Delusion in Death (In Death 35)

She replaced her ’link. “She didn’t have much time here. I gave her more, just a little more by giving Nadine the heads up on an arrest. Damn it. Fuck it. How much did she make? Why? Why not just blow?”

She began to pace. “She could’ve walked straight out the front. She didn’t. She wanted us to waste time, setting this up, assuming she was inside. But that cost her time. Time she couldn’t spend getting on her shuttle and getting away. Now we’ve locked down her vehicles, frozen her accounts.”

“I suspect she has ready funds buried.”

“Yeah, but she took this time instead of running.”

“She’s not ready to get out of New York.”

“She has a target. Something big. The mayor—she’d never get near Gracie Mansion, not today. Cop Central—same deal. She has to know security has her face.”

Peabody walked in. “It looks like she might’ve packed a few things. Jewelry, I think. There’s an empty safe in the master bed-room, and some signs she, or somebody, went through the closet in a hurry.”

“She figures on getting away. She took valuables, clothes. You don’t bother with that unless you believe you’ll need them.”

“It doesn’t feel right she’d just leave her grandson,” Peabody said. “Just take off, leave him swinging.”

“She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about him when push comes to bigger push. It’s about the principle, the mission. About Menzini.”

“I think she does care about Callaway. She’s got a picture of him framed on her dresser. And there’s one of the two of them in the second bedroom—some men’s clothes in there, too. Nice ones, new. They look like his size. It seems, I don’t know, caring and sentimental.”

Eve pushed by, strode through the living room. “Your men can stand down, Lowenbaum, but hold. Just hold.”

She took the stairs two at a time.

In the master, gold again with soft, almost watery greens and blues, Callaway’s photo stood in a gold frame on an antique dresser. Facing the bed, Eve noted. She’d wanted to see him, see his face before she went to sleep.

“This was taken here.” She snatched it up, walked to the wide windows. “On the terrace, probably. You can see the river behind him. Get me the other one,” she snapped at Peabody, and circled the room with the photograph.

“Caring, sentimental. I’m wrong here. Maybe, maybe. He’s her blood—Menzini’s blood. Male. Good-looking, fit, not stupid. And willing to kill. Willing to follow the path. Menzini dies, and what does she have left? Callaway. The daughter’s nothing but the daughter provided the grandson. People put their hopes and dreams into their offspring.”

She grabbed the second photo when Peabody hurried back. It showed Callaway, wide smile, his arm around the waist of his grandmother. Was that pride in her eyes, Eve wondered. Affection? Ambi

tion.

Maybe all of it.

“She gave him what she had,” Eve mused. “The means to destroy. Let him start with his enemies, his competitors, those he considered in his way. No, that’s not the mission, not the credo. That’s personal. Indulgence. She lets him create panic and fear, for his own sake—not the big picture. Then they’d move on, together, to bigger and better. Is that it? Did she, along the way, develop feelings for him? Her grandson, her only worthy family. No, she’s not going to leave him swinging.”

“What can she do?” Peabody asked. “She can’t get to him.”

“She’s cooked up a hell of a bargaining chip, right down in her kitchen. She can finish what he started, what he’d planned to do next. Weaver. That restaurant. What was it? What—Appetito.”

Nancy Weaver hooked her arm through her date’s as they strolled along the sidewalk. The night air, so cold and crisp, felt wonderful on her skin.

“Thanks, Marty.”

“For what?”

“For indulging me.”

He laughed, shifted so he could wrap an arm around her waist. “I thought we indulged each other.”

“We did. I know I was a mess when I showed up at your door.”

“You’ve had a horrible couple of days. We all have, but you most of all.”

“It’s been a nightmare, and I couldn’t wake up. When I heard that Lew—Jesus, how could I have worked with him all this time and not known, not seen?”