Witness in Death (In Death #10)(66)

"Peabody's tracking her."

"He had, and has, strong feelings for her. I'd say she was a turning point for him. If it had been a storybook, the woman would have come to him after he defended her. Happily ever after. But -- "

"She didn't want him."

"Or didn't love him enough, felt unworthy, humiliated, scarred." Mira lifted a hand. "There are countless reasons why she and Stiles didn't match. Without observing her, I couldn't say. Still, it's Stiles's emotional and mental state that interests you."

"Peabody's idea is that this woman was the love of his life, and because of that, he'd never have completely lost touch with her."

"I think Peabody has good instincts. He protected her, defended her. A man with his sense of theater or drama would tend to put himself in the role of hero, and she his damsel in distress. He may very well still be doing so."

"She's key," Eve murmured. "Maybe not the key, but a key." With her hands in her pockets, she wandered to Mira's window. She was feeling closed in today and couldn't say why. "I don't get it," she said at length. "The woman shrugs him off, sleeps with another guy, folds herself into this other guy so completely that when he tosses her away, she tries to self-terminate. And still Stiles is hung up on her. He beats hell out of Draco, gets himself arrested, gets skinned in a civil suit. And when he talks about her twenty-five years later, he goes soft. Why isn't he bitter? Why isn't he pissed? Is he jamming me here?"

"I can't say with absolute certainty. He's a talented actor. But my evaluation at this point is no, as far as his feelings for the woman, he's not jamming you. Eve, the human heart is a mystery we'll never completely solve. You're putting yourself in this man's place. That's one of the skills you have, what makes you so good at what you do. But you can't quite get into his heart. You would look at this woman and see weakness."

Mira sipped more tea as Eve turned. "She was weak. Weak and careless."

"And quite young, I imagine, but that's beside the point. You look at love differently because you're strong and because of where and in whom you found it. The love of your life, Eve, would never betray you or hurt you or, where it matters most, ever let you down. He accepts who you are, absolutely. As much as you love him, I don't think you fully understand how rare and how precious that is. Stiles loved, and perhaps still loves, a fantasy. You have the reality."

"People kill for both."

"Yes." Mira ejected the disc, held it out to Eve. "They do."

All the talk about love and lifetimes got under Eve's skin and made her feel uncomfortably guilty. She played back what others had said and realized everyone who had mentioned her relationship with Roarke as an example had spoken of what he would do for her or wouldn't do to her.

It wasn't, she decided, a very pretty picture of her participation in the whole love and marriage deal.

She never really did anything, she thought. She still had a miserable time finding the right words, the right gesture, the right moment. Roarke seemed to pluck them out of the air as easily, as smoothly, as he plucked his fortune.

So she'd make an effort. She'd push the case onto the back burner, okay, the side burner, she admitted, and do something, Jesus, romantic.

In her current state of mind, she wanted to avoid Summerset at all costs, so she actually put her car in the garage. Then, like a thief, she snuck in the house through one of the side doors.

She was about to plan her first intimate dinner.

How hard could it be? she asked herself as she jumped into the shower. She'd led tactical teams in hostage situations, tracked psychopaths, outwitted the deranged.

She was smart enough to put a fancy meal on a fancy table. Probably.

She zipped out of the shower and into the drying tube. Not in the bedroom, she decided, because that was, well, obvious, and she thought, most likely, romance should be subtle.

She'd use one of the lounging rooms.

As the hot air whirled around her, she began to plot.

Thirty minutes later, she was feeling both satisfied and frazzled. There were so many damn rooms in the house, she still didn't believe she'd been in all of them. And all the damn rooms had stuff, enormous amounts of stuff. How was she supposed to figure out what was needed?

Candles, she got that, but when she ran an inventory scan, she discovered a veritable forest of candles in several areas. Still, the satisfaction came from skulking through the house, evading the ever-watchful Summerset.

She decided on white, because color meant she'd most likely have to match it with more colors, and that was just more than she could handle. She spent another twenty minutes dealing with the menu, then had to face the frightening ordeal of selecting plates, flatware, crystal.

It had been a shock to run an inventory on something as basic as dinner plates and find her husband had over fifty types of varying material and patterns.

What kind of maniac needed over five thousand plates?

Her maniac, she reminded herself, then nearly choked when she ran the crystal.

"Okay, that's got to be wrong." She was at the point of choosing at random because her time was running short.

"Might I ask precisely what you're doing?"

A lesser woman would have yelped. Eve managed, just barely, to bite it back. "Get lost. I'm busy."