Dark in Death (In Death 46)

“You can let me know if you know any rich old ladies with a greedy, murderous son who plays the biddable, and a daughter who can be framed.”

He considered as he ate. “I likely have a passing acquaintance with a few.”

“Next vic. She’ll have her target selected and set up. I don’t know how long she’ll wait to move on it now. Whether she’ll push or step back. But if the bartender comes through with Yancy, I’ll have a face. And maybe Harvo finds something on the damn coat. Maybe we turn up the dreads and get something off them. Loxie made it easy for her, but she still moved too fast, and she made mistakes.

“I’ve got to dig deeper into Delaware,” she continued as she got up to go to her closet. “Especially if I have a face. She had a life there. She lived somewhere, worked somewhere. Shopped, ate, has a history there. Maybe family.”

She thought it through while she dressed, came out to find Roarke knotting a wine-colored tie with thin gray stripes. The gray matched his shirt exactly and came in a few tones lighter than the suit.

As she strapped on her weapon, she saw him pick up the gray button he always carried, slide it into his pocket. And felt a stupefying wave of love.

She rubbed a hand over the diamond under her sweater. Here was the cop, sentimental over a big, fat diamond. And the kazillionaire sappy over some stray button.

What a pair they were.

“Luck’s bullshit.”

He glanced over. “Darling Eve, those are fighting words for an Irishman.”

“Luck’s bullshit,” she repeated, and put a hunter green jacket over a sweater the color of Mira’s tea. “Except when it isn’t. I’m feeling pretty lucky to wake up with you, then there’s the whole getting nailed in the shower, even if oatmeal followed. I can’t say that counterbalances Strongbow’s luck last night, but it’s given me a damn good start to the day.”

Eve filled her jacket pockets with her usual paraphernalia. “She doesn’t have that—not just the waking up and getting nailed. She might have a rush from the kill, but she’s got to be worried. She got spotted, chased, left possessions behind. She has to worry about that. She has to worry about me.”

Now he studied her as she’d studied him. “How will she write you in, Lieutenant?”

“Can’t say, but I can guarantee her story isn’t going to have a happy ending.”

Thinking of stories, of endings, she sent Feeney a long text as she drove downtown a

long madly slippery streets.

Attached are several writing samples from my prime suspect in the three murders associated with Blaine DeLano’s Dark series. If you’re not up to date, McNab can brief you. Is it possible to run an analysis of the writing, do a global search for similar styles, word uses, blah, blah, focusing on sites for writers? Wannabe types? Especially places where they can put up samples of their work for others to read?

I can have Peabody start a search on social media sites. Suspect wrote a manuscript titled Hot Blood, Cold Mind, but my searches for the title on self-publishing types, social media, and so forth gets bupkus.

On my way to the morgue now to see what Morris can tell me about her third vic. I’ll be in Central in about an hour if you need any clarification. Appreciate it. Dallas

Long shot, Eve thought. She wasn’t confident Strongbow would put her work out there for comments or criticism. But maybe, maybe, there was a hunger that needed feeding. Maybe she’d risk it.

Eve’s DLE handled the ice patches with barely a shudder, and certainly better than the pair of Rapid Cabs she saw crunched together on Ninth between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-fourth.

Still, she couldn’t deny relief when she could get out of the damn car, off the damn streets, and into the white tunnel of the morgue.

Halfway down she heard the unmistakable Peabody clump behind her.

She paused in the air that smelled of chemical cleaning, fake lemon, and death.

Bundled like a candied Eskimo in her pink coat, pink fuzzy-topped boots, a scarf in bleeding shades of blue with pink fringe, an earflap hat in the same pattern with bouncing pom-poms, Peabody clumped to catch up.

“I take it back about the dumb-ass wind goggles. I wish I’d had a pair just for the walk to and from the subway.”

“Blame Canada,” Eve told her. “It’s a changeup from blaming February.”

“I’ve been looking at gardening sites. We’re going to do some window boxes, plant herbs and stuff. I shouldn’t have started thinking about spring.”

“Maybe we’ll blame you then.” Eve kept walking, and pushed through Morris’s double doors.

He’d gone for a black turtleneck rather than a shirt and tie—and who could blame him? It gave the steel-blue suit a sort of artsy vibe. He’d wound his hair into a single, thick braid that hung down the back of his protective cloak.