Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(80)

“Eve. Come in out of the cold.” He took her hand to draw her inside. “Where are your gloves? Your hands are freezing. Charlie! Find Eve some gloves.”

“Oh, no, I have them. I just forget to—”

“And a hat! You should always wear a hat in the cold,” he said to Eve. “It keeps the heat in.” He winked at her. “Warms the brain. Who can think with a cold brain?”

In her life he was the only person she actively wanted to hug the minute she saw him. Just press up against him, rest her head on his sloping shoulder and just . . . be there.

“You can sit by the fire,” he said, nudging her into the living area with its sparkling Christmas tree, its family photos, and lovely, lovely sense of home. “I’ll make you hot chocolate. It’ll do the trick.”

“You don’t—” Hot chocolate? “Really?”

“It’s my secret recipe, and the best. Charlie will tell you.”

“It’s incredible,” Mira confirmed as she came in—looking nothing like a Charlie in an icy blue suit and heeled boots in metallic sapphire. “We’d love some, Dennis.” Then she tugged on the frayed sleeve of his cardigan. “Didn’t I put this sweater in the donation box?”

“Did you?” He smiled in that absent way he had. “Isn’t that strange? I’ll make the chocolate. Where did I put the . . .”

“First cupboard, left of the stove, second shelf.”

“Of course.”

He walked off, little shuffling sounds in his house scuffs.

“I can’t get him to let go of that sweater. It’ll probably unravel on him one day.”

“It looks good on him.”

Mira smiled. “It does, doesn’t it? Have a seat, and tell me what you’re thinking.”

Eve sat near the simmering fire to talk of the business of murder.

16

Mira listened in that quietly absorbed way she had even when Eve felt the need to get up and pace out the theory.

“There’s no way it all slides in that neat,” Eve concluded. “‘Hey, we’re moving. Listen, brother, you’re going to Africa to spread the word.’ And between those two events, twelve girls are drowned in the bathtub of the former digs, rolled up and walled up. It has to tie.”

“The mother’s history of mental illness, and her eventual suicide when the youngest child was still living at home.”

“He never lived on his own.”

“Yes, a dependency either innate or fostered. You’re looking at the tub—the mother died in one, now the girls are killed in one.”

“It’s tidy.”

“It’s the wrong symbolism. The mother took her life, and it’s a violent act. A blade through flesh, blood in the water. The girls were drowned, not—according to the forensics—bled out.”

“The killer could have cut their wrists. It wouldn’t show on the bones. And it’s pretty damn annoying not to be able to just look at a body and see.”

“I’m sure it is. Let’s take the other route. This Sebastian—a fascinating character from your notes—do you tie him in?”

“I’m not sure where or how, just yet. My first instinct was he’d be top of the list, no matter how Mavis feels about him, because those feelings go back to when she was a kid and he played the center role in keeping her from going hungry and being alone.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets. “But then you talk to him awhile, and the sense is he’s sincere—in his warped way. That he has a code—it’s screwed up, but it’s a code—and he isn’t capable of doing what was done to those girls. Then, with a little distance, you have to remember he lives and makes his living off the grift. He’s not just a liar, he’s a damn good actor with it. So, he’s a possible, even if just a possible accomplice.”

“Is that because you sense he is capable after all, or because you instinctively hate the idea whoever killed those girls may already be dead and beyond the reach of justice?”

“Probably more of the second.” She dropped down again. “But—” Then stopped when Dennis shuffled in again with a tray loaded with cups, what looked like a bowl mounded with whipped cream, and a fat white pitcher.

“Here we are. Don’t let me interrupt. I’ll fix you up and be right out of the way.”

“Sit down and have some with us,” his wife instructed. “It’s very possible for older siblings to feel a sense of duty and responsibility for a younger, especially a younger who falls short. They come from a family who based their lives, their work on faith, good work, and the mission to use that work to draw more into the faith. They could hardly exclude their own brother from that mission.”

She shifted, crossed her legs. “Particularly after the mother’s death, the suicide which would go against their tenets—suicide affects those left behind, and the younger brother was still a teenager when she died.”

“It messes you up.”

“Family and loved ones often feel anger and guilt after a suicide. And there’s often a sense of abandonment.”

“The father went off on a mission within the year, dumped the younger on his older brother and the sister. So they’re responsible, right? That’s the way it would work. They’re responsible for him now. It’s their job to take care of him.”