“Yeah. Looked like nice material.”
“I want it tagged, too. Ewing says she tore it up with her minidrill. Let’s see if that matches.”
“Huh. Why’d she use a drill if she had a knife. Ripping away with a knife’s got to be more satisfying and efficient.”
“Yeah, there’s a question. We’ll also run both vics, see if we can find anyone who’d want them dead besides the betrayed wife.”
Hissing a breath out between her teeth, Peabody looked back at the bodies. “If it’s what it looks like, she’ll make diminished capacity in a walk.”
“Let’s find out what it is, not what it looks like.”
2 “NO. NO, I didn’t wash her hands or face.” Caro sat, eyes level, face composed. But her hands were knotted together in her lap, as if she used them as a rope to anchor her body to the chair.
“I tried to touch as little as possible, and just keep her calm until you got here.”
“Caro.” Eve kept her gaze focused on the woman’s face, and tried to ignore the fact—and the small kernel of resentment in her belly—that Roarke remained in the room. At Caro’s request. “There’s a master bath upstairs, off the main bedroom. There are indications, though the sink was wiped down, that someone washed blood away.”
“I didn’t go upstairs. I give you my word.”
Because she did, because Eve believed her, she realized Caro didn’t understand the implications of her statement. But from the change in Roarke’s posture, the subtle shifting to alert, Eve knew he did.
Because he remained silent, that kernel of resentment shrank a bit.
“There’s blood on Reva’s clothes,” Eve said.
“Yes, I know. I saw . . .” And the understanding dawned in her eyes, followed instantly by a barely controlled panic. “Lieutenant, if Reva—if she used the washroom, it would’ve been while she was in shock. Not to try to cover anything up. You have to believe that. She was in shock.”
Sick, certainly, Eve thought. Her prints were on the bowl and rim of the toilet. Just as they’d be if she’d held on while being violently ill. But not in the master bath. The evidence of her illness was in the bath down the hall from the bedroom.
While the blood traces were in the master bath.
“How did you enter the premises, Caro?”
“How did I . . . oh.” She brushed a hand over her face like a woman brushing absently at a cobweb. “The door, the front door was unlocked. It was open a little.”
“Open?”
“Yes. Yes, the lock light was green, then I saw it wasn’t quite closed, so I just pushed it open and came in.”
“And what was the situation when you entered?”
“Reva was sitting on the floor, in the foyer. Sitting there, in a ball, shaking. She was barely coherent.”
“But she’d been coherent enough when she contacted you for you to understand Blair and Felicity were dead, and she—your daughter—was in trouble.”
“Yes. That is, I understood she needed me, and that Blair—Blair and Felicity—were dead. She said: ‘Mom. Mom, they’re dead. Someone’s killed them.’ She was crying, and her voice was hollow and strange. She said she didn’t know what to do, what should she do. I asked where she was, and she told me. I can’t remember exactly what she said, or I said. But it’s on my ’link at home. You’ll hear for yourself.” Her voice tightened a little.
“Yes, we will.”
“I realize that Reva, then I, should have contacted the police immediately.”
Caro smoothed a hand over the knees of her pajama pants, then simply stared at them as if she’d just realized what she was wearing.
Her cheeks went a little pink, then she sighed. “I can only tell you that both of us, both of us were . . . we weren’t thinking clearly, and only thought to contact the person we each trusted most.”
“Were you aware that your son-in-law was unfaithful?”