Trouble breathing, drinks more. Gales of laughter as victim starts to lose consciousness. Screams and scrambling when she vomits. Motive tries to push through crowd to get to victim. Seizures, skin turns cherry-red.
Chaos, confusion. One figure back in the shadows observes, then slips out of the club and away.
Will the killer—in real life—need to find a way to have the motive present?
Eve went back to her list, checked residency, band schedule. She found four slated to be in New York over the next few weeks. And yet, she thought as she read a few follow-up scenes with the motive …
Having him there, making him a part of the death of the ex-lover triggered emotions in him. Seeing her die shattered him, pushed him into grief and depression. Rather than giving the killer what she wanted—his attention and love, his salvation—it built a wall around him.
Would Strongbow edit that mistake? Eve wondered.
She rose to pace, to give her eyes a break, to work her way into thinking like a killer whose entire being sprang from the pages of a book.
By having him in the club, the killer—in the book—failed to achieve her primary goal. The motive didn’t come to her, love her, throw off what she saw as the chains the victim had around him, dragging him down into the abyss. In fact, rather than weaning him off illegals, he used them to block the grief, and missed recording sessions and canceled a swath of tours.
Until the cat ran out of the room, until she heard Roarke’s voice answer the cat’s greeting, she hadn’t realized the low-level stress inside her.
She’d wanted him home, off those icy roads. Safe and with her.
She didn’t run out of the room like the cat, but she did walk out and wrap her arms around Roarke. “It’s bad out there.”
“It’s bloody vicious out there.” He tipped her head back for a kiss, skimming his thumb over the dent in her chin. “And now we’re all in here. And in this world, at this moment, I want nothing more than my cop, my cat, to get out of his shagging suit, and have a very large drink.”
“A hard one?”
“Not particularly, no. Well, but for the bleeding weather. A quick trip to Chicago, or what would’ve been quick but for the bleeding weather.”
“You went to Chicago?”
“Should’ve handled it by holo, and that’ll teach me. Getting there, simple enough. Getting back? Not altogether pleasant.”
And, she thought, he’d have stayed over in Chicago if not for her. She considered her own skidding ride home in the ice storm, and didn’t want to imagine flying through it in a shuttle.
“I’ll deal with dinner while you change.”
“Will you?”
She heard the world of suspicion in his voice.
“It won’t be pizza. But this is the last time it won’t be pizza.”
“What will it be then?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Easing back, he rubbed his hands down her arms. “A hard one?”
“I’ll tell you about it over that big drink.”
“That sounds exactly right. I won’t be long.”
She turned back to her board, conceded she’d done little to narrow the field. Then again, the weather—“bloody vicious” nailed it—lowered the chances of her potential victims braving it for a club night. It seemed to her the killer would conclude the same.
They should all have a little more time, she decided, and went into the kitchen to consider dinner choices.
By the time he came back in black pants and a blue sweater, she had the meal under warming domes and a bottle of wine opened.
“Now this is our version of cozy on a cold and filthy night. I’m grateful for it,” he added as he took the wine.
“Why Chicago?”
“Hmm? Ah, we’ve just finished up a major rehab to one of the hotels, and I’d scheduled the visit, some media and so forth, before this front moved in.”
“You could’ve stayed in the major rehab overnight.”
He danced those clever fingers down her arm. “Then I wouldn’t have my cop and my cat. Unless you’re starved, why don’t we just sit in front of that very nice fire for a bit?”
“I was worried,” she confessed. “I didn’t know I was worried until I wasn’t, but I was.”
“Well, I’m sorry for that. I’m not late home,” he added as they sat on the sofa.
“The weather, I guess. The day.” She shrugged it off.
“And what was the day?”
“It was the Day of the Skanks and the Strange Interlude of the Crafts.”
“Obviously, I want to hear about the skanks, at the very least.”
“What perv wouldn’t?”
So she told him, punched in what she’d learned at the craft store, from the bartender, and ended with the morbid artist.
“But it’s not about them—the possible victims. Not as much about them as the rocker guy. The motive. The killer’s obsessive love—and it’s not really love—is what drives her.”
“Which is why you have all those new faces on the board.”
“The trouble is, they’re not much different from one another. Physical appearance, sure, but they’re a type. The image, the lifestyle. In the book, she kills the obstacle while he’s present. But that’s just one of the ways she went wrong, so I don’t think that’s going to be a factor for Strongbow. Unless …”
“Unless some part of her maintains enough reality to know the obsession ends for her after the murder. The murder is the goal.”
“Yeah. Trying to think like her gives me a damn headache. Add the fact that she’s certainly laid the groundwork for the book after this one, so she has to shift those realities. From this obsessed skanky fan type to the saintly, obedient son—who’s really a greedy bastard—who kills his wealthy mother and pins it on his screwup of a sister. And how does she pull that off anyway?”
“It’s no wonder it gives you a headache.”
“Under it all, whoever she coats herself in, she’s one woman. And that woman knows how to sew, watches her pennies, came from Delaware. Lives alone. Is likely in her forties. If I get a sketch out of that bartender, it’s going to turn this around. Whatever mask she puts on to haunt the clubs, she’s going to show through.”
“You said the bartender described her as a loner, and not very friendly. But in the book, as I recall those scenes, people knew her by name.”
“Yeah, she was part of that scene in the book. I figure either Strong-bow couldn’t pull that off, or she saw it as a mistake in the plot. The killer blends, but goes unnoticed. Except the bartender noticed and remembered her, because she didn’t really blend.”
“Or can’t,” Roarke suggested. “Think of the woman you described. She sews, watches her pennies, is likely twenty years older than many in the club, she lives through books. The writing and the reading.”
“She doesn’t know how,” Eve mused. “It’s not hard to figure out how to book a street-level LC. You can be nervous, look out of place. They don’t care, and they get all kinds. Anybody can sit in the dark at a vid.”
“But weaving yourself into a club scene, and these particular kinds of clubs?” As she did, Roarke studied the board. “It’s more than being able to craft a reversible coat or doctor a drink. It’s attitude, it’s vernacular.”
“A woman sitting alone at the bar at that kind of place, she’s going to get hit on by somebody who figured to get laid up in a privacy room. She can’t do that, not even living inside the character. Not just because she needs to observe, but she can’t get that personal and stay unnoticed.”
“The fuck-off tends to discourage most.”
“Yeah, especially since there are plenty in there who’ll give you a roll with less effort. She’s already altered the character there.”
Rising, Eve walked back to her board. “Still, one of these has to be the object. The vic is the obstacle. It’s not going to matter if he’s on scene at the killing, but he matters. Until he doesn’t.”
“Why don’t we eat, then I’ll see if I can help you find him?”
“Yeah. I’ve got Peabody on it, too.”
Roarke lifted the domes. “This looks dead perfect. What is it?”
“It said pork and beer stew. I figured if there’s beer it’d neutralize the vegetables.” And she’d programmed a single bowl first, prepared to ditch it if it looked awful. It hadn’t, and the smell had done the rest.
“I fed the cat while I was in there,” she added, which explained why Galahad was currently sprawled in her sleep chair in a kibble-with-tuna-chaser coma.
She sampled some stew, decided the beer did help the healthy parts go down easy.
“You know, Nadine’s hooked with that rock guy. Maybe he knows some of those guys.”
“Possibly, though I don’t think Kincade or the band’s played the small club scene in more than a decade. Big venues, major tours. ‘Hooked with’?” he asked. “Going out a time or two doesn’t necessarily lead to the ‘hooked with,’ does it?”
“I had her come in for a one-on-one today, and I poked her a little about him. She got flustered and … girl-like. Maybe I’m not supposed to say how she was and what she said about it. She didn’t say, ‘Don’t say how I was or what I said,’ but maybe it’s supposed to be understood.”
Trying to walk that minefield gave Eve another headache.
“One of those stupid unwritten rules,” she complained, “which make them impossible to keep track of.”
Because he knew her, Roarke followed the convoluted logic. “Before you tangle yourself up in the invisible, I have to say it’s already too late. So, she fancies him then?”
“I guess—if that means she’s got some hots going for him, in American.”