Immortal in Death (In Death #3)(39)

“Get a grip, Peabody.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry.”

“We’re looking for a box. The sweepers have already done the standard here, taken in the discs from her ‘links. We know she didn’t get any calls that night, or make any. From here, anyway. She’s pissed. She’s revved. What does she do?”

Eve continued to open drawers, paw through them as she spoke. “She drinks more, maybe, rants around the house thinking of all the things she’d like to do to the people who’ve ticked her off. Bastards, bitches. Who the hell do they think they are? She can have anything and anyone she wants. Maybe she comes in here and pops another pill, just to keep the energy up.”

Hopeful, though it was a plain, enameled box rather than an ornate wooden one, Eve flipped a lid. Inside was an assortment of rings. Gold, silver, gleaming porcelain, carved ivory.

“Funny place to keep jewelry,” Peabody commented. “I mean she’s got this big glass chest here for her costume, and the safe for the real stuff.”

Eve glanced up, saw her aide was perfectly serious, and didn’t quite muffle the laugh. “They’re not exactly jewelry, Peabody. Cock rings. You know, you put them over it, then — “

“Sure.” Peabody shrugged, tried not to stare. “I knew that. Just — a funny place to keep them.”

“Yeah, sure is silly to keep sex toys in a box next to the bed. Anyway, where was I? She’s using, chasing the pills with champagne. Somebody’s going to pay for ruining her evening. That f**ker Leonardo is going to crawl, he’s going to beg. She’ll make him pay for screwing some worthless slut behind her back, and for letting the little bitch come around to her house — her house, goddamn it — and f**k with her.”

Eve closed a drawer, opened another. “Her security tags her as leaving the place just after two. The door’s on automatic lock. She doesn’t call a car. It’s at least a sixty-block walk to Leonardo’s, she’s in ice-pick heels, but she doesn’t take a cab. There’s no record of any company picking her up or dropping her. She’s registered for a palm ‘link, but we haven’t found it. If she had it with her and made a call, either she or someone else disposed of the unit.”

“If she called her killer, he or she should have been smart enough to ditch it.” Peabody began a search of the two-level closet and managed not to hyperventilate over the racks of clothes, many with price tags still attached. “She might have been wired on something, but no way would she walk downtown. Half the shoes in this closet aren’t even scraped on the soles. She wasn’t the walking kind.”

“She was wired, all right. Damned if she’s taking some stinking cab. All she has to do is snap her fingers and she can have half a dozen eager slaves slathering to take her anywhere she wants to go. So she snaps them. Somebody picks her up. They go to Leonardo’s. Why?”

Fascinated by the way Eve juggled Pandora’s point of view with her own, Peabody stopped the search and watched Eve. “She insists. She demands. She threatens.”

“Maybe it’s Leonardo she calls. Or maybe it’s somebody else. They get there, the security camera’s smashed. Or she smashes it.”

“Or the killer smashes it.” Peabody pushed her way through a sea of ivory silk. “Because he’s already planning to do her.”

“Why take her to Leonardo’s if he’s already planning it?” Eve demanded. “Or if it was Leonardo, why dirty your own nest? I’m not sure murder was the priority, not yet. They get there, and if Leonardo’s story holds, the place is empty. He’s off drinking himself into a stupor and looking for Mavis, who is drinking herself into a stupor. Pandora wants Leonardo there, she wants to punish him. She starts to wreck the place, maybe she takes out some of her rage on her companion. They fight. It escalates. He grabs the cane, maybe to defend himself, maybe to attack. She’s shocked, hurt, afraid. Nobody hurts her. What the hell is this? Then he can’t stop, or doesn’t want to stop. She’s lying there, and there’s blood everywhere.”

Peabody said nothing. She’d seen the pictures of the scene. Could imagine it all happening just as Eve related.

“He’s standing over her, breathing hard.” Eyes half closed, Eve tried to bring the shadowy figure into focus. “Her blood’s all over him. The smell of it’s everywhere. But he doesn’t panic, can’t afford to panic, doesn’t let himself panic. What ties her to him? The palm ‘link. He takes that, pockets it. If he’s smart, and he has to be smart now, he goes through her things, makes sure there’s nothing that can lead to him. He wipes off the cane where he gripped it, anything else he thinks he might have touched.”

In Eve’s mind it played like an old video, cloudy and full of shadows. The figure — male, female — hurrying to cover tracks, moving around the body, stepping around the pools of blood. “Have to be quick. Someone might come back. But have to be thorough. Almost clean now. Then he hears someone coming in. Mavis. She calls out for Leonardo, rushes back, sees the body, kneels beside it. Now it’s even more perfect. He knocks her out, then he curls her fingers around the cane, maybe he even gives Pandora a few extra whacks. He takes that dead hand and rakes its nails over Mavis’s face, uses it to tear her clothes. He puts on something, one of Leonardo’s robes, to conceal his own clothes.”