Eternity in Death (In Death #24.5)(8)

While she was at her desk, she contacted the lab to give them a not-so-gentle push, then began to research vampire lore. She broke off when Peabody poked her head in.

“Did you know there are dozens of websites on vampirism, and any number of them have instructions on how to drink from a victim?”

Peabody cocked her head. “This surprises you because?”

“I know I say people suck, but I didn’t mean it literally. And it’s not just kids in their I’m-so-bored twenties into this.”

“I’ve got a couple of names we might want to look at, but meanwhile, Tiara Kent’s mother just came in. I had one of the uniforms take her to the lounge.”

“Okay, I’ll take her, you keep digging.” Eve pushed back from her desk. “Roarke’s going to tag along tonight.”

“Yeah?” Relief showed on Peabody’s face before she controlled it. “It doesn’t hurt to have more of us when we head down.”

“He’s an observer,” Eve reminded her. “I’m waiting for a callback from Mira. That comes through, tag me.”

Eve made Iris Francine the minute she stepped into the lounge with its lines of vending machines and little tables, and chairs designed to numb the ass after a five-minute sit-down.

Her daughter had favored her, taking the blonde hair, the green eyes, the delicate bone structure from her mother.

Iris sat with her hand clutched by a man Eve imagined was husband number four, Georgio Francine. Younger than his wife by a few years, Eve judged, and dark and sultry where she was light and elegant.

But they sat like a unit—she recognized that. Like two parts of a whole.

“Ms. Francine, I’m Lieutenant Dallas.”

Iris’s eyes looked exhausted as they lifted to Eve’s, a combination Eve also recognized as grief, guilt, and simple fatigue.

“You’re the one in charge of…in charge of what happened to Tiara.”

“That’s right.” Eve pulled up a chair. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. Will I be able to see her?”

“I’ll arrange that for you.”

“Can you tell me how she…what happened to her?” Iris’s breath hitched, and she took two slow ones to smooth it out. “They won’t tell me anything really. It’s worse not knowing.”

“She was killed last night, in her apartment. We believe she knew her killer, and let him in herself. Some pieces of her jewelry are missing.”

“Was she raped?”

They would always ask, Eve knew. For a daughter, they would always ask, and with their eyes pleading for the answer to be no. “She’d had sexual relations, but we don’t believe there was rape.”

“An accident?” There was another plea in Iris’s voice now, as if death wouldn’t be as horrible somehow if it were accidental. “Something that got out of hand?”

“No, I’m sorry. We don’t believe it was an accident. What do you know about your daughter’s activities recently, her companions? The men in her life?”

“Next to nothing.” Iris closed her eyes. “We didn’t communicate much, or often. I wasn’t a good mother.”

“Cara.”

“I wasn’t.” She shook her head at her husband’s quiet protest. “I was only twenty when she was born, and I wasn’t a good mother. I wasn’t a good anything.” The words were bitter with regret. “It was all parties and fun and where can we go next. When Tiara’s father had an affair, I had one to pay him back. And on and on, until we loathed each other and used her as a weapon.”

She turned her shimmering eyes to her husband as he lifted their joined hands, pressed his lips to her fingers. “Long ago,” he said softly. “That was long ago.”

“She never forgave me. Why should she? When we divorced, Tee’s father and I, I married again like that.” Iris snapped her fingers. “Just to show him he didn’t matter. I paid for that mistake six months later, but I didn’t learn. When I finally grew up, it was too late. She preferred her father, who’d let her do whatever she liked, with whomever she liked.”

“You made mistakes,” Georgio told her. “You tried to fix them.”

“Not hard enough, not soon enough. We have an eight-year-old daughter,” she told Eve. “I’m a good mother to her. But I lost Tiara long ago. Now I can never get her back. The last time we spoke, more than a month ago, we argued. I can never get that back either.”

“What did you argue about?”

“Her lifestyle, primarily. I hated that she was wasting herself the way I did. She was pushing, pushing the boundaries more all the time. Her father’s engaged again, and this one’s younger than Tee. It enraged her, had her obsessing about getting older, losing her looks. Can you imagine, worried about such things at twenty-three?”

“No.” Eve thought of the mirrors again, the clothes, the body work Tiara had done. Obviously, this was a young woman who obsessed about anything that had to do with herself. “Did she have any particular interest in the occult?”

“The occult? I can’t say. She went through a period several years ago where she paid psychics great gobs of money. She dabbled in Wicca when she was a teenager—so many girls do—but she said there were too many rules. She was always looking for the easy way, for some magic potion to make everything perfect. Will you find who killed her?”