Obsession in Death (33 page)

“Whatever she says to do, you’ll do?”

Mavis swiped her finger over her heart, kissed it, then laid it on his lips. “Mega promise, not to be broken.”

“I’ll open the wine.”

Mavis waited until he’d moved out of earshot. “Don’t tell me to cancel the ball drop. Mega promise, so I have to if you say. Don’t say.”

“I won’t. No way she’s going to go after you there. She runs, and she goes for solo, goes for alone. You make the mega promise you’re never alone. Not at rehearsals or pre-gig or post-gig, whatever it is.”

Once again Mavis swiped her heart. “No chances. I’ve got two of the maggest of mag reasons for staying safe.” She turned as Peabody came in with Bella, both of them draped in baubles.

“There’s one of them.”

Bella held out her arms, did the toddler version of a model’s turn. “Ba-ba!”

She pulled off a gaudy bangle bracelet and, smiling sweetly, offered it to Eve.

“You think I’m going to trade?” Eve slipped the thoroughly wiped diamond back under her shirt, then crouched. “Disappointment, kid. Get used to it.”

Bella only laughed, threw her arms around Eve’s neck. “Slooch,” she said in obvious delight, and pressed her sticky lips to Eve’s cheek.

Eve sat for twenty minutes after the security team returned, amazed and baffled that Bella insisted on crawling onto and staying on her lap while she talked of procedure and code words.

Then again, maybe the kid was plotting how she’d get her hands – or her mouth – on the diamond again.

Eve took another long scan of the street when she left, then turned, studied the windows of Mavis’s apartment. Bright and colorful for the holidays, tree shining in the center of the glass.

Baubles, she supposed.

Mavis would be smart. She’d survived the street for years, and knew how to be smart. And she’d be only smarter and more careful because she had family.

As safe as possible, Eve assured herself, and got in the car.

Time to go the hell home, she thought. She, too, had family. And she wanted to be home, with her family, eating takeout soup and pie.

As soon as she figured the best way to get the hell out of this parking space.

18

When she walked into the house with her takeout bag, Eve had a moment of panic. Summerset – the Grim Reaper of welcome home – wasn’t lurking. Even as she started toward the in-house intercom, she caught the murmur of voices from the parlor. Another time she’d come home like this flashed through her mind. Another time, another killer, and one who’d gotten past Summerset’s guard.

Quietly, she shifted the bag to her left hand, laid her right on her weapon, and pivoted to the doorway.

She saw Summerset, at his ease, a lowball glass in his hand, the cat on his lap. A woman she’d never seen before sat across from him, with the fire snapping away in the hearth between them.

“Lieutenant.” Summerset continued to stroke the cat, only lifted his eyebrows at the position of her right hand.

“Who is this?” Eve demanded, and left her hand where it was.

“An old friend. Ivanna, meet Lieutenant Dallas. Lieutenant, Ivanna Liski.”

“I’ve heard so much about you.” Ivanna set her glass aside, held out a hand – sort of like royalty, Eve thought, extending a ring to be kissed. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

The accent, Eve noted, like Summerset’s, held the faintest trace of Eastern Europe. Satisfied enough, Eve took her hand off the butt of her weapon, crossed the room to shake Ivanna’s.

Delicate, Eve thought. Everything about the woman said delicate. The pale blond hair that swept into a long wave around a porcelain-doll face. Clear blue eyes, softly pinked lips, cameo features blended into fragile beauty. Eve gauged her, on closer look, at around seventy.

“Nice to meet you, and I haven’t heard a thing.”

“Always discreet.” On a musical laugh, Ivanna glanced toward Summerset. “We’ve known each other for too many years to count. Lawrence was my first love.”

“Really?” Eve decided to give her psyche a break and not try to imagine it.

“A woman’s first always holds a strong place.” Ivanna laid a hand on her heart, just below a square-cut sapphire. “You have a lovely home. It’s been far too many years since I’ve been to New York, been able to visit.”

“You don’t live here.”

“Paris, for the past several years, but my granddaughter lives here now, and is to be married here next week. So I’ve come for the wedding, for family.” She smiled back at Summerset. “And for old friends.”

“Well, enjoy it. I’ve got to…”

“Your work is important, and we can’t keep you. The police. There was a time,” she said, playfully, to Summerset.

“Times change.”

“Oh, so they do, no matter how you might try to hold them in place. I hope to see you again,” she told Eve.

“Sure,” was the best Eve could think of.

She left them to their whiskey and memories, and started upstairs.

Russian, Ukrainian, possibly Czech – who knew? – but the voice brought images of gypsy campfires and crumbling castles in shadowy mountains. Still, it was hard to picture the delicate beauty with the sapphire and the pale blue dress ever being attracted to the bony, skull-faced Summerset.

She went straight to her office, figuring on stowing the takeout in the kitchen, writing up her report, putting in some solid thinking time.

And found Roarke in his own office, at his own desk. He wore a sweater the color of night fog, and when those wild blue eyes flicked up to hers, they held both welcome and ease.

“Hey. I didn’t know you were home.”

“For a bit now, just finishing up a few things. What have you got there?”

“I made dinner.” She held up the takeout bag. “Some kind of soup and bread sticks and pie.”

“You’ve been busy. What sort of pie?”

“Damn good pie, I’m told. Hungry?”

“Now that you mention it.”

“I’ll set it up. I could handle some wine if you want to get that. It’s been a day.”

“I don’t see any fresh blood or bruises.”

“Not that kind of day,” she said, turning back into her office. “But it was close. Closer, somebody would’ve been bloody.”

She scowled at the sketches on the murder board. “Somebody,” she repeated, then went back into the kitchen and decided to work backward through the day. “Summerset has a woman.”

“I believe he has.” Roarke stepped into the kitchen behind her, turned her, kissed her lightly in welcome. “And has had, a number of them.”

“Don’t even,” she warned. “I mean he has a woman downstairs.”

“Ivanna, yes.” Roarke wandered back out to her office, considered what wine to open for dinner. “She arrived just before I did. I came up more to give them privacy than to work.”

Eve stuck her head out a moment. “For what?”

“To catch up, for a start. It’s been several years, I believe, since they’ve been in the same place at the same time.”

“You know her?”

“I do, yes. Quite a fascinating woman.”

“What’s a fascinating woman doing with Summerset?”

He opted for a sturdy Merlot. “Reminiscing. To start. They were very young when they met, and had an intense and passionate relationship.”

She couldn’t image Summerset young, and really,
really
didn’t want to imagine him passionate.

“Then she went to Kiev – or it may have been Moscow,” Roarke considered, then shrugged. “She was, some forty, fifty years ago, a brilliant and famous dancer. Prima ballerina. I’ve seen recordings of her onstage, and she was truly stunning.”

“Okay, I can see that.” Eve carted out the meal, including the pie.

“She traveled around the world, fell in love with her choreographer. They had two children.” He offered Eve the wine. “They were very young when he was killed. The dawn of the Urbans. And she danced for the rich, the privileged, lived her life as one of them. Or so she made it appear. She worked in intelligence.”

Eve blinked, brought back the image of delicacy and grace. “She was a spy?”

“And quite brilliant at that as well, if the stories are true. She worked with Summerset when he was based in London.”

Eve sampled the soup – whatever was in the kitchen sink was pretty good. “He was a medic.”

“Among other things, as you well know. He was married, so they remained friends and compatriots. At one point, she hid her children with his wife. And was godmother to Marlena when she was born. And, I’m told, was there for him when he lost his wife.”

Crowded lives, Eve thought. Long and crowded. Times changed, she remembered, no matter how you tried to hold them in place.

“I met her for the first time in Dublin,” Roarke said, “after Summerset took me in. I’d never seen the like of her – so elegant and cultured. And kind. She came to him again after Marlena was killed. I think he might have gone mad with grief if she hadn’t come to him.”

Eve laid a hand over his for a moment. The brutal murder of Summerset’s young daughter was a wound she knew had never healed for Roarke, for Summerset.

“It’s good he had someone. That you both did.”

“They rekindled their romance.”

“Okay, ick.” She removed her hand. “I don’t need that information.”

“And every few years they manage to be in the same place at the same time, and… reminisce.”

She rolled her eyes when he grinned at her. “Absolutely not going there.”

“Best not. In any case if things weren’t as things are, I’d suggest we take them out to dinner. She’s someone you’d enjoy, a great deal, and she’d entertain you, believe me, with stories of her very multilayered life.”

“She looks so delicate. I’d never have pegged her as being an Urban War operative. Which would be the point of being one.”

“The ballet takes strength and endurance as well as grace and talent. And espionage, particularly during war? A spine of steel. Yes, you’d enjoy her.”

“Next trip maybe, but right now…” She picked up her wine. “I was about ten feet away from ending this with a flying tackle today.”

He’d reached for a bread stick, paused, surprised. “You found her? And didn’t lead with that?”

“If I’d found her, I’d be at Central grilling her sorry ass. She got away from me.”

And that, Eve realized, would sting for a while.

“I spotted her, wearing her full gear so I didn’t get any better look at her than any of the wits so far. She was across the street from Mavis’s apartment.”

“Mavis and the family are all right?”

“All good there, tucked up with security – Mantal and Grommet.”

“Then tucked up well,” Roarke said, gave her half the bread stick.

“And McNab rigged some sort of alarm so if anyone tries to get in at Mavis’s, it’ll go off at their place.”

“That’s good thinking.”

“Yeah, he was wearing the thinking hat today.”

“Cap.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Idiom.”

“Schmidiom. So I spotted her, but she had a good lead because she spotted me at the same time. I had to get across the street – fucking traffic – then haul ass after her down the sidewalk, which was packed with pedestrians. She’s fast, too,” Eve credited, and bit into the bread stick. “Pretty damn fleet of feet. I thought I’d lost her, but she’d cut through this dump of a restaurant. I could hear the crashing and yelling from the kitchen, so I’m after her. Maybe, maybe I get her. But the cook, and he’s about the size of Everest, gets in my way. Clears it when I badge him, but she rabbited. So we got soup and pie out of it, since they felt bad about slowing me down.”

“It’s nice soup.”

“It’s amazing soup if you consider it came from a hole-in-the-wall.”

“You don’t think she’d have tried for Mavis today if you hadn’t seen her?”

“No. Just strolling the neighborhood, getting the feel, that’s my sense of it. Maybe she’d’ve gone in the building – used the fake master. Just as well she didn’t, because she’d have ditched it when it didn’t work. This way, we’ll have her next location if and when she tries.”

She finished off the pretty good soup. “Bella tried to eat the diamond.” Eve tugged on her chain. “What does Leonardo do but walk off leaving me holding the kid? Why would any sane person do that?”

“It’s a wonder,” he said, smiled.

“So she digs it out while I’m trying to figure out what to do with her. Popped that sucker right in her mouth when I wouldn’t just hand it over. She likes the shiny, I guess. Calls them ba-bas. Baubles.”

“Baubles.” Laughing, he sat back. “Trust Mavis to start the girl early.”

“She had this look in her eye – the kid. Like: Not going to give it to me? That’s what you think, sister. It was a little scary considering she’s about a foot and a half.”

She shoved the bowl aside, and decided the pie had to wait.

“I’m glad I went by. Not only because I got a chance to put the fear of God into the UNSUB, but I can cross worry about Mavis off the list. She’s covered.”

“And the others? How many will you worry about tonight?”

“I talked to all of them. My gut says, if she’s going to go for someone tight with me, it’ll be Nadine or Mira, since Mavis is off the list. She can’t try for Mavis, not now anyway. I’m going to tag both of them, push the stay-inside, be-careful routine.”

She got up, just had to get up, walked to the board.

“Murdering Morphing Dollies.”

“Excuse me?”

“McNab thinks you should produce a vid game. Murdering Morphing Dollies. When he had the hat on today, he and Yancy got together, came up with a series of possible sketches. Using math and probability and ratio and dimension and what the hell.”

“Interesting.” Considering, he finished his wine. “And actually there’s a customer base who’d go mad for Murdering Morphing Dollies.”

“They dressed their ‘dollies’ in trashy underwear and skimpy bikinis.”

“Well, of course. Why don’t I have a look?”

“Because of the trashy underwear?”

“Such things are always a factor, but for now, to see the concept.”

She set it up, then stood studying the images on screen with him.

Head angled, he smiled. “Hmm. We’d need to include weapons. An ax – perhaps a halberd – maybe a boomer, definitely a vial of poison.”

“What?”