Innocent in Death (In Death #24)(75)

“Let’s chow, my young apprentice.” Baxter slung an arm around Trueheart’s shoulders. “I know a place not far away where the food is questionable, but the waitresses are delicious.”

“Well…I could give you a hand with the carting and logging, Lieutenant.”

Eve shook her head. “Go eat and ogle, Trueheart. I’ve got this. I’ll dump you and McNab at Central, Peabody.”

“Excellent.” She didn’t say it would make more sense for them to snag a radio car and haul the boxes downtown since her lieutenant lived only a few blocks away.

Eve tuned them out on the drive. Obviously her partner and the e-geek were off the clock, too. Their conversation was primarily about a vid they both wanted to see, and if they should go for pizza or Chinese.

“We’ll give you a hand with this, Dallas.” Peabody climbed out in Central’s garage. “We’re thinking of going for pot stickers, moo goo, and Chinese beer after. Our treat.”

God, was all Eve could think. She must look pathetic. “I got it, go on. I want to put a couple hours in while I’m here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“It’ll take you three trips, at least.” McNab pulled out his communicator. “I’ll tag a couple of uniforms for the hauling.”

Eve started to object, then shrugged. It would take her three trips, and that was a waste of time and energy.

“Sure you don’t want to grab a bite?” Peabody asked. “You didn’t even snag a brownie today.”

“I’ll grab something here.”

Peabody’s hesitation told Eve she wanted to push, but she backed off. “If you change your mind, the place we’re going’s only a couple blocks down. Beijing South.”

She wasn’t going to change her mind, but Eve found, after the evidence was logged, she wasn’t going to put in a couple hours either. She was done, finished, out of steam.

But neither could she face going home.

So she went where she supposed she’d known she’d end up. She went to Mavis.

It had been her apartment building once, and one Roarke owned. Just one more of the links between them, she supposed. Not long after she’d moved in with Roarke, Mavis and Leonardo had set up house in Eve’s old apartment. They’d worked a deal with Roarke months before, and had expanded their unit by renting the one next to it, and taking out walls, building more.

With Mavis a hot-ticket music star, and Leonardo a major fashion designer, they could have lived in any exclusive building, bought any trendy house. But this was where they wanted to be, with Peabody and McNab as their neighbors.

She’d never been attached to the apartment, Eve thought as she headed up to it. She’d never been attached to any place she’d lived. Just a place to dress and sleep between shifts.

She’d tried not to become attached to the warm and magnificent glamour of Roarke’s home, but she’d lost the battle. She loved it, every room, probably even those she hadn’t been in yet. She loved the sweep of the lawn, the trees, the way he used the space.

Now, here she was, back at the start, dragging her heels about going back to the house she loved. And the man.

Leonardo answered. She saw it in his eyes, those big, liquid eyes of his, the sympathy. Then he simply enfolded her. The gesture had tears rushing to her throat that had to be brutally swallowed down.

“I’m so glad to see you.” Those enormous hands rubbed, gently as bird wings, up and down Eve’s back. “Mavis is just changing Belle. Come in.” He laid his wide hands on her cheeks and kissed her. “How about some wine?”

She started to refuse. Wine, empty stomach, stress. Then she shrugged. Fuck it. “That’d be good.”

He took her coat, and bless him, didn’t ask how she was or where Roarke might be. “Why don’t you go back and see Mavis and Belle? I’ll bring you the wine.”

“Back? Back to…”

“The nursery.” He beamed a smile. His face was big, like the rest of him, the color of burnished copper. His at-home wear was a pair of brilliantly blue pants with legs as wide as Utah and a silky sweater in snow-blind white.

When she hesitated, he gave her a little nudge. “Go on. To the right through the archway, then left. Mavis will be thrilled.”

The apartment looked nothing like it had under her style. There was so much color it was dizzying, and yet it was cheerful. So much clutter it was impossible to see it all, and yet it was happy.

She passed under an archway that struck her as probably Moroccan in style, then turned into the nursery.

She thought of Rayleen Straffo’s pink and white and frothy bedroom. There was pink here, too, and some white. And there was blue and yellow and green and purple in flashes and streaks, rivers and pools. There was everything.

It was Mavis’s rainbow.

The crib was swirled with color, as was the rocker system chair Eve had given Mavis for her baby shower. There were dolls and stuffed animals and pretty lights. On the walls fairies danced under more rainbows or around fanciful trees bursting with glossy fruit or flowers.

And Eve saw stars sparkling on the ceiling.

Under them Mavis stood, bent over a kind of high, padded table, singing in the squeaky voice millions loved, to a wriggling baby.

“No more poopie for Bella Eve. You have the prettiest poopie in the history of poopies, but my beautiful Belle’s butt is all clean, all shiny. My beautiful, beautiful Belle. Mommy loves her beautiful Bellarina.”