‘One big happy family,’ Eve mumbled. ‘The primary, the defendant, and the tenant of the murder scene, who also happens to be the victim’s former lover and the defendant’s current. Are you all insane?’
‘Who’s to know? Roarke has excellent security. And if there’s even the smallest chance that things could go wrong, I want to spend whatever time I can with Leonardo.’ Mavis set her mouth in a stubborn pout. ‘So that’s what I’m going to do.’
‘I’ll have Summerset arrange for a work space.’
‘Thanks. We appreciate it.’
‘While you people orchestrate your mad tea party, I’ve got a murder to solve.’
Roarke winked at Mavis and called after Eve as she stormed away, ‘What about your crepe?’
‘Stuff it.’
‘She’s crazy about you,’ Mavis commented.
‘It’s almost embarrassing, the way she fawns. Want another crepe?’
Mavis patted her stomach. ‘Why the hell not?’
A downed circuit at Ninth and Fifty-sixth played hell with street traffic. Both pedestrians and drivers ignored the noise pollution laws and honked, shouted, and buzzed out their frustrations. Eve would have rolled up her windows to cut the din, but her temperature controls were on the fritz again.
To add to the fun, Mother Nature had decided to body slam New York with a humature of a hundred and ten. To pass the time, Eve watched the heat waves dance up from the concrete. At this rate, more than a few computer chips were going to fry by noon.
She considered taking to the air, though her control panel seemed to have developed a mind of its own. But several other harried drivers had already done so. The traffic overhead was in a nasty snarl. A couple of one-man traffic copters were trying to deal with it and instead added to the mess with the bee swarm buzz of their blades and the irritating drone of voices.
She caught herself snarling at the i love new york hologram sticker on the bumper jammed in front of hers.
The sanest idea, she decided, was to get some work done in her car.
‘Peabody,’ she ordered the ’link, and after a few frustrating hisses of static, it engaged.
‘Peabody. Homicide.’
‘Dallas here. I’m going to pick you up in front of the Cop Shop, west side. ETA, fifteen minutes.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Bring all files pertinent to the Johannsen case and the Pandora case, and be . . .’ She trailed off and squinted at the screen. ‘Why is it so quiet in there, Peabody? Aren’t you in the bull pen?’
‘Only a couple of us made it in this morning. There’s a bad traffic snag on Ninth.’
Eve scanned the sea of traffic. ‘Is that a fact?’
‘It pays to listen to the traffic network in the morning,’ she added. ‘I took an alternate route.’
‘Shut up, Peabody,’ Eve muttered and broke transmission. She spent the next couple of minutes retrieving messages from her desk ’link, then set up a morning appointment at Paul Redford’s office in midtown for an interview. She called the lab to harass them for the toxicology report on Pandora, got the runaround, and left them with a creative threat.
She was debating whether to call Feeney and nag him when she saw a narrow break in the wall of cars. She jogged forward, cut left, squeezed through, ignoring the rude blast of horns and spearing middle fingers. Praying her vehicle would cooperate, she punched vertical. Rather than spring up, she wavered, but she did rise the minimum ten feet.
She swerved right, nipped by a jammed people glide where she caught the blur of miserable, sweaty faces, and rattled over to Seventh while her control panel warned of overload. After five blocks, the car was wheezing, but she’d cleared the worst of the jam. She set down with a teeth-rattling thud and swung toward the west entrance of Cop Central.
The dependable Peabody was waiting. How the woman managed to look cool and unperturbed in her sweltering blues, Eve didn’t want to know.
‘Your vehicle sounds a little rough, Lieutenant,’ Peabody commented when she climbed in.
‘Really? I didn’t notice.’
‘You sound a little rough yourself. Sir.’ When Eve merely bared her teeth and started to cut across town to Fifth, Peabody dug into her kit, took out a small porta-fan, and clipped it to the dash. The blast of cool air nearly made Eve whimper.