Devoted in Death (In Death #41)(24)

She folded her arms at her chest with a distinctive hmmph. “I bet they got in trouble, didn’t they, out in Hawaii? That’s where they are, right up till March is what I heard.”

“I couldn’t say. Are you live-in?”

“Nope. Eight to four most days. What’s this about?”

“Have you noticed a strange vehicle around the neighborhood in the last few days? Maybe just driving by too often, or parked next door.”

“I can’t say I have, no, sorry.” She stopped, head angled, eyes narrowed. “They’re starting to get into it back there. I’ve got to get back to them. You could try Mr. Havers, on the other side of that house. He works nights a lot – at home. They’re nice people.”

They found Havers at home and willing to talk.

He was a bulky man in his middle fifties, by Eve’s gauge, and with an absent look in light brown eyes.

“Not last night,” he muttered. “Not the night before. Night before that. Okay, okay, I’d’ve been working. I write horror novels, and right now it starts rolling for me about ten at night.”

“Drew Henry Havers?” Peabody asked.

“That’s right.”

“You’ve scared the bejesus out of me for years.”

His plain, pale face lit up like a runway. “Best compliment ever. Thanks.”

“Where do you work?” Eve asked.

“Oh. Upstairs. I have a studio facing the street so I don’t disturb my wife and the kids. Bedrooms face the back. A vehicle you say, a strange vehicle. I get caught up in the work, don’t notice much outside it. But…” He scratched his head, rubbed his eyes. “I was pacing around the studio, trying to figure out if the psychotic demon should disembowel the character or if flaying was more appropriate given the build-up. I did see someone parked in front of the house next door. Very unfriendly people over there – away now. But I didn’t think anything of it, I’m afraid. Didn’t even remember they were away. I might’ve thought, huh, the un-neighbors – that’s what we call them – must’ve bought a new ride. But they were away.”

“What kind of vehicle?”

“Ah… I barely registered it. Dark, yes, it wasn’t white or cream, but a dark color. Not a car,” he considered, “bigger. Maybe one of those burly all-terrains. Or a van. Maybe a van.”

“Did you see anyone around it?”

“I barely glanced out the window, just as I was pacing around. I do think I saw someone. I can’t tell you if it was a man or a woman. Bundled up. I think they had a chair. I must be imagining that, mixing it up. Why would anyone stand out on the street with an armchair? I’m very likely mixing it up, I’m sorry.”

“What was this person doing with the chair?”

“I can’t say – there probably wasn’t a chair. My wife is always saying I live in my head more than out of it. I get the impression they were putting it in the back of the van, or maybe they’d taken it out.”

“Do you remember the time, the time you saw this?”

“I have no idea. It would’ve been after ten, when it started rolling. Probably well after ten, as I’d written right up to the kill. And it would’ve been before two, when I stopped and went to bed – well before two as I decided on the disemboweling, and wrote right through to the sacrificial rite before I tapped out.

“I wish I could be of more help. I appreciate all you do – the police. I especially appreciate police who read my books.”

“We appreciate the time, Mr. Havers,” Eve told him. “If you remember anything else, please contact us. Peabody, give Mr. Havers one of your cards.”

They knocked on a few more doors, but got nothing to match Havers.

“He’s responsible for most of my nightmares,” Peabody said as they got back into the car.

“Why would you read something that gives you nightmares?” Life and the job, Eve thought, gave her plenty of her own.

“I don’t know. Irresistible. He’s really good. Mostly I like stories that have happy endings – and his do. I mean good overcomes evil – after a lot of blood, terror, death. Sort of like us,” Peabody concluded. “Maybe that’s why.”

“Dark colored A-T or van. He was leaning van. It’s not much, but more than we had. And the woman with the chair.”

“He didn’t say woman.”

“It’s going to be the woman. The woman trying to get the chair into the back of the vehicle.”

“Classic ploy,” Peabody added.

“Because it often works. Kuper comes along, sees her struggling, steps over to offer a hand.”

Just as she’d seen it, Eve thought. It had been the most logical because it was the most true.

“It all works, including the timing. Let’s hit the club since we’re here.”

After Midnight was a moody little place with a scatter of patrons, and an ancient piano player noodling the keys as a woman with the face and body of a siren swayed and sang about love gone the wrong way around.

She could see Morris here, clearly see him adding the mournful song of his sax. And with the picture formed in the last hours, she could see Dorian Kuper, adding those down-low notes of the cello.

An intimate place, she thought, with tables crowded together and huddled close to the stage. A single bar and the man who tended it, and the lighting dim and faintly blue.