“I know this is difficult, Ms. Feinstein, and we’ll keep this as brief as possible. I’m Lieutenant Dallas, this is Detective Peabody. We’re Homicide.”

“I guess I know. My friend Lydia’s brother’s a cop in Queens. I almost called him. We sort of dated when we were in high school, but …”

“Why don’t you just tell us what happened? Start with where you were tonight.”

“We were all over,” Feinstein began.

“I’m sorry,” Vance interrupted. “Please sit down. Do you want coffee or anything?”

“That’d be great.” And would give him something to do, Eve thought. “Black for me, coffee regular for my partner.”

“How about some more tea, cutes?”

Feinstein smiled. “Thanks, Clip. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Never have to find out. Just take me a minute.”

He rose, moved quietly from the room. Feinstein curled up defensively.

“So, your evening?”

“We were all over. It was my stag party. We’re getting married next Friday. The limo picked me up about nine. There were fourteen of us, and we club hopped, you know? Clip’s deal is tomorrow night. So anyway, we finished up with the all-male revue at Spinner’s downtown. I know it sounds like—”

“A fun time with girlfriends,” Peabody finished with a smile.

“It was.” Feinstein’s eyes filled. “It really was. Some of us have been friends since forever, and I’m the first of our group to get married. So we did it big, and we drank a lot and laughed a lot, and the limo started dropping us off. I was the last one, and I had him drop me on the corner. I just wanted some air, to walk a little. I felt so happy, so silly, so good. I didn’t want it to end. Then …”

She broke off when Vance came back with mugs on a tray.

“Clip.”

“It’s okay, come on now, cutes. It’s okay.”

He set the tray down, put an arm around her. Eve took the mug of black coffee from the tray. From the smell, she knew she’d had worse. She’d had better, God knows, but she’d had worse.

“If I’d just had Shelly—that was the driver—drop me out front, she’d have seen it first. It’s terrible, but I wish she had. He was just lying there. For a second I thought it was just some awful joke, but then I saw …I think I screamed. I don’t know for sure, but I ran, and I could hardly use my swipe and code to get in I was shaking so bad, and I came right up to Clip.”

“I thought there’d been an accident. She could hardly tell me. Then I thought, well, she’s pretty lit, she imagined it, but she was so upset.” He kept that protective arm around her as he spoke, his fingers stroking up and down her arm. “I threw on some clothes, went out. And I saw she didn’t imagine it. I called nine-one-one, and the police came.”

“Did you recognize the victim?”

“No.” Vance looked at Feinstein, who shook her head.

“I didn’t really look,” Feinstein added. “I know he was right under the streetlight, but I didn’t really look at his face. He was all, I don’t know, burned. I saw the sign, the note, and that right below it, he’d—”

“So did I,” Vance added when she broke off. “Someone castrated him.”

“Could I ask how long you’ve lived in this building?”

“Two and a half months.” Feinstein managed a ghost of a smile as she took Vance’s hand. “We wanted to have our own place before the wedding. Our first place together.”

2

“Vic’s top floor,” Eve told Peabody as they walked back to the elevator. “Unlikely those two knew him or his wife. A couple of months in the building, eight floors away, twenty-odd years younger.”

“And this is only one of the vic’s residences,” Peabody added. “So he’s not always here.”

“He was here long enough to get dead. Let’s see if his family’s in the building.”

Tags: J.D. Robb In Death Mystery
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