Strangers in Death (In Death #26)(64)

“I think we can take her off the list.”

“Yeah. Also the mayor’s wife and a number of other prominents.”

“We won’t discount them. Staff and volunteers go into the mix, but we’re going to focus on the participants. The women Ava played Lady Bountiful with.”

“I’ve got some with criminal, got some who were or are LCs.”

“Keep them at the top. Trying to figure her. Would she go for somebody with experience, with tendencies, or somebody blank, somebody who’d run below the radar?”

She paced to the window, stared out. “She wouldn’t expect us to get here, to look where we’re going to look. But somebody who plans as meticulously as she does would have to consider all the possibilities. How did she weigh it?”

“Another question would be how do you convince somebody to kill for you.”

“Some people bake pies. Copy all the files, shoot them here and to my home unit. And keep working it, Peabody. If somebody in there was her trigger, I bet she has plans for them, too. I just bet she has plans.”

She worked it as well, formulating notes from her conversations that day, pushing through the repeated names Peabody had culled out. And she considered the logistics and man hours of interviewing literally hundreds of potential suspects.

Needle in the haystack. But sooner or later.

She pushed back, circled her head around her shoulders to loosen knots. Her incoming beeped, and it pleased her to see Nadine had sent her a file. “Copy to my home unit,” she ordered.

She rubbed her tired eyes. Time to go home herself, she admitted. Take it home, pick it up again, bounce it off Roarke.

She shut down, loaded her bag, shrugged into her coat. She picked up the pie box as Mira stepped to the doorway.

“On your way out?”

“Yeah, but I’ve got time. They told me you were booked solid today.”

“I was. And I’m late heading home. If you’re leaving, why don’t we walk out together, and you can tell me what’s on your mind.”

“That’d be good. I’ve got this theory,” Eve began.

She briefed Mira as they took glides down to the main level, then switched to the elevator for the garage.

“The dominant personality, the benefactor, or employer, convinces, pressures, or cajoles the subordinate or submissive to execute her will.”

“Execute being the operative term,” Eve commented. “But I think cajole is a passive term for getting someone to do murder.”

“Passivity can be a weapon if used correctly. And such methods have certainly been used for gain. Anything from lying to protect the superior’s mistake or misconduct, to providing sexual favors and yes, all the way up to murder. To insure continued cooperation after the fact, the dominant would need to continue the relationship, offer and supply reward, or threaten with exposure or harm.”

To finish, Eve got off on Mira’s garage level. “We’re running the ones with jackets, and any LCs—currently or previously—first.”

“The most logical place to start.”

“The nature of the crime. You’d have to have that in you, or be so completely under Ava’s thumb you couldn’t so much as wiggle to see that through.”

“Or utterly enthralled,” Mira added. “Love comes in a lot of forms.”

“Yeah, so does gratitude. And fear. I need to figure out which one of those levels she pulled. I let her see today. I let her see I know. Maybe that was a mistake, but I wanted her to sweat a little.”

“It’s good strategy. It gives the opponent something to worry about, and worried people make more mistakes.”

“If I had a little more, just enough to bring her in, to get her in the box, I think I could trip her up. But I need to push her out of her comfort zone, isolate her from…” Realizing they were standing beside Mira’s car, and she was down to talking out loud, Eve shrugged. “Anyway.”

“If and when, I’d like to observe. I think it would be fascinating.”

“I’ll let you know. So…say hi to Mr. Mira.”

“I will. Eve, don’t go straight to work when you get home. Take an hour. Recharge.” In a gesture that never failed to fluster Eve, Mira leaned over, kissed her cheek.

“Well. Good night.”

She’d planned to go straight back to work, Mira had her there. More, she’d planned to drag Roarke into it with her. How was she supposed to hammer that crack open if she sat around for an hour doing nothing? She walked into the house with the notion of recharging later.

Summerset loomed; the cat sat and stared.

“I haven’t got time for you, Flat Ass.”

“Or little else, apparently, as you arrive late. Again. And have used your face as a punching bag. Again.”

“That was yesterday. I offered yours, but they judged it too high on the ugly scale.”

“Roarke is in the pool house, if you have any interest in your husband’s whereabouts.”

“I got interest.” She tossed her coat over the newel post, dropped her file case at the foot of the stairs, then shoved the box she held into Summerset’s hands. “I brought dessert.”

That,she thought as she strolled to the elevator, confused him speechless, and was almost as satisfying as her best insult. As she rode down, she rubbed at the back of her neck. Maybe she could take time for a quick swim, stretch out some of these damn kinks she’d earned from too many hours at the comp.