by J. D. Robb
She’d just send him a quick text, and that hit somewhere in the middle, she decided.
She ordered his personal ’link, ordered text mode. And had barely begun to compose the text when the whole thing shifted. He came on screen.
“I’d rather hear your voice.”
“I’m going to be home in . . . a couple of weeks if this traffic doesn’t Get The Hell Moving! How did that asshole get a license to drive a maxibus? How? You have to take a test. Just hold it a minute. Fucker.”
She skimmed in front of a shiny limo, muttered, “Bite me,” at the dignified protest of horns, shimmied in beside the offending bus, then around.
“I swear I’d pull the asshole over and impound the goddamn bus and everyone in it if I had time.”
“Yes, I’d rather hear your voice, anytime.”
“Better now. I’m about ten minutes out, maybe less. I’ve had some movement on things, and a whole bunch of bullshit. I need a consult with Mira and couldn’t get to her today, so they’re going to stop by on their way to some deal.”
“It’ll be lovely to see them.”
“Okay. I just . . . wanted to tell you.”
“Because you decided it might fall into the rules. I’m probably a few minutes behind you. Where did you get that fetching cap?”
“Crap.” Instinctively, she slapped a hand over the snowflake.
“And those . . . adorable gloves.”
“Crap and crap.” She dropped her hand. “Mr. Mira. I’ve got to go to war with these fucking cabs. Later.”
She clicked off on his laughter, geared up for battle.
When she finally pulled up in front of the house, she decided the drive home had been more exciting than most of her workday. And that just showed how tedious a full building search could be when people lived like droids.
No sex toys, no porn, she thought as she got out, hunched against the sleet as she walked to the door. No cache of money or ill-gotten gains, no illegal weapons. Just one ancient joint.
Really, how did anyone live that way?
She stepped inside, to the cat, to Summerset, wondering just how many interesting things a full house search of her own would turn up, and that didn’t even count Roarke’s private office with the unregistered equipment.
“Well,” Summerset said, “this is new.”
“What? Don’t start.”
“You appear to be wearing a glittering snowflake, and fuzzy gloves.”
“Crap, crap.” She yanked it all off. “They were gifts, so knock it off. The Miras are coming by in about an hour. Not socially. It’s a consult.”
“I believe we can still be cordial and welcoming.”
“I can. You’ll still have all the cordiality of a corpse.”
Since it was the best she could do with her mind so damn crowded, she bolted upstairs, and straight into her office.
She pulled off her coat, tossed it on the sleep chair, then immediately had to lift the cat off it. She should’ve known better.
She picked up the coat, put down the cat, tossed the coat elsewhere.
Coffee, she thought. Please God, some coffee. Programming some, she just stood, drank half the mug, then breathed out.
Setting it aside, she made some minor adjustments to her board. She sat at her desk, cobbled together some notes, made some additions, reordered them.
Then she picked up the coffee, put her boots up, and let her mind clear.
Because it was clear, the first thing that popped in when Roarke stepped inside was: He’s so pretty.
“You couldn’t have been more right or more succinct about the traffic. It was bloody vicious.”
“We won. We’re home.”
“You’re right. That calls for a drink.”
“I guess maybe.”
He came over to her first, put his hands on the arms of her chair, leaned down to kiss her.
She surprised him, undid him, by rising up, wrapping her arms tight around him, and making it much more than a welcome-home kiss.
“Well now, I might arrange for bloody vicious traffic daily.”
“You don’t have to. We live in New York.”
“What’s all this then?”
“I don’t know.” She’d surprised herself as much as him. “I guess . . . The Miras this morning, then this couple later. It . . .” Her mind, she realized, wasn’t as clear as she’d thought. “I’ll have that drink, and tell you.”
“All right. Let’s have it downstairs. You can come up with Mira if you feel you must,” he added, anticipating her protest, “but we should go down, greet them first, as friends.”
“You’re right.” She wrapped around him again, just to hold. “We’ll go downstairs.”
He tipped her head back, looked into her eyes. “You’re not sad.”
“No, I’m not sad.”
Thoughtful then, he decided, taking her hand as they went back down.
Summerset had lit the fire, and the tree. The parlor looked, well, amazing, she thought. It looked like home—her home—despite its elegance, its exceptional taste and style, the gleam of antiques, the art, the color, the lovely blending of old and new.
“What is it, Eve?”
She shook her head, sat on the arm of a chair because you could do that at home.
“I was in the Miras’ house this morning, and thinking how pretty it is there, how calm and pretty and easy to be in. This is, too. Isn’t that funny that this is, too? They have a tree. We have a tree. Well, I don’t know how many trees we have in here because who could count?”
“Twenty.”
“Okay. We have twenty trees.” It struck her suddenly. Twenty trees. “Seriously?”
“Yes.” He smiled, as much at his own need to fill the house with Christmas as with her reaction. “We’ll go around and have a look at all of them sometime.”
“It’ll take a while. Anyway, they had a fire, and we have one. But it’s not that, do you know what I mean? It’s the feeling. I used to envy that feeling. I could recognize it. You’d go into somebody’s place to interview them, notify them, even arrest them, and you’d recognize the feeling of home when it was there.”
“I know that envy, very well.” Which, he understood, explained all the trees, among other things.
“I thought when I moved in here it would always be a house, and always be yours. I don’t even know when that changed, not exactly, and it became mine. Ours. That’s pretty amazing.”
“It was a house, one I enjoyed very much. But it wasn’t a home until you.” He looked around the parlor as she had. Candles and firelight, tree glowing, colors rich, wood gleaming.
“What I put in it was for comfort, for show, or because I could. It mattered to have it, this place. My place. But I could never quite reach that feeling, until you.”
“I get that,” she realized. “It matters that you mean it, and that I get it.” She took a breath while he opened a bottle of wine. “You know how they are, the Miras. So connected, so just right. I swear if I didn’t love you, if it wasn’t for her, I’d really go for him.”
At Roarke’s laugh, she shook her head again, took the wine he offered.
“I think I could take him,” Roarke considered.
“I don’t know. He might surprise you. Anyway, it’s not like that really. There’s just . . . he’s just . . . There’s something about him that hits all my soft spots. I didn’t know I had some of them.”
“I think that’s lovely.”
“He brought me those silly gloves and that stupid hat, and put them on me like I was a kid. I ended up wearing them because he can’t button his sweater right half the time but he hunted up a cap and gloves for me because it’s cold out. He’s so kind, and they have this amazing connection between them.”
She had to take a steadying breath, amazed at
how sloppy she felt about . . . all of it.
“I want that. I mean when we’ve been together like them a couple decades, I want that with us.”
“Darling Eve.” This time he pressed his lips to the top of her head. “There’s more every day.”
“It feels like it. Sometimes I don’t know how I got through not feeling it. And later, this couple. I need to talk to Mira about her. DeLonna.”
“Ah.” He sat now. “Sebastian came through. I thought he must have when you didn’t ask me to dig him up.”
“She goes by Lonna, Sebastian neglected to tell me he’d helped her change her name off the books. Lonna Moon. She and her guy own this swank little club. The Purple Moon.”
“I know it.”
“You don’t own the building, do you?”
“I don’t, but I’ve heard of the club. It has a good rep.” His hand glided gently along her thigh. Affection. Connection. “We should go.”
“We should. Yeah, we should. I’ll get into the whole thing, but what I wanted to say to you was listening to her, seeing them together, it struck close to home. She’s solid, no washout, but he worries about her because of what she went through. She has nightmares.”
Those eyes, those wild blue eyes met hers. He didn’t have to say a thing to say everything.
“Looking at them, seeing them, I could see some of us. And it was really good, what I saw. I don’t know his story, but there’s something there. Slick, he’s slick, and looks like he can and has handled himself. But they were connected.
“So.” She let out another breath. “I want to let you know if the day comes when you forget how to button-your sweater—when you start wearing those button-sweater deals—I’ll fix it.”
“Every day there’s more,” he murmured. Swamped with love, he drew her off the arm of the chair into his lap.
She curled there, utterly content.
“They still have sex. You can tell.”
Now he let out a laughing sigh. “I’d as soon not think too deeply on that.”
“Me either. I’m just saying that mixing up your socks or buttons doesn’t mean you don’t have sex.” Lifting her head, she touched her lips to his.
“You might wait to indulge yourselves,” Summerset said from the doorway, in the tone of a parent catching kids sneaking cookies before dinner. “Your guests are arriving. I’ve cleared them through the gate.”
Eve rolled her eyes as he walked away. “Indulging? You know his problem is he doesn’t have anyone bored or stupid enough to indulge with him.”
“I wouldn’t be quite so sure.”
She frowned down at Roarke, saw the knowledgeable gleam in his eyes. “Eeuuww. Don’t tell me. Seriously. Don’t. Ever. Tell me.”
She pulled herself up, and decided she really wanted that glass of wine now.
Roarke rose as well, greeting the Miras when Summerset brought them in.
“Charlotte, you look lovely.” The exchange of cheek kisses was followed by a warm handshake for Dennis. “It’s so good to see you.”
“I appreciate you making the detour,” Eve began.
“We’re just having some wine.” Roarke spoke smoothly before Eve could launch into her case notes. “What can I get you?”
“I’d love whatever you’re having. Wouldn’t you, Dennis?”
“That’d be nice.” He smiled at the tree in his dreamy way. “That’s a pretty one. It looks good in here. The whole place looks festive when you drive up. There’s nothing like Christmas.”
“Dennis loves Christmas.” Mira gave him an indulgent look as Roarke led them to a sofa near the fire. “The lights, the music, the bustle. The cookies.”
“I have a weak spot for Charlie’s snickerdoodles.”
“You bake cookies,” Eve said with a kind of wonder.
“At Christmas I do, then hide half of them or Dennis wouldn’t leave a crumb for company. Thank you,” she added when Roarke served the wine. “We’re looking forward to your party later this month. It’s always memorable.”
She turned to Eve. “So. I know you sent me a report this evening, but I didn’t have time to read it. Can you fill me in?”
“Yeah, sure. Ah, should we go up to my office?”
“Dennis doesn’t mind if we talk shop, do you, Dennis?”
“No.”
He settled back comfortably, as someone might to watch an entertaining vid. He always looked comfortable to Eve’s eye. In his own skin, in the moment.
“I like hearing about the work. Fascinating, isn’t it?” he said to Roarke.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Okay then. Highlights. Nashville Jones is in the wind.”
Mira arched her eyebrows. “I see.”
“We interviewed Philadelphia Jones this afternoon. I pushed her on the premise the younger brother lured and killed the victims, starting with Shelby Stubacker and Linh Penbroke.”
She laid out her theory on that, standing to pace it off, to think on her feet.
“You speculate the younger brother did the killings, and had the basic skills to conceal the bodies in the building he considered his home, his place. And the older brother was complicit.”
“He knew something, maybe not until toward the end, but he knew. The sister, I don’t think so. Big brother, head of the family, protects the female sib. It’s ingrained behavior impressed on him by the parents, and I’d say especially the father. He’s in charge.”
“Yes, I agree with that.”
“Between the time I saw you this morning and my interview with Philadelphia, I met with DeLonna.”
“Friend of Shelby’s,” Mira said, refreshing her memory. “Liked to sing. Remained at HPCCY until she went into a work/study program.”
“Yeah. I believe she was an intended victim, and a survivor. I believe she survived because Jones—the elder—found her, after she’d been tranq’d, before the younger had the chance to finish her. He stopped it.”
“But she didn’t report it before now?” Mira asked.
“She doesn’t remember, not clearly. She remembers climbing out the window of her room, just barely fitting through the opening. I checked that and it jibes. Climbing down, running to the subway, riding it, running toward the old building because she wanted to find her friend. She wanted to find Shelby, who’d left, and never sent for her as planned. Couldn’t, being dead. But she remembers everything up to that point, then it blurs on her.”
“Blurs,” Mira asked, “or blanks?”
“Blurs. She dreams about voices, and shouting. Someone talking about cleansing, washing the bad girl clean. She dreams of dark, being cold. Then she remembers, or dreams this feeling as if she was floating, and that’s it. She woke up in her bed, back at HPCCY, and the window was shut, and she’s wearing her uniform nightclothes. She felt sick and out of it. She has nightmares about it, has had them ever since.”
“Voices and sensations only?”
“That’s how it comes. Because it wants to come back, but she’s suppressing it. I think she heard enough, saw enough to know, but she was a kid, and blocked it.”
Mira watched Eve’s face. Between them flowed the knowledge there’d been another child, another trauma, another block.
“Very possible, very likely,” Mira said after a moment, “from what you say and what we know. The trauma combined with the drug could very well have resulted in a memory block.”
“I gave her your card, and I’m hoping she’ll contact you. She wants to help. She’s got a new life now, a good one. She’s got a good man. But she wants to help, wants to know who killed her friends. And who would have killed her if she hadn’t gotten the break.”
“If she contacts me, I’ll make room for her right away.”
“People do terrible things to children because they can,” Dennis said.
&nbs
p; Eve stopped, looked at him.
“The power isn’t with the child, you see, but with the stronger, the cannier. There are people who, rather than defend and tend the child, do terrible things. There’s little that’s truly evil. But that is. You’ll help her, Charlie. It’s what you do. And you,” he said to Eve.
Taking a moment, Eve sat again. “I think, maybe to protect the child, Nashville Jones killed his brother. He got the kid back, put her back in bed, then he disposed of the body. He didn’t know there were already twelve girls concealed right there. But he still had to protect his brother, his sister. He still had to do his duty, right? So he arranged for this missionary position, and sent someone to pose as his brother. An opportunity, or a mission of faith. However he managed it.”
“Why not send the brother?” Dennis wondered. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to step in.”
“That’s okay. The brother had emotional issues. He was shy, unskilled, inexperienced. If you study his background, his makeup, then you compare that to the reports on the missionary in Africa, they’re two different people. The missionary’s devout, friendly, outgoing, interested in photography, compassionate, and so on. None of those words are used when describing Montclair Jones.”
“But by sending a substitute in his brother’s name,” Mira continued, “he could somehow honor his brother, even while concealing the crimes both had committed.”
“Then fate stepped in,” Eve added, “because sometimes shit happens. The missionary’s killed, mauled by a rogue lion. Nobody does DNA or specific ID, because as far as they’re concerned, he’s Montclair Jones. He’s cremated, his ashes sent back here, and that’s that. Including a plaque in the new building to memorialize him.
“It’s as somebody said to me today, bogus. Jones figured he’d done what he had to do, gave it up to the higher power or whatever worked for him. He’d saved the kid, who’s too traumatized and drug-hazed to remember. He’d stopped his brother from, as far as I think he knew, committing murder, and he’d protected him in the end by the pretense that baby brother followed family tradition.”
“He’d need to find someone willing to masquerade as the brother,” Roarke pointed out.
“Yeah. Jones knows a lot of people in that line. They go to these retreats, plus he was raised in that world. Going to Africa? It’s a big opportunity, right, for a missionary type? It’s . . . a kind of bartering, maybe. And say the missionary wants to come back one day, that’s fine. He comes back as himself, and Jones can say his brother was lost. He’s vanished. It’s a mystery, but he did his good work, and that’s what matters.”
