“It’s sick plagiarism.”
“Piper.” Heather shot out an elbow, slickly evaded by its target. “It’s not a joke.”
“I’m not joking. Somebody’s copying Mom’s books to kill people. Sick plagiarism. Do you have a suspect?”
Does the kid ever blink? Eve wondered.
“I’m here to ask the questions. Has anyone approached either of you asking questions about your mother or her work?”
“Just the usual.” Heather took the lead. “Sometimes one of the teachers or one of the other parents asks when a new book’s coming out, or they want us to ask Mom to come talk to a class or their group. She doesn’t much do that.”
“Because she’s working,” Piper … piped up. “And some people just don’t get it.”
Closed ranks, Eve observed.
Girls rock and rule.
“Have you noticed anyone around the neighborhood you felt didn’t belong?”
The sisters looked at each other, shook their heads.
“Peabody.”
Peabody pulled out the photos again. “Have you seen this person?”
“You can’t see the faces, really. Are they the suspects?” Heather asked.
“Not they,” Piper corrected. “Her. I’ve seen her.”
“Don’t make things up.” Elbow jab.
“I’m not.” Return jab. “She was wearing those dopey goggles and the lame-o hat from the other picture. And that coat. The goofy one.” Piper closed those eerie eyes. “She had a scarf, too, but not the one in the picture. I think it was black-and-white. I think.”
“Where did you see her?”
“It was before Christmas. Remember we went on the stocking-stuffer hunt, then had dinner at Angelo’s? We walked.” She shifted to look directly at Eve. “The shops are only a few blocks away, and with the stocking-stuffer hunt, everything’s small, so no prob with big, heavy bags. And we kind of spread out so everybody doesn’t see what everybody else is buying. I saw her in City Kitchen when I was buying those spice bags for Grand, and I found those sugar spoons, too, for Mom’s coffee.”
“Did she approach you?” Eve demanded.
“Nuh-uh. Then we went into … At Your Leisure, and I got Heather those frilly socks, and I spotted Mom going gooey over this robe with blue checks, but she didn’t buy it. So I told Heather and we went back and bought it for her for Christmas.”
Piper looked up at her mother. “That was a good surprise.”
“It was a really good surprise.”
“Anyway. She—the woman in the goofy coat—was poking around in there, too. I didn’t pay much attention because a lot of people were shopping like we were.”
“It was like, two months ago,” Heather began. “You can’t be sure you remember, especially since you can hardly see anything in these pictures.”
“I see what I see.” Piper gave her sister—yeah, that could be termed a sexy eye—and mimed a hair flip.
She earned an elbow jab, but it was half-hearted, and Heather snickered with it.
“Do you remember the date?” Eve asked.
“It would’ve been the Saturday before Christmas,” Blaine supplied. “We always bake cookies in the morning and afternoon, then do the shopping hunt, end the day with pizza at Angelo’s.”
“You and Grand split a bottle of wine,” Piper added. “And got giggly on the walk home.”
“Our family elephant,” Audrey commented. “She never forgets.”
“Have you seen her since?”
“I don’t think so. The goggles are mega lame-o, so I’d remember them. Britta Gleason has a pair almost like them, and she gets pissy when I tell her they make her look goon.”
“Piper!”
“Sorry.” She hunched her shoulders at her grandmother’s rebuke. “She gets annoyed when I tell her she looks goon.”
“She does look goon,” Heather agreed. “Piper does notice things.”
“I observe. I’m going to be a writer like Mom, so I observe. She had a shopping bag! She had a shopping bag from Artie’s. We were in there, too, so that’s three places we were she was—that I noticed.”
“Is she going to try to hurt Mom?”
“Heather, sweetie.” DeLano cuddled her daughter closer. “Of course not.”
“I’m going to be straight. You’ve got good security. Use it. You’ve got good eyes,” Eve said to Piper. “Keep using them. If you see this person again, do not approach. Don’t screw around. Contact the police—local, then me.”
“You don’t … You don’t think she’d go after my children.”
“I think this woman has an unhealthy obsession with you and your books. I think through that obsession she’s killed two people, and I’m damn sure she plans to follow that up by re-creating the scene from your next book. She’s focused on the scenes, the characters, but she’s been close enough for your daughter to identify her as trailing you through local shops.”
“Should I keep them home from school?”
Eve dampened Piper’s instant grin with a head shake. “Not necessary. How do they get to and from school?”
“It’s walking distance. In bad weather we have a carpool system.”
“Talk to the car pool participants, talk to the school. They should be aware. I’m going to speak to your local police, request regular drive-bys, and make sure they’re aware of the situation. Use common sense. Don’t let anyone into the house you don’t know. If somebody comes to the door saying you’ve got a gas leak—verify with the gas company. If somebody claims they’ve had an accident or uses any ploy to try to get you to open the door, it’s nine-one-one.”
“I’ve reached third kup in tae kwon do.”
Eve gave Piper a respectful nod. “Blue belt, red tag. Nice. I’m fifth dan, currently studying with a grand master, and I’m telling you: Don’t screw around.”
“She won’t.” The steel in Audrey’s voice resonated. “None of us will.”
“Good. Peabody, cards.”
Rising, Peabody took out contact cards, handed them out. “It’s good you know how to defend yourself,” she said to Piper. “And your family. Contacting the police is another form of defense.”
“I got it. Heather’s fast. Really fast. She’s lettered in track and field, and cross-country. Running’s a defense, too.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“We’ll stick together, right, Mom? Right, Grand?” Heather took her mother’s hand, her sister’s. “It’s what we do.”
“Meanwhile, I want your fan mail as soon as possible.”
“Oh, I’ve got that for you.” Audrey stood up. “I’ve got all the e-mail on a disc—most comes that way. But I made copies of everything else. I’ll get it for you now.”
Outside, Peabody glanced back at the house as they walked to the car. “It’s a solid family. Serious girl power.”
“Not a pushover among them. Contact local PSD, walk them through it. We’ll go show the photos through these shops the kid talked about. Not much chance anybody’s going to remember like she did, but we could hit a streak of luck.”
Eve got behind the wheel. “That’s not the household of a woman who let herself be bullied, let herself be subjugated.”
“I guess sometimes it takes a punch in the face to shake out the inner strength.”
“I guess it does. After the shops, I’m going to dump you at Central. You can take the photos to Yancy, though I don’t know what even the genius of police artists can do with them. There’s no point in you going all the way to Queens to interview Jefferson, and I’ll work at home after that.”
They not only didn’t have a streak of luck, they didn’t manage so much as a sputter—and no store security that kept the feed longer than forty-eight hours.
As traffic thickened on the drive back to Manhattan, Eve braced herself for a long, ugly slog to Queens.
She passed the disc from Audrey to Peabody, ordered her partner to copy and send to her home unit, and started the slog.
Blasting ad blimps, farting maxibuses, a bike messenger with an obvious death wish, cross streets clogged with delivery vans, crosswalks clogged with pedestrians who appeared oblivious to the meaning of Walk/Don’t Walk signals, cabs, cars, blaring horns, and an underlying rumble of simmering anger slapped together to form New York at rush hour.
Though why some idiot termed it rush hour when it was crawl hour, Eve would never know.
A waste of time talking to Craig Jefferson, she knew it in her bones, but it had to be done. And though she was tempted to wait—to just go home to the quiet—and come up with a ploy to get him into Central the next day, she wanted to see him at home. She wanted to observe his dynamic with his wife.
She soothed herself with coffee from the in-dash AC, and finished the slog.
Another decent neighborhood, she noted, maybe glossier than Blaine’s, but Jefferson’s house couldn’t boast a corner lot. A newer structure, she noticed. Smaller, but … shinier, a two-story painted sleek white, with a short, one-story leg of nearly all glass.
Decent security, she judged, and this time the computer answered her buzz.
Good evening. Please state your name and the purpose of your visit.
“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, NYPSD.” She held up her badge for scanning and verification. “I need to speak with Craig Jefferson.”
One moment please …
It took more than a moment—long enough Eve considered buzzing again. Then the door opened.
She recognized Jefferson’s wife from her ID shot, just as she recognized the anxious look in her eyes. She wore a dark blue sweater with subtle swirls of silver threads worked through and pants that matched the threading. She’d swept her hair back with some sort of blue and silver clips. Maybe to show off the silver studs in her ears.