Faithless in Death (In Death, #52)(70)

She started straight upstairs with the cat trotting beside her. Then paused, looked back. “You were in Dublin at the end of the Urbans, and after. Any rumbles of Natural Order?”

“They gained no foothold there. I did have my own contacts, however, and there were murmurs about them. I regret to say I and many others considered them no more than a flash in the pan. We were wrong.”

She nodded, started up again.

“Detective Peabody, may I say your hair is quite fetching.”

Peabody grinned back at Summerset. “Yeah? Thanks.”

She had to quick time it to catch up with Eve and the cat.

“What the hell flashes in a pan?” Eve demanded.

“I … don’t actually know.”

“See? See? That’s why that kind of stupid saying doesn’t make any sense.”

“Now I have to look it up.” Peabody pulled out her PPC as she followed Eve. “Oh, oh, it’s from flintlocks—you know, muskets—and they had these little pans for the gunpowder. And if it went off without the bullet or the ball thing, the gunpowder just, well, flashed in the pan.”

“And that makes it make sense?”

“Well, sort of. Not really,” Peabody decided.

Eve turned into her office. “Update the board. I’ll do the book. Get coffee or whatever if you want it.”

“I’m coffee’d out, and hoping you have low-cal fizzies.”

As Peabody headed into the kitchen and the AutoChef, Eve sat at her command center.

“Score!” Peabody called from the kitchen. “And there’s Yancy—he’s just finished. He’ll be here within fifteen.”

Peabody came out with a fizzy for herself, a black coffee for Eve.

“I’m looking at this board,” Peabody said as they worked, “and the connections between the Huffmans and Wilkeys. It goes back. I’m sort of surprised the families didn’t arrange for one of the Wilkey sons to marry Gwen.”

“You don’t expand your membership or your treasury that way. They wanted the Caine money, and hoped—more assumed, I think—Gwen would draw Merit into the order.”

“And all the while, she planned to use him to hit the terms of the trust, then set him up so she could divorce him with their approval and support.”

Eve glanced up, frowned. She knew all that, had gone over and over that. But something new wanted to click.

And Yancy came in.

“Hey, Peabody. Dallas.”

“Hey, Yancy. How’d the wits do?”

He paused by Peabody and the board to answer her. “Solid as it gets. I ran facial rec on the sketch while I was there, and pop! They confirmed ID. Pedophile, on parole after doing fourteen years in. He’s out three months and tries to snatch a twelve-year-old girl walking home from band practice after school. Her mom’s looking in a shop window three feet away. Kid yells, kicks his nuts. Mom screams, grabs kid, pervert takes off limping. I got word on the way over, we already picked him up in his flop.”

“Nice work.”

“The kid gets the credit. She says her mom taught her the move.”

He shifted his gaze from the board to Eve.

Peabody might term him ultra-dreamy, with his mop of curly dark hair and handsome face. But he was, Eve knew, a solid cop. He had a way of easing small details out of a witness, a way of relaxing them into remembering more, then merging those details into a face.

“So.” He smiled at her. “First time for us. Have you ever worked with a police artist as a wit?”

A lifetime ago, she thought. At eight, broken and battered and terrified. She’d been gentle, too, as Eve knew Yancy could be. But that traumatized little girl hadn’t remembered a single detail of her father’s face.

It was simpler to hedge.

“They brought a couple into the Academy for training, had us witness a mock attack, then set us up to describe the attacker to the artist.”

“How’d you do?”

“I did okay.”

“I bet. I’m ready when you are.” He glanced around. “How about we use the table there, by the doors?”

“That’ll work. Do you want coffee?” Eve asked as she rose.

“I’d rather have one of those fizzies.”

Peabody tipped hers side to side. “This is low-cal.”

“Skip that part. Make it lemon if you’ve got it.”

“You guys set up. I’ll get the fizzy.”

“You want to fill me in?” Yancy asked Eve.

“Roarke’s coming, and McNab. I’d rather brief everybody at once.”

“Okay.” He took off his satchel, then set it down to open it.

Peabody delivered his fizzy while he set out his tools.

“Grab a chair, Peabody. We both got a good look at her.”

“Subject’s female.” Yancy nodded.

“Female, eighteen, Caucasian, ivory skin. Triangular face, on the thin side. She’s lost the fresh of eighteen. It’s strain, it shows. Hollows in the cheeks, not deep, more like somebody who’s lost weight in the last couple months. Oval, double-lidded eyes, blue-green tending toward blue. A little wider than that,” she told Yancy as he sketched. “More oval.”

She paused for coffee.