“Then go.” He lifted her hands, kissed them. “Do your job.”
“Yeah.” She started toward the door, stopped, and turned back. “I dreamed about Marlena. I dreamed about her and Quinto Turner. They were both the way they were after they’d been killed.”
“Eve.”
“But… she said she’d take him, and she did. She said there was a special place for the innocents, and she’d take him there. Do you think there is? A place for innocents.”
“I do, actually. Yes.”
“I hope you’re right.”
She left him, went to her office to prepare for what had to be done.
When Peabody and McNab came in, she simply gestured toward the kitchen. There were twin hoots of joy as they scrambled for the treasure trove of her AutoChef. She stuck with coffee. The blocker had done the job-and maybe the conversation with Roarke had smoothed the rest, at least a little.
She cocked her eyebrows when Peabody and McNab came back in with heaping plates and steaming mugs.
“Do you think you’ve got enough to hold you off from starvation during the briefing?”
“Belgian waffles, with seasonal berries.” Peabody sat down, prepared to plow in. “This may hold me forever.”
“As long as your ears stay as open as your mouths.”
She began with Ortega, took them through her premise.
“At the end of the seven years, he’d stand to inherit, by spousal right, upward of six hundred and eighty-five million-not including personal property, and the profits from the real property and businesses over the seven.”
“That’s a lot of waffles,” McNab commented.
“Set for life,” Peabody agreed. “Well, if he’d lived.”
“His bed buddy didn’t want to split. She wanted it all. We’re going to prove that, nail her for accessory after the fact on Ortega and Flores, fraud, conspiracy to murder on Lino, and being a basic skank bitch. We’ll meet with the lawyer later today, and set up a little sting.”
“We lay down on her,” Peabody added, “and get her to flip on her co-conspirator.”
“Don’t need it. Screen on,” she ordered, and Juanita’s data flashed on. “Juanita Turner. Her son was a victim in the second bombing.”
“How did you…” Peabody paused, narrowed her eyes at the image. “She looks a little familiar. Did we interview her? Was she at the Ortiz funeral?”
“If she was, and I think it’s likely, she slipped in and out before the scene was secured. We saw her at the youth center. The medical.”
“That’s it! I didn’t get much of a look at her there. Her son?”
“And her husband, a year later-to the day-by self-termination.” Eve ran through it, flatly. “Penny needed a weapon,” Eve concluded. “And Juanita fit the bill.”
“Man, man, it had to be horrible for her to realize this guy she’d thought was… that he was the one respons-ible for her son’s death.”
“Yeah. It’s rough.” But it couldn’t influence the work. “I’ve contacted Reo,” Eve said, referring to the APA she preferred working with. “We’ve got enough, in her opinion, to get the communications. Which is where e-boy here comes in. I want you to dig in, dig out,” she told McNab as he gorged on waffles. “Anything that so much as sniffs like it’s connected. We’re picking up Juanita. While we have her in the box, you find us a communication with Penny. Find a memo, a journal, a receipt for the cyanide. Find something hard, and find it fast.”
Peabody swallowed waffles and berries. “We’re picking her up before Penny?”
“Penny orchestrated it. Juanita executed it. I’ve contacted Baxter. He and Trueheart are keeping a tail on Penny. Now, if you’ve finished stuffing yourselves, let’s get to work.”
Peabody said nothing as they walked downstairs. She got into the passenger seat, finally turned to Eve. “Maybe we get Penny on conspiracy, but it’s a stretch. It’s more likely we get accessory after the fact there. And that’s a maybe. She can claim she let it slip out about Lino, or felt guilty and spilled it to Juanita Turner.”
Peabody put a hand on her heart, widened her eyes. “I swear, your honor and members of the jury, I didn’t know she’d do murder. How could I know?” Dropping her hand, she shook her head. “Juanita’s going to get hit with first degree, no way around it unless Reo wants to deal it down, but Penny? She’s likely to slither out of it.”
“That’s not up to us.”
“It just seems wrong. Juanita loses her son, her husband. And now, all these years later, she gets used. And she’s the one who’s going to go down the hardest.”
“You play, you pay. She killed a guy, Peabody,” McNab said from the back. “If Dallas has this right, and it sure fits nice and tight, she did the premeditated-cold-blooded killed his ass.”
“I know that. But she was set up to do it. Jesus, you ought to see the crime scene photos from that bombing. There wasn’t much left of her kid.”
“Vic was a downtown bastard, that’s coming crystal. And I give you she took the hardest of the hard knocks. But, come on, that gives her the go to poison him?”
“I didn’t say that, you ass, I’m just saying-”
“Shut up and stop arguing,” Eve ordered.
“I’m just pointing out,” Peabody said in the gooey tones of reason that told any detractors they were stupid, “that Juanita took some really mean hits, and Penny-who probably was in on them-used that. And-”
“I’m just pointing out, hello, murderer.”
Peabody swung around to glare at McNab. “You’re such a jerk.”
“Bleeding heart.”
“Shut up!” Eve’s sharp order had them both zipping it. “you’re both right. So stop bickering like w couple of idiots. I got rid of one headache this morning. If you bring one back, I’m booting Both of you to the curb and finishing this myself.
Peabody folded her arms, stuck her nose in the air. McNab slumped in the backseat. It was, in Eve’s mind, a sulkfest all the way over to the East Side.
21
EVE DOUBLE-PARKED IN FRONT OF THE YOUTH center, flipped on her On Duty light. The same group of kids shot hoops on the court, while adults hustled, dragged, and carried smaller ones into the building.
The daily life of kids was a strange one, she thought. You got hauled to various locations, dumped there, hauled out again at the end of the day. During the dump time, you formed your own little societies that might have little or nothing to do with your pecking order in your home life. So weren’t you constantly adjusting, readjusting, dealing with new rules, new authorities, more power, less?
No wonder kids were so weird.
“You wait for the warrant,” she told McNab. “Once we confirm Juanita’s here, or confirm her location, Peabody will relay that information. You can make your way to her apartment.”
“I don’t see how I can relay information when I’m supposed to shut up-and if I wasn’t supposed to, I still wouldn’t be speaking to him.”
“Do you really want to experience the thrill of having my boot so far up your ass it bruises your tonsils? Don’t even think about it,” Eve snapped at McNab when he snickered. “Detective Jerk, stand by. Detective Bleeding Heart, with me.”
She strode off. In seconds, Peabody clipped along beside her, insult in every step. “Be pissed later,” Eve advised. “There’s nothing about this that’s going to be pleasant or satisfying. So do the job now, and be pissed later.”
“I just think I ought to be able to express an opinion without being-”
Eve stopped, whirled. Fire kindled and flashed in her eyes as she scorched Peabody with them. “Do you think I’m looking forward to hauling in a woman who had to bury the torn and bloody pieces of her son that could be scraped up off the floor? That I’m rubbing my hands with glee at the prospect of putting her in the box and sweating a confession out of her for killing the man who I believe was responsible for that?”