He sighed, long and loud, closed his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I do feel better. I wish he'd just caught a cold, though."
Eve's head was throbbing lightly as she walked back up the steps to her car. "Nobody's that naive," she muttered. "Nobody's that guileless."
"He's from Nebraska." Peabody scanned her pocket unit.
"From where?"
" Nebraska." Peabody waved a hand, vaguely west. "Farm boy. Done a lot of regional theater, some video, billboard ads, bit parts on-screen. He's only been in New York three years." She climbed into the car. "They still grow them pretty guileless in Nebraska. I think it's all that soy and corn."
"Whatever, he stays on the short list. His fee for walking into the part of Vole is a big step up from watching in the wings. He's living like a transient in that dump. Money's a motivator, and so's ambition. He wanted to be Draco. What better way than to eliminate Draco?"
"I've got this idea."
Eve glanced at her wrist unit to check the time as she zipped down into traffic. Goddamn press conference. "Which is?"
"Okay, it's more of a theory."
"Spill it."
"If it's good, can I get a soy dog?"
"Christ. What's the theory?"
"So, they're all actors in a play. A good actor slides into the character during the performance. Stays there. It's all immediate, but another part of them is distant – gauging the performances, remembering the staging, picking up vibes from the audience and stuff like that. My theory is whoever switched the knives was performing."
"Yeah, performing murder."
"Sure, but this is like another level. They could be part of the play and watch it go down without actually doing the crime. The objective's reached, and it's all still a role. Even if it's a tech who did it, it's all part of the play. Vole's dead. He's supposed to be. The fact that Draco's dead, too, just makes it all the more satisfying."
Eve mulled it over, then pulled over at the next corner where a glide-cart smoked and sizzled.
"So it's a good theory?"
"It's decent. Get your soy dog."
"You want anything?"
"Coffee, but not off that bug coach."
Peabody sighed. "Wow, that sure stirs my appetite." But she got out, beelined through the pedestrian traffic, and ordered the double wide soy dog and a mega tube of Diet Coke to convince herself she was watching her weight.
"Happy now?" Eve asked when Peabody dropped back into the passenger seat and stuffed the end of the dog into her mouth.
"Ummm. Good. Wanna bite?"
Peabody was saved from a scathing response by the beep of the car 'link. Nadine Furst, reporter for Channel 75, floated on-screen. " Dallas. I need to talk to you, soon as you can manage."
"Yeah, I bet." Eve ignored the transmission and whipped around the corner to head back to Central. "Why she thinks I'll give her an exclusive one-on-one before a scheduled press conference, I don't know."
"Because you're friends?" Peabody hazarded with her mouth full of soy dog and rehydrated onion flakes.
"Nobody's that friendly."
" Dallas." Nadine's pretty, camera-ready face was strained, as Eve noted with mild curiosity, was her perfectly pitched voice. "It's important, and it's… personal. Please. If you're screening transmissions, give me a break here. I'll meet you anywhere you say, whenever you say."
Cursing, Eve engaged transmission. "The Blue Squirrel. Now."
" Dallas – "
"I can give you ten minutes. Make it fast."
It had been a while since she'd swung through the doors into the Blue Squirrel. As joints went, there were worse, but not by much. Still, the dingy club held some sentimental attachment for Eve. At one time, her friend Mavis had performed there, slithering, bouncing, and screaming out songs in costumes that defied description.
And once, during a difficult and confusing case, Eve had gone in with the sole purpose of drinking her mind to mush.
There Roarke had tracked her down, hauled her out before she could accomplish the mission. That night, she'd ended up in his bed for the first time.
Sex with Roarke, she'd discovered, did a much better job of turning the mind to mush than a vatful of screamers.
So the Squirrel, with its debatable menu and disinterested servers, held some fond memories.
She slid into a booth, considered ordering the hideous excuse for coffee for old times' sake, then watched Nadine come in.
"Thanks." Nadine stood by the booth, slowly unwinding a brilliant multicolored scarf from around her neck. Her fingers plucked at the long, dark fringe. " Peabody, would you mind giving us a minute here?"
"No problem." Peabody pushed herself out of the booth, and because Nadine's eyes were clouded, gave the reporter a quick, reassuring squeeze on the arm. "I'll just go sit at the bar and watch the holo-games."
"Thanks. Been a while since we've been in here."
"Never long enough," Eve commented when Nadine took her seat across the wobbly table. At a server's approach, Eve merely took out her badge and set it in clear view on the table. She didn't think she or Nadine were in the mood for a snack, much less possible ptomaine. "What's the problem?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe there isn't one." Nadine closed her eyes, shook back her hair.
She'd added some blonde streaky things in it, Eve noticed. She could never figure out why people were always changing colors. All that maintenance baffled her.
"Richard Draco," Nadine said.
"I'm not going to discuss the case with you." Eve scooped up her badge with one impatient swipe. "Press conference at fourteen hundred."
"I slept with him."
Eve paused in the act of getting out of the booth, settled back, and took a closer look at Nadine's face. "When?"
"Not long after I got the on-air job at 75. I wasn't doing the crime beat then. Mostly fluff stories, social gigs, celebrity profiles. Anyway, he contacted me. Wanted to tell me how good I was, how much he enjoyed watching my reports. Which were pretty damn solid, considering I hated every fucking minute of it."
She picked up her scarf, wound it around her hand. Unwound it. Set it down again. "He asked me to dinner. I was flattered, he was gorgeous. One thing led to another."
"Okay. That would have been, what, five years ago?"
"Six, actually, six." Nadine lifted a hand, rubbed her fingers over her mouth. It was a gesture Eve had never seen her make before. On-air reporters didn't like mussing their makeup.
"I said one thing led to another," she continued, "but it led there romantically. We didn't just jump into bed. We dated for a couple of weeks. Quiet dinners, theater, walks, parties. Then he asked me to go away with him for the weekend, to Paris."
This time Nadine simply dropped her head in her hands. "Oh Jesus. Jesus, Dallas."
"You fell for him."
"Oh yeah. I fell for him. All the way. I mean I was gone, stupid in love with the son of a bitch. We were together for three months, and I actually… Dallas, I was thinking marriage, kids, the house in the country. The whole ball."
Eve shifted in her seat. Emotional declarations always made her feel clumsy. "So, I take it things didn't work out."
Nadine stared for a moment, then let her head fall back with a long, shaky laugh. "Yeah, you could say things didn't work out. I found out he was two-timing me. Hell, three- and four-timing me. I caught a gossip report right before I went on air, and there was Richard cuddled up with some big-breasted blonde at some swank club uptown. When I confronted him about it, he just smiled and said he enjoyed women. So what?
"So what," she murmured. "The fucker broke my heart and didn't have the decency to lie to me. He even talked me back into bed. I'm ashamed of that. I let him talk me back into bed, and when I was still wet from him, he takes a call from another woman. Makes a date with her while I'm lying there naked."