by J. D. Robb
Seven
They were into their second year of marriage, and being a trained observer, Eve knew when he was irritated with her. It seemed stupid, just stupid to have a fight or the undercurrent of one over something as ridiculous as ghosts.
Still, she brooded over it another moment, on the verge of stupidity. Then she huffed out a breath.
"Look," she began.
After a pause, he sat back. "I’m looking."
"What I’m getting at is… shit. Shit." She paced to his window, to the doorway, turned around again.
Rules of marriage - and hell, one of the benefits of it, she admitted - were that she could say to him what she might even find hard to say to herself.
"I have to live with so many of them." There was anger in her over it, and a kind of grief she could never fully explain. "They don’t always go away when you close the case, never go away if you leave a crack in it. I got a freaking army of dead in my head."
"Whom you’ve defended," he reminded her. "Stood over, stood for."
"Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean they’re going to say Thanks, pal,’ then shuffle off the mortal whatever."
"That would be coil - and they’ve already done the shuffle before you get there."
"Exactly. Dead. But they still have faces and voices and pain, at least in my head. I don’t need to think about one wifting around sending me messages from beyond. It’s too much, that’s all. It’s too much if I have to start wondering if there’s some spirit hovering over my shoulder to make sure I do the job."
"All right."
"That’s it?"
"Darling Eve," he said with the easy patience he could pull out and baffle her with at the oddest times.
"Haven’t we already proven that you and I don’t have to stand on exactly the same spot on every issue? And wouldn’t it be boring if we did?"
"Maybe." Tension oozed back out of her. "I guess. I just never expected you’d take something like this and run with it."
"Then perhaps I shouldn’t tell you that if I die first, I’m planning to come back to see you naked as often as possible."
Her lips twitched, as he’d intended them to. "I’ll be old, with my tits hanging to my waist."
"You don’t have enough tit to hang that low."
She pursed her lips, looked down as if to check. "Gotta point. So are we good now?"
"We may be, if you come over here and kiss me. In payment for the insult."
She rolled her eyes. "Nothing’s free around here." But she skirted the desk, leaned down to touch her lips to his.
The moment she did, he yanked her down into his lap. She’d seen it coming - she knew him too well not to - but was in the mood to indulge him.
"If you think I’m playing bimbo secretary and horny exec - "
"There were actually a few insults," he interrupted. "And you’ve reminded me that you’re going to get old eventually. I should take advantage of your youth and vitality, and see you naked now."
"I’m not getting naked. Hey! Hey!"
"Feel you naked then," he amended, as his hands were already under her sweatshirt and on her breasts.
"Good things, small packages."
"Oh yeah? Is that what I should say about your equipment?"
"Insult upon insult." Laughing, he slid his hand around to her back to hold her more firmly in place. "You have a lot of apologizing to do."
"Then I guess I’d better get started."
She put some punch into the kiss, swinging around to straddle him. It would take some agility as well as vitality to pull off a serious apology in his desk chair, but she thought she was up to the job.
He made her feel so many things, all of them vital and immediate. The hunger, the humor, the love, the lust. She could taste his heat for her, his greed for her as his mouth ravished hers. Her own body filled with that same heat and hunger as he tugged at her clothes.
Here was his life - in this complicated woman. Not just the long, alluring length of her, but the mind and spirit inside the form. She could excite and frustrate, charm and annoy - and all there was of her somehow managed to fit against him, and make him complete.
Now she surrounded him, shifting that body, using those quick hands, then taking him inside her with a long, low purr of satisfaction. They took each other, finished each other, and then the purr was a laughing groan.
"I think that squares us," she managed.
"You may even have some credit."
For a moment, she curled in, rested her head on his shoulder. "Ghosts probably can’t screw around in a desk chair."
"Unlikely."
"It’s tough being dead."
* * *
At eight-fifteen in the morning, Eve was in her office at Central scowling at the latest sweeper and EDD reports.
"Nothing. They can’t find anything. No sign of electronic surveillance, holographic paraphernalia, audio, video. Zilch."
"Could be it’s telling you that you had a paranormal experience last night."
Eve spared one bland look for Peabody. "Paranormal my ass."
"Cases have been documented, Dallas."
"Fruitcakes have been documented, too. It’s going to be a family member. That’s where we push. That and whatever Hopkins may or may not have had in his possession that his killer wanted. Start with the family members. Let’s eliminate any with solid alibis. We’ll fan out from there."
She glanced at her desk as her ‘link beeped - again - and, scanning the readout, sneered. "Another reporter. We’re not feeding the hounds on this one until so ordered. Screen all your incomings. If you get cornered, straight no comment, investigation is active and ongoing. Period."
"Got that. Dallas, what was it like last night? Skin-crawly or wow?"
Eve started to snap, then blew out a breath. "Skin-crawly, then annoying that some jerk had played with me and made my skin crawl for a minute."
"But kind of frigid, too, right? Ghost of Bobbie Bray serenading you."
"If I believed it was the ghost of anyone, I’d say it was feeling more pissy than entertaining. What someone wants us to think is we’re not welcome at Number Twelve. Trying to scare us off. I’ve got Feeney’s notes on the report from EDD. He says a couple of his boys heard singing. Another swears he felt something pat his ass. Same sort of deal from the sweepers. Mass hysteria."
"Digging in, I found out two of the previous owners tried exorcisms. Hired priests, psychics, parapsychologists, that kind of deal. Nothing worked."
"Gee, mumbo didn’t get rid of the jumbo? Why doesn’t that surprise me? Get on the ‘link, start checking alibis."
Eve took her share, eliminated two, and ended up tagging Serenity Massey’s daughter in the woman’s Scottsdale home.
"It’s not even seven in the morning."
"I’m sorry, Ms. Sawyer."
"Not even seven," the woman said testily, "and I’ve already had three calls from reporters, and another from the head nurse at my mother’s care center. Do you know a reporter tried to get to her? She has severe dementia - can barely remember me when I go see her - and some idiot reporter tries to get through to interview her over Bobbie Bray. My mother didn’t even know her."
"Does your mother know she was Bobbie Bray’s daughter?"
The woman’s thin, tired face went blank. But it was there in her eyes, clear as glass. "What did you say?"
"She knows, then - certainly you do."
"I’m not going to have my mother harassed, not by reporters, not by the police."
"I don’t intend to harass your mother. Why don’t you tell me when and how she found out she was Bobbie’s daughter, not her sister."
"I don’t know." Ms. Sawyer rubbed her hands over her face. "She hasn’t been well for a long time, a very long time. Even when I was a child…" She dropped her hands now and looked more than tired. She looked ill. "Lieutenant, is this necessary?"
"I’ve got two murders. Both of them relatives of yours. You tell me."
"I don’t t
hink of the Hopkins family as relatives. Why would I? I’m sorry that man was killed because it’s dredged all this up. I’ve been careful to separate myself and my own family from the Bobbie phenomenon. Check, why don’t you? I’ve never given an interview, never agreed to one or sought one out."
"Why? It’s a rich pool, from what 1 can tell."
"Because I wanted normal. I’m entitled to it, and so are my kids. My mother was always frail. Delicate, mind and body. I’m not, and I’ve made damn sure to keep me and mine out of that whirlpool. If it leaks out that I’m Bobbie’s granddaughter instead of a grandniece, they’ll hound me."
"I can’t promise to keep it quiet, I can only promise you that I won’t be giving interviews on that area of the investigation. I won’t give out your name or the names of your family members."
"Good for you," Sawyer said dully. "They’re already out."
"Then it won’t hurt you to answer some questions. How did your mother find out about her parentage?"
"She told me - my brother and me - that she found letters Bobbie had written. Bobbie’s mother kept them. She wrote asking how her baby was doing, called my mother by name. Her Serenity she called her, as if she was a state of mind instead of a child who needed her mother."
The bitterness in the words told Eve she wasn’t talking to one of Bobbie Bray’s fans.
"Said she was sorry she’d messed up again. My mother claimed Bobbie said she was going back into rehab, that she was leaving Hop, the whole scene. She was going to get clean and come back for her daughter. Of course, she never came back. My mother was convinced Hop had killed her, or had her killed."
"What do you think?"
"Sure, maybe." The words were the equivalent of a shrug. "Or maybe she took off to Bimini to sell seashells by the seashore. Maybe she went back to San Francisco and jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. I don’t know, and frankly don’t much care."
Sawyer let out a long sigh, pressed her fingers to her eyes. "She wasn’t, and isn’t, part of my world. But she all but became my mother’s world. Mom swore Bobbie’s ghost used to visit her, talk to her. I think it’s part of the reason, this obsession, that she’s been plagued by emotional and mental problems as long as I can remember. When my brother was killed in the Urbans, it just snapped her. He was her favorite."
"Do you have the letters?"
"No. That Hopkins man, he tracked my mother down. I was in college, my brother was overseas, so that was, God, about thirty years ago. He talked her out of nearly everything she had that was Bobbie’s or pertained to her. Original recordings, letters, diaries, photographs. He said he was going to open some sort of museum in California. Nothing ever came of it. My brother came home and found out. He was furious. He and my mother had a horrible fight, one they never had a chance to reconcile. Now he’s gone and she might as well be. I don’t want to be Bobbie Bray’s legacy. I just want to live my life."
Eve ended the transmission, tipped back in her chair. She was betting the letters were what the killer had been after.
* * *
With Peabody she went back to Hopkins’s apartment for another thorough search.
"Letters Bobbie wrote that confirm a child she had with Hop. Letters or some sort of document or recording from Hop that eventually led his grandson to Serenity Massey. Something that explosive and therefore valuable," she said to her partner. "I bet he had a secure hidey-hole. Security box, vault. We’ll start a search of bank boxes under his name or likely aliases."
"Maybe he took them with him and the killer already has them."
"I don’t think so. The doorman said he walked out empty-handed. Something like that, figuring the value, he’s going to want a briefcase, a portfolio. Guy liked accessories - good suit, shoes, antique watch - why miss a trick with something that earns one? But… he was hunting up money. Maybe he sold them, or at least dangled them."
"Bygones?"
"Worth a trip."
At the door, Eve paused, turned to study the apartment again. There’d be no ghosts here, she thought. Nothing here but stale air, stale dreams.
Legacies, she thought as she closed the door. Hopkins left one of unfulfilled ambitions, which to her mind carried on the one left by his father.
Bobbie Bray’s granddaughter had worked hard to shut her own heritage out, to live simply. Didn’t want to be Bobbie Bray’s legacy. Eve recalled.
Who could blame her? Or anyone else for that matter.
"If you’re handed crap and disappointment - inherited it," Eve amended, "what do you do?"
"Depends, I guess." Peabody frowned as they headed down. "You could wallow in it and curse your ancestors, or shovel yourself out of it."
"Yeah. You could try to shine it up into gold and live the high life - like Hopkins. Obsess over it like Bray’s daughter. Or you could shut the door on it and walk away. Like Bray’s granddaughter."
"Okay. And?"
"There’s more than one way to shut a door. You drive," Eve said when they were outside.
"Drive? Me? It’s not even my birthday!"
"Drive, Peabody." In the passenger seat, Eve took out her ppc and brought up John Massey’s military ID data. She cocked her head as she studied the photo.
He’d been young, fresh-faced. A little soft around the mouth, she mused, a little guileless in the eyes. She didn’t see either of his grandparents in him, but she saw something else.
Inherited traits, she thought. Legacies.
Using the dash ‘link, she contacted police artist Detective Yancy.
"Got a quick one for you," she told him. "I’m going to shoot you an ID photo. I need you to age it for me."
Eight
Eve had Peabody stop at the bank Hopkins had used for his loan on Number Twelve. But there was no safety deposit box listed under his name, or Bray’s, or any combination.
To Peabody’s disappointment, Eve took the wheel when they left the bank.
She couldn’t justify asking Roarke to do the search for a safety deposit box, though it passed through her mind. He could no doubt pinpoint one, if one was there to be pinpointed, faster than she could. Even faster than EDD. But she couldn’t term it a matter of life and death.
Just a matter of irritation.
She put in a request to Feeney to assign the task to EDD ace, and Peabody’s heartthrob, Ian McNab while she and Peabody headed back to Bygones.
"McNab will be so completely jazzed about this." Smiling - as if even saying his name put a dopey look on her face - Peabody wiggled in the passenger seat. "Looking for a ghost and all that."
"He’s looking for a bank box."
"Well yeah, but in a roundabout way, it’s about Bobbie Bray and the ghost thereof. Number Twelve."
"Stop saying that." Eve wanted to grip her own hair and yank, but her hands were currently busy on the wheel. She used those hands to whip around a farting maxibus with a few layers of paint to spare. "I’m going to write an order forbidding anyone within ten feet of me from saying Number Twelve in that - what is it - awed whisper."
"But you just gotta. Did you know there are all these books, and there are vids, based on Number Twelve, and Bobbie and the whole deal from back then? I did some research. McNab and I downloaded one of the vids last night. It was kind of hokey, but still. And we’re working the case. Maybe they’ll make a vid of that - you know, like they’re going to do one of the Icove case. Completely uptown. We’ll be famous, and - "
Eve stopped at a light, turned her body slowly so she faced her partner. "You even breathe that thought, I’ll choke you until your eyes pop right out of their sockets, then plop into your open gasping mouth where you’ll swallow them whole. And choke to death on your own eyeballs."
"Well, jeez."
"Think about it, think carefully, before you breathe again."
Peabody hunched in her seat and kept her breathing to a minimum.
When they found the shop closed and locked, they detoured to the home address on record.
Maeve o
pened the door of the three-level brownstone. "Lieutenant, Detective."
"Closed down shop, Ms. Buchanan?"
"For a day or two." She pushed at her hair. Eve watched the movement, the play of light on the striking red. "We were overrun yesterday, only about an hour after you left. Oh, come in, please. I’m a little flustered this morning."
"Overrun?" Eve repeated as she stepped into a long, narrow hallway brightened by stained glass windows that let in the winter sun.
"Customers, and most of them looking for bargains. Or wanting to gawk over the Bobbie Bray collection." Maeve, dressed in loose white pants, a soft white sweater and white half boots led the way through a wide doorway into a spacious parlor.
