Memory in Death (In Death 22)

“He’s tired,” Zana said, “but he was joking with me. Said how he was off soy dogs for life. Thanks for staying. It helped to have somebody here I know.”

“I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

“Maybe I could stay with Bobby. I could sleep in the chair by his bed.”

“You’ll both do better if you’re rested. I’ll have a black-and-white bring you back in the morning.”

“I could take a cab.”

“Let’s take precautions now. Just to be on the safe side. I’ll put a cop back on the hotel.”

“Why?”

“Just a precaution.”

Zana’s hand shot out, gripped Eve’s arm. “You think somebody hurt Bobby? You think this was deliberate?”

Her voice rose several octaves on the question, and her fingers dug through to skin.

“There’s nothing to substantiate that. I’d just rather be cautious. You need to pick up anything for back at the hotel, we’ll get it on the way.”

“He slipped. He just slipped, that’s all,” Zana said definitively. “You’re just being cautious. You’re just taking care of us.”

“That’s right.”

“Could we see if they have a store, like a gift shop here? I could get Bobby some flowers. Maybe they even have a little tree. We bought one today, but I think it got smashed.”

“Sure, no problem.”

She fought back impatience, went downstairs, into the gift shop. Waited, wandered, while Zana appeared to agonize over the right flowers, and the display of scrawny tabletop trees.

T

hen there was the matter of a gift card, which meant more agonizing.

It took thirty minutes to accomplish what Eve figured she could have done in thirty seconds. But there was color back in Zana’s cheeks as she was assured the flowers and tree would be delivered upstairs within the hour.

“He’ll like seeing them when he wakes up,” Zana said as they walked outside. With the wind biting, she buttoned her stained coat. “You don’t think the flowers are too fussy? Too female? It’s so hard to pick out flowers for a man.”

What the hell did she know about it? “He’ll like them.”

“Gosh, it’s cold. And it’s snowing again.” Zana paused to look up at the sky. “Maybe we’ll have a white Christmas. That’d be something. It hardly ever snows where we are in Texas, and if it does, it usually melts before you can blink. First time I saw snow, I didn’t know what to think. How about you?”

“It was a long time ago.” Outside the window in another nasty little hotel room. Chicago, maybe. “I don’t remember.”

“I remember making a snowball, and how cold it was on my hands.” Zana looked down at them, then tucked them in her pockets out of the chill. “And when you looked outside in the morning, if it had snowed at night, everything looked so white and clean.”

She waited by the car while Eve unlocked the doors. “You know how your stomach would get all tied up with excitement, because maybe there’d be no school that day?”

“Not really.”

“I’m just babbling, don’t mind me. Happens when I’m nervous. I guess you’re all ready for Christmas.”

“Mostly.” Eve maneuvered into traffic, resigned herself to small talk.

“Bobby wanted to have his mama’s memorial before the end of the year.” As if she couldn’t keep her hands still, Zana twisted the top button of her coat. “I don’t know if we can do that, now that he’s hurt. He thought—we thought—it’d be good to do it before. So we’d start off the new year without all that sorrow. Are we going to be able to go home soon?”

Couldn’t keep them, Eve thought. Could stall, but couldn’t reasonably demand they stay in New York once Bobby was cleared for travel. “We’ll see what the doctors say.”