When Roarke came on-screen, he smiled. “Great minds,” he said. “I was about to check and see where you were and what you were doing.”
“I’m in the city of New York, hunting bad guys.”
“So, the usual. And literal, as I see you’re on the street. Find any bad guys?”
“Not yet, but the day’s not over. Shift is, work’s not. I’m going to drop Peabody off at the Great House Project. Deal is, she and McNab will put in more time tonight on the Greenleaf investigation if I take a look at the progress. Do you want in on the deal?”
“As it happens, I’m already downtown and intended to make the same deal with you.”
“Then I’ll meet you there. Soon.”
“This is mag!” Peabody climbed in the car, then bounced in her seat. “Joyful bouncing is forbidden on the job.”
“We’re off shift.”
“Off shift doesn’t mean off duty. It’s got to connect with somebody on that list.”
She asked herself if she’d stuck the investigation on that point, just bogged it down looking for that connection.
No. The connection was the point.
“Nothing else plays through,” she concluded. “And no one we’ve talked with so far connects there. Or we haven’t found that connection.”
“At the same time,” Peabody continued, “the killer had to be able, or work with someone who was able, to gain access to that window, from the inside most likely. And they had to know Greenleaf—or his wife—well enough to know their routine, to know the layout of the apartment.”
At the light, Eve watched some kid execute a tight backflip on his airboard.
Good form.
“Arnez and Robards’s apartment has the same footprint,” Eve pointed out. “It’s likely others in the building do, too. So we could have someone who lives there, or did. Or knows someone in the building.”
“Or who knows the security feed overwrites every couple of days. So find a way in outside that time frame. A week ago, say. Two weeks. I don’t see longer than that, Dallas. Too chancy that one of the Greenleafs would notice the window’s unlocked.”
“Agreed. It’s too well planned for leaving that to chance. Arnez was the last outsider in there, and roughly thirty minutes before the murder.”
“Yeah, and if it wasn’t for that pesky motive she’d look good.” “She had a … look.”
“A look?”
“When Webster opened the door of the apartment. Just for a second, she had a look.”
Eve shook her head. “Sticking with facts. She had means and opportunity, so I want us to dig deeper there. She’s decades younger than all but one of this women’s group. Does she have friends her own age? Tanaka said Ms. Greenleaf joked about Arnez looking after her. Checking in, did she need something from the market, that sort of thing.”
“It’s considerate.”
“Maybe. It also adds to the information pile on the Greenleafs, gives Arnez more easy access. ‘Got your quart of soy milk and your egg substitute.’ Then you get the: ‘Come on in, have a cookie.’”
“Well, I don’t usually get a cookie, but I sometimes pick up a few things for Rhonda Grappler—do you remember her from when you lived there?”
“Yeah. Down the hall—from Mavis now. I hauled her trash to the building recycler if I was around. And she had to be cruising toward the century mark when I lived there.”
“A hundred and two now.”
“And Greenleaf’s thirty years younger, healthy and active,” Eve pointed out. “I get it may just land on considerate, friendly neighbor. Add she had a legit reason to be in the bedroom. But she’s the only one who stands out in
this group right now. The rest have known each other for years—and most of them decades.”
“Okay, I’ll play. Arnez and Robards move into the same building, and two floors up—same footprint—from the Greenleafs.”
“Greenleaf and Tanaka met Arnez slightly before that when they went into the shop Arnez manages. I don’t see that as coincidence, as Greenleaf has a lot of clothes, it’s a neighborhood shop. High-end, but they have sales, and some people—it escapes me—just like to look around at stuff in shops.”
“They call looking around at stuff in shops shopping. Or browsing,” Peabody considered. “You browse around so you can see the stuff, then decide what to buy or not buy.”
“If you decide what you want to buy before you go in, you can just buy it and save time. If you’re not going to buy anything, you can just stay home.”
“Sometimes you don’t know what you want to buy until you see it. Hence, browsing provides the opportunity to see what’s available, and if you want it for your own.”
“So if you didn’t see it in the first place, you wouldn’t want it? And if you didn’t want it before you saw it, doesn’t it follow you didn’t need it?”
Peabody narrowed her eyes. “Those are snare-Peabody-in-a-trap questions. I take the Fifth and move on. Wait!” She shot up her index finger on both hands. “When people browse and shop and find what they want and buy it, it’s good for the economy. It increases the tax revenue, and allows the merchant to meet their overhead and make a profit so they can stay in business.”
“Uh-huh. I’m sure all the people hauling shopping bags are thinking: I’ve done my civic duty, contributed to the economy, and now the merchant I bought all this stuff I didn’t actually need from can put food on the table tonight.”
Eve glanced over. “Is that what you were thinking when you bought that pink jacket?”
“No, I was thinking: Pretty. But it still works that way. Anyway … So they meet while browsing at Très Belle, and then Arnez and Robards move in.”
“Which automatically makes contact easier.” The easy contact, Eve thought, was going to matter. “To move there, Robards has to commute to Queens for his work, to see his family.”
“But she can walk to her work, and he’s a defender. What’s best for her.” “Maybe what’s best for her is to kill the captain—but we’re not there
yet.”
Eve told herself to run it through, but avoid getting stuck on it.
“They make friends,” she added. “Enough she’s invited into this group of longtime friends.”
“McNab and I are about to move into a beyond-mag house with your oldest friend and her family. Because Mavis and family and McNab and I are friends—through you—and because we moved into the same building— where they took over your old apartment when you moved in with Roarke.
“Relationships are complicated,” Peabody concluded, “and have a lot of intersections.”
“Tell me.” Eve said it fervently. “I’m keeping them on the list. They’re low on it, but they stay on. If we don’t find a connection, they’re clear.”
“You really think we will? Find that connection?”
“Can’t shake it,” Eve admitted. “Something about her, just something, from the minute she came in with Greenleaf.”
“I wasn’t there, so I don’t have that. But we’ll dig, and hard.” “That’s the deal.” Eve pulled up at the gate. It opened.
“Your vehicle’s on the Open Sesame List. That’s what Mavis calls it.” “Right. Sesame’s a seed, right? I know it’s from a story, but why pick a
seed to open something?”
“It’s a frosty word. Sesame! Doesn’t it look abso-mag?”
It did. While she’d been in Europe, the grass had sprouted up into a blanketing green lawn, shaded here and there by young trees or flowering shrubs. Long gone were the dead and dying branches, the overgrown weeds and patches of dirt and scrub.
A wide, paved walkway led to a covered front porch where chairs painted a bright, happy blue, a bench in popping purple, stood ready for people to sit. Pots in every color of the rainbow and more held thriving flowers.
The front door—somewhere between that bright blue and popping purple—of the big, sprawling brick house already stood open.
Saying nothing, Eve pulled into the paved parking area, got out of the car, then stood, hands in pockets, studying the house.
“If I’d imagined a house Mavis would make her home, it wouldn’t have been this. And I’d have been completely wrong. It’s her, it’s so much her. And you,” she added, glancing at Peabody.
“It’s both of you, which shouldn’t make sense. But it does. It’s also a miracle of major proportions. This—the house, this yard business. A couple of months ago, it looked like some rich guy’s neglected shithole. Now? Yeah, it’s abso-mag.”
“I love it so much. I feel like we sort of saved it, you know? It was sitting here, all sad and empty, waiting for the right people to bring it back, fill it up.”
“You’re the right people,” Eve told her.
“You have to see inside. It’s an even bigger miracle.”
As they walked to the house, Mavis ran out to the porch. “Jesus, she got bigger.”
“Well, she’s six months along.”
And in tiny leaf-green shorts and a baby-belly-clinging pink-and-white- striped tee, she looked it. She had her hair—currently pink with some leaf- green tipping—scooped up so it bounced as she did.
A couple of bouncers, Eve thought. No wonder Mavis and Peabody fused a friendship.
“You’re back! You’re here! Check it!” She threw her arms out, then up. “Jesus, she shouldn’t bounce like that. I can see what’s in there sloshing
around, banging its head against her rib cage.” “Number Two’s just fine,” Peabody assured her.
Number One came barreling out the door and kept coming.
She wore cropped overalls in pink with big purple buttons to match the shirt under them. Her curly blond hair bounced, like her mom’s, in ponytails on either side of her ridiculously pretty face.
“Das! Das! Das!”
She came at Eve like a heat-seeking missile, then leaped up, fully expecting to be caught. With little choice, Eve snagged her. She smelled like cherries. And since Eve tasted them when Bella smacked kisses over her face, Eve suspected a recently consumed cherry popsicle or sucker.
It wasn’t bad.
She babbled, laughed heartily, then linked her arms around Eve’s neck, hugged fiercely.
“Rub Das.”
“She wants me to rub her?”
“La-la-la,” Peabody said, and Bella laughed again. “La-la-love Das.”
“Oh, well, hell.”
“Hell,” Bella echoed with a smile.
“You’ll get me in trouble. Anyway, love you back.” Who wouldn’t? Eve thought.
“La-la-love, Peadobby.”
“She’s almost got it,” Eve noted.
“We’ve been practicing. How about giving me some?” Peabody held out her arms. Bella dived into them to smack more kisses between babbles.
Peabody settled Bella on her hip as they walked to the house with Bella babbling.
“We’ll see August next time,” Peabody told her. “McNab’s coming soon, and Roarke, too.”
“How do you know what she said?” “You get an ear for it.”
“We missed you!” Mavis threw her arms around Eve as fiercely as Bella had. And what was inside the growing bump, bumped.
“God, it’s moving in there.” “Number Two’s happy to see you.”
“It can’t actually see me.” Unsure, Eve eased back. “Can it?” “Bellamina, baby’s kicking.”
“I want!” She scrambled down from Peabody, pressed her ear to Mavis’s belly. “Boom, boom!” she said, and laughed like a maniac.
“How was Greece, how was Ireland? I want to hear. We’ll open some wine. Not for me,” she added, patting her belly.
“Not for me. I’ve still got work. But I want to check things out.”
“So much is happening. It’s beyond the beyond. The amazing maga-god crew knocked off about an hour ago, but they finished Leonardo’s studio.”
Now Peabody bounced. “Totally?”
“Totally and too totally tremendo. He’s up there basking around and fussing. My studio’s complete-o, too. They’re moving the rest of the
equipment and furniture in tomorrow.”
Mavis did a hip wiggle that brought Eve more mental images of sloshing fetuses.
“And the— No, wait. Sheesh! You didn’t get to see Peabody and McNab’s place at all last time with Dorian acting like a you-know-what before she came around. How’s she doing at the school?”
“Roarke checked in while we were away. All good. But you’d know that,” Eve said. “You’d have checked with Sebastian, who’d have found a way to check.”
Mavis just rested a hand on her belly and smiled. “How about we go around, go in through Peabody’s side?”
“I run!” Bella announced, and did just that.
“You know what’s absolutely ultra mag? She can. She can run wherever she wants. This one will, too.”
They started around to the side of the house. “It looks great out here, Mavis. Seriously.”
Now Mavis added a shoulder wiggle to the hips. “Let me say, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
As they rounded the house, Bella scrambled up the steps of a slide in the play area. That had been there weeks before, and the beginning of a vegetable garden, the young flowers and vines, the barest bones of Peabody’s water feature.
As Bella slid down with a delighted Whee, Eve stopped in her tracks. “Holy shit, Peabody.”
Water spilled and tumbled down stones from a height of about four feet. The stones formed ledges and drops that invited more spills and tumbles that ran into a kind of rocky stream ending in a small, glittering pool, where a stone dragon kept guard.
Flowers, moss, other greenery pushed out of spaces in the rocks.
It looked as if nature had decided to set a waterfall in a backyard in downtown Manhattan.
“Isn’t it the abso-poso ult?” Crossing her hands over her belly, Mavis just beamed.
“Holy shit,” Eve repeated. “It’s all I’ve got. You killed it, Peabody. Holy shit.”
“It really worked. About halfway through I panicked, and thought it was going to look like somebody—me—just piled a bunch of rocks together. Leonardo talked me through it.”
“My moonpie.”
“How?” Eve wondered.
“He said the same thing happens to him sometimes with a design. And sometimes he’s right, and it turns out wrong. But he can fix it when that happens. He can see where he went wrong if he went wrong, and fix it.”
“Well, it’s freaking beautiful.”
“It absolutely is,” Roarke said from behind her. “Peabody, you’re a wonder.” He kissed her cheek. “A genuine wonder.”
Bella spotted him, shouted, “Ork,” and came running.
He scooped her up, kissed her. “I believe you’ve grown. And you as well,” he said to Mavis.
“Bunches of progress. Here.” A pat on the belly. “There.” A smile for Bella. “In there and out here. We picked tomatoes and peppers—from our backyard—over the weekend. Lettuce, too. Peabody made a salad—put nasturtiums in it. And we all sat right out here and ate what we’d grown.”
She swiped at a tear. “I know I’ll get to the point, one day, that I don’t get drippy whenever I stand out here, see all this, watch Bella play. But right now? Every single time.”
“Mama cwy happy,” Bella announced.
“Yeah, she does. Let’s go inside, in Peabody’s place, before I flood. How about we start in the kitchen, Peabody?”
“My happy place. On the side, we have doors straight into the living area, and one into a mudroom.”
“I saw,” Eve said. “You went with that not really purple, not really blue color.”
“Plum Blue. We wanted to keep it coordinated. We’ve got the full accordion doors on the back.”
“Peabody tried to balk,” Mavis said, “but coordinated won. Do it, Peabody!”
Peabody took out her ’link, coded in. And Bella applauded when the glass doors slid open.
Not as wide an opening as Mavis had, Eve noted, but plenty wide enough.
She’d seen the images on Roarke’s tablet, but …
“I’m saying what I said when I got a load of the waterfall. But silently, so Mavis doesn’t give me the hard eye.”
All the soft colors Peabody wanted—cabinets, some with glass fronts, counters, miles of them. Shelves already holding tools and dust catchers— nice-looking ones, Eve admitted—arranged with Peabody’s artistic eye.
What Roarke had called a living wall served, Eve supposed, as a focal point. Pots of quiet blues held green plants that spilled or climbed or spread.
“My sister made the pots.”
“I heard. When I heard, I figured it would look weird, which is fine. But it doesn’t.”
“McNab thought of it. And the baking counter—it’s custom for my height.”
“Yeah, he gets points. And pie. It’s you, Peabody. The wall there, the whole thing. It’s just completely you.”
“I get drippy, too,” she said as her eyes filled and she ran a hand over a counter. “I always had a home. Homes. Because that’s how I grew up. My home, my grandparents’, cousins’. I always had a home. McNab, too. And we made the apartment home, but we always knew that was temporary. This is…”
She drew a breath. “This is ours. I know we’ll help. With security, with the kids, the garden, with just being here. But Mavis and Leonardo gave us ours. We’ll never forget it.”
“Don’t make me cry again.” Mavis wrapped around her, swayed. “You’re ours, too, so think about that. I’m going to go get Leonardo. He won’t want to miss. Let’s get Daddy, Belle of mine.”
“I run!”
“You bet. Show them around, Peabody. We’ll find you.”
“Okay.” Peabody sniffed, swiped. “Okay. So the dining room—it’s all open now. My mom’s making the light—I think I told you. Blown glass.”
“Yeah.”
“She says it’s almost done, but won’t show me. But I have the basic measurements, so I was going to build a table.”
“Of course you were,” Eve murmured.
“But then, last weekend, McNab and I went to this place in Brooklyn. A giant thrift store, flea market, antiques, or just old stuff place. I found this
great sofa for the living room, just need to reupholster it—but that’s not the big find. I saw this table and it reminded me of the one my dad made, the one they still have. Live edge, this big, thick plank of oak, farmhouse-style legs. It’d seat twelve. We have the counter here when it’s just us, or casual stuff. It was damaged—somebody’s dog had chewed the hell out of a couple of the legs. But fixable, and affordable if we really, really squeezed.
“Then I checked because it just reminded me of my dad’s work. And I found his name and the date on the underside. He always signs his work. I started bawling.”
“And no wonder. The fates led you right to it.”
Peabody nodded at Roarke. “I felt just that. The date? The year I was born. I mean, what are the odds—in Brooklyn?”
“Fate doesn’t trouble with odds,” Roarke told her.
“I guess not, because there it was. The guy selling in that area came running over because I’m sitting on the floor blubbering. Anyway, he knocked fifteen percent off, and McNab squeezed another five out of him. It’s in the garage—since we don’t have cars, at least right now, I’m using it as a workshop. I’m not telling my dad. We’re hoping they come out for Thanksgiving. We’ll be in by Thanksgiving.”
At her hopeful look, Roarke rubbed her shoulder. “You will, with time to spare.”
“I can see just how it’ll look there. I’m going to start hunting for chairs. I don’t want new, and I don’t want them to match. Coordinate’s different. So the dining room’ll take awhile, the living room, too,” she added as she led the way.
“I swear I’ll decide about the feature wall—yes or no—by the end of the week. But I’m thinking we already have one with the fireplace and the bookshelves.”
The bookshelves, still empty, flanked the fireplace Eve remembered as old and grimy.
It gleamed now in its frame of wood, as did all the wood trim Peabody had raved about at first sight.
“So I think just soft walls—the way it flows into the great room area— and street art. Classic old-timey for the sofa. I guess I’m going for urban farmhouse.”
She hadn’t gone soft in the powder room, but bold, artistic, eclectic.
“We were going to put our office downstairs, then we decided hey, let’s use that for another living space, like a party space, or kick-back-and- watch-a-vid space. We’re going to put a bar down there, a big-ass screen. So we went for the office here.”
She opened double pocket doors, and left Eve blinking.
Peabody had said something about splattering paint on the walls, and they’d done just that.
Name the color, it splattered to create a ridiculous, wild, mad space that reminded Eve of EDD.
“We had the best time doing this. Just a free-for-all, paint everywhere.
You should’ve seen Bella.”
Eve glanced back as she heard Bella and her parents approaching.
Leonardo, looking dreamily happy, hugged Eve from behind, set his chin on the top of her head. “Now she wants her playroom walls done like this.”
“And we’ll do it, won’t we, Bella?”
Racing into the room, Bella turned circles. “Paint!” And flicked her little hands everywhere. “Woo!”
“We’re going to put the partner’s desk my dad’s making right in the center. They used this as sort of a formal parlor. And Jesus, the wallpaper. I mean, jeez,” Peabody corrected. “We’ll have screens, a sit-down-and-talk- it-through area, an AutoChef station in the closet. McNab’s building our comps systems. Roarke and Feeney are in on that.”
“Fun for us.”
“You people have strange ideas of fun. It’s a good work space,” Eve said, “even with the crazy walls.”
McNab pranced in. “Am I late to the party?” He sure as hell fit in with the crazy walls.
“We have to duck out of the party soon,” Eve told him. “I’ve got work.
And…” She pointed at Peabody. “Deal.” “What’s the deal?” McNab wondered.
“We’ve got to push on the dead or disgraced cop list.”
“Oh, that’s smooth.” He put his hands in the hip pockets of his many- pocketed, canary-yellow baggies. “I got another chunk done. Why I’m a little late. Sent to your home and office units, Dallas.”
“Then I’d better get to it. Listen, we’ll come back when we close this case. Get the full house tour, both sides. It looks great, very seriously
great.”
“Let’s make another deal.” Mavis snuggled into Leonardo. “The first Saturday night after you close the case, you come for dinner and a tour. We’re getting a grill. Peabody actually knows how to use one, and she’s going to teach Leonardo and McNab. Bella, Number Two, and I are opting out of that one.”
Eve glanced at Roarke, already knowing she’d get a nod. “Okay. That’s a deal.”
Since he’d sent his car away, Roarke got behind the wheel of Eve’s as the family—because damned if that’s not just what they were—waved them off.
“It’s coming right along, and ahead of schedule.” The gates opened.
“So in before Thanksgiving.”
“I’d set October, but now I think the middle of September. They may still have some fussing to do—we need a this for that space. Or thinking like Peabody: I need to paint that table. But the work, I think yes, mid- September.”
“I see a lot of you in there.” “Do you?”
“The if you take this wall out here, you’d have this. If you leave this wall here, you’d have that.”
“It’s given me a great deal of fun and satisfaction to be part of it. It’s a happy place now, and will only get happier.”
“I have to agree with you there. Bella and the next one, they’re going to grow up in a home, with the kind of people we never knew existed at that age. Mavis and Leonardo, they’re great at all this. Then you add Peabody and McNab. You’ve got the handy with the Free-Ager and the geek. It’s a sweet deal for all of them.”
She rested her head back, closed her eyes.
“I was going to suggest dinner out on the way home, but I can see that’s not an option.”
“Sorry. The investigation’s not in a happy place. Do you know an organization called Open Doors?”
“Somewhat familiar. What’s its purpose?”
“Former female inmates. Offering housing when needed, training to move into the workforce, that sort of thing.”
“Ah, yes, I know of it. Are they connected to Greenleaf?”
“No—one of their staff was, but she’s in the clear. How about Another Chance?”
“Very well, yes. Dochas often coordinates with them.” “Darlie Tanaka.”
“Not familiar—wasn’t that one of the names Elizabeth Greenleaf gave you? Her women’s group?”
“Good memory, yeah. She runs it, and she’s clear. How about Della McRoy, so I don’t waste my time there.”
“Yes, I know her a bit and, if my opinion counts, you would be wasting your time there. She founded Open Doors, as I recall now, and works tirelessly to fund and promote it, along with her other good deeds. I find her extraordinary, actually.”
“Fits, and your opinion counts. I can’t say I wasted time hitting those angles. They had to be hit, the people had to be questioned and cleared. I can wish I had the time back, but it wasn’t wasted.”
“We’ll have a meal, and you’ll tell me how I can help.” “I’ve got finances to dig into.”
“And so you give me my evening’s entertainment.” “I need to update Whitney, so I’d like to do holo.” “Easy enough.”
For you, she thought. She really needed to get a handle on that. Soon.
“If I deal with the finances and have time left, I can take part of this list of dead and disgraced cops. It also sounds entertaining.”
For you, she thought again.
“I’ll take you up on it. It’s a fucking long list. Jenkinson got his promotion.”
“That’s very good news, but you expected it.”
“It was fun to see him squirm a little when I announced it in front of the bullpen. I meant to tag Yancy, just to tell him you really liked the painting.”
“I spoke with him. So did Sinead.” “Really?”
“He told me she contacted him first thing this morning. It meant a great deal to him.”
“I’ll still tag him.” She put her head back again. “Did we really only get back to New York about twenty-four hours ago?”
He laid a hand over hers. “Murder has no sense of timing, does it now?” “Sure as hell doesn’t. Can we have spaghetti and meatballs?”
“What a fine idea that is.”
