“It’s okay,” Eve heard herself say.
“There’s a rose on the pillow on one side of the bed, and since I was poking, I looked in the drawer of the nightstand, and there’s what you’d call adult play toys, and the like. I’d say the mister was expecting someone not his wife, like he has before.”
“Before?”
“Twice since we’ve been working here I’ve done that room. Both times when we knew the missus was away for a day or two that room was used. The bed was used—and I’ve been doing beds long enough to know when somebody’s had relations in that bed. There’d be that, and the bucket, the empty bottle, the glasses, and so on. The setup. Bathroom would’ve been used, too. Nobody used the bed or the bath in there this time, but it was set up for relations.”
“Mama.” Sila shook her head. “You take the cake and a slice of pie.”
“It’s a terrible thing happened to Senator Mira—and now this other man. I know because while we were waiting upstairs I had Dara look on her handheld to see if there’s been another murder, and there was. A terrible thing, though I didn’t like Senator Mira as far as I could spit rocks. But a man shouldn’t be killed, and killed so mean, just because he’s a prick.”
Dara giggled, then slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”
“No problem. Mrs. Trent, that’s really helpful. Did you notice anything else?”
Frankie sucked air in her nose, furrowed her brow. “Well, I don’t know how much help, but I think he changed out of his business suit when he came home. It was tossed in the chair in the master, and his good shoes were under the chair. Nobody in this house puts a thing away proper. I can’t tell you what he put on, but it looks to me like he came home, took himself a shower in the master bath, and put on fresh clothes. Then he went about setting up for relations in that guest suite. I guess he doesn’t think it counts if he doesn’t take them into the bed he shares with his wife. Put your hand over your mouth in advance, Dara, because I’m going to say a man who cheats is a prick, but I hope he doesn’t get killed for it.”
Since Eve thought the same, she couldn’t argue.
She asked a few more questions, just to see if something else popped up. Then let them go.
Peabody joined Eve in the hallway.
“I got ahold of the wife,” Peabody began. “Played it light, and she’s too involved in her morning massage to clue in. Plus, dumb as a brick, which I’m pretty sure is an insult to bricks. She says ‘Freddy’ will be joining her tomorrow or maybe the day after. She needed a little alone time first. Alone means a house full of staff, her personal assistant, the two nannies, and her masseur. His name is Sven.”
“If her husband ends up dead, she’ll have plenty of alone time. Frankie Trent says he uses a guest suite upstairs for sex when his wife’s away, and it’s set up for same now. Unused, but set up.”
She gave a come-ahead head jerk and started up. “She said twice in the six months they’ve worked here, she’s cleaned up that room while he’s supposedly having his alone time.”
“Jeez, why doesn’t he go to a hotel for it?”
“My guess? He thinks this is more discreet, and he’s lazy. Woman comes here, he wines her and bangs her, then she goes home. He just rolls himself down to his own room, sleeps in his own bed.”
“How does anyone live with all this red?” Peabody scowled down at the red carpet. “And all the gold braid? Oh, and I wandered into what I guess is the formal dining room. All the walls are mirrored, and so’s the ceiling. How can you eat when you’re watching yourself eat? I don’t know how—”
“Screaming Jesus Christ!”
At Eve’s shout—nearly a shriek—Peabody drew her weapon. “What? What?”
“In there. Oh, Christ on a catapult, they’re everywhere.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Peabody turned, half expecting a room filled with giant, hairy spiders. Hairy, red-eyed spiders.
And faced a room filled with dolls.
Baby dolls, glamour dolls, smiling dolls, crying dolls. Dolls en pointe in tutus and dolls in swaddling clothes. Dolls with tiaras, dolls with fur coats, dolls in native costumes of every culture and land.
Dolls as small as her hand. Dolls the size of a healthy toddler.
Peabody liked dolls fine—had played with her share and never quite understood her partner’s deep phobia. But the sight of them, of hundreds of them, had her backing up a pace.
“I . . . think we should close the door.”
“I think we should lock it. I think we should barricade it. That one.” Eve pointed. Slowly. “That one over there on the horse thing. I think it blinked.”
Peabody cast a leery eye toward the cowgirl doll with her smiling face and pink hat. “She did not. You’re weirding me out.”
“You’re seeing what I’m seeing, and I’m weirding you out? Who does this? What kind of sick, twisted mind has a room full of dead-eyed little humans on display?”
“I don’t want to know.” Holding her breath, Peabody reached out—slowly, slowly—then pulled the door shut with a loud snap.
“That many of them?” Eve said. “Oh, they can get out if they want.”
“Stop it. Just stop it.” Peabody hustled down the hall, and kept her weapon out until she was two yards away. “Don’t say anything more about them. Nothing. Sex and murder. Let’s just think about sex and murder.”
Eve walked into the guest suite—cast one glance over her shoulder (just in case)—then got down to business.
“Frankie isn’t wrong. Betz was expecting sex company. Unopened champagne, two glasses, the strawberries, rose on the bed.”
She opened the drawer of the bedside table. “Vibrators, a variety, glides in various flavors. Condoms, also flavored. Nipple clamps—jeweled.”
“Ouch.”
“Some get off on the ouch. Velvet cuffs. And, some Erotica, some Stay Up, other chemical boosts. Illegal ones mixed in. But they never got up here. Took him out downstairs, easy and quick, I bet. Stun to the groin. No bashing him around here. They learned that the first time. Stun him, get him out of the house and into their transportation. He let them in. Maybe he had a double scheduled, maybe he thought he got lucky. Maybe they just caught him off guard, but he let them in, and they took him out.”
“If they took him last night, they took him while they still had Wymann.”
“Yeah, they’re the ones who had a twofer.” Eve thought of the big, gaudy chandelier in the entranceway. “They’ll want to string him up tonight.”
“Following pattern, they’ll bring him back here.”
“When and if they do, we’ll be all over them. We’re going silent on Betz. No chatter, no media, no alerts. Meanwhile, let’s see if we can find out the name of his date for last night.”
They started for the master suite, giving the doll room a wide berth. The doorbell pealed.
“I’ll take it—probably EDD.”
Peabody stopped dead. “You’re going to leave me up here? Alone? With them?”
“You’re armed. They probably aren’t. Check his nightstand, his closet, and his bathroom. If he’s hiding anything from his wife, those are likely the places they’ll be.”
She checked the screen downstairs, saw McNab with his long tail of blond hair under a big, wooly cap with striped earflaps. And to her surprise, her former partner and the captain of EDD. Feeney, his wiry ginger hair uncovered, and his hands deep in the pockets of the magic coat she’d given him.
She hit the locks, opened the door. “Didn’t figure I’d rate the brass.”
“Gotta get out in the field now and then, kid. And with you shooting for three in three days, you rate. What the hell kind of door is this?”
“Wild to the mega,” McNab said, “and deep into bizarro.”
“It’s just the entrance into bizarro. There’s a room upstairs that’d curl McNab??
?s hair.”
“S and M?” Feeney asked.
“Dolls. A zillion dolls.”
Feeney hissed through his teeth. “Sick fucks.” Hands still in his pockets, Feeney lifted his droopy eyes to the gold chandelier. “That’s where they’d want to hang him. Right over those weird fat fish. Good security. No forced entry on the other two, right?”
“None, and unlikely here. You can clear that, but here’s the rundown as I see it.”
While she briefed them, McNab went over the security on the front entrance.
“Crotch tattoos and sidepieces.” Feeney shrugged. “It’s a stretch to sex club—more a rape club. But you got two of them done the way they were done? Somebody’s really pissed off.”
“They start off stunning them in the balls, Feeney, and sodomize them using the ever-popular hot poker. That’s more than really pissed.”
“Can’t argue. It’s got sex all over it, and it don’t feel like any of that woman scorned crap. Me and the boy here will take the electronics. You got a club, you got a roster or rules put down somewhere.”
“Nobody came through the front without the codes,” McNab told them. “I’ll check the other doors, the windows. She-Body upstairs?”
“Yeah—no ass-grabbing. Like I said, he was expecting company, and it wasn’t the first time. We need to cross off break-in, but he let her in—or them. So he knew at least the one he was planning on sexing, but she didn’t worry him. He knew about Edward Mira, had to. But he wasn’t worried.”
“They got him? He’s worried now. He got a home office?” Feeney asked. “I’ll start there.”
“Third floor, according to the cleaning crew. I haven’t been through yet. Let me check with Peabody, and I’ll find you. I want to look at his personal spaces.”
She found Peabody in Betz’s closet.
“More sex stuff, both nightstands. His and hers goodie drawers,” Peabody said. “Makes me think the stuff in the guest room is reserved for women other than his wife.”
“Well, that’s delicate of him.”
“He’s got a closet comp—wardrobe in categories—and I haven’t finished, but I’m not finding any evidence he packed for a trip. There’s a notation that he removed black silk boxers, gray twill trousers, a navy blue cashmere crew neck sweater, gray loafers, and navy blue cashmere socks. The comp says those items came out at six-sixteen P.M., yesterday. There’s also a jewelry safe. It’s locked.”
“We’ll have McNab or Feeney take a look.”
“Feeney’s here?”
“McNab’s on doors and windows, Feeney’s starting in Betz’s office. If you’ve got this, I’m going to take the office, any place else he might claim as just his.”
“I got this.” Stepping back, Peabody fisted her hands on her hips, turned a circle. “I keep thinking there should be some hidey-hole. If he’s into something bad, he wouldn’t leave anything about it in his workplace, right? I mean, less likely to leave it where some nosy somebody might stumble on it. And here? He’d want it hidden away from his wife. She was a sidepiece before, right?”
“That’s right.”
“So cheat with me, cheat on me. That’s my thinking. I figure she probably gets into his stuff now and then, just checking. Or even if she doesn’t maybe he’d figure she might. So where’s she going to look?”
“His personal spaces,” Eve agreed, and frowning, studied the room-sized closet. “False wall, false drawer, hidden floor access.”
“If it’s here, I haven’t found it yet, but I’m going through with that in mind.”
“Good thinking.”
“I’m not checking in that creepy doll room.” Face set, Peabody swiped a hand through the air. “I draw the line.”
“He doesn’t strike me as a guy who plays with dolls. That’s her space.”
“Just so we’re clear.”
“I’m on the third floor. If we need more hands and eyes, I’ll pull in Baxter and Trueheart.”
“Maybe you could tap Roarke—if he has some free time. If there’s any hidey-hole, he’d find it.”
“I’ll keep that in my back pocket.”
If there was a secret panel, drawer, safe, hole, Eve thought as she climbed to the third floor, Roarke would find it, and quicker than any cop.
But she couldn’t tap him, ask him to toss off whatever world-shaking meeting he might be in to follow her partner’s hunch. A good hunch, Eve thought, but still only that.
But like Peabody, she’d look with that in mind.
Betz’s office space proved as ornate as the rest. The desk must’ve been custom-made, as it had the frisky cherubs carved into its heavy, dark wood. The top was a marble slab with a lot of silver squiggles and flecks running through the black. Behind it sat a throne-like leather chair in bright gold. The combination put her teeth on edge.
If this decorator Roarke hired suggested anything remotely close to this scheme, Eve decided she’d deserve a boot out the window. She’d just keep that in mind, too.
Feeney sat on the throne, looking rumpled, wrinkled, and normal.
“This butt-ugly desk has two locking drawers. Neither locked now.”
“Is that so?”
“It looks to me like somebody riffled through them pretty good.”
She crossed to him over red carpet so thick she wondered it didn’t suck the boots off her feet. Both bottom drawers were fitted with keypad locks. Feeney had them both open.
“Paper files?”
“Looks like house and personal stuff in one, work stuff in the other. Finances, insurance, repairs, like that. Lot of people don’t trust digital, keep paper backups. You’re one of them.”
“Yeah.” She fingered through. “Either he’s disorganized and messy, or someone went through these, at least superficially. Looking for what?”
“Can’t say, but the desk comp was riffled with, too. Full scan and search executed at nineteen-twelve.”
“He changed clothes about an hour before that—closet comp—getting ready for his date. Date comes in, with a friend because there’s two of them, and likely three. Stuns him, maybe roughs him up a little. We didn’t see anything like this at Wymann’s, but I’m going back, looking again. What did they want here?”
She circled the office with its hard colors, elaborate space.
“Nothing to find in the Spring Street house, and they can’t get into the Mira penthouse.”
“Tortured him.”
She turned back, nodded. “Yeah, and maybe he gave them something on Betz. Betz has this or that. Maybe, like you said, that roster, those rules, something on this brotherhood of theirs. But what’s the difference if they’re going to kill them anyway? It’s not like they’re looking for evidence. They’ve already tried and convicted.”
She looked behind art of strange, long-bodied dogs and rearing horses.
Finding nothing, anywhere, she looked back at Feeney as he busied himself checking ’link transmissions.
“You cheated on your wife.”
He kept working. “Not if I wanna live past Tuesday.”
“Think like a cheat. You end up marrying one of the women you cheated with. You’re still cheating—it’s what you do. Do you keep anything to do with your sidepieces, and more, anything to do with something that would turn a woman murderous, where the current wife could find it?”
“Me? I’d have a separate account she didn’t know about, maybe a bank box, too. And, if I’m rich like this asshole, I’ve got a place she doesn’t know about. If I had a place when I was cheating with her, it’s gone, sold, done when I’m cheating on her. Anything I did cheating with her, I switch up now.”
“A place. A place,” she murmured. “Like Edward Mira had the hotel. His wife knew he cheated, so he didn’t have to worry about it. Wymann wasn’t married—I’m still waiting for Roarke to tell me if
he used the hotel. We’ll do the same with Betz. But, a place. A place just for sex. You can only have it here when your wife’s out of town, and you really like cheating.
“He’d need a key, a swipe, codes, something. And he wouldn’t keep it in a desk drawer, even a locked one, where his wife might get to it.”
She opened a door, looked into a red and silver powder room, turned and studied the bar in the corner of the office.
“I bet I know where she doesn’t go.”
Eve walked out, jogged downstairs, back into the master.
She found Peabody and McNab beside the huge red (naturally) bed with its avalanche of pillows. They had a look in their eyes, but fortunately for them nobody’s hands were on anybody’s ass.
“I don’t think anybody broke in a second-story window.”
“Nobody broke in anywhere,” McNab told her. “Two other doors on the main, and neither of them have been opened for twenty-six hours. The windows haven’t been opened for weeks. I figured I’d take the ’links and comps in here.”
“Is that what you figured?”
He grinned. “Abso-true. And hang with She-Body while I’m at it.”
Saying nothing, she walked over, looked into the hers bathroom.
As she suspected, it was filled with frills and a carnival full of pink.
The cleaning crew had started there, so fresh pink towels and white towels with pink edging were stacked on a painted bench or hung on a standing rack. Surfaces—all pink and white—shined, and the air gave off a faint whiff of citrus. Jars of various girl products stood on the long counter between two pink vessel sinks. The faucets were silver mermaids, and that motif was repeated in the triple-glass shower.
In addition to the divan—pink-and-white stripes—there was a curvy vanity; drawers full of creams, lotions, enhancements; a closet filled with various robes and slippers; a mini AutoChef and friggie built into the wall.
The toilet rated its own little room with mermaid art and a wall screen.
She stepped back out. “Have you been in there?”