to hunt for parking.
She took the block-and-a-half walk in stride. Fast strides as the air froze her fingers and cheeks. Too early for the off-to-school brigade, she noted, but not for the domestics. Nannies, maids, cooks poured off maxibuses, streamed up from the subway, hoofed it over the sidewalk toward the day’s work.
Owners, or those owners paid, walked a variety of dogs. She smelled fresh bread, chestnuts roasting, coffee, sugar-dusted pastries.
Not a bad place to call home, she thought as she walked up to the Miras’ front door. Even before she rang the bell, the door opened.
As always when she saw the kind and dreamy eyes of Dennis Mira, her heart gave a little tug. Just something about him, she thought, with his cardigans and mussed hair, bemused smile.
“Eve. Come in out of the cold.” He took her hand to draw her inside. “Where are your gloves? Your hands are freezing. Charlie! Find Eve some gloves.”
“Oh, no, I have them. I just forget to—”
“And a hat! You should always wear a hat in the cold,” he said to Eve. “It keeps the heat in.” He winked at her. “Warms the brain. Who can think with a cold brain?”
In her life he was the only person she actively wanted to hug the minute she saw him. Just press up against him, rest her head on his sloping shoulder and just . . . be there.
“You can sit by the fire,” he said, nudging her into the living area with its sparkling Christmas tree, its family photos, and lovely, lovely sense of home. “I’ll make you hot chocolate. It’ll do the trick.”
“You don’t—” Hot chocolate? “Really?”
“It’s my secret recipe, and the best. Charlie will tell you.”
“It’s incredible,” Mira confirmed as she came in—looking nothing like a Charlie in an icy blue suit and heeled boots in metallic sapphire. “We’d love some, Dennis.” Then she tugged on the frayed sleeve of his cardigan. “Didn’t I put this sweater in the donation box?”
“Did you?” He smiled in that absent way he had. “Isn’t that strange? I’ll make the chocolate. Where did I put the . . .”
“First cupboard, left of the stove, second shelf.”
“Of course.”
He walked off, little shuffling sounds in his house scuffs.
“I can’t get him to let go of that sweater. It’ll probably unravel on him one day.”
“It looks good on him.”
Mira smiled. “It does, doesn’t it? Have a seat, and tell me what you’re thinking.”
Eve sat near the simmering fire to talk of the business of murder.
Mira listened in that quietly absorbed way she had even when Eve felt the need to get up and pace out the theory.
“There’s no way it all slides in that neat,” Eve concluded. “‘Hey, we’re moving. Listen, brother, you’re going to Africa to spread the word.’ And between those two events, twelve girls are drowned in the bathtub of the former digs, rolled up and walled up. It has to tie.”
“The mother’s history of mental illness, and her eventual suicide when the youngest child was still living at home.”
“He never lived on his own.”
“Yes, a dependency either innate or fostered. You’re looking at the tub—the mother died in one, now the girls are killed in one.”
“It’s tidy.”
“It’s the wrong symbolism. The mother took her life, and it’s a violent act. A blade through flesh, blood in the water. The girls were drowned, not—according to the forensics—bled out.”
“The killer could have cut their wrists. It wouldn’t show on the bones. And it’s pretty damn annoying not to be able to just look at a body and see.”
“I’m sure it is. Let’s take the other route. This Sebastian—a fascinating character from your notes—do you tie him in?”