J. Robb - Born In Death

“Boots.”

“Their foundation, and the original Helbringer is still their top seller. You’re wearing a pair right now.”

“Of boots.”

“Helbringer boots. Very distinctive in their simplicity. Anyway, nothing on them or their offspring.”

“We’ll check for corroboration when we get back to Central.”

Eve pulled up in front of the grand front entrance of Roarke’s Palace. The doorman started over immediately. Eve saw recognition and then resignation flicker into his eyes as she climbed out of the car.

“Good morning, Lieutenant. Would you like me to have your vehicle parked?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you want it to stay exactly where it is.”

“There you go.” She jogged up the steps and into the glossy marble, the elaborate and enormous flowers, the sparkling fountains.

She wound her way under the waterfall of crystal chandeliers to the desk. When she saw another flicker of recognition on the face of one of the sleek, nattily uniformed desk clerks, she decided Roarke had called a staff meeting with her picture.

Regardless, she took out her badge. “I need to speak with Rochelle DeLay.”

“Certainly, Lieutenant. I’ll contact her immediately. If you’d care to have a seat.”

At the gesture, Eve considered. Since everyone was being so cooperative, she could take the same page. “Sure.”

Eve took one of the high-backed velvet chairs arranged in the elegant jungle of flowers.

“If my granny – the tough-cookie granny – ever gets out here, I’m going to take her to tea at the Palace.” Peabody drew deep of the floral-scented air as she sat. “I think she’d get a charge out of it. Anyway, so while we’re waiting it’s a good time to talk about Mavis’s shower.”

“It couldn’t possibly be.”

“Come on, Dallas. We’re on serious countdown now. Anyway, I got the theme. Thinking it’s Mavis, and then with that chair you bought, I went with rainbow. I hit this party store on the way home last night and got all kinds of mag stuff.”

“Great. Go you.”

“Then there’s the flowers. I figured on bopping by this place I know. But the thing is, um… I can’t really afford to you know, pay.”

Though she’d been trying to tune Peabody out, the last hit a chord. “Well, Jesus, Peabody, you don’t have to pay. You’re not supposed to pay.”

“I want to help and everything, but – ”

“Not with the dough.” Eve forced herself to focus and deal with it. “Listen, you’re right. There should be stuff. The more stuff, the more of the large charge Mavis gets. You’re willing to get the stuff, I’ll pay for it.”

“That’s good, that’s great. Um, I never asked about, like, a budget.”

Eve just sighed. “I guess the sky’s the freaking limit.”

“Yay. It’s just completely ult. I mean, it’s a total event.”

“Put the squealy girl away,” Eve said as she got to her feet. “Be a cop.”

Eve spotted the pretty young thing headed toward them. Willowy build in a streamlined, almost military-style suit. The leafy green shade suited the coffee-and-cream complexion, and the hair – worn in a sleek updo – was dense brown.

Her lips curved in a polite, restrained welcome, but even that small smile didn’t reach the melting chocolate eyes.

“Lieutenant Dallas, and…”

“ Peabody. Detective,” Peabody told her.

“I’m Rochelle DeLay. You must be here about Natalie. Is it all right if we sit out here? My office is a little box of a thing, and currently loaded with supplies for a party.”

“This is fine.”

“I just talked to Jake. I wish he’d go home. I don’t think he’s ready to be there, see everyone, not where he saw and talked to Nat almost every day.”

“You were friends.”

“We were. We got to be good friends when Jake and I started seeing each other. But Nat and Jake?” She looked away a moment, as people did when their composure wavered. “They were like family to each other.”

“It didn’t bother you that the guy you’re dating was so tight with another woman?”

“It might have if there’d ever been anything romantic between them, or maybe it would have if it had been anyone but Nat. She was so into Bick, and I liked her so much. We had a lot of fun together, the four of us. We just clicked. I don’t know what to do for Jake.”

“Ms. DeLay,” Peabody said, “sometimes women tell their women friends things they don’t tell a man, no matter how close they are. Did Natalie say anything to you about being worried, concerned?”

“I can’t think of anything. But… we were supposed to have lunch the day before she… the day before. She called and told me she wasn’t feeling very well, was staying home from work, just going to stay in, catch up with things. Chill. I was busy. I was busy,” Rochelle repeated in a voice that broke. “So I was kind of relieved. And now, when I think back, she sounded, I don’t know, a little shaky, maybe nervous. I didn’t think about it at the time. I could’ve gone over, taken her something to eat. It’s what I do, but I didn’t because I was busy. If there was something wrong, she might have told me. I keep thinking that.”

“Hindsight’s a choke chain,” Eve told her. “You need to let that go. Tell me where you were the night she and Bick died.”

“We had dinner at his grandparents’. We played bridge afterward. Well, they played,” she said with a weak smile. “They’re teaching me, and I blow at it. It was after midnight when we left, and we went back to Jake’s. We’re sort of cohabbing – unofficially. Sliding into it, I guess you could say. I was in the East Ballroom.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The next morning. I was in the East Ballroom helping to set up for a luncheon. Jake came in, came to find me. He was crying. I’d never seen him cry before. And he told me. We sat on the floor, right on the floor in the ballroom.”

EVE TOOK ONE LOOK AT THE BOXES COVERING the table in the conference room she’d ordered and felt a headache coming on.

“Okay, here comes the monkey work. We’re going to go through the discs and hard copies, memo, memo books, appointment books, everything, going back – for now – two weeks. From the wit statements it was two weeks, ten days, when people started noticing something off with Copperfield, and just under two weeks when the transmission went from Copperfield to Byson that she had something she needed to show him.”

“We’ll get through the names, the notes – eventually,” Peabody said. “But the accounts? We could probably use a numbers guy on this.”

“Probably could,” Eve agreed. “But for now, it’s you and me. We’ll look for repetition, a file or account she went back to repeatedly during the time frame. Any of them copied to her home unit, or any data she copied to Byson.”

Eve glanced unhappily at the conference room’s AutoChef, knowing it wasn’t loaded with her personal stash of coffee.

“Any mention of meetings or appointments with the higher-ups,” she continued. “Appointments with reps of accounts.”

“Going to be awhile,” Peabody commented. “Maybe I should order in some sandwiches.”

“Whatever. Her assistant said she logged in after hours a couple times recently. Let’s find what she accessed after business hours.”

She turned as the door opened.

“Anything?” Baxter asked her.

“It’s looking like she found something off at work, was pursuing it on her own, and shared her concerns with her fiancé. We’re digging there.”

“Want another shovel?”

Eve dipped her hands into her pockets. “What’s on your desk?”

“A few things, mostly leg and ’link work. Nothing the boy can’t handle,” he added, referring to his trainee, Trueheart. “Look, the kid’ll let me know if he needs me on anything active. I’ve got some personal time coming. I can take it to work this.”