by Nora Roberts
“She may have bought something for her wedding night already. But… as her matron of honor, that’s where I’d advise you to aim. Classic. Romantic.” Adrian opened the door of a tall, narrow cupboard. “Like this.”
It was a long sheer robe open over a long shimmering gown. Not quite gray, Eve mused, not really silver. But the color of… moonlight, she decided. “That could work.”
“Silk, with satin accents at the bodice, the straps. And the back-” Adrian turned it to display the low back with its wisps of crisscrossing satin. “I love the back.”
“Yeah, that could work,” Eve repeated.
“I wish you had a picture of her. It’s an important gift. It should be perfect.”
“You want a picture?” Puzzled, but game, Eve pulled out her PPC. She ordered a standard run on Louise Dimatto, then turned the screen around to Adrian to display the photo ID. “That’s Louise.”
“Oh, that’s mag! Isn’t she pretty? Can you bring it over here? If I can just scan it-the photo?”
“Well-”
“You’ll like this,” Roarke said, and took Eve’s arm to lead her through the open doorway. As Adrian stationed herself at a computer, Roarke took Eve’s PPC, made some adjustment, and printed out Louise’s photo. “Use this.”
“Perfect. We’re the only intimate apparel shop in the city to have this system. Which we would never have been able to afford without Roarke’s backing. I scan her photo, and input the data you gave me on her height and weight. Now let’s add the Latecht boudoir ensemble-Moonlight Elegance. And have a look.”
The computer sent out a beam over the small table, and the beam sent out a swirl of light dots. The light dots shifted, connected.
“A miniholo,” Eve murmured.
“In a sense, yes. It takes the data and reconstructs. And… There. What do you think?”
Eve bent down for an eye-level study as the hologram of Louise circled inches off the table in the moonlight gown. “I’ve gotta say, that is seriously iced. It’s really close. Maybe she doesn’t have quite that much-” Eve wiggled her fingers in front of her own breasts.
“More delicate there?” Adrian made a slight adjustment.
“Okay, yeah. Very frosty. If I had one of these in my department… I’m not sure what I’d do with it, but I’d find a use. We can do holos, but not right off a comp station. They use them more in the lab, for forensics. Reconstructing a DB.”
“DB?”
“Dead body.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry.” Eve shook her head, straightened. “It’s bull’s-eye. Thanks.”
“I love when it works! The computer says size six, which is also my opinion from the data, but-”
“That’s my information,” Roarke assured her.
“Excellent. Still, if for any reason it doesn’t work for her, she can bring it back. I’ll box and wrap it for you. But in the meantime. Mini Waterfall, wasn’t it? We have your data on here already, so this will just take a moment.”
Eve barely blinked before Louise disappeared and she saw her own form wearing the short, nearly transparent gown. “Holy shit.”
Adrian laughed. “It looks delicious on you. You’re never wrong,” she said to Roarke.
“We’ll have that as well.”
Eve swallowed, ordered herself to look away from herself and couldn’t. “Would you turn that off? It’s strangely disturbing.”
“Of course.” Still beaming at Eve, Adrian ordered the image off. “Is there anything else while you’re here? Do you have enough tanks?”
“Enough what?”
“Support tanks. You prefer them to a bra for work.”
Eve opened her mouth, but couldn’t quite choke out a word.
“She could probably use a half dozen,” Roarke said.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“I know you will.” Roarke leaned over to kiss Adrian’s cheek. “We’re going out to dinner. Why don’t you wrap all that up, put it on the account, and have it sent?”
“My pleasure. Sincerely, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks.”
“Our best to Liv,” Roarke added as he led Eve out.
“She knows what I’m wearing under my clothes. She knows what I look like naked. Yes, this is very disturbing.”
“It’s her business to know,” Roarke pointed out. “And however attractive she may find you, she’s devoted to Liv.”
“That’s not the point. That is not the point. And people wonder why I hate shopping. I want that wine. A really big glass of it.”
“I can take care of that.” He put an arm around her shoulders, kissed the side of her head as they walked across Madison.
It was good and it was right, Eve thought later, to remember her actual life now and again. To step away from the work, even just for a few hours, and enjoy sitting at a sidewalk table on a balmy May evening in the city, drinking good wine and eating good food with the man she loved.
She leaned across the table toward him. “Consider this the wine talking.”
He leaned toward her so their foreheads nearly touched. “All right.”
“You’re never wrong, just like she said.”
“About the nightgown?”
“That’s for you, and we both know it. About dinner. Here. Us. It’s a good thing.”
“It is a good thing.”
“I don’t remember to give you the good things enough.”
“Eve.” He closed his hand over hers on the table. “I think you remember exactly the right amount.”
“That’s the wine talking.”
“Maybe. Or my calculating getting you in-and out-of that nightgown tonight.”
“Slick operator.” She sat back, took a long breath as she watched people, watched traffic. Hurry, hurry by. “It’s a good city,” she said quietly. “It’s not pure and it’s not perfect. It has some nasty edges, some hard lines. But it’s a good city. We both chose it.”
“I’ve never asked you why, exactly. Why you did choose it.”
“Escape.” Her brows lifted as she frowned into her wine. “Maybe it is the wine for that to be the first thought. I guess it was a part of the motivation. It was big enough to swallow me if I needed it to. It’s fast, and I wanted fast, and the crowds. The work. I needed the work more than I needed to breathe back then.”
“That hasn’t changed overmuch.”
“Maybe not, but I’m breathing now.” She lifted her wine, sipped.
“So you are.”
“When I came here, I knew. I can’t explain why, but I knew. This is my place. Then there was Feeney. He saw something in me, and he lifted me out. He made me more than I ever thought I could be. This was my place, but if he’d transferred to Bumfuck, Idaho, I’d have gone with him.”
Had she ever thought of that before? Eve wondered. Ever realized or admitted that? She wasn’t sure.
“Why did you choose it?” she asked Roarke.
“I dreamed of New York when I was a boy. It seemed like a shiny gold ring, and I wanted my fingers around it. I wanted a lot of places, and did what I did to get them. But here’s where I wanted my base. That shiny gold ring. I didn’t want to be swallowed; I wanted to own. To own here.”
He looked around, as Eve had, to the crowds, the traffic, the rush. “Well, that’s saying something, isn’t it? Then I fell for it, like a man might fall for a fascinating and dangerous woman. And it became more than the owning-the proving to myself, and I suppose, a dead man-and became more about being.”
“And you brought Summerset here.”
“I did.”
She sipped her wine. “Fathers make a difference, and they don’t have to be blood to do it. We both found fathers, or they found us, however it worked. It made a difference.”
“And you’re thinking Alex Ricker lost his, the day he learned his father murdered his mother. And that made a difference.”
“You read me pretty well.”
“I do indeed. Let’s go home, get to work
.”
She waited while he paid the check, then rose with him. “Thanks for dinner.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Roarke?” On the sidewalk she stopped, studied his face, then shrugged. “What the hell, it’s New York.” And threw her arms around him, took his mouth in a long, shimmering kiss. “For reading me well,” she said when she released him.
“I’m buying a bloody case of that wine.”
She laughed all the way to the car.
At home, she peeled off her jacket, tossed it on the sleep chair. In shirt-sleeves, she circled her murder board.
“You said you were going to work from home, too. To Caro,” Eve reminded him.
“So I am. But not before you tell me what you plan to do.”
“I’m thinking about asking you to contact your new best friend before getting started on your own stuff.”
“And why would I be doing that?”
It had to be the wine, she thought, because sometimes when he talked-just the way that hint of Celtic music wove through the words-she wanted to drool. “Um.” She shook it off. “To tell him it’s important that both he and his PA stay in New York. And that I’d like to talk with each of them tomorrow.”
“On a Saturday. When you’re hosting a party.”
“I can do it in the morning. Peabody and Nadine are invading with God knows what stuff. I don’t have to do any of that. They said.”
“Easy, darling. And I’d be telling my new best friend this because?”
“Show of good faith. I’m inclined to believe him, blah, blah. I want to discuss some details tomorrow morning that may help me with a current line of investigation.”
“And put the heat on Sandy. Could work. I’ll do that. I’ll be a couple hours, I expect, after. You do remember I’m off to Vegas tomorrow?”
“I…” Now she did. “Yeah, yeah, male debauchery.”
“I could probably juggle things and go with you in the morning, as Peabody’s occupied.”
“No. No. You’ve juggled enough.” She could take it alone, but he’d get pissy about that. And he’d have a point, she admitted. “I’ll get Baxter.”
“All right then.”
Armed with coffee, Eve sat down to write up her notes. She ordered a secondary run on Rod Sandy, including his financials. The man had been in the Ricker stew since college, Eve thought. A long time.
He’d know how to tuck money away here and there. Maybe money paid by the father to betray the son.
She scanned the EDD reports on the data mined from the ’links and comps confiscated from the Ricker penthouse. Nothing to Omega, of course. It wouldn’t be that easy. Nothing to Coltraine but the single contact from Alex asking her over for a drink. Nothing to Coltraine’s precinct or any member of her squad.
But a smart guy like Sandy? He wouldn’t leave that clear a trace-one, in fact, his pal Alex might stumble on and question.
Second pocket ’link somewhere. Stashed, hidden, already ditched?
She checked her wrist unit. Hours, she thought, still hours before Callendar docked, much less started digging. Eve told herself to consider it time to refine her theory, to check for wrong turns.
She poured more coffee, had barely begun when Roarke stepped back in. “You reach Alex?”
“Yes, that’s done and he’s expecting you about nine. Eve, Morris was at the gate. I had Summerset let him through.”
“Morris?”
“On foot.”
“Oh, shit.” She pushed away from her desk, and started downstairs. “What condition is he in? Is he-”
“I didn’t ask. I thought it best to get him here. Summerset sent a cart down to him.”
“A cart?”
“God, how long have you lived here? One of the autocarts. It’ll bring him straight here.”
“How am I supposed to know we have autocarts? Do I ever use an autocart? What’s your take?” she demanded of Summerset as she came down the last flight of stairs. “His condition?”
“Lost. Not geographically. Sober. In pain.”
Eve stood, dragging her hands through her hair. “Do some coffee thing,” she told Summerset. “Or… maybe we should let him get drunk. I don’t know. What should we do here? I don’t know what to do for him.”
“Then figure it out.” Summerset moved to the door. Then he paused, turned back to her. “A drunk only clouds the pain for a time, so it comes back sharper. Coffee’s best when you listen to him as that’s what he’ll need. Someone who cares who’ll listen to him.”
He opened the door. “Go on, go on. He’ll do better if you go to him.”
“Don’t kick at me,” she muttered, but went out.
The cart was nearly silent as he cruised sedately down the drive, made a graceful turn. It stopped at the base of the steps.
“I’m sorry.” Morris rubbed his hands over his face like a man coming out of sleep. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I came. I shouldn’t have.” He got off the cart as she went down the stairs. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
She held out a hand. “Come inside, Li.”
He shuddered, as if fighting a terrible pain, and only shook his head. She knew pain, and the fight against it, so moved to him, and took his weight, some of the grief when his arms came around her.
“There,” Summerset murmured. “She’s figured it out, hasn’t she?”
Roarke put a hand on Summerset’s shoulder. “Coffee would be good, I think. And something… I doubt he’s eaten.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“Come inside,” Eve repeated.
“I didn’t know where to go, what to do. I couldn’t go home after… Her brother took her. I went and I watched them… They loaded her on the transpo. In a box. She’s not there. Who knows that better? But I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t go home. I don’t even know how I got here.”
“It doesn’t matter. Come on.” She kept an arm around him, walked him up the stairs where Roarke waited.
15
“I’M INTRUDING, INTERRUPTING.”
“You’re not.” Eve steered him toward the parlor. “Let’s go sit down. We’re going to have some coffee.” His hands were cold, she thought, and his body felt fragile. There were always more victims than the dead.
Who knew better?
She led him to a chair by the fire, relieved she didn’t have to ask Roarke to light one. Anticipating her, he already was, so she pulled a chair around, angling it so she sat facing Morris.
“It was easier, somehow,” Morris began, “when there were details to see to. Easier somehow to go through the steps. The memorial, it centered me. Somehow. Her brother-helping him-it was something that had to be done. Then she was gone. She’s gone. And it’s final, and there’s nothing for me to do.”
“Tell me about her. Some small thing, something not important. Just something.”
“She liked to walk in the city. She’d rather walk than take a cab, even when it was cold.”
“She liked to see what was going on, be part of it,” Eve prompted.
“Yes. She liked the night, walking at night. Finding some new place to have a drink or listen to music. She wanted me to teach her how to play the saxophone. She had no talent for it whatsoever. God.” A shudder ran through him. Racked him. “Oh, God.”
“But you tried to teach her.”
“She’d be so serious about it, but the noise-you’d never call it music-that came out would make her laugh. She’d push the sax at me, and tell me to play something. She liked to stretch out on the couch and ask me to play.”
“You can see her there?”
“Yes. Candlelight on her face, that half smile of hers. She’d relax and watch me play.”
“You can see her there,” Eve repeated. “She’s not gone.”
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.
Panicked, Eve looked over at Roarke. And he nodded, centered her. So she kept talking.
“I’ve never lost anyone who mattere
d,” Eve told Morris. “Not like this. For a long time, I didn’t have anyone who mattered. So I don’t know. Not all the way. But I feel, because of what I do. I feel. I don’t know how people get through it, Morris, I swear to Christ I don’t know how they put one foot in front of the other. I think they need something to hold on to. You can see her, and you can hold on to that.”
Morris dropped his hands, stared down at them. Empty. “I can. Yes, I can. I’m grateful, to both of you. I keep leaning on you. And here, I’ve turned up on your doorstep, pushing this into your evening.”
“Stop. Death’s a bastard,” Eve said. “When the bastard comes, the ones left need family. We’re family.”
Summerset wheeled in a small table. Businesslike and efficient, he moved it between Eve and Morris. “Dr. Morris, you’ll have some soup now.”
“I-”
“It’s what you need. This is what you need.”
“Would you see the blue suite on the third floor’s prepared.” Roarke moved forward now to sit on the arm of Eve’s chair. “Dr. Morris will be staying tonight.”
Morris started to speak, then just closed his eyes, took a breath. “Thank you.”
“I’ll take care of it.” When Summerset started out, Eve slid out of the chair and went after him. She caught him at the doorway, spoke quietly.
“You didn’t tranq that soup, did you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Okay, don’t get huffy.”
“I am never huffy.”
“Fine. Whatever.” She had more important things to do than wrangle with Summerset.
“Lieutenant,” he said as she turned away. “It will likely be a very long while before I ever repeat this, if that day should ever come. But I’ll say now, at this precise moment, I’m proud of you.”
Her jaw very nearly slammed into the toes of her boots. She goggled at his stiff, skinny back as he walked away. “Weird,” she muttered. “Very, very weird.”
She went back inside, took her seat. It relieved her that Morris ate, that his voice was back to steady as he and Roarke talked. “Some part of my brain must have been functioning, because it brought me here.”
“You’ll talk to Mira, when you’re ready?”
Morris considered Roarke’s question. “I suppose I will. I know what she’ll offer. I know it’s right. We deal with it every day. As you said, Dallas, we feel.”
