Survivor In Death (In Death #20)(27)

“I think we need to make time. An hour won't hurt, Eve, and I'd say that child needs as much normalcy as we can manage. Dinner, at the table, is normal.”

“I don't see what's more normal about shoveling in food off a big flat surface than shoveling it in at your desk. It's multitasking. It's efficient.”

“She scares you.”

She stopped dead, and her eyes went to lethal slits. “Just where the hell do you come off saying that?”

"Because she scares me, too."

Temper flickered over her face for a moment, then everything relaxed. "Really? Really? You're not just saying that?"

"Those big eyes, full of courage and terror and grief. What could be more frightening? There she stands, such a little thing, all that pretty hair, tidy jeans and jumper--sweater," he corrected. "And that need just radiating out of her. We're supposed to have the answers, and we don't."

Eve let out a breath as she looked back toward the stairs. "I haven't even figured out all the questions."

"So we'll have dinner with her, and do what we can to show her that there's normalcy and decency left in the world."

"Okay, okay, but I need to debrief my men."

"I'll meet you downstairs. Fifteen minutes."

She found normal in her office, where a couple of cops--who'd obviously raided her AutoChef--were chowing down while they studied murder. On her wall screens, each Swisher bedroom, each victim, was displayed while Baxter and Trueheart chomped on cow meat.

"Steak." Baxter forked up another bite. "Do you know the last time I had real cow? I'd kiss you, Dallas, but my mouth's full."

"Summerset said it was okay." Trueheart, young and fresh in his uniform, offered her a hopeful grin.

She merely shrugged, then turned so that she, too, had full view of the screens. “What's your take?”

“Big red check to everything in your report.” Baxter continued to eat, but his expression was sober now. “Slick job. And a mean one. Even without the eyewit, I'd have said two or more to pull it off, and even then it went down damn fast. The tox came in from the ME. No illegals, no drugs of any kind in any of them. No illegals on the premises. Even the pain remedies were herbal and holistic.”

“Fits with the adult female's career choice,” Eve murmured. “No defensives, no struggle, no missing valuables.”

“No trace,” she added. “Sweepers got zip. You dump your currents?”

“With pleasure.” Baxter stabbed his fork into another bite of steak. “Carmichael now hates me like a case of genital warts. Made my day.”

“The two of you are relieved here. Report back at oh eight hundred. Double duty. You babysit, and start running the names I pulled out of the Swishers' client lists. Anybody with so much as a parking violation gets a deeper look. We look at them, their family, their friends and associates, their next-door neighbors, and their little pets. We look until we find.”

“The housekeeper?” Baxter asked.

“I'll do her tonight. We look at them all, kids included. School, activities, neighbors, where they shopped, where they ate, where they worked, where they played. Before we're done, we'll know these people better than they knew themselves.”

“A lot of names,” Baxter commented.

“It's only going to take one.”

Though she now had steak and murder on her mind, Eve ate roasted chicken and tried to keep her conversation away from the investigation. But what the hell were you supposed to talk to a kid about over dinner?

They didn't use the dining room often--well, she didn't, she admitted. So much easier to grab something upstairs. But she couldn't call it a hardship to sit at the big, gleaming table, with a fire simmering in the grate, the scent of food and candles in the air.

“How come you eat so fancy?” Nixie wanted to know.

“Don't ask me.” Eve jabbed a fork toward Roarke. “It's his house.”

“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”

Eve blinked twice, then realized the question was directed at her, and Roarke wasn't stepping in to field the ball.

“No.”

“When do I go back to school?”

Eve felt the back of her neck begin to ache. “I don't know.”

“But if I don't do my work, I'll get behind. If you get behind, you can't be in the band or the plays.” Tears started to shimmer.

“Oh. Well.” Shit.

“We can arrange for you to do your school work here, for now.”

Roarke spoke matter-of-factly. As if, Eve thought, he'd been born answering thorny questions. “You enjoy school?”

“Mostly. Who'll help me with my work? Dad always did.”

No, Eve thought. Absolutely not. She wasn't moving into that area if somebody planted a boomer under her ass.

“The lieutenant and I weren't the best of students. But Summerset could help you, for the time being.”

“I'll never get to go home again. Or see my mom and dad, or Coyle or Linnie. I don't want them to be dead.”

Okay, Eve decided. Maybe she was a kid, but she was still the eye wit. The case was back on the table along with the chicken.

Thank God.