Strangers in Death (In Death #26)(94)

“The exchange is what clicked for me,” Eve told him. “The possibility of that. You do mine, I do yours. We’re both alibied, and who’d look at either of us for the other’s? Why would Baxter look at Ava Anders in the murder of this guy? She doesn’t know him, and even if you note that Suzanne Custer’s in the Anders program, it doesn’t pop. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Until you look at Anders’s murder, won’t let it slide as an accident, and dig deep enough to see this. And wonder.”

“Probability scan’s going to bottom out.” Already annoyed by that, Eve hissed out a breath. “It’ll bottom out until I can plug in more. What about you? Do you buy it?”

“The stronger personality, the more powerful one, hatches the plan, draws the weaker one in. And does the job first, to add pressure and obligation. Even threat. When the weaker follows through, it’s not quite as clean and tidy. Yes, I’d buy it.”

“It’s easier to pry open the weaker one. We pull Suzanne Custer in, we work her.” Pacing, Eve circled the murder board. “Work her right, work her hard enough, she’ll flip on Ava. Need more first. You move.”

He pushed back from the desk. “Do you still want runs on the other names?”

“I’ll put a drone on that. This is the money shot here, this is the one. I’ve got a tingly.”

“Save it for me, will you?”

“Ha. I need everything I can get on her. Baxter’s got a solid murder book. We just have to look at the data from a different angle now. Suzanne didn’t kill her husband. She killed Ava’s.”

“There had to be contact between the two murderers,” Roarke pointed out. “Confirming the first, setting up the second.”

“Where did Custer get the murder weapon, the drug, the enhancer? That’s a place to pick at. Ava had to give her the security code, the layout.” As she spoke, Eve scrawled down names, connections, questions. “They changed the code every ten days, so there had to be a way to pass that on. We pick at Ava at the same time. She’s not going to be alibied so damn tight for the night of Ned Custer’s murder. She fits,” Eve added. “She’s the right height for the angle of the killing strike. The right personality to have planned it without leaving a trace behind, the right personality to use someone else to get what she wanted.”

“Baxter would have had EDD check all Custer’s ’links, her comp for communication and activity before her husband’s murder, and—I assume—for a week or so after it.”

“Yeah, but not for before Anders.” Eve planted a finger on Thomas Anders’s name on her notes. “No point. She wasn’t a suspect, not with her alibi, in her husband’s. You look, you check, but Baxter didn’t feel it. Because it wasn’t there to feel. We’ll pull them now, all of them. Anders’s, too. We’ll go back to before the Custer murder on them.”

She drummed her fingers. “Asshole like Custer, I bet he kept c**k enhancers around. The barbs, now…where’s a nice mom of two like Suzanne going to get her hand on them? They came from her. That part wasn’t in Ava’s plan.”

“A terrible thing when your husband’s murdered that way,” Roarke commented. “I’ll bet a kindly doctor would prescribe tranquilizers for the widow. Put them all together instead of doling them out for yourself…”

“Good. That’s good. A medical won’t want to give us that information, not without a warrant, but we start with her financials, see if she paid a doctor, paid a pharmacy between the murders. Close to the second murder, yeah, close, I bet. Got cold feet as it got toward the sticking point.”

She engaged her ’link, put through to Baxter’s home. When she hit voice mail, she ordered a transfer to his mobile.

She heard music first, something low and bluesy that said sexual foreplay to her. Baxter’s face came on with dim lighting in the background.

“This better be damn good.”

“My home office, tomorrow, eight hundred hours.”

“I’m not on the roll till Monday. I’ve got—”

“You are now. Tag your boy, too.”

“Give me a break, Dallas. I’ve got a clear field and a hot brunette on tap.”

“Then you’d better turn her on full tonight, because you’re here at eight. How much do you want to close the Custer case, Baxter?”

The irritated scowl vanished. “You got something there?”

“Hotter than any brunette who’d give you a clear field. Eight hundred. If you’ve got any personal notes not in the murder book, bring them.”

“Give me a goddamn hint, will you?”

“ Strangers on a Train. Look it up.” She clicked off, contacted Peabody, then Feeney.

“Sounds like we’ll need the standard cop breakfast buffet,” Roarke decided. “And a Saturday one at that.”

“You don’t have to feed them. I want Mira, too,” she considered. “I’d like her take on the suspect profiles.” She glanced at her wrist unit. “It’s not really all that late.”

“While you’re interrupting the Miras’ evening, send me the file. I’ll poke into the financials.”

She frowned at him. “It’s still open and active. Yeah, you could do that. And I can order the full search on the electronics. When you do the financials, see if anything pops back a ways that points toward Suzanne Custer buying the sex aids.”