Page 55 of Passions in Death
It happened, she decided, and drove out of the garage into traffic.
The wheeze and the rejected boyfriend. It could play. More logical to target Shauna herself, but… more painful to kill someone she loved, and leave her grieving.
She played with that angle, picked it apart, put it back together as she drove to the Down and Dirty.
A very doable walk, she thought again as she hunted up parking, from so many of the apartments, workplaces, hangouts of this intersecting group of friends.
Not surprising. Geography counted.
It counted again when she had to walk two and a half blocks from parking to the club.
The vibe started to change as it crept closer to the end of the workday, or passed that mark for some.
Not as many tourists on the street now, or at least not here where the sex clubs, the bars, the piercing and tat parlors ruled. She watched two women come out of one of those parlors. One had skin still pink under a vine of weird flowers now twining up her arm.
And her face as pale as chalk.
A trio of guys in work boots and sweaty shirts trooped into a bar. End-of-construction-day brews.
She spotted a junkie across the street, jittery as he hunted up an early score. And ignored him.
The neon on the D&D stayed dark and the front windows shaded.
She mastered in.
Rochelle Pickering, tall and built in worn jeans and a faded T-shirt, stood scrubbing at the bar. She’d bundled her black corkscrew hair under a floral do-rag.
She jolted when Eve stepped in, then blew out a breath.
“You startled me. I didn’t expect anyone to come in.”
“I didn’t expect to find you cleaning the bar.”
“Wilson won’t let me near the room where it happened, so I’m helping this way. Nobody got to clean the place afterward last night. It’s terrible, what happened. He’s just sick about it.”
She went back to scrubbing, putting some elbow grease into it as she spoke.
“He told me he knew her, that she came in off and on, and for a long time. And how they were having their bachelorette party here, she and her fiancée getting married in a few days. He’s just heartsick, and won’t have anyone deal with that room but himself.”
“Sometimes it helps, to do it yourself.”
“I know, and I’m hoping it does.”
She put down the rag a moment, turned to Eve. “I was hoping to talk to you sometime—I wish it wasn’t after this. But I wanted you to know how well Dorian’s doing at An Didean. The counseling’s helped her deal with everything that happened to her, back to her mother’s emotional and physical abuse, through the nightmare of what was done to her at that vicious so-called Academy.”
“Good.”
“It’s more than good, Dallas. She’s got a lot more counseling in her future, but she’s actually blossoming. She’s so much smarter than her grades at her school before she ran away indicate. Her mother simply didn’t allow her to blossom, and now she is. She’s making friends—carefully, but making them. And the boy, Mouser—Tom? He’s just a wonder. So damn entertaining, and not just smart, Dallas. Scary smart. He just latches on.
“You helped give them this chance, and I wanted you to know what it means.”
“I’m glad to hear it. They both got knocked around more than any kid should. Roarke put you in charge of the school because he knew you’d find ways to not only give them a chance but convince them to take it.
“Seen much of Sebastian?”
Rochelle smiled. “I understand your issues with him, and why you have them. I don’t disagree. He does check in with them from time to time, and I promise you, they need that connection. He helped them—in his way, but he helped them.”
“His way is… questionable.”
