Mary Robb - Down the Rabbit Hole

Darlene drove the bloody points into the table. “You’re surrounded by evil. How can you see through it to what’s good?”

“You just have to look hard enough.”

“Then look! I was going to have what you have. I just wanted answers. That’s no different than you. I wanted what you want.”

Eve opened her eyes and looked into Roarke’s. “This. She wanted this.”

“You’ve a few minutes left to sleep, but you dream so hard.”

“She wanted this, and she had the person who wanted to give it to her. Why end everything? Gotta look deeper.”

“All right.” He kissed the brow she’d furrowed.

She laid her hand on his cheek. “Sometimes you don’t have to look very hard.”

“For what?”

“For what’s good. You’re right here.” She tipped her face up, touched her mouth gently to his. “And when things aren’t so good, you’re still right here.”

“Always.”

She eased over so her heart lay on his, so her mouth lay on his. The only bridge she needed, she thought, was the one that led to him.

Her body, warm, smooth, fit so perfectly with his. His lanky, leggy cop. They could fill each other with love, with light, a kind of awakening after the long, dark night.

It touched him, the tenderness of her hand on his cheek, the sweetness of her fingers sliding through his hair. As much a lifting of the heart as arousal. He gave her the same; soft and easy, slow, dreamy kisses as desire roused.

He shifted. When he covered her she opened. She welcomed. She enfolded.

With their mouths meeting again, again, their bodies moved together, a rise and fall, rise and fall until that final peak.

And the quiet, sighing slide that followed.

* * *

She thought of it later when she stood in her home office, studying the murder board she’d set up.

Darlene had wanted that—not just the sex; the connection, the continuity. And Eve had seen that connection in photographs in the townhouse.

Eve glanced over to a photograph of her and Roarke, taken by some enterprising paparazzo. They’d taken down the bad guy, and were both a bit bruised and bloody—a contrast to the glittery evening clothes. And they grinned at each other.

The connection was there, clear to see.

Who’d give that up and jump off a building? You’d have to be crazy—and that might be the answer. If she was sane, the logical answer was Darlene had been pushed. One way or the other.

She texted Peabody with a change of plans and told her partner to meet her at the morgue at oh-nine-hundred. Meanwhile she split the list of reputed psychics, gave Peabody half to run.

She’d start on the others, but first she wanted a look at Darlene’s financials. That might tell its own tale.

* * *

Ten minutes later she was up and crossing to Roarke’s adjoining office.

“I know you’re busy.”

He glanced over from his wall screen and the schematics on it. “I’ve been busier.”

“It’s a money question.”

“I’m never too busy for that.”

“I’m looking into Darlene’s financials. For the past eighteen weeks—including the morning she died—she withdrew nine thousand, nine hundred and nine-nine dollars from her personal account. I’m reading it as cash.”

Roarke sat back. “Isn’t that interesting.”

“There’s other activity. Deposits, transfers, other withdrawals—one every month for five or six thousand. But eighteen weekly for that amount’s a flag for me.”

“One dollar more, you hit ten thousand and the IRS might do a sniff. Blackmail springs to mind, but with what you found last night, another idea leapfrogs over it.”

“Somebody’s been taking her for a ride for four and a half months. Parents died seven months ago. I need to find out when she started hunting for psychics, but that’s what rings. She has another personal account—years old. This one? She opened it about five months ago, and not at her usual bank. I think she was hiding this, just like she was hiding the business cards and pamphlets.”

“I’d agree, but if you’re angling from that to whoever she was paying somehow pushing her to murder/suicide, why? Forget the how for a moment. Why? A dollar shy of ten large a week is a very nice income from one source.”

“Maybe she’d decided that was it.” Demonstrating, Eve swiped a finger through the air. “Maybe she’d figured out whoever she was paying was full of bullshit, maybe argued, threatened. Could be this bullshit shucker figured out a way to get more if he eliminated her, and her brother. A lot of ropes to tug there.” She jammed her hands into her pockets. “I need her tox.” She hadn’t given Morris enough time, and found that frustrating. “I need how. She was high, and everyone says she didn’t use, but damn it, she was high. So maybe she didn’t know she was using. Still doesn’t tell me why she’d kill her brother. If we stretch it to mind manipulation—not a big stretch since we’ve dealt with it before—it still doesn’t explain the why.” She’d taken a turn around his office before she caught herself. “Sorry.”

“I never tire of watching you work.”

“I’m working these angles because two people who loved her insist she couldn’t do what she did.”

“Not just because of that.”

She blew out a breath. It could be disconcerting to have someone who knew her inside and out.

“No, not just,” she admitted. “My sense of her, too. Money’s part of it. Gia Gregg—lawyer. Do you know her?”

“Not personally, but she has an excellent reputation. Specializes in estate law, high-end clients.”

“Too early for her, too. I’m going to get out of your hair, go on in. I can start running the list on the way, and maybe get lucky and push Morris on the autopsy.”

“Would you like me to look for more?”

“More what?”

“Money, darling.”

“You can give it a glance if you have time. Thanks. I’ll be . . . communing with the dead for a while, one way or the other.”

“Give them my best or my worst, depending. And take care of my cop.”

“I can do all that. See you later.”

She started her run on the psychics at the top of the list as she drove downtown, letting the in-dash do the work. She eliminated one straight off, as he was doing time for fraud.

Two others had done time. Eve bumped them down, figuring Darlene had enough brains and certainly enough resources to have gotten the same information. And while she might have been gullible, she didn’t strike Eve as brick-stupid.

She toggled that with Darlene’s travel. Though she had flown to Europe twice in the last six months, there was nothing for the last eighteen weeks.

Eve bumped down anyone on the list out of the country. But she’d check with Henry Boyle, and with Darlene’s office, just to be sure she hadn’t snuck any travel in that didn’t show.

She continued the runs as she walked through the white tunnel of the morgue—and tried to resign herself to spending a good chunk of her day talking to woo-woo shovelers.

She found Morris with Darlene’s shattered body, and with the brother laid out on a second table.

“Jumpers or floaters,” she began, “which is worse?”

“Floaters go on a sliding scale. The longer they’re in the water, the higher they rate.”

He wore a steel gray suit today, paired with an electric blue tie. He’d gone silver with the cord that twined through his single thick braid of black hair.

And he looked, she thought, both rested and alert.

“Jumpers,” he continued. “We can judge them on a sliding scale as well. The higher they go, the higher they rate.”

“Fifty-two floors. She rates pretty high.”

“She does. Years ago I had a jumper—literally. A skydiver.”