“Then boom, bad spill, bad knee, dream dashed. Now you’re teaching instead, showing other people how to do what you’ve wanted since you were a kid. You’re choreographing those big-ass shows instead of taking the bows.”
Hooking her thumbs in her pockets, she nodded toward Minx Novak’s photo.
“You get married, have a kid, sucking it all up, living a life. But then, it all comes around, it comes around and shoves it all in your face. There’s Eliza Lane again, making the big splash, riding on the break she got all those years ago because your sister died. Your sister’s dead, and Lane is going to sing and dance right over her dead body, again.”
Eve walked back, picked up her coffee. “All those memories come flooding back. So it’s fuck that, and fuck her. This one’s for Rose.”
She drank some coffee. “It’s a theory, and it smells like motive. Now potentially two lines of means, with two other sibs. And opportunity, no question on that.”
“An opposing view? Even a loving sister—assuming she is—would have a difficult time blaming anyone but Rose herself for her death.”
“Novak’s eleven, and her mother’s on marriage number three. Scars,” Eve said. “Sometimes scars rip right open and bleed again. It doesn’t have to be Lane’s fault Rose died. But it’s her fault for profiting—fame and fortune–wise—from it. She plans to do it again. And there’s the whole payback is a salad thing.”
He looked, as he rarely did, baffled. “All right, there you’ve lost me. How is payback like a salad?”
“It doesn’t have to be hot, right? You eat it cold, a salad.”
“Ah, I think we’ve gone around this one before, so I should’ve gotten it. Revenge, darling Eve, is a dish best served cold.”
“What I said, basically. And I don’t know about best anyway, because a lot of people like it served up all hot and bubbly. But a connection like this isn’t bollocks.”
“I wouldn’t argue with that, only tell you her finances are aboveboard. Her father’s and stepmother’s as well. Solid citizens there. I didn’t see anything to flag on the two—the photographer and the office manager—that may be your cyanide source. The photographer has financial ups and downs, but nothing murky. And the officer manager is clever financially, but straight with it. If either of them accessed the poison, it doesn’t show there.”
“If either did, it’ll show somewhere else.”
“All right then, we’ll each take one, do the run, and see if something pops up.”
“I can toss one to Peabody.”
“I’m sitting right here,” he pointed out, “and may as well keep myself busy until this part’s done and we can go back to where we were interrupted last night.”
“Will do cop work for sex?”
“It’s become my daily mantra.”
He gave her one name, took the other.
She pushed, and hard. An hour later, even after the cat had deserted them, after reviewing her own results, Roarke’s, running probabilities from every angle she could think of, she had nothing more to hang her theory on.
“Could be one of the in-laws; she’s got plenty. Or she found another way to access it.”
“All true.” Roarke took her hand, hauled her to her feet. “You’ll confront her about all of this in the morning and get more answers.”
“I can buy nobody making the connection. Novak to Bernstein to Rose. Plus, nobody, after all this time, would remember Bernstein if it wasn’t for Lane. But Novak not telling anybody? I want the why.”
“I’ve no doubt you’ll get it. I have to admit, looking at her, her husband, the family I’ve poked through? She doesn’t strike as the murderous type. And before you remind me,” he added as she walked into the bedroom, “I’m aware of how many murderous types hide under the gloss of innocence.
“Their last big purchase? Furniture for their daughter’s bedroom.”
“Killers have kids.”
“So they do. Did you know Malcomb Furrier wrote the lyrics for ‘Only One’?” At her blank look, he smiled, turned her into his arms. “We danced to it at our wedding. Entertainment unit, play ‘Only One.’”
As the music slid into the room, she had a picture, a vivid one, of dancing with him under summer skies, the scent of flowers everywhere.
“I remember,” she said as she moved with him now. “I remember feeling weird I didn’t feel weird dancing with you while everyone stood around watching.”
“Almost three years now.”
“I had a shiner. Fucking Casto.”
He kissed her under the eye that had been blackened. “It didn’t show, thanks to Trina.”
“Don’t say the name.” She put her head on his shoulder. “I like dancing with you better when no one’s watching, but that was good. I dumped all the plans on you.”
“Fucking Casto.”
She laughed, tipped back her head. “It probably came off smoother without me. It was a really good day.” Then she laid a hand on his cheek. “I love you more now.”
“Eve.”
“Because I know more now. It was all such a rush, wasn’t it? And I know more now. What it takes, who you are, what we have. Even when I piss you off, you’re going to be there. Like I’m going to be there even when you piss me off. So there’s more.”
“Loving you changed everything for me. Being loved by you opened everything for me. Every day is more,” he said, and lowered his mouth to hers.
She remembered the first time he’d kissed her, all that wild urgency and need. And remembered the stunned joy of the kiss on their wedding day, under an arbor of flowers.
Now this, soft, strong, sweet, while music played, after a long, hard day, this gift of knowing, of being home again.
He circled her around, a slow dance, then eased her weapon harness away to set it aside. She tugged the leather tie out of his hair and did the same.
The end of work mode for both of them.
“Replay,” she ordered as the music faded off. She began to unbutton his shirt. “We had a really big party after that dance.”
“We did.”
“It was pretty late when people finally went away, but then we came up here. Like this.” She ran her hands up his chest, then linked her arms around his neck.
“The wardrobe was considerably different,” he pointed out as he emptied her pockets—the badge, the ’link, the communicator. “But otherwise…”
With the memory in mind, he picked her up to carry her to the bed. The cat sprawled over it, stretched out as far as felinely possible.
Eve said, “Scram.”
Galahad opened one eye, aimed a baleful look with it before he rolled, leaped down, and stalked away.
“We’re going to need the room,” she finished as Roarke laid her down. With her arms still linked around him, she drew him down with her.
He simply sank into her, into the kiss, into the moment.
She could wipe the world away for him, and had owned that power almost from the first instant. Those eyes, the color so like the whiskey he’d sipped, looked, saw him, loved him anyway.