Forgotten in Death(51)

Eve felt the lift in her chest. “She wrote down what he did? When he did it?”

“Lifelong habit. She documented all of it. Do you want me to send you the notebooks?”

Eve’s spine snapped straight as a ruler. “You have them?”

“She left them behind. She said she was leaving all of that behind and starting a new life. New name, new Alva. I kept them because you just never know. I can ship them to you in the morning.”

“No.” She didn’t want to trust them to a shipping company. “I’m going to ask you for a solid, Allysa.”

“It’s for Alva. Ask away.”

“I can have a couple cops from my department on a shuttle and to your shelter within a couple hours.”

“I’ve got the books here. I kept them here, in my home office. I’ll have them ready, and the medical report and photos when your people get here. I’d like a solid back.”

“What do you need?”

“Keep me in the loop—I want to know when you nail that Wicker fucker. And when you cage up whoever killed her. One more? If her family’s going to have a service or memorial, I’d like to know. I’d like to go.”

“I’ll do all of that.”

“It’s hard to lose one, I guess you know. She had a sweet heart. A lot of hard breaks through her life, but she kept that sweet heart.”

“Her brother, possibly her sister as well, are coming to New York for her. I’d like to give them your name and contact.”

“Yes, please. I’ll wait for your people.”

“Thanks for all of this.”

“Back at you, Dallas.” Now Allysa lifted the glass in a toast. “Hunt them down.”

“That’s the plan.”

“A shuttle’s being prepped,” Roarke told her when she ended the call. “Who are you sending?”

“They can take a public…” Quicker, easier, she admitted as Roarke just waited. “Uniform Carmichael. He’ll probably take Shelby. Thanks.”

She turned back to contact Carmichael, give him the assignment and information he needed.

“Seal and label it, on the record. Take it straight into Evidence when you get back. I’ll pull it out in the morning.”

Because she hadn’t switched modes back, Officer Carmichael nodded on her wall screen. “Yes, sir. I’ll notify Shelby, pick her up on the way to the shuttle.”

Rather than his uniform, he wore a red T-shirt, buff-colored khakis. “You can go in soft clothes. Is that the game?” she asked, because she heard the distinctive thwack of bat to ball, followed by cheers.

“Long foul,” he said. “We’re bottom of the eleventh, Lieutenant, tied up at six each. It hasn’t been what you’d call a pitcher’s duel.”

“I’ll say. Text when you have the evidence in hand, Officer, and when it’s been checked into Evidence.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dallas out.”

She swiveled back to Roarke, who sat on the sleep chair with the cat sprawled over his lap. Eve ran both hands over her hair. “She wrote it all down, and the woman who gave her a fresh start, a new life—at least for a while—kept the books.”

Roarke kept stroking the cat, who purred like a jet shuttle. “I heard.”

“I’m going to crush Garrett Wicker.”

“I know.”

“I need to write this up. In the morning, I have to check with Harvo on the fabric trace, check in with Morris. I want that consult with Mira. And I guess I’m going to tap you for a goddamn jet-copter to make it easier for me to push on Yuri Bardov.”

Coming together, she thought. She could feel it coming together.

“And since they’re in the same area with their big-ass country estates, I’ll talk to Elinor Bolton Singer. I’ll round up J. B. Singer. That’ll be like a flock of birds with the one rock, and it’ll overlap both cases. It should give me some sense, some information to pull from once I close Alva’s case and move to Jane Doe’s remains.”

“I have more for you on the plans and specs and blueprints on the original building where we found those remains.”

“I’ll want them as soon as I close this one. I’m sorry, but—”

He shook his head. “Your investigation needs to be logical and focused. You know her.” Roarke gestured toward the board. “And though she didn’t die first, she comes first.”

“That’s it, but there’s going to be that overlap. There’s already a connection point with the Singers. Why don’t you give me an overview or a couple of highlights if anything applies? I can keep it working in the back of my mind. You’re not the only one who can multitask.”

“Well then, I can tell you something I found very interesting when the analyses confirmed it just a bit ago.”

“Which is?”

“After you left this morning, and we went about shutting down the project, both Mackie— You’ll remember him.”

“Sure.”

“Both he and I noticed a few things. One, already mentioned, is the proposed wine cellar’s dimensions were off—which I’ve confirmed from the original plans. The inner wall, though designed to appear as an exterior, was, in fact, three feet in from the actual exterior wall.”