Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(84)

When she paced back, she shouted, “Peabody!”

“I don’t get having fish in the house.” Baxter stood looking down at koi. “It’s unnatural.”

“I used to win a goldfish every summer at the county fair. Ringtoss,” Trueheart said. “It never made it through the fall.”

“See, unnatural.”

“You want unnatural? There’s a room full of dolls on the second floor.”

“Well, don’t they have a little girl?” Trueheart began.

“If a kid walked in that room, her screams would be heard from here to Queens, and she’d be traumatized for life. I’m saying hundreds of dolls. Staring dolls. Staring-at-the-door dolls. Waiting dolls.”

“Jesus, Dallas.” Muttering it, Baxter shuddered.

“They’re up there. We’re heading out,” she said as Peabody came down the stairs. “Detective Bennet cleared the path to the social worker.”

“Mike Bennet? Nice guy,” Baxter said.

“Sit on the house. Maybe feed those fish something. Nobody’s been here since yesterday. Maybe they’ll start eating each other.”

“Staring dolls, cannibal fish. What the hell kind of place is this?”

“Sit tight. Stay alert. We don’t want to add dead guy swinging over the cannibal fish.”

“Did she give Mike any names?” Peabody asked, winding her long, long scarf as they started to the car.

“No, and he doesn’t think she will. But she might give us a yes or no when we show her photos.”

“That’s a fine line.”

“What I get is she likes him—that nice-guy vibe. And she really respects his future mothers-in-law. We push on how these people used Anson to kill Wymann, and if we don’t stop them, will kill Betz, we’ve got a decent shot at getting a nod if we show her the right face.”

The minute she was in the car, Peabody ordered the seat warmer. “Reo says hey, and that she’ll have a warrant for us when we get the locations on the swipes. You never said what ideas you had about the old keys.”

“Old keys, old doors. These guys go back to old times. Group house. Maybe they’ve still got it. Or another. A place they get together, as brothers.”

“If so, and Betz went to all that trouble to hide the keys, it follows they go there, as brothers, to do stuff he doesn’t want his wife to know about.”

“If the senator had keys, he wouldn’t bother hiding them. We’ll get another warrant to go through his apartment, since it’s easy money his wife won’t cooperate. If Wymann had keys, we didn’t look in the right place, with the right eye. We’re going to need to have this Ethan MacNamee picked up, arrange a ’link or holo interview.”

“Senator Fordham?”

“Not one of them, but we’ll leave his security detail to watch him, in case he’s just a late entry. And let’s get the file on the suicide: William Stevenson.”

She answered the dash ’link when she noted Roarke’s display. “Hey.”

“I thought you’d want to know, security did the run-through at the hotel. Wymann has never registered, and doesn’t show up on any feed in the last year.”

“Okay. How about Frederick Betz?”

Roarke gave her a quiet stare. “Why don’t you contact Lloyd Kowalski, at the Palace, and ask him whatever you like. Your middleman on this is a bit busy today.”

“Sure, thanks. Just so you know, I didn’t tap you when we were after a hidey-hole, or when we had a locked box. Peabody found the hole, I picked the lock.”

“I’m so proud of both of you. Don’t skip lunch again, and if you need me I’ll be much more free after three.”

“Okay. Might need a copter and a pilot.”

“Now, that’s so much more fun than talking to Kowalski. Let me know. Later,” he added and clicked off.

“Copter? Pilot?”

“Group house—if it’s still standing, I want a look at it once we find it. Maybe those keys fit a door there, maybe they don’t. But I’d like to see it either way. Once we find out where the hell it is.”

“I can dig it up—it’ll take some time unless one of them owned or owns it. Maybe Mr. Mira knows.”

Eve let out a sigh, and once again went on the hunt for a parking space. “Yeah. He might know. We’ll ask before we dig.”

—

Suzanne Lipski had a cramped little office space in a dilapidated building that housed a rape crisis center. The center did its best, Eve imagined, with whatever funding it could scrape up, to offer support, information, medical and emotional assistance to victims. The walls of that space—one smaller than her division at Central—held soothing and uplifting posters. Calm water, misty forests, sunny beaches. And a bulletin board full of emergency numbers, counseling information, support group information.

Eve stopped, studied a flyer—a pretty summer meadow under a perfect blue sky—for Inner Peace.

“Bang,” she murmured.

Lipski sat at a battered, overburdened metal desk on a squeaky swivel chair. She had no window, but a pot of greenery thrived on an ancient file cabinet under some sort of grow light.

She was a bone-thin woman of about sixty, with a messily curling mop of stone-gray hair. Her face was long, narrow, and brown as a cashew. She had dark eyes that told Eve the woman had seen it all, and was fully expecting to see it all again before she was done.