Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(86)

“Stop. Yeah, they’re doing a lot for you. You’re doing a lot for them. You’re giving them security, and that means it all right there. You’re giving them companionship, which for some reason all of you need on a constant basis. Mavis never planted anything in her life before you, now she’s all about it. They’re about to have their second kid, and what have they got, readily installed? A couple of people they trust absolutely who won’t mind if Bella goes running around their space looking for a cookie.”

“I’m always going to have cookies. Thanks.” Peabody had to blink back the sheen in her eyes. “I get a little—a lot—overwhelmed sometimes with all this. Buzzed and overwhelmed and teary and everything at once. Like when I fell for McNab. It’s all: Is this really happening? I can really have this?”

“Looks like you can, and you’re stuck with McNab’s skinny ass.”

“Last night in bed—”

“Oh no. No.” Grim, Eve flipped back her jacket, laid a hand on her weapon harness. “I will draw my weapon, place it between your eyes, and fire. At the rate you’re driving, no one’s going to notice when we come to a dead stop.”

“Not that part—this was after that part. He said how he felt he’d rubbed a lamp and the genie gave him three wishes. The first was the job, because he got that before me. So I was the second wish, and the best. And the third was happening now, with the house, with the home we were making for each other.”

She sighed, hugely. “Saying stuff like that’s why I love his skinny ass.”

Finally, finally, Peabody pulled into the garage. She parked meticulously, turned to Eve, and smiled.

“Then we had sex again. Slow, yummy sex.”

She bolted from the car before Eve followed through on the threat.

“Anyway.” She tried the smile again. “I’m torn here. I really thought we’d hit with the supply vendors, then we’d go bag the bastard, save Covino, fry him in the box, and call it a damn good day. But I still feel up because McNab and I are going to walk over to the house and look at the progress.”

“We are going to hit. Before you go anywhere, you’re going to contact more vendors—and so will I—before they close for the day. I don’t see him onlining this. Can’t pay cash that way, and it’ll leave a bigger trail. If he did, we’ll find him that way. We’ll push there tonight after the brick-and-mortars close.”

They got in the elevator.

“He didn’t have them on hand, and had to buy or order them in the last few days. That specific brand, that specific color. He remembers she liked to wear color on her nails. Not like pink or red or clear. Bolder, weirder. He remembers a lot. She’s fixed in his brain—an image, indelible to him, from a specific time in his life.”

“Age five. Old enough to have images, memories cement. I remember—I must have been about five—and I was crying because Zeke broke the wheels off this little blue truck I had. He didn’t really mean to. My dad hauled me up onto his shoulders, bounced them until I laughed—it always worked.

“His hair smelled like sawdust, and he wore it long. I grabbed it like reins and he galloped around the yard making horse noises while my mom fixed the little truck.”

She shuffled over as more cops loaded on. “I can see exactly how they looked, remember the sun was hot and my mom wore shorts she’d cut off from an old pair of jeans.”

When the car stopped again, Eve escaped with Peabody in her wake. “I don’t remember being five.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“No.” Eve stopped her as they jumped on a glide. “Not what I mean. You’ve got a solid memory—lots of them—and you like to pull them out. Good times, good family. I got the same from McKinney’s three adult children. The good can etch things in the memory, and so can the traumatic. The traumatic can also erase them. Or block them.”

“True. My cousin Janis fell out of a tree when she was about seven. Broke her arm, knocked herself out. She doesn’t remember even climbing the tree, much less falling.”

“Which is more likely? A woman maintains a fake name, a life, a family for sixty-odd years without, as far as we can tell, a hitch, or the woman doesn’t remember the life that came before?”

“Amnesia? I sure hadn’t gone there. It’s kind of, you know, vid of the week.”

“I’m going there.” Because vid of the week or not, she’d been there herself. “Trauma. Some john beats the crap out of her, she OD’d and they pull her back, she wrecks the car, sells the kid—something. Maybe an attempted suicide—it’s the way she went out in the end. She might have tried it before. In any case, she’s blank—just like the name she gave herself. What do they call it—tabula rasa. And maybe that suits her just fine. Maybe there’s enough in her to see it as a second chance.”

Switching glides again, she angled toward Peabody. “Now you’ve got a doctor—ER doc—who by all accounts is compassionate, dedicated. He tries to help her. You don’t get the kind of fake ID she had without a lot of money. Maybe she paid for it by selling the kid. That would do it. Or maybe the rich young doctor who fell for her financed it.”

“I can see how maybe.”