She dropped into bed at two a.m., with the muttered request that Roarke wake her at six if she slept through. He was better than any alarm.
With a low fire simmering, the cat curled into the small of her back, and Roarke’s arm wrapped around her, she tumbled straight into sleep.
The dead had a lot to say. In dreams, she thought, dreaming. And that was different from believing you could walk over some magic golden bridge into the afterlife and have conversations with vics.
No golden bridge for her. She sat in Interview A, with Marcus and Darlene Fitzwilliams seated on the other side of the scarred table.
“What gives?” she asked.
“I love my brother. I’d never hurt him.”
“It’s pretty clear you did.”
“I’ve never hurt anyone in my life, not on purpose. You were in my house. What did you see?”
“It’s all right, Darli.” Marcus draped an arm around her shoulders, pressed his lips to her temple.
She’d seen that, Eve remembered. A photograph of just that, in a frame. Another when they’d been teenagers—Darlene riding on Marcus’s shoulders as he hammed it up. Her in a bikini, Eve remembered, him in swim trunks, up to his waist in a blue sea.
Other photos, many photos. The siblings, the parents, Darlene and Henry, Marcus and Henry. Holiday photos, casual photos, formal photos.
A life in frames.
“You had secrets,” Eve said.
“Everyone has secrets.”
“And some people kill to protect them.”
“Do I look like a killer?”
“Mostly killers look like everybody else. You jammed scissors in your brother’s heart.”
“I couldn’t.” Darlene gripped the handle of the shears now buried deep in her brother’s chest. Yanked them free. “I’d kill myself first.”
“You killed yourself second,” Eve pointed out. “Grief can mess you up.”
“How do you know? You’ve never lost anyone. You don’t know my grief, you don’t know my sorrow. My parents were angels. Yours were monsters.”
Darlene drove the bloody points into the table. “You’re surrounded by evil. How can you see through it to what’s good?”
“You just have to look hard enough.”
“Then look! I was going to have what you have. I just wanted answers. That’s no different than you. I wanted what you want.”
Eve opened her eyes and looked into Roarke’s. “This. She wanted this.”
“You’ve a few minutes left to sleep, but you dream so hard.”
“She wanted this, and she had the person who wanted to give it to her. Why end everything? Gotta look deeper.”
“All right.” He kissed the brow she’d furrowed.
She laid her hand on his cheek. “Sometimes you don’t have to look very hard.”
“For what?”
“For what’s good. You’re right here.” She tipped her face up, touched her mouth gently to his. “And when things aren’t so good, you’re still right here.”
“Always.”
She eased over so her heart lay on his, so her mouth lay on his. The only bridge she needed, she thought, was the one that led to him.
Her body, warm, smooth, fit so perfectly with his. His lanky, leggy cop. They could fill each other with love, with light, a kind of awakening after the long, dark night.
It touched him, the tenderness of her hand on his cheek, the sweetness of her fingers sliding through his hair. As much a lifting of the heart as arousal. He gave her the same; soft and easy, slow, dreamy kisses as desire roused.
He shifted. When he covered her she opened. She welcomed. She enfolded.
With their mouths meeting again, again, their bodies moved together, a rise and fall, rise and fall until that final peak.
And the quiet, sighing slide that followed.
* * *
She thought of it later when she stood in her home office, studying the murder board she’d set up.
Darlene had wanted that—not just the sex; the connection, the continuity. And Eve had seen that connection in photographs in the townhouse.
Eve glanced over to a photograph of her and Roarke, taken by some enterprising paparazzo. They’d taken down the bad guy, and were both a bit bruised and bloody—a contrast to the glittery evening clothes. And they grinned at each other.
The connection was there, clear to see.
Who’d give that up and jump off a building? You’d have to be crazy—and that might be the answer. If she was sane, the logical answer was Darlene had been pushed. One way or the other.
She texted Peabody with a change of plans and told her partner to meet her at the morgue at oh-nine-hundred. Meanwhile she split the list of reputed psychics, gave Peabody half to run.
She’d start on the others, but first she wanted a look at Darlene’s financials. That might tell its own tale.
* * *
Ten minutes later she was up and crossing to Roarke’s adjoining office.
“I know you’re busy.”
He glanced over from his wall screen and the schematics on it. “I’ve been busier.”
“It’s a money question.”
“I’m never too busy for that.”
“I’m looking into Darlene’s financials. For the past eighteen weeks—including the morning she died—she withdrew nine thousand, nine hundred and nine-nine dollars from her personal account. I’m reading it as cash.”
Roarke sat back. “Isn’t that interesting.”
“There’s other activity. Deposits, transfers, other withdrawals—one every month for five or six thousand. But eighteen weekly for that amount’s a flag for me.”
“One dollar more, you hit ten thousand and the IRS might do a sniff. Blackmail springs to mind, but with what you found last night, another idea leapfrogs over it.”
“Somebody’s been taking her for a ride for four and a half months. Parents died seven months ago. I need to find out when she started hunting for psychics, but that’s what rings. She has another personal account—years old. This one? She opened it about five months ago, and not at her usual bank. I think she was hiding this, just like she was hiding the business cards and pamphlets.”
“I’d agree, but if you’re angling from that to whoever she was paying somehow pushing her to murder/suicide, why? Forget the how for a moment. Why? A dollar shy of ten large a week is a very nice income from one source.”
“Maybe she’d decided that was it.” Demonstrating, Eve swiped a finger through the air. “Maybe she’d figured out whoever she was paying was full of bullshit, maybe argued, threatened. Could be this bullshit shucker figured out a way to get more if he eliminated her, and her brother. A lot of ropes to tug there.” She jammed her hands into her pockets. “I need her tox.” She hadn’t given Morris enough time, and found that frustrating. “I need how. She was high, and everyone says she didn’t use, but damn it, she was high. So maybe she didn’t know she was using. Still doesn’t tell me why she’d kill her brother. If we stretch it to mind manipulation—not a big stretch since we’ve dealt with it before—it still doesn’t explain the why.” She’d taken a turn around his office before she caught herself. “Sorry.”
“I never tire of watching you work.”
“I’m working these angles because two people who loved her insist she couldn’t do what she did.”
“Not just because of that.”
She blew out a breath. It could be disconcerting to have someone who knew her inside and out.
“No, not just,” she admitted. “My sense of her, too. Money’s part of it. Gia Gregg—lawyer. Do you know her?”