Innocent in Death (In Death #24)(115)

“Maybe we could fit in the candlelight and so on before midnight, but—”

“It doesn’t matter, Eve. I promise you.”

Yeah, we got lucky,she thought. God, didn’t they just. “I got you a present.”

“Did you?”

“It’s a book of poetry—romancy stuff. I thought, ‘How schmaltzy is that,’ so it seemed like the thing. Then I screwed up and left it in my desk at work.”

He smiled, leaned down to kiss her softly. “Thank you.”

She touched his cheek. “I’ve got to grab a shower and get to this. I planned to dig straight in, so we could maybe have a really late dinner, but then I had to punch you and your blonde tart, and one thing led to another.”

“Of course. Well, we’ll have a shower and you can fill me in.”

He listened, saying little as she ran it through for him. “So,” he said, as she pulled on loose flannel pants and a sweatshirt. “You were right about the girl.”

“That’s no girl, but yeah, I was right. The diary’s going to be one of the nails. I could have it cut open—the box, it’s in—”

“I can promise that’s not necessary.”

“Let’s take it in my office.” She hauled up a field bag. “I want it all on record. So maybe you could fumble just a little with the lock.”

“I certainly will not.”

“Okay, okay.”

“I’d like to explain what Magdelana was doing here.”

She slanted him a look. “Other than trying to lock lips with you?”

“More specifically,” he said carefully as they started out of the bedroom, “why I allowed her in our home.”

“I already got that. You needed to deal with it, with her. Needed to spell it out for her, give her the get lost, and put some of the fear of Roarke in her.”

“How fortunate I am, under the circumstances, to have a woman who understands me. Fear of Roarke?” he repeated.

“You can do the fear of God thing, but see, you can’t see Him, and most people feel He’s not going to really—what is it—smite them. You, however, are flesh and blood, and would do a lot worse than a smite. You’re a lot scarier than God.”

“I don’t know quite how to take that,” he said after a moment. “But meanwhile, do you want to know how this was handled?”

“Yeah, actually, I would.”

He told her while they made their way to her office, while she set down her bag, took out the diary. While she simply stood, staring at him.

“See? See? Holy crap. God wouldn’t have made her insides quiver like that, and you can bet your fine Irish ass they quivered like jelly. Can you really ban her from all your stuff? That’s like eighty percent of the known universe.”

“You exaggerate, it wouldn’t be more than fifty, and, oh, aye.” His grin was fast and fierce. “I bloody well can.”

“And you’ve got data on her that would interest the international authorities?”

“What do you take me for? Of course I do.” He waited a moment, reading her face perfectly. “I’m not giving it to you, Eve. Two reasons.”

“They’d better be good ones.”

“First, it’s not your concern, and don’t even think about raising that fist to me. This is my doing, her coming here, her causing trouble. Second, it’ll keep her up at night, for some time to come, wondering what I have, and what I might do with it. She’ll be looking over her shoulder a long time.”

“I think your first reason’s crap, but the second is really mean, really insidious. I like it a lot, so we’ll call it a wash.”

“Good. Well, I’ll open that for you, shall I, and we’ll have our Valentine’s dinner while we see what’s inside.”

“Um…”

“It’s pizza. It was to be pizza and champagne actually.”

“Seriously?”

“I know my wife as she knows me.” He tapped a finger on her nose. “So it’ll be pepperoni pizza and coffee—with the champagne for another time.”

“You know, you really are my Valentine.”

22

BEFORE BREAKING THE SEAL ON THE EVIDENCE bag containing Rayleen’s diary, Eve turned on her recorder, logged in the necessary data. She took the metal box—embossed with some sort of wide-petaled flowers—out of the evidence bag, set it on her desk.

“Peabody found it in the kitchen recycler.”

“Clever Peabody,” Roarke replied as he chose a tool.

“If things hadn’t moved as fast as they did—au pair coming back and so on—if Peabody hadn’t been basically on the scene with the direct purpose of finding this, it might’ve been garbage by morning. Takes more than one cycle for something of this size, material, and density to break down. All she managed was to bang the box up.”

“A pity, too. It’s a lovely box. Sturdy, well made, which is why it held up as well as it did. The girl should have taken the book out of it. That might have broken down before it was found.”

“Some, but she doesn’t know everything. There’s a lot we can put back together in the lab. And…Okay, nice work,” she added, as he had the crushed and passcoded lock open in under ten seconds.