Reunion in Death

He reached over idly to toy with the fingers she'd been tapping restlessly against her knee. «You didn't mention you'd caught a case today.»

«I didn't. I dug one out of the cold files. Six years back. Woman, pretty, young, upwardly mobile, married. Husband's out of town, comes back and finds her dead in the bathtub. Homicide poorly disguised as self-termination or accident. His alibi's solid, and he comes off clean as a whistle. Everyone interviewed says how they were the perfect couple, happy as clams.»

«Do you ever wonder how we determine the happiness of the clam?»

«I'm going to give that some real thought later. Anyway, there are letters hidden in her underwear drawer. Really explicit sex letters from someone who signs his name C.»

«Extramarital affair, lover's spat, murder?»

«The primary of record thought so.»

«But you don't?»

«Nobody ever found the guy, nobody ever saw the guy, nobody she knew ever heard her speak of the guy. Or so they said. I went by to see the husband, met his new wife and kid. Little girl, couple years old.»

«One could assume, justifiably, that after his period of mourning, he moved on, made a new life.»

«One could assume,» she replied.

«Not that I ever would, of course. Under similar circumstances, I'd wander aimlessly, a broken man, lost and without purpose.»

She looked at him skeptically. «Is that so?»

«Naturally. Now you're supposed to say something along the lines of you having no life at all without me in it.»

«Yeah, yeah.» She laughed when he bit the fingers he'd been playing with. «So back to the real world. I think I know how it went down. A couple of good, hard pushes and it's closed instead of cold.»

«But instead of pushing, you gave it to Peabody.»

«She needs the experience. A little more time won't matter to Marsha Stibbs. If Peabody goes down the wrong channels, I'll steer her back.»

«She must be thrilled.»

«Christ, she's got stars in her eyes.»

It made him smile. «What was the first case Feeney handed you?»

«Thomas Carter. Got into his sedan one fine morning, coded in, and the sucker blew up, sending pieces of him flying all over the West Side. Married, two kids, sold insurance. No side pieces, no enemies, no dangerous vices. No motive. Case stalled, went cold. Feeney dug it out, told me to work it.»

«And?»

«Thomas Carter wasn't the target. Thomas K. Carter, second-rate illegals dealer with a gambling addiction was. Asshole hired hitman tapped the wrong guy.» She glanced back to see Roarke still grinning at her. «And yeah, I remember how it felt to be handed the file and to close it.»

«You're a good trainer, Eve, and a good friend.»

«Friendship has nothing to do with it. If I didn't think she could handle working the case, I wouldn't have given it to her.»

«That's the trainer part. The friendship part should be here shortly.»

«Dinner. What the hell are we going to do with them when we're not eating?»

«It's called conversation. Socializing. Some people actually make a habit of doing both, on practically a daily basis.»

«Yeah, well some people are screwy. You're probably going to like the Peabodys. Did I tell you that when I got back to Central, they were feeding the bullpen cupcakes and cookies? Pie.»

«Pie? What kind of pie?»

«I don't know. By the time I got there all that was left of it was the dish and I think somebody ate that. But the cupcakes were amazing. Anyway, Peabody came back in my office and said all this weird stuff about her mother.»

He toyed with the ends of Eve's hair now, enjoying the streaky look of it. He'd have understood perfectly Boyd Stibbs's claim of not being able to keep his hands off his wife. «I thought they got along very well.»

«Yeah, they seem to cruise. But she said how she needed to warn me that her mother had these powers.»

«Wiccan?»

«Uh-uh, and not the Free-Ager hoodoo stuff either, even though she says her father's a sensitive. She said that her mother can make you do things you don't necessarily want to do, or say things you'd as soon keep to yourself. According to Peabody, I only asked them to dinner tonight because I was trapped in The Look.»

Intrigued, Roarke cocked his head. «Mind control?»

«Beats me, but she said it was just a mother thing, and her mother was particularly good at it. Or something. Didn't make any sense to me.»

«Well, neither of us know much about mother things, do we? And as she's not our mother, I imagine we're perfectly safe from her maternal powers, whatever they may be.»

«I'm not worried about it, just passing on the warning.»

Summerset, Roarke's majordomo and the bane of Eve's existence, came to the doorway. He sniffed once, his bony face set in disapproving lines. «That Chippendale is a coffee table, Lieutenant, not a footstool.»

«How do you walk with that stick up your ass?» She left her feet where they were, propped comfortably on the table. «Does it hurt, or does it give you a nice little rush?»

«Your dinner guests,» he said, curling his lip, «have arrived.»