Salvation in Death (In Death #27)(105)

“I do, actually. Yes.”

“I hope you’re right.”

She left him, went to her office to prepare for what had to be done.

When Peabody and McNab came in, she simply gestured toward the kitchen. There were twin hoots of joy as they scrambled for the treasure trove of her AutoChef. She stuck with coffee. The blocker had done the job—and maybe the conversation with Roarke had smoothed the rest, at least a little.

She cocked her eyebrows when Peabody and McNab came back in with heaping plates and steaming mugs.

“Do you think you’ve got enough to hold you off from starvation during the briefing?”

“Belgian waffles, with seasonal berries.” Peabody sat down, prepared to plow in. “This may hold me forever.”

“As long as your ears stay as open as your mouths.”

She began with Ortega, took them through her premise.

“At the end of the seven years, he’d stand to inherit, by spousal right, upward of six hundred and eighty-five million—not including personal property, and the profits from the real property and businesses over the seven.”

“That’s a lot of waffles,” McNab commented.

“Set for life,” Peabody agreed. “Well, if he’d lived.”

“His bed buddy didn’t want to split. She wanted it all. We’re going to prove that, nail her for accessory after the fact on Ortega and Flores, fraud, conspiracy to murder on Lino, and being a basic skank bitch. We’ll meet with the lawyer later today, and set up a little sting.”

“We lay down on her,” Peabody added, “and get her to flip on her co-conspirator.”

“Don’t need it. Screen on,” she ordered, and Juanita’s data flashed on. “Juanita Turner. Her son was a victim in the second bombing.”

“How did you . . .” Peabody paused, narrowed her eyes at the image. “She looks a little familiar. Did we interview her? Was she at the Ortiz funeral?”

“If she was, and I think it’s likely, she slipped in and out before the scene was secured. We saw her at the youth center. The medical.”

“That’s it! I didn’t get much of a look at her there. Her son?”

“And her husband, a year later—to the day—by self-termination.” Eve ran through it, flatly. “Penny needed a weapon,” Eve concluded. “And Juanita fit the bill.”

“Man, man, it had to be horrible for her to realize this guy she’d thought was . . . that he was the one responsible for her son’s death.”

“Yeah. It’s rough.” But it couldn’t influence the work. “I’ve contacted Reo,” Eve said, referring to the APA she preferred working with. “We’ve got enough, in her opinion, to get the communications. Which is where e-boy here comes in. I want you to dig in, dig out,” she told McNab as he gorged on waffles. “Anything that so much as sniffs like it’s connected. We’re picking up Juanita. While we have her in the box, you find us a communication with Penny. Find a memo, a journal, a receipt for the cyanide. Find something hard, and find it fast.”

Peabody swallowed waffles and berries. “We’re picking her up before Penny?”

“Penny orchestrated it. Juanita executed it. I’ve contacted Baxter. He and Trueheart are keeping a tail on Penny. Now, if you’ve finished stuffing yourselves, let’s get to work.”

Peabody said nothing as they walked downstairs. She got into the passenger seat, finally turned to Eve. “Maybe we get Penny on conspiracy, but it’s a stretch. It’s more likely we get accessory after the fact there. And that’s a maybe. She can claim she let it slip out about Lino, or felt guilty and spilled it to Juanita Turner.”

Peabody put a hand on her heart, widened her eyes. “I swear, your honor and members of the jury, I didn’t know she’d do murder. How could I know?” Dropping her hand, she shook her head. “Juanita’s going to get hit with first degree, no way around it unless Reo wants to deal it down, but Penny? She’s likely to slither out of it.”

“That’s not up to us.”

“It just seems wrong. Juanita loses her son, her husband. And now, all these years later, she gets used. And she’s the one who’s going to go down the hardest.”

“You play, you pay. She killed a guy, Peabody,” McNab said from the back. “If Dallas has this right, and it sure fits nice and tight, she did the premeditated—cold-blooded killed his ass.”

“I know that. But she was set up to do it. Jesus, you ought to see the crime scene photos from that bombing. There wasn’t much left of her kid.”

“Vic was a downtown bastard, that’s coming crystal. And I give you she took the hardest of the hard knocks. But, come on, that gives her the go to poison him?”

“I didn’t say that, you ass, I’m just saying—”

“Shut up and stop arguing,” Eve ordered.

“I’m just pointing out,” Peabody said in the gooey tones of reason that told any detractors they were stupid, “that Juanita took some really mean hits, and Penny—who probably was in on them—used that. And—”

“I’m just pointing out, hello, murderer.”

Peabody swung around to glare at McNab. “You’re such a jerk.”