Connections in Death (In Death 48)

“No criminal there. Father’s a bad seed, in and out, and now in for good this time for aggravated assault. Looks like the brother had some issues as a juvenile, got straightened out. He’s been in Georgia for eight years, employed at the same firm for the last five. No recent bumps.

“Duff, on the other hand.”

“Yeah, I skimmed hers. Illegals, possession, possession with intent to distribute, unlicensed solicitation. A long line of petty shit. No real violent crimes on her sheet.”

“Now she’s dead, and if she wasn’t dead, she’d be looking at charges of accessory to murder.”

Jones made it out in about three, red hoodie, black pants, scarred high-tops.

Black, Eve noted, but not Lightning brand.

“I want some breakfast.”

Since he kept walking, Eve signaled Peabody, fell into step with him.

“I have to hand it to you. I don’t know if I’d have an appetite if I had the cops coming around asking about the murders of two people I’m connected to.”

“I ain’t worried about it.”

He turned into a grease trap called 24 Hour Eats.

It smelled like overcooked onions, tremendously bad coffee, and fake meat sopped in that grease.

The decor ran to walls painted screaming orange, decorated with blissfully optimistic pictures of food. The yellowing white of the counter had scorch scars, and the handful of backless stools carried strips of duct tape along the seats.

The line of booths looked no more promising, but Jones swaggered back to the last, a corner, slid in, tapped a hand on the scarred laminate of the table like he owned the place.

Which he did, Eve thought. At least a share

thereof.

A waitress, somewhere in her forties, Eve gauged, with a lot of tits straining against an atomic-yellow uniform, shuffled right over with a coffeepot.

“How’s it going, Slice?”

She poured what pretended to be coffee into the brown mug he turned over. Eve waved a hand in a no signal over hers. Peabody shook her head.

“Get me the cheese grits, Melba, and three eggs scrambled soft, sausage, and toast.”

“I’ll put that right in for you.”

She shuffled off, pausing to fill the mugs of a couple of men who looked more like they were ending the night than starting the morning.

The counter waitress slapped a plate in front of a solo female Eve tagged as street level.

Jones added three containers of nondairy creamer and three packets of fake sugar to his coffee.

“How’d Dinnie get herself dead?”

“Probably by letting three murdering goons into Lyle Pickering’s apartment. She finished that up getting beaten to death, raped repeatedly, choked, and stomped on. Her assailants stole her shoes, her coat, her ’link if she had one, ripped her earrings out of her ears, and left her under the Manhattan Bridge overpass.”

He hadn’t shown any reaction to Eve’s listing of the violence, but his face lit with fury at the location.

“Fucking Dragons.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Fuck you know?”