Festive in Death (In Death #39)(63)

“That would be mag! We can have a little party.”

“Why don’t you get in touch with me when you expect him?” Eve pulled out a card. “We’ll have that little party.”

“Sure! This is, well, it’s just magolicious. I can’t wait.”

“Neither can I.” She opened the door, glanced back at the bombshell. “You know, Felicity, your friend Sadie sounds pretty smart.”

“Oh, she’s really smart. She’s a really good friend, but she worries about me, and doesn’t have to. She thinks I should go back to Shipshewana.”

Eve decided Sadie might be the only person in New York dealing Felicity the truth.

“Have you talked to her recently?”

“I talk to her most every day. JJ doesn’t want her to come here because, well, people don’t always understand about the dancing, but . . . you’ve got to have girlfriends, right?”

“Yeah. What did she say about JJ having to go out of town, all of a sudden?”

“Oh, well, Sadie doesn’t trust most guys. She’s had some bad experiences. She never thinks JJ’s telling me the truth.”

“Like I said, she sounds pretty smart. Maybe you should listen to her. You ought to tag her up. And, Felicity? Maybe you should ask yourself why an important, successful man’s doing out-of-town business over a weekend instead of grabbing a shuttle back to take you out for caviar.”

Leaving it at that—the best she could do—Eve made her way out, nodded to Brent.

She hated feeling sorry for the woman—no, she corrected, girl. No more than a girl really. But it balanced out, she supposed. The sorrier she felt for Felicity, the more contempt she felt for Copley.

First chance, she promised herself, the two of them were going to have a long, fascinating conversation.

And it wasn’t going to be much of a party.

13

Kira Robbins let Eve in herself. She looked heavy-eyed, strained, and wore baggy flowered pajama pants and a gray NYC sweatshirt. A far cry, Eve thought, from the smart red dress and heels of the day before.

“You want to go over it all again.” She didn’t ask Eve to sit, didn’t offer her a drink, just flopped down on the sofa. “That’s how this works. Just going over and over it again.”

“You said you were alone, no outside contact, during the time Ziegler was murdered.”

“Yeah. Damn book. I haven’t written a word since I talked to you yesterday. I’m not going to make deadline. I just want to sleep, but . . .”

“How many times did Ziegler come here for a private session?”

“Four—no, five. Twice with me and my assistant, three times just me. I think.”

“How much extra did you give him for adding in the assistant?”

“Ah . . . five hundred.” Robbins rubbed the spot between her eyebrows with two fingers. “Yeah, five.”

It jibed with Ziegler’s accounting.

“How many times were you intimate with him?”

“It wasn’t intimacy. There’s nothing intimate about having your choice taken away. He had sex with me—once. He raped me. Once.” Something fired in her eyes. “It wasn’t intimacy.”

“You’re right.”

“You’re wondering—I’m wondering—did I ask for it? Did I open the damn door to it? I had him in here, I paid him to come here. I knew he was a user. I heard the talk, but I kept going to him, I had him come to me.”

“Why?”

“He was a really good trainer.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Oh God. He was tough on me, and charming about it. He helped keep me in shape. Fashion blogger,” she said with a bitter half laugh. “You have to look good. You’re not competing with the people you’re writing about—the stars and butterflies and trust-fund babies—but you absolutely are. I didn’t want to go to a body sculptor—wanted to do it myself. That’s something to feel smug about when you know who’s getting work done, and how often. So I stuck with him. I stuck with Trey.”

She let her head fall back. “So I’m asking myself did I ask for it. When it happened before, I was in love with the bastard. Just a kid, and in love the way you are at sixteen. After, he said I’d wanted it. I’d teased him. So he’d given me a little something to relax me, so he’d held me down when I said no, when I said stop. But I’d wanted it, and if I made a big deal about it, everybody would know I’d asked for it.”

“No one asks to be raped, Kira.”

“No, and I know better. I just can’t get to it yet. I thought I could handle Ziegler—no problem. I’m smart, I’m strong, I learned how to take what happened before and get smarter, get stronger. But knowing’s one thing, feeling’s another.”

Her eyes filled; she pressed her fingers to them as if to push the tears back in. “Sorry, rough night.”

“You’d been dosed and raped before, but you didn’t wonder—you didn’t ask yourself—if it had happened again. You just got the urge, had sex with a man you’ve stated you weren’t attracted to, didn’t even really like. And after, didn’t wonder?”

“I never thought of it. It never so much as floated over my head. I’d put it behind me. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I was too smart, too strong, too careful. It could never happen to me again.”