Page 109 of Passions in Death
“Me? Oh, if you’d lured me in with your seductive coffee, then dumped me? Murder cops know a lot of ways to kill without leaving a trace. But short of that? I’d have just hounded you on your shady past until I got you tossed in a cage.”
She angled around to look at the board. “Somebody on there didn’t stop short.”
“Killing the rival, or the one who rejected them?”
“Not completely sure. But I know Lopez took the time to go into that shoe store to fuck with Shauna. I’ve got no doubts she tried to put the moves on Erin within the last year. I’d’ve put some money on her for it.”
“Now?”
“Holding that bet because Barney had something besides what came out of the friggie and AC in that box. He was nervous, stayed nervous, and pushed for information on the case. Trying to size me up on it.”
She shifted back. “He took something, maybe just some little thing. And that’s stupid, like the murder was stupid. He’s got a thing for Shauna. It doesn’t come off sexual, even romantic, but it’s a thing.”
“You’re changing your bet.”
“Not yet.” She polished off the fries. “Not yet, because either one of them could’ve done it. And both of them wanted to.”
“A partnership?”
“I’ve played with that. May play some more, but it doesn’t hold for me. It… wobbles,” she decided. “I can’t see them hooking up, not for this, not for anything.”
Shrugging, she picked up her wine again, did a half toast. “I’ll know more tomorrow when I see them at the memorial.”
As she drank, lightning cracked the sky. Rain poured out.
“Here it comes,” she said. Then she rose. “I’ve got the dishes.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you? Runs? Finances?”
“Not really, no.” She walked to the window to watch the rain, to feel the whip of the wind. “I need to write it up—and I’m going to copy Mira. Maybe writing it up will click something into place.”
When he joined her at the open doors, she leaned against him. Just two people, she thought, watching a storm blow its raging way over their city.
“I need to see them all together tomorrow. Together over death, how they react, how they interplay. I’ve got some of their impressions of each other, a lot of the dynamics. I need to see how it all plays out.”
She looked up at him. “What have you got going?”
“Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that. I’ll entertain myself well enough.”
“How about you give it an hour, then we entertain ourselves with a vid?”
Watching the storm, he stroked a hand down her hair. “A vid, is it?”
“If something doesn’t click, I’m just going to keep circling.”
“A vid works for me. So does an hour.”
She watched the storm another moment. “A good thing I lost that button.”
“And I intuited you could be won over by coffee.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I’ve got the dishes.”
Though she didn’t feel she made any progress or opened new avenues, Eve took the hour.
They settled into their usual vid spot, the sofa in the bedroom. The action and complexity of the vid took her out of the investigation for a while. As did the slow, lazy sex that followed.
She slept peacefully, curled between Roarke and the cat.
