by J. D. Robb
"Sure, but try to have a conversation with him." Eve dipped her hands in her pockets and rocked back on her heels. "Guy's in love with himself and figures every woman who gets a load of him has to go moony-eyed -- just like you're doing. He'd bore you to death in ten minutes because all he'd talk about is himself -- how he looks, what he does, what he likes. You'd just be his latest accessory."
Peabody considered, watching as the gold-tipped Adonis posed at the check-in counter. "Okay, so we won't bother to talk. We'll just have sex."
"He'd be a lousy lay -- wouldn't give a damn if you got off or not."
"I'm getting off just looking at him." But she sighed when he took out a small silver-backed mirror and examined his face with obvious delight. "It's times like this I hate it when you're right."
"Look at this," Eve said under her breath. "These two are so polished I need my sunshades."
"Ken and Barbie on the town." At Eve's blank look, Peabody sighed again. "Man, you didn't have a Barbie doll. What kind of kid were you?"
"I was never a kid," Eve said simply and turned back to greet the magnificent couple gliding her way.
The woman was slim-hipped and full-breasted as the current fashion demanded. Her silvery blond hair fell in a straight streaming waterfall over her shoulders to flick across the big, beautiful breasts as she walked. Her face was smooth and white as alabaster, with deep-set eyes of rich emerald-green surrounded by long lashes dyed to match those jewel-like irises. Her mouth was full and red, curved in a polite smile of greeting.
Her companion was every bit as dazzling, her twin in coloring, with his moonlight hair swept back into a long braid twined with thin gold ribbon. His shoulders were wide, his legs long.
Unlike the rest of the staff, they weren't dressed in black, but wore slim white skinsuits. The woman had draped a transparent red scarf cleverly over her hips.
She spoke first, in a voice as soft and silky as the scarf. "I'm Piper, and this is my associate, Rudy. What can we do for you?"
"I need data on one of your clients." Once again, Eve took out her badge. "I'm investigating a homicide."
"A homicide." The woman put a hand to her heart. "How dreadful. One of our clients? Rudy?"
"We'll certainly cooperate in any way we can." He spoke quietly in a creamy baritone. "We should discuss this upstairs, in private."
He gestured toward the clear tube of an elevator guarded by enormous white azaleas in full bloom. "You're sure the victim was one of our clients?"
"Her lover met her through your service." Eve stepped directly to the middle of the tube and ignored the view as they whisked up. Heights had never appealed to her.
"I see." Piper sighed. "We have an excellent success rate in matching couples. I hope it wasn't a lover's quarrel that ended in tragedy."
"We haven't determined that."
"I can't believe that could be it. We screen very carefully." Rudy gestured toward the opening of the tube as the elevator stopped.
"How?"
"We're connected to ComTrack." As he spoke, he escorted them down a quiet corridor in hospital white with soft, dreamy watercolors in gold frames and banquets of fresh flowers in clear vases. "Every applicant is put into the system. We look at marital history, credit ratings, criminal records, of course. Our applicants must also take the standard personality test. Any violent tendencies are rejected. Sexual preferences and desires are recorded, analyzed, and matched."
He opened the door to a large office done in blinding whites and screaming reds. The window wall was filtered against both the glare of the sun and the noise of sky traffic.
"What's your percentage of deviants?"
Piper's perfect mouth thinned. "We don't consider personal sexual preferences deviant unless the partner or partners involved object."
Eve merely lifted her brows. "Why don't we use my definition instead? Bondage, S and M? You get any in here who like to doll up their partner after sex?"
Rudy cleared his throat and moved behind a wide, white console. "Certainly some applicants look for what we might call adventurous sexual experiences. As I said, those preferences would be matched with like applicants."
"Who did you match up with Marianna Hawley?"
"Marianna Hawley?" He glanced at Piper.
"I'm better with faces than names." She turned to the wall screen as Rudy fed the name into the computer. Seconds later, Marianna smiled out at them, her eyes bright and alive.
"Oh yes, I remember her. She was charming. Yes, I very much enjoyed working with her. She was looking for a companion, someone fun who she could enjoy art -- no, no, it was theater, I believe." She tapped one perfectly shaped nail against her bottom lip. "She was a romantic, rather sweetly old-fashioned."
It seemed to come to her all at once, and Piper's hand dropped limply to her side. "She's been murdered? Oh, Rudy."
"Sit down, dear." He came gracefully around the console to take her hand, pat it. to lead her to a long sofa with deep air cushions. "Piper becomes very personally involved with our clients," he told Eve. "That's why she's so marvelous at her work. She cares."
"So do I, Rudy."
Though her voice was flat, his eyes flicked over her face and whatever he saw had him nodding. "Yes, I'm sure you do. You suspect that someone in our system, someone she might have met through our service, killed her."
"I'm investigating. I need names."
"Give her whatever she needs, Rudy." Piper patted her fingers under her eyes to dry tears.
"I'd like to, but we have a responsibility to our clients. We guarantee privacy."
"Marianna Hawley was entitled to privacy," Eve said shortly. "Someone raped her, sodomized her, and strangled her. I'd say they pretty much violated her privacy. I doubt any of your clients would enjoy sharing in that experience."
Rudy took a deep breath. His face was paler now, if that was possible, so that his eyes seemed to burn against a field of glossy white. "I trust you'll be discreet."
"You can trust I'll be good," Eve said in return and waited for him to call up the list of matches.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sarabeth Greenbalm wasn't having a good day. First off she hated working the afternoon shift at the Sweet Spot. The clientele from noon to five consisted primarily of junior execs looking for a long lunch and cheap thrills. With the emphasis on cheap. The climbing-the-corporate-ladder crowd didn't have a lot of money to toss to a stripper.
They just liked to gawk and hoot.
Five hours of hard work had netted her just under a hundred in cash and credit chips, and a half a dozen drunken propositions.
None of which included marriage.
Marriage was Sarabeth's Holy Grail.
She wasn't going to find a rich husband in the afternoon set of a strip club. Even a high-class club like the Sweet Spot. There was potential in the night hours, when the VPs and CEOs sauntered in, bringing important clients for an hour or two of titillation. She could make a thousand easily, and when you added in some lap dancing, double that. But the best was collecting business cards.
Sooner or later one of those corporate suits with their big, white smiles and perfectly manicured and grabby hands was going to put a ring on her finger for the privilege of groping her.
It was all part of the career plan she'd carefully mapped out when she'd moved from Allentown, Pennsylvania, to New York City five years before. Stripping in Allentown had been a dead-end situation, netting her just enough per week to keep her from becoming another sidewalk sleeper. Still, moving to New York had been risky. There was more competition for the same recreation dollar.
Younger competition.
The first year she'd worked two shifts, three if she could still stand. She'd worked as a roamer, sliding from club to club and shelling out the hard-line forty percent of take to the managers. It had been a gruesome year, but she'd earned her nest egg.
The second year she'd focused on nailing a regular spot at an upscale club. It had taken nearly all of those twe
lve months, but she'd carved her niche at the Sweet Spot. During her third year she'd fought her way up the food chain to shift headliner, cagily investing her profits. And, she admitted, she had wasted nearly six months considering the cohabitation offer of the club's head smasher.
She might have done it, too, if he hadn't gone and gotten himself sliced into six separate pieces in a bar fight at a dive where he'd been moonlighting because Sarabeth had insisted he needed a bigger bank account if he wanted her to sleep with him on a permanent basis.
She'd decided to consider it a lucky escape. Now, well into year four, she was forty-three years old and running out of time.
She didn't mind naked dancing. Hell, she was a damn good dancer and her body -- she studied it as she turned in front of her bedroom mirror -- was her meal ticket.
Nature had been generous, gifting her with high, full breasts that hadn't required augmentation. So far. A long torso, long legs, a firm ass. Yes, she had all the necessary weapons.
She'd had to put money into her face, and considered it a good investment. She'd been born with thin lips, a short chin, and a heavy forehead. But a few trips to a beauty enhancement center had fixed that. Now her mouth was full and ripe, her chin sassily pointed, and her brow high and clear.
Sarabeth Greenbalm looked, in her opinion, damn good.
The problem was she was down to her last five hundred, the rent was due, and some over-eager bozo in the lunch crowd had ripped her best G-string before she could slither out of it.
She had a headache, her feet hurt, and she was still single.
She should never have plunked down the three thousand for Personally Yours. In retrospect what had seemed like a clever investment now appeared to be good money down the sewer. Losers used dating services, she thought as she tugged on a short purple robe. And losers attracted losers.
After meeting the first two men on her match list, she'd gone straight down to Fifth Avenue and asked for her money back. The blond ice queen hadn't been so friendly then, Sarabeth thought now. No refunds, no way, no how.
With a philosophical shrug, Sarabeth walked from the bedroom into the kitchen -- a short walk in an apartment barely bigger than the communal dressing room at the Sweet Spot.
The money was gone, a write-off. And a lesson had been learned: She had to depend on herself, and herself only.
The knock on her door interrupted her hopeful scan of the limited offerings of her AutoChef. Absently she tugged her robe closed, then beat a fist on the wall. The couple next door fought like cats and fucked like minks most every night. Her pounding wouldn't change the noise level by a decibel, but it made her feel better.
She turned one suspicious brown eye to the security peep, then grinned like a girl. Hurriedly she disengaged the locks and swung the door wide.
"Hey there, Santa."
His eyes twinkled merrily. "Merry Christmas, Sarabeth." He shook the big silver box he carried, then winked at her. "Have you been good?"
* * *
Captain Ryan Feeney sat on the end of Eve's desk and munched on candied almonds. He had the lived-in, vaguely morose face of a basset hound and a wiry thatch of russet hair sprinkled with thin, steely threads of silver. There was a rust-colored splotch on his rumpled shirt -- a memory of the bean soup he'd had for lunch -- and a small nick on his chin where he'd cut himself shaving that morning.
He looked harmless.
Eve would have gone through any door with him. And had.
He'd trained her, and taught her. Now as captain of the Electronic Detective Division, he was an invaluable resource to her.
"Wish I could tell you the bauble was a one of a kind." He popped another nut into his mouth. "Still there's only a dozen stores in the city that sell it."
"And how many do we have to trace?"
"Forty-nine of them were sold in the last seven weeks." He scratched his chin, worrying at the tiny scab. "The pin runs about five hundred. Forty-eight were credit deals, only one cash transaction."
"That would be him."
"More than likely." Feeney pulled out his memo book. "The cash deal was at Sal's Gold and Silver on Forty-ninth."
"I'll check it out, thanks."
"Nothing to it. Got anything else? McNab's willing and able."
"McNab?"
"He liked working with you. The boy's good and sharp and you could toss him any grunt work."
Eve considered the young detective with his colorful wardrobe, sharp mind, and smart mouth. "He gives Peabody the fish eye."
"You don't think Peabody can handle him?"
Eve frowned, tapped her fingers, shrugged. "Yeah, she's a big girl, and I could use him. I contacted the victim's ex-husband. He's relocated in Atlanta. His alibi for the period in question looks fairly solid, but it wouldn't hurt to look closer. See if he booked any travel to New York, made any calls to the victim."
"McNab can do that in his sleep."
"Tell him to stay awake and do it." She reached for a disc file, handed it over. "All the data I have on the ex is here. I'll be running the names of the matches from Personally Yours. I'll pass those to him after I've taken a look."
"Don't understand places like that." Feeney shook his head. "In my day you met women the old-fashioned way. You picked them up in a bar."
Eve lifted an eyebrow. "Is that how you met your wife?"
He grinned suddenly. "It worked, didn't it? I'll pass this on to McNab," he said as he rose. "Aren't you off the clock, Dallas?"
"Yeah, just. I think I'll run those names before I head out."
"Suit yourself. Me, I'm out of here." He started for the door, stuffing his bag of nuts into his pocket. "Oh, we're looking forward to the Christmas party."
She was already focused on her computer and barely glanced over. "What party?"
"Your party."
"Oh." She searched her mind, found it blank as far as parties went. "Yeah, great."
"Don't know a thing about it, do you?"
"I must." And because it was Feeney, she smiled. "It's just in another compartment. Look, if you see Peabody out in the bullpen, tell her she's off duty."
"Will do."
Party, she thought with a sigh. Every time she turned around, Roarke was giving a party or dragging her off to one. The next thing she knew Mavis would pounce on her about getting her hair done, having face and body work, trying a new outfit designed by her lover Leonardo.
If she had to go to a damn party, why couldn't she just go as she was?
Because she was Roarke's wife, she reminded herself. And as such she was expected to attend social functions looking slightly better than a cop with murder on the brain.
But that was ... whenever it was. And this was now.
"Computer, list matches through Personally Yours for Hawley, Marianna."
Working.. .
Match one of five. .. Dorian Marcell, single, white, male, age thirty-two.
While the computer listed his statistics, Eve studied the image on screen. A pleasant face -- a shy look around the eyes. Dorian liked art, theater, and old videos, claimed to be a romantic at heart looking for a mate for his soul. His hobbies were photography and snowboarding.
Nothing special about Dorian, she thought, but they would see what he'd been up to on the night Marianna had been murdered.
Match two of five . . . Charles Monroe, single, white, male --
"Whoa, whoa, hold it. Stop." With a half laugh Eve peered at the face on screen. "Well, Charles, fancy meeting you here."
It was a fine face smiling back at her, and she remembered it. She'd met Charles Monroe nearly a year before while investigating another murder -- the case that had brought her and Roarke together. Charles was a licensed companion, slick and charming. And what, she wondered, was a well-heeled LC doing in dating service?
"Trolling, Charlie? Looks like you and I are going to have to have another talk. Computer go to third match."
Match three of five, Jeremy Vandoren, divorced --
"Li
eutenant."
"Computer pause. Yeah?" She glanced over as Peabody hovered at the door.
"Captain Feeney said you're finished with me for the day."
"Right. I'm just running some names before I go."
"He, uh, mentioned that you were going to use McNab for some of the e-work."
"That's right." Eve angled her head, then kicked back in her chair as Peabody struggled to keep her face controlled. "You got a problem with that?"
"No -- that is ... Dallas, you don't really need him. He's such a pain in the ass."
Eve smiled cheerfully. "He's not a pain in mine. I guess you'll just have to work on making your ass a little tougher, Peabody. But buck up, he'll do most of what I give him over in EDD. He won't be around here much."
"He'll find a way," Peabody muttered. "He's such a show-off."
"He does good work. And anyway -- " She broke off as her communicator beeped. "Shit, I should have gotten out of here on time." She pulled it out. "Dallas."
"Lieutenant." Commander Whitney's wide, stern face filled the small screen.
"Sir."
"We have a homicide that appears to be connected to the Hawley case. There are uniforms on the scene now. I want you as primary. Report to 23B West One Hundred and Twelve, apartment 5D. Contact me at my home office after you've confirmed the status."
"Yes, sir. I'm on my way." She spared Peabody a glance as she rose and grabbed her jacket. "You're back on duty."
* * *
The uniform standing guard at Sarabeth's door had eyes that told Eve she'd seen the likes of what was inside before, and expected to see it again.
"Officer Carmichael," Eve began, scanning the nameplate. "What have we got?"
"White female, early forties, dead at scene. Apartment's in the name of Sarabeth Greenbalm. No sign of forced entry or struggle. There's no video security in this building other than on the main door. My partner and I were on our cruise when Dispatch sent the call at sixteen thirty-five. A 1222 anonymous report at this address. We responded, arriving at sixteen forty-two. The entrance door and the door of the reported unit were unsecured. We entered and found the deceased. We then secured the scene and alerted Dispatch of a suspicious death at this location."
