Betrayal in Death (In Death #12)(21)

"Eight."

"Then I'd better get some work done. I guess I have to put on some fancy deal."

"Leave that to me." He took her hand, kissed it. "Thank you."

"Yeah, yeah, save it. I want some of your time before tomorrow," she added, jogging up the stairs.

"Darling Eve, I want a great deal of yours."

She snorted, kept going, and when she reached the second floor paused as Mick came out of one of the countless guest rooms. He'd removed his suit jacket and looked, to her eye, casual and at home.

He gave her a quick, crooked smile. "Ah, Lieutenant. Nothing more annoying than an unexpected houseguest, is there? And add on to that an old boyhood friend of your husband's who's a stranger to you, and you have tedium on top of it. I hope you're not too inconvenienced by my staying."

"It's a big house," she said, then realized that was probably not the most polite of responses. But he received it with such a huge, rollicking laugh she had to grin back at him. "Sorry, I'm a little distracted. Roarke wants you here, so that's fine with me."

"Thanks for that. I'll try not to bore the ears off your head with stories of our youthful escapades."

"Actually, I like hearing that kind of thing."

"Well now, that's opening the worm can." He winked at her. "Some house," he said, letting his gaze wander the generous hall and stairs. "House isn't the word, I suppose, not near to grand enough for this palace. How do you find your way about?"

"I don't always." She noticed his gaze shifting again, resting contemplatively on her weapon harness. "Problem?" she said, coolly now.

"No, indeed, though I'm not shamed to say I'm not one to care for that sort of weapon."

"Really." Idly, she laid her hand on it. "What kind of weapon do you prefer?"

He lifted his arm, cocked it at the elbow, and bunched his fist. "This always did fine enough for me. But in your line of work, well... And speaking of that, I was just thinking this is one of the rare pleasant conversations I've experienced with a person in your profession. Roarke and a cop. Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, there's a brain rattler. Maybe you'd sit and tell me the story of how that came to be one of these days. God knows I'd love to hear it."

"Ask Roarke. He's better at stories than I am."

"I'd like your version all the same." He hesitated, then appeared to come to a decision as he approached her. "Roarke wouldn't have settled for less than smart, so I figure you for a smart cop, Lieutenant. And as one, you'd know the likes of me when you look. But maybe you don't know that Roarke's my oldest friend in this world. I hope I can work a truce, if nothing better than that, with the woman my friend married."

When he held out a hand, Eve came to a decision of her own. "I'll take a truce with a friend of the man I married." She clasped his hand. "Keep it clean in New York, Mick. I don't want any trouble for him."

"Nor do I." He gave her hand a squeeze. "Or for meself for that matter. You work in the homicide part of things, don't you?"

"That's right."

"I can say, looking you in the eye, that I've never had occasion to kill anyone, and have no plans to begin. That might help things along here."

"It doesn't hurt."

CHAPTER FIVE

Leaving the houseguest for Roarke and Summerset to deal with, Eve buried herself in her home office to study the case files on the long list of murders tagging Yost as the primary suspect.

She picked them apart, put them back together, searching for holes in the investigative process, for pieces that had been mislaid or ignored.

Whenever she found something she set it aside in what she began to think of as her Screwup File. There'd been a number of definite screwups, to her way of thinking. Witnesses who hadn't been thoroughly interviewed, or pushed during an interview. Trace evidence that had been logged, but not tracked down to its root source.

In a smattering of the cases she found there had been some small, personal item taken from the body of the victim. A ring, a hair ribbon, a wrist unit. All inexpensive items that held consistent with the lack of robbery as motive.

But that didn't, Eve felt, hold consistent with pattern.

"If he took something from one, he took something from all," she muttered.

He was anal, tidy, habitual.

Souvenirs, she thought. He takes a token. What had he taken from Darlene French?

She brought up the security video, keyed it into the section where Darlene had wheeled her cart to the door of 4602, froze the image, magnified it.

"Earrings." In the image Darlene wore tiny gold hoops at her ears, all but hidden by her dark, curling hair. Though Eve was certain no such jewelry had been on the body, she checked the record, split-screening images so that she could examine Darlene, battered and broken on the bed. "He took your little earrings."

A collector, she decided, sitting back. Because he enjoys the work? she wondered. Wants to be able to look back on various jobs, remember them, revisit them.

So it wasn't just the money. No, not just the money. Are they thrill kills after all?

Her desk 'link signaled, and still studying the two images of Darlene, she answered.

"Dallas."