Mary Robb - Down the Rabbit Hole

“Why do people do that?” It absolutely baffled her. “People actually pay to do that.”

“It’s exhilarating.”

“You?” Surprised, she frowned at him. “You’ve jumped out of a plane? On purpose?”

“An amazing sensation. I’m quite a fan of sensations.”

“Jumping out of a plane would give me a sensation of insanity.”

“Only if you did it without a chute. My skydiver, however, ran afoul of his business partner, who’d sabotaged his chute. His fall of thirteen thousand feet puts him at the top of my scale. Not as far for her, but the results . . .” He glanced down, quiet pity in his eyes. “She was a lovely young woman before that last step.”

“Yeah, and lovely young women are more inclined to pills for self-termination. What can you tell me about her?”

“At this point I haven’t found any injuries prior to that last step, but it’s going to take more time to be certain, given the state of her.”

“It’s the tox I’m most interested in right now. She and the brother? Friends of Louise’s.”

“Ah, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Louise, Charles, and the woman’s fiancé—who looks to be in the clear on first pass—are all adamant she didn’t use. But the security feed on the brother’s door and two wits who saw her get out of the elevator all say she looked high on something.”

“I can tell you that before that last step, her liver, kidneys, lungs, heart showed no signs of abuse or disease. She wasn’t a habitual user. Her stomach contents? Tea, sugar cookies—real sugar—and about two ounces of white wine.”

She caught the inflection. “And?”

“The blend of tea to start.” He gestured to his comp screen, brought up some sort of colored chart with a lot of words she didn’t understand. “It was a chamomile base—harmless enough—but laced with other elements. Valerian, for one.”

It rang a bell. “A sedative, right?”

“Yes, it can be used as one. Peyote.”

“Hallucinogen. Shit. Is this like the Red Horse?”

“No. I remember that too well, and this wasn’t the same. Nothing in this would trigger violence. But there are elements here and in the other stomach contents I can’t identify. I’ve flagged it top priority for the lab, as requested. They’re minute traces, nothing debilitating. It may be that the combination of them caused such violent effects.”

“If we weigh in the insistence she didn’t use, it leans toward her being dosed.” Eve circled the body. Had she known she was falling? Eve wondered. Had she seen the ground rushing up?

“Where’d she get the scissors? That’s a question. Not the sort of thing you carry around in a purse—they were huge.”

“Shears, actually,” he corrected. “Nine-inch blades. I did a quick exam of his wounds. And I’d agree, it’s not the sort of thing most women carry.”

“And no reason I can see why her brother had them sitting out where she could grab them,” Eve said. “He had kitchen scissors—in a knife block—and a pair in his office, desk drawer. Which makes it lean premeditated. For somebody.”

Eve turned from Darlene, stepped over to Marcus.

“She was smiling,” Morris said.

“I’m sorry?”

“When she rang his buzzer. She was smiling—glassy-eyed, yeah, but smiling the way people do when they’re ready to say, hey, sorry about that. And nothing I get in my read of her says she had that kind of chill. That she could stand there, smiling, with a pair of nine-inch blades in her purse she intended to jab into her brother’s heart.”

She shook her head. “There wasn’t enough time for them to have a serious argument. Five, six minutes after she went in, he’s bleeding. Then she went straight out to the terrace and off. She was dosed, that’s my read on this. Who wanted her dead? Her and her brother.”

“She can’t tell me that.”

Eve let out a half laugh. “She believed she could. She was seeing psychics, mediums, all that crapola. Parents killed in an accident last June, and she’s got a secret stash of business cards and info on talking to dead people.”

Now Morris smiled. “I talk to them all the time. So do you.”

“Ever have them talk back?”

“In their way.” He touched a hand, gently, to Darlene’s shattered shoulder. “I talk to Ammarylis often.”

Eve slid her hands in her pockets. Morris had lost the love of his life the previous spring. “I’m sorry, Morris.”

“No, it’s a comfort. I hear her voice quite clearly at times. She picked out this tie, just this morning.”

Not sure how to respond, Eve said, “Okay,” and made him laugh.

“I reached for a gray one, as it matched my morning mood. I heard her tell me to wear the blue—the bold blue. So I did, and it lifted away the gray. Young Darlene was looking for answers, and comfort, I suspect. There are those who can give both—and those who exploit grief and naivety.”

“I’m going for door number two on that one, as the one she walked into led her to that long fall.”

CHAPTER SIX

Eve was halfway through the tunnel heading out when Peabody came in.

“I’m not late!” Automatically quickening her steps in her pink, fussy-topped boots, Peabody checked her wrist unit. “I’m not late.”

“No, I was early. No sign in the female vic of habitual drug use. But she had valerian, peyote, and some as yet undetermined substances in her system—mixed, it appears, with tea and cookies.”

“You think somebody drugged her? But murder/suicide takes—” Peabody’s eyes popped. “Shit! Red Horse.”

“Not according to Morris. Not the same.” And they could all be grateful for it. “Ingested, he believes,” she added as they walked out to the car. “He’s going to crack the whip at the lab so I don’t have to. We wait on that. Where did she get the scissors—shears, Morris called them?”

“Dressmaker shears.” Peabody climbed into the passenger seat, belted up.

“Dressmaker?”

“Broad term, I guess. I have a pair I use when I’m doing some sewing, or a craft project.”

“I went through her residence. I sure didn’t see any signs she did the crafty. No sign in the brother’s place he’d have use for that sort of tool. And if it didn’t belong to either of them, where did she get it?”

“Is it it or them ? Shears, scissors—it’s like plural, probably because of the two blades, but it’s still just one tool, so . . . never mind,” Peabody finished when she caught Eve’s cool stare.

“We’re going by to talk to Louise and the fiancé. I want to know if she owned those shears. She had to have an assistant, an admin at work. Dig it up, check with whoever that is if she had something like that, or access to it, in the office.”

“How about the psychics?”

“On the slate.”

“A pair of mine are in the wind. Bench warrants out on them—co-habs, partners. Fraud and theft. He’d rifle through purses and wallets, help himself, while she held a séance. They’ve been running that scam or others for about five years. They pack up and move off fast, pick another spot, try another variation with new names.”

“Darlene ran backgrounds—not a complete idiot—so that should’ve popped. We’re going to factor in the drugs, look for somebody who hypes the use of herbs to help open the portal.”

“The portal?”

“A couple of the brochures used that one. Bridge, portal, channeling. They’ve got a patter, and there’s a sucker born every second.”

“Minute. Born every minute.”