Now he just looked pissed. Righteously.
“Okay, I’m buying it.”
She programmed kibble, and though he didn’t deserve it after costing her a half hour down, she added some salmon.
When she set it down, he strolled over, tail swishing. His body language clearly stated: It’s about damn time.
“Yeah, you’re freaking welcome.”
Eve took the coffee with her into the shower.
Fully awake, considerably less grumpy, she came out to see Roarke standing in the bedroom. Dressed in one of his impeccable suits, he gestured at the empty bowl across the room while the cat wound between his legs and sang his sad song in pathetic meows.
“I can see the bloody empty bowl right there. I’ve eyes. And no doubt if I lowered myself to take a whiff, I’d smell tuna or salmon on your breath.”
“Salmon,” Eve confirmed.
The cat glanced over, obviously concluded the jig was up. He strolled toward the fire, sat, and began to wash.
“You didn’t feed him before, right?”
“I didn’t,” Roarke confirmed, “as he was both sprawled out and snoring, and I knew I wouldn’t be more than forty minutes or so.”
“He woke me up, sitting his tonnage on my chest and staring holes through my brain.”
“If we put a micro AC on his level, he might learn to operate it.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Eve pointed out. “He operates us.”
“Entirely too true.”
Eve went back to the AutoChef, put herself in charge of breakfast. Which meant a Summerset-and oatmeal-free day.
While she contemplated her choices, Roarke switched on the financial reports, muted the sound. He stood a moment, studying what would always remain incomprehensible to her, while she settled on berries, bacon, and mmm pancakes.
She topped it off with a pot of coffee.
“Did you add a planet to your collection?” she asked as she carried plates to the table of the sitting area.
“Not this morning. I’ll get the rest.”
She sat, drenching her pancakes with syrup while he brought over the berries and coffee. “So, what’s on your plate today?” she asked him. “Besides breakfast.”
“As it happens, I just agreed to pay a quick visit to an ag complex I have an interest in. In Bristol.”
“Where’s Bristol?”
“England. Since that requires considerable shuffling of the day’s schedule in any case, I’ll likely check on the rehab in Italy before heading back. A pity you have a case,” he added as he poured coffee for both of them. “Or we could take a day or two.”
To the bone, Eve knew she’d never take to the idea of casually shuttling off to Europe. “Do you need a day or two? For the work, I mean.”
“No, a few hours. It’s more for public relations than work in Bristol. For Italy, I think it’s time for an unexpected drop-in. I expect you’ll be in the field quite a bit today.”
“Starting with the morgue.”
“Lovely. My best to Morris, of course.”
Considering, Eve ate more pancakes. “You go to Europe, I go to the morgue. That about sums it, right?”
“And yet here we are.” Roarke patted her leg. “Sitting here having breakfast while our cat calculates if he can manage to snag some bacon.”
“He can’t.” Lifting a slice, Eve gave the cat the same quality of stare he’d given her. And crunched in.
Once she’d hit her limit on pancakes, she went to her closet to dress, and to line up her morning agenda.
Morgue, then Cop Central to put her board together there, check any reports, update. Schedule a consult with Mira—get Mira the data. A visit to the victim’s apartment, Eve added. See how she lived, fill in some blanks. A talk with the people in charge of the auditions, the casting. Another talk with the vet assistant who took the bogus emergency.
As she planned it out, she pulled on black trousers, a white shirt, yanked a gray V-neck sweater over that when she remembered the temperature. Shifted to grab a black jacket at random, but Roarke beat her to it.
He stepped in, took another—a sort of tweed, maybe—of deep forest green with touches of gray and black woven through.
“There’s an undertone of green in the sweater,” he pointed out.
She frowned down at it. “It’s gray.”
“With a green undertone.”
She shrugged, took the jacket from him, then deliberately grabbed brown boots.
“You’d be breaking my heart if I didn’t know you’re winding me up.”
“Serve you right if I wore them anyway.” She switched them for black.
“I need to go deal with the schedule changes, which will likely have Caro set her hair—or maybe mine—on fire.”
Eve sat to pull on the boots, imagined Roarke’s steady-as-a-rock admin would handle it all, without flames. “I’ll see you when we’re both back.”
“Meanwhile, take care of my cop.” He bent over to kiss her.
“I will if you take care of my traveling gazillionaire.”
“That’s a deal.”
Alone, she strapped on her weapon, filled her pockets. She gave Galahad a quick scratch and rub—no point holding grudges—then jogged downstairs.
Coat, scarf, snowflake cap, then out into the cold where her car sat, engine and heater already running thanks to the man who thought of everything.
And, thanks to the cat, she ran thirty ahead of schedule. No ad blimps blasting yet, she noted, and traffic at the edge of insane rather than fully over the line.
Some commuter trams, overhead and on the street, carted the night shift one way, the early shift another.
Eve used her wrist unit, dictated a text to Peabody.
Skip the morgue, go straight to Central. Get me a consult with Mira, and clear the way for us to go through the vic’s apartment.
More time saved, she thought as she played weave and dodge on her route downtown. Time she’d spend getting that subscription list for the vid palace, running down the names.
Somebody knew you, Chanel, knew a lot about you, Eve thought. Coworkers aren’t ringing so far. Exes aren’t ringing.
A neighbor maybe, somebody who belonged to the same gym, or shopped at the same market.
A friendly woman, everybody said. A happy one. Friendly and happy tend to talk to people.
Neighbors, she thought again. Markets, a gym if she used one, bank, beauty salon. And the vid palace.
Somebody you see regularly, but more important, who sees you.
Before you know it, you’ve got a target on your back.
Or on the base of your skull.
Those angles played in her head all the way downtown.
When she walked through the white tunnel of the morgue, her boot steps echoed. She heard muted voices behind a set of doors, smelled bad coffee, something fried. Hash brown cake, she decided, which somehow managed to be both disgusting and delicious.
She stepped into Morris’s theater and a chorus of voices singing about … making the match.
“Early and bright,” Morris commented, turning the music down to a murmur.
He stood beside Rylan’s body in a navy suit with thread-like stripes of maroon. His shirt matched the stripes and the tie played both colors together in a pattern she thought they called—for whatever reason—paisley. He’d braided his long, dark hair, then twined it with maroon cord.
His eyes, exotic, sort of beautiful, smiled at her from behind his safety goggles.
Rylan’s chest, already spread, lay open to him.
“The cat woke me up, so I got an early start.”
“Our Galahad’s not ill, I hope.”
“No, fat and healthy. He wanted breakfast, and apparently we’re there to serve. Anything I can use yet?”
“As you see, I haven’t gotten far, but I can tell you that at this point, I see a healthy, well-proportioned female who took care of her body. Though slightly underweight—as many are in her profession—she has exceptional muscle tone. A lovely face as well, and no signs I’ve found thus far of any surgical enhancements.
“Your TOD concurs with mine,” he added. “She was enjoying some lightly salted popcorn and Diet Coke when she died.”
“I don’t get how anybody enjoys popcorn if it’s only lightly salted, but it takes all kinds. COD?”
“I’d suspect the ice pick plunged into her brain stem.”
“Ice pick.” Eve nodded.
“You’re looking for one with a spike about three inches long, with a diameter of three millimeters. It has a wooden sheath, as I found microscopic traces of wood in the wound.”
“That’s good, that’s helpful.”
He ordered his work screen on. Eve watched a spine, and what she assumed was the brain stem attached, revolve in bright yellow and blue.
“The spike entered between the first and second vertebrae, penetrated the brain stem, disrupting the central nervous system in a slightly upward angle. With that penetration, the brain ceased to transmit orders to breathe, to regulate body temperature and blood pressure, heart rate. That cessation would result in, most likely, a short seizure as the body—cut off from the brain—objected, you could say. Death followed quickly, a matter of seconds.”
“How good would you have to be to make that shot, in that spot?”
“A bit of practice.” Morris lifted his shoulders. “From reasonably close range on a sitting target, you wouldn’t need more than a rudimentary search to know where to aim, and your aim could be off a bit and produce the same results. If you’re thinking the killer needed medical training or expertise, I have to say no. May have had, certainly, but wouldn’t need it.”
“Okay.” Hands in pockets, she wandered. “Okay. Ice picks are easy to come by. They use them in bars, commercial kitchens. She worked in a place that has a bar and a commercial kitchen.”
“I thought she worked in the theater. That’s a cast recording playing now, from one of the plays she worked in.”