Page 153 of Passions in Death
“You had a fight?”
“More a disagreement, and it was over a year ago. I told him what I did with my life, who I slept with, and so on wasn’t any of his business. I was pretty harsh because I was already in love with her and he was so critical. But we made up, he apologized. And he and Erin got along fine. More than. You can’t expect me to believe my oldest friend would have…”
“Who else could have taken the box, Shauna? Who else did that jewelry mean anything to?”
“I must’ve misplaced it. No, no, you said you saw it after… but—”
“Would Erin have trusted him? She wanted to surprise you with something you dreamed of, and Donna was out of town. Would she have trusted him?”
Her eyes went dead. “Yes.”
“He knew about Maui. When you were together in high school, the two of you talked about it.”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded dead as well. “After college. We’d get married after college when we both had jobs. And we’d honeymoon in Maui because I’d wanted that since I was a little girl.”
She didn’t weep. Her eyes stayed dull and dead, and she didn’t weep. “Why wouldn’t she trust him? He was my oldest friend. I’ve known him since middle school.”
“Dallas.” Peabody spoke from the doorway, then nodded.
“Shauna, we’re going to take you back to Angie’s. I need you to stay there, and I need you to keep your word.”
“Do you think I’d speak to him about this?” She got to her feet. “He knew where I kept the jewelry, and taking it was petty. He can be petty, but that’s something you overlook in a friend. She would have trusted him. I trusted him. He always thinks he knows what I should do, what’s best for me. I overlooked that, too, or ignored it. And if I got pissed about it, he’d back off, apologize. ‘Just trying to look out for you, Shaunbar.’ He’d call me that to make me laugh.”
She laid a hand on her heart. “In here, I’m not ready to believe he could do anything like this. But in here?” She touched her other hand to the side of her head. “I can. Oh God, God, I can.”
She dropped both hands. “I’ll keep my word, but I need yours. You have to tell me, if you prove it’s true, you have to tell me right away.”
“You have my word.”
When they dropped her off, Eve watched her walk inside.
“She won’t contact anyone, least of all him. But let’s make this as fast as possible, too.”
“We got the search warrant for his apartment. When we find the box—and we have to hope like hell he didn’t toss it all—”
“He wouldn’t. Shaunbar’s too important to him.”
“Okay. When we find it, we’ll get the arrest for robbery.”
“Enough to take him in, sweat out the rest. He’ll have excuses for taking the box,” Eve continued as she drove. “He’s going to be sure, at first, he can talk his way out of this. He sells, he manages, and we’re just women, after all.”
“Then this should be fun.”
“Not for him,” Eve said, and considered it a stroke of Roarke luck when she zipped into a place right outside the apartment building.
A third-floor unit, almost within shouting distance of where Shauna and Erin lived. No cams, crap security.
She mastered in, hit the stairs.
The soundproofing was better than Shauna’s building, but not by much. This time instead of wailing, a baby laughed somewhere on the second floor.
Though she decided it was hard to tell the difference.
On three, she knocked first. “NYPSD, Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody, record on. Please open the door.”
When she got no response, she knocked a second time. “Dallas and Peabody entering premises by master for a duly warranted search and seizure.”
She mastered in, looked around while Peabody secured the door behind them.
