Dark in Death (In Death 46)

Tightening, tightening the sash, heart drumming, drumming.

The eyes flutter open, blind, bulging. The whore-dyed lips open, like a fish gulping. The body shakes.

It’s like sex, yes, like the sex the little whore sold. Tightening, tightening as tears of grief and betrayal gather. No more, no more selling sex, no more tempting, no more taking. Then it all dies away. It dies. It’s done.

Relief makes the killer almost tender. Patient fingers tie the bow, adjust it, perfect it, study it, approve it.

And with it makes death a gift.

Eve closed the book, stared at the fire as she let it roll around in her head. Moments later, Roarke closed his.

“No question about it,” he said. “Lethal plagiarism. Why don’t we eat in here and talk about it?”

“In here?”

“What better place to discuss books? Computer, open drapes.”

The heavy drapes parted on the window between sections of shelves.

“Ah, it’s snowing.”

Eve scowled at the windows. “Crap.”

“It’s lovely from in here.” Rising, Roarke walked to another cabinet, opened it to an AutoChef. He called up the menu, perused it a moment. “Well now, Summerset said we wouldn’t starve while he was away, and he certainly saw to it. I think a snowy night in the library calls for shepherd’s pie.”

“Why is it ‘pie’ when it’s not?”

“I think before potatoes came around England and Ireland, it was made with a pastry crust. But as we won’t be tending sheep, Summerset does his up pub style.”

He programmed two servings before she could wheedle him into pizza. “The Deann Dark character’s fascinating. I’ll definitely read more of the series. But as to the relevant book, I see your point. The killer followed the book when it came to victim and method, but shifted other things about—as plagiarists are wont to do—trying, often succeeding at least for a time, in getting away with it.”

“What changes?”

He brought two personal casseroles to the library table, gestured for her to bring the wine. “No reversible coat or changing from male to female. The killer walked in and out as himself, but made a point of asking for the vid in the theater two down from where the victim would be.”

He walked to another table, took the two heavy candlesticks, and carried them to the library table. Lit them.

“How did he know the victim would be there?”

“Amelia Benson—the character—talked about it in dance class, in the workshop she was part of, and on her social media. She admired Grace Kelly particularly, and had never seen the vid. She had a friend planning to attend with her, but said friend received a text minutes before the show’s start, purportedly from the restaurant where she worked as a line cook, citing a staff emergency and instructing her to come in and cover.”

“ ‘Purportedly’?” Eve sat, studied the pie that wasn’t pie.

“Yes. When the friend arrived at work some twenty minutes later, no one knew what she was talking about. No one had texted her, but it was too late for her to go back, as the vid had already started.”

Once again, he topped off their wine. “Meanwhile, the killer slipped from one theater to the other, and there we have your mirror scenes. With the deed done, he slipped out again, back into the other theater. In this case, the killing wasn’t discovered until the houselights came up, and by then he’d left with the crowd exiting the other theater.”

“How did they identify him and wrap him up?”

“Haven’t gotten there yet.” Roarke dug into the pie. “But I have gotten to the point where he raises the suspicions of the clever and intrepid Deann Dark. The victim’s mother hired her, by the way, as she believes her daughter’s former lover did the deed, despite being cleared by the police—Hightower specifically—as

he has a solid alibi for the time in question.”

“Okay, the mother hires the PI because she thinks the cops are idiots, and the PI ends up proving the cops aren’t idiots. Back in reality, the killer reads the book, concludes strolling in and out, letting the security cams track her may lead to trouble. Because if the cops, and the PI, don’t review the feed, eventually pinning the killer as connected to the victim, they’re all idiots.”

“I suspect you’re right, and am now invested—fiction and non—in discovering for myself. And yours?”

It wasn’t pie, and it had a hell of a lot of vegetables, but they were all inside a meaty stew that had just enough kick, and mushed up with mashed potatoes that weren’t exactly mashed potatoes.