Festive in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Is there a problem?” she began.

  “Could be.” Eve showed her the badge. “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t understand. I’m up to date on everything. Business license, health department.”

  “It’s not about that. Is there a place we can talk?”

  “We’re really busy in the back.” She glanced behind her. “We’re running holiday specials, and they’re paying off. We can grab that table over there. Dora, let’s have three-drink specials. I could use a little break.”

  “Right away, Alla.”

  She pulled off her cap as she walked around the counter. A long, sleek tail of hair tumbled out.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Trey Ziegler.”

  Irritation flickered in Alla’s large brown eyes. “What about him?” she demanded as she sat. “If he’s in trouble and looking for me to bail him out, he can forget it.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “What?” She jerked back as if punched. “What do you mean?”

  “His body was found early this morning. When did you last see him?”

  “That’s not right. That’s a mistake.”

  No tears, Eve noted, but if she was faking the shock and denial, she was damn good at it.

  “You’ve made a mistake,” Alla said, the words slow, careful. “Trey’s not dead.”

  “Trey Ziegler,” Eve said, keeping her tone flat and brisk as she brought his ID shot up on her PPC. “This Trey Ziegler.”

  “This can’t be right. This can’t be true.”

  Still no tears, but trembles in the voice, in the hands.

  “You and the victim were involved.”

  “Vic—victim? Victim?”

  “Here you are, Alla. Would you like to split a yamberry muffin? A fresh batch just came out.”

  “We’re fine,” Eve said when Alla only stared straight ahead. “Go away.”

  “How . . . what happened? How?”

  “When did you last see or speak with Trey Ziegler?”

  “I . . .”

  “Are you missing a pair of red shoes, Alla?”

  “Oh God. Oh God.” She covered her face with her hands. “I was going to lie. I don’t even know why. I can’t take it in. I saw him yesterday, just yesterday. He was fine.”

  “Tell me about yesterday.”

  “I’d seen him that morning, early, at the gym. Buff Bodies. I was there for my early yoga class and . . . we’d started thinking about seeing each other again. He’d broken things off with the woman he’d been living with, and he said he missed me. It was stupid. I was stupid, but he asked me to come to his place. I took off for a couple hours, even dressed up for it. Stupid, stupid. And I jumped right back in bed with him.

  “I missed the sex,” she admitted. “He’s good in bed, and he’s got a way of making you feel you matter, for as long as he wants to make you feel that way. Afterward, he started talking about going to Aruba or St. Bart’s, starting up a fitness spa. At first I thought he was asking me to go with him, how we could start up this whole thing together. It was fantasy, but it was nice. But that wasn’t it.”

  She pressed her hand to her mouth, rocked herself a moment. “That wasn’t it at all. We had a second round of sex, and I really needed to get back, but I would’ve stayed if he’d asked. That’s how stupid he could make me. Instead he said I was one of the best bangs, that I could make a living at it. Like I should be flattered. Then he asked if I’d be interested in doing a threesome, that he had this client, and she was looking for a little adventure. He . . . He said he’d pay me.”

  Tears shimmered now. “He’d pay me.”

  “That must’ve pissed you off.”

  “I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. How stupid, and all for an orgasm. I told him to go to hell. I started grabbing my clothes, and he’s lying there laughing, saying, Oh, come on, baby, it’ll be fun. How he’d make it worth my while, how I was the first woman he’d thought of when it came up.”

  The tears flowed out now, but not from grief. Eve read the shame clearly.

  “That’s what he thought of me. I allowed him to think that of me. I got out, I got out, and I said . . . Oh my God, I said I wished he was dead. Now he is.”

  “You left in December, with no shoes.”

  “I had my work shoes in my bag.” She showed Eve the navy blue recycled-material clogs. “I didn’t even think about the damn red shoes. I never want to see them again. I wore them for him. I let myself think he cared about me, but he didn’t.”

  “What time did you leave the apartment?”

  “Um, about three in the afternoon. I went home, took a shower, and I came right back here. I needed to work. I think I was back here before four. You can check with any of the staff.”

  “And what time did you leave here yesterday—for the day?”

  “Six-fifteen, six-thirty. I went home. I live right upstairs. I went home, and I had a good cry. Then I ate my entire secret stash of cookie dough ice cream—the real stuff. I drank a half bottle of wine and watched cheesy vids.”

  “Did you talk to anyone, see anyone?”

  “No. I turned off my ’link. I wanted to wallow, so I wallowed. I didn’t kill him. I said I wished he was dead, but I didn’t kill him.”

  Back outside, Eve gauged the distance from the health-food store to the crime scene.

  “She could have walked out of here at six-fifteen, gone back to his place, bashed him on the head. Plenty of time to get from here to there by TOD.”

  “Yeah, but her statement really rings,” Peabody argued. “Eating ice cream, drinking wine, watching sad vids. It’s what a lot of women do after a bad breakup or an emotional jolt.”

  “Which is why she’d run that route for us, wouldn’t she? It may ring, but she had motive and she’s got no alibi.”

  “It feels more like she’d have bashed him, if she’s inclined to bashing, when he brought up the threesome and paying her for it.”

  Though she agreed, Eve shrugged. “Maybe she’s a slow burn. Let’s go check in with Morris, then we can start working on the clients. Maybe we can find out who he had in mind for the third member of his threesome.”

  • • •

  The white tunnel of the morgue smelled of a recent cleaning. Something that brushed lemons over death and left an undertone of industrial antiseptic.

  Eve wondered if those who spent their days and nights working in its warrens even noticed.

  She passed Vending’s bright and colorful lights, felt a low-level craving for more caffeine, nodded to one of the crew pushing a body bag on a gurney.

  Not all the dead were hers, she thought, but in an odd way, they all belonged to Morris.

  She found the chief medical examiner standing over her dead, a clear protective cape over Morris’s sharply elegant suit of forest green.

  Two more bodies waited on steel slabs.

  “You’ve got a backup,” she commented.

  “Holidays. Some deck the halls, others opt to haunt them. An apparent suicide pact, but we’ll see.” He lowered his microgoggles, smiled. “A long day for you already. Can we offer you some refreshment? I have orange fizzies in the friggie.”

  Peabody brightened. “Yeah?”

  “I know my cops. Pepsi’s cold, Dallas.”

  “Thanks. You look . . . cheerful.”

  “I had a couple of days off, visited some old friends. It was good for me.”

  “Nice.” And it was good to see him wearing color again, looking relaxed. In the months since he’d lost the woman he loved, the grief and strain had weighed visibly on him.

  She cracked the tube Peabody brought her, took a swig of cold caffeine. “So. Ziegler, Trey. He won’t be decking any halls, either.”

  “Blunt force trauma, tried and true.”

 
; “Personal trainer of the year trophy.”

  “Ah, the irony. Your vic was rather fiercely fit. Exceptional muscle tone, low body fat, no signs whatsoever he paid for body work. And I must say his skin’s wonderfully taut and smooth.”

  “He loved himself, a lot.”

  “He had a bunch of high-end products,” Peabody added. “Hair, body, skin. Some of it wasn’t even opened yet.” Her wistful sigh earned a hard stare from Eve. “It just seems like a waste, that’s all.”

  “And it doesn’t seem ghoulish to covet a dead guy’s face gunk? Face-to-face, the first blow?” Eve asked Morris.

  “Yes. Striking here, on the left forehead, and the second on the back of the skull.”

  He turned to his screen, brought up the view of the second wound, now cleaned. “While the first blow would have incapacitated—severe concussion, considerable bleeding, leaving the jagged gash you see here, the second, a down-blow of considerable force, fractured the skull, driving bone fragments into the brain. Death within minutes. The trophy had some weight, I’d say.”

  “Yeah, it’s hefty. A good six, seven pounds. About eighteen inches high.”

  “We’ll just add that in.” He turned to his comp, keyed in some data.

  “It had a figure on top,” Peabody added. “Ripped body.” She held out her arms, flexed.

  “Of course,” Morris murmured, his exotic eyes amused as he added more data. “From the angles, the depth of the head wounds, the attack would have gone—probability ninety-six-point-eight percent—like this.”

  On screen two figures faced. One gripped the trophy in both hands swung right to left, striking the other figure on the temple. Ziegler’s figure staggered back, then pitched forward. As it fell, the attacker swung again—now left to right—striking the back of the skull.

  “Double-handed blows.”

  “Considering the weight of the weapon, and the angles, the force, that’s my conclusion. Like swinging for the fences on the first, then rounding back, striking down—almost a chop—for the second.”

  “Ziegler was six-one. You have the killer about the same height.”

  “Yes, from the angles, near to the same. An inch or two either way, but I wouldn’t say more. And I’d also conclude the killer had excellent upper-body strength. These were not glancing blows.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Then you’ve got a hundred-eighty pounds of dead weight—all muscle—to haul off the floor and onto the bed.”

  “Our killer isn’t a ninety-pound weakling. An old cliché,” Morris said at Eve’s blank look. “As for the knife wound, the vic was dead before that was inflicted—and still there was considerable force used, enough to break the tip of the knife.” He gestured to a small sample bowl, and the tiny piece of metal it held.

  “Somebody was really pissed off,” Eve acknowledged. “Did the vic have sex before death?”

  “I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t like to, but I can’t tell you. He’d showered or bathed—and thoroughly. He sports what’s called a Continental.”

  Eve looked down at the razor thin, sharply edged zigzag of hair at the crotch. “Yeah, I noticed that. Weird.”

  “But tidy. His genitals and what pubic hair he has were thoroughly washed and groomed. He died clean. He’d consumed about eight ounces of red wine less than an hour prior to death, a field green salad and an energy drink about two hours prior.”

  “He had a little bag of dried leaves in his suitcase. Looked and smelled like tea to me, but . . .”

  “The tox isn’t back yet—they’re backed up as usual—but from the condition of his body, his organs, I’d doubt he had any habitual illegals use. I see no signs he took any sort of drugs on a regular basis. This was a very healthy man in peak physical condition.”

  “Personal trainer of the year.”

  “In life and in death.”

  “Thanks.” She rolled up her empty Pepsi tube, two-pointed it into his recycler. “That helped.”

  “Anytime. I’m looking forward to your party. It’s the bash of the season.”

  “Yeah? I’d guess Ziegler probably feels his big trophy was the bash of the season.”

  “Ha,” Morris said.

  • • •

  With Peabody, Eve worked down Ziegler’s client list, giving priority to women of means.

  She hit the managing partner of a SoHo art gallery, the CFO of a real-estate company, the owner of a small chain of boutique day spas, and a couple of women who’d married well and spent most of their time spending money.

  “The last one was skinny as a snake and barely five-foot-four.”

  “And her current husband is six-foot, also has a BB membership, and plays lacrosse. Jealous husbands qualify, Peabody. We run him.”

  “Got it.”

  Eve walked toward the elegant three-story brownstone drenched in holiday glamour. “We’ll take this one—Natasha Quigley, spouse John Jake Copley—both clients. Then we’ll call it for the day.”

  “Yay. My butt’s dragging.”

  “Well, hike it up.” She rang the buzzer.

  Good afternoon.

  The computerized voice intoned polite reserve.

  Please state your name and your business.

  “Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. NYPSD.” Eve held up her badge to be scanned. “Our business is with Ms. Quigley and Mr. Copley.”

  Your identification has been verified. One moment please.

  “People ought to answer their own doors once in a while,” Eve said, “just to see what it feels like.”

  “You have Summerset,” Peabody pointed out. “And a really big gate.”

  Before Eve could respond, the door opened. A woman—no a droid, Eve realized quickly—in a smart gray uniform smiled with the same reserved politeness as the security comp. “Please come in. Ms. Quigley will see you.”

  The house opened up to a soaring three-story foyer. Free-form silver chandeliers dripped down, showering light over what Eve thought might be the original wood floors.

  That space flowed into a living area where a fire snapped inside a black marble hearth, a tree draped in crystals and red ribbon glittered, and two women sat on a massive circular sofa drinking clear liquid out of martini glasses.

  They were both blond, both lookers, with enough similarities in sharp features and coloring for Eve to surmise family connection.

  One—the oldest by maybe five years in Eve’s estimation—tapped the cushion beside her. A sleek, narrow arm glided up. She set her drink on it, rose.

  “I’m Natasha Quigley. This must be about Trey. Martella just told me he was murdered. My sister. We’re both clients. Actually, we’re all clients. My husband and hers. How can we help?”

  “When did you last see or speak with Mr. Ziegler?”

  “I—oh, I’m sorry, this has been a shock. Please, sit down. Can I offer you anything?”

  “We’re fine, thanks.” Eve took a chair with a low, semicircular back. Everything in the room seemed to follow the round theme.

  “Sorry.” Natasha sat again. “I think this is the first time we’ve had police in the house—officially. I had my usual Tuesday morning session with Trey. I work with him twice a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays, ten A.M. Thursdays I follow the workout with a massage. We didn’t have a session scheduled today as he was going out of town to a conference.”

  “And you, Mrs. Schubert? Since you’re here.”

  “Oh.” Martella took a quick sip of her drink, bit her lip. “It would’ve been Wednesday morning. I was Wednesday mornings and Friday afternoons. So, um, yesterday morning. Tilly said he died yesterday, but I saw him, and he was fine.”

  “Tilly?” Eve prompted.

  “Tilly Burke. She heard from Lola. You went to see Lola, and she talked to Tilly. Tilly didn’t work with Trey, she worked with Flora because she wanted a female
trainer, but she knew Trey. Everyone knew Trey.”

  She paused, drank again. “I’m talking too much.”

  “Yes, you are.” Natasha patted her on the leg. “It’s upsetting.”

  “It feels awful.”

  “How long were you clients, specifically of Mr. Ziegler’s?”

  “It must be six months now. A little longer for you, Tella.”

  “I switched to BB. Tilly and I used to go to Sensible Fitness but they just got really boring, and BB had just remodeled, done a whole vamp of their locker rooms. It has such a good feel, so we joined, then Tash joined when I told her how much more I liked it. Then I started working with Trey. He really upped my game. I bought Trey for Lance for his last birthday.”

  “She means she bought her husband weekly personal training sessions,” Natasha explained. “Tella raved so, I took a two-week trial with him myself and I was hooked.”

  “Did you socialize with him?”

  “Socialize?” Natasha lifted an eyebrow as if the question baffled her. “You mean personally? I had lunch with him a few times in the juice bar to discuss fitness options and strategies.”

  “And outside the gym.”

  “Not really. Though JJ and I invited him to our club once or twice. We felt he’d vastly improved our tennis game. Speed and endurance,” she added with a smile. “And his focus on upper-body work seriously strengthened my backhand. He and JJ played golf now and then,” she added. “They’re both fanatics about golf.”

  “Did you ever go to his apartment?”

  “Why no. Why would I?”

  Eve shifted her attention to the sister. Martella gave all hers to her drink. “Mrs. Schubert?”

  “Yes? What?”

  “Did you ever see Mr. Ziegler outside of the fitness center?”

  “Oh, well . . . He came to the club. Tash, I’m going to ask Hester for another drink.”

  “Mrs. Schubert?” Eve said, voice firm and flat.

  “Yes?”

  “How long were you sexually involved with Mr. Ziegler?”

  “That’s a ridiculous question,” Natasha snapped out. “That’s incredibly rude. Tella, you don’t have to dignify that with a . . .” She trailed off after a look at her sister’s face. “Oh God. Martella!”