Loyalty in Death (In Death #9)(92)

“B. D. ran the show.” Lisbeth waved a hand. “J. Clarence was better with people, and creatively he enjoyed having input in new projects. It didn’t bother him that B. D. held the reins.”

“What was his relationship with Clarissa?”

“He liked her, of course. She’s a charming woman. I think she intimidated him somewhat. She’s very formal and aloof for all that air of fragility.”

“Really, but you were friends?”

“Friendly. After all, we were both involved with a Branson. We socialized, with and without them.”

“Did she ever tell you B. D. mistreated her?”

“Mistreated?” Lisbeth let out a short laugh. “The man fawned on her. All she had to do was bat her eyes and purr and he jumped.”

Eve glanced toward the wall screen, noted it was turned off. “Not watching the news these days?”

“No.” She turned her head and for a moment looked tired and strained. “I’m making arrangements to clean up some personal matters before I transfer to the rehabilitation center.”

“Then you wouldn’t have heard that B. Donald Branson was killed last night.”

“What?”

“He fell during a struggle when he was beating his wife.”

“That’s ridiculous. That’s absurd. He wouldn’t lay a hand on Clarissa. He worships her.”

“Clarissa claims he’s been abusing her physically for years.”

“Then she’s a liar,” Lisbeth snapped out. “He treated her like a princess, and if she says otherwise, she’s lying through her teeth.”

She stopped abruptly, went very pale.

“You didn’t find the photographs in your mail slot, did you, Lisbeth? You had them handed to you by someone you trusted — someone you thought cared about J.C.”

“I — I found them.”

“No point in lying to protect the Bransons. He’s dead, and she’s gone. Who gave you the photographs of J. C., Lisbeth? Who gave them to you and told you that he was cheating on you?”

“I saw the pictures. I saw them with my own eyes. He was with that blond bitch.”

“Who gave them to you?”

“Clarissa.” She blinked once, twice, and tears started to stream. “She brought them to me, and she was crying. She said how sorry she was, how sorry. She begged me not to tell anyone she’d given them to me.”

“How did she get them?”

“I never asked. I just looked at them, and I went crazy. She told me it had been going on for months, and she couldn’t pretend not to know any longer. She couldn’t stand to see me hurt and J. C. ruin his life over some cheap lay. She knew how jealous I was, she knew. When I got to his house, he denied it. He told me I was crazy, there wasn’t any blonde. But I’d seen! And the next thing I knew, I was picking up that drill. Oh my God, oh my God. J.C.”

She collapsed into the chair, wailing.

“Get her a tranq, Peabody.” Eve’s voice held no sympathy. “We’ll have a car come by and pick her up. When she’s pulled it together, McNab can take a statement.”

“I know we’re pressed for time.” Peabody jumped in the car again. “But I feel like I’m three steps behind.”

“Branson’s connected to Cassandra. Clarissa’s connected to Branson, Zeke’s connected to Clarissa. We’re led to believe that both the Branson brothers meet with untimely and violent ends within a week of each other. Meanwhile, the accounts are stripped. Zeke’s brought in from clear across the country to work at the Branson house, and within a couple of days, he’s tangled with Branson over Clarissa and supposedly killed him. But Clarissa, out of her fear and concern for Zeke, loses the body.

“That’s the part that hung me up all along, but a guy tells you he kills another guy, you generally go with it. Still we’ve got no body, and there’s nothing on the droid playback to indicate he was instructed to weigh it down. The search team’s sensors don’t pick another up, it doesn’t bob up and float, but we know it got tossed in the river.”

“Droids don’t float, and the sensors are looking for flesh, blood, and bone.”

“See, you’re catching up. Now, we connect those dots. Zeke killed himself a droid. We have Lisbeth’s statement that there were never any beatings, no rapes, and odds are she’d have known if there were. Through J. C., if not on her own. We have the coincidence that Zeke just happened to be in the right place at the right time to hear beatings and rapes, then Clarissa turns to him for help. She’s already scoped him; she knows the kind of man he is, and very likely made the subtle kind of play for him he wouldn’t see as a come-on.”

“He doesn’t understand women,” Peabody murmured. “He’s practically still a kid.”

“He wouldn’t understand this one if he’d hit the century mark. She trolled for him and reeled him in. She and Branson got rid of the brother, which leads me to believe he wasn’t involved in Cassandra. He was weight, so they ditched him. I’m primary on the case, and they don’t want me looking too hard, having just the kind of talk with Lisbeth I just finished having, so they tag me on the bombings. Blowing up the city’s going to pull my attention away from a plea bargain I know I can’t change.”