* * *
"I've never worked a cold case before."
"Don't think of it as cold," Eve told her. "Think of it as open."
"How long has this one been open?" Peabody asked.
"Going on six years."
"If the guy she was doing the extra-marital banging with hasn't shown in all this time, how do you rout him out now?"
"One step at a time, Peabody. Read the letters."
Peabody took them out of the field bag. Midway through the first note, she let out an Ouch! "These things are flammable," she said, blowing on her fingers.
"Keep going."
"Are you kidding?" Peabody wiggled her butt into the seat. "You couldn't stop me now. I'm getting an education." She continued to read, eyes widening now and then, throat working. "Jesus, I think I just had an orgasm."
"Thanks for sharing that piece of information. What else did you get from them?"
"A real admiration for Mr. C's imagination and stamina."
"Let me rephrase. What didn't you get from them?"
"Well, he never signs his name in full." Knowing she was missing something, Peabody stared down at the letters again. "No envelopes, so they could have been hand-delivered or mailed." She sighed. "I'm getting a D in this class. I don't know what you're seeing here that I'm not."
"What I'm not seeing is more to the point. No reference to how, when, or where they met. How they became lovers. No mention of where they boinked each other's brains out in various athletic positions. That makes me pause and reflect."
At sea, Peabody shook her head. "On?"
"On the possibility that there never was a Mr. C."
"But—"
"You have a woman," Eve interrupted, "married for several years, with a good, responsible job, a circle of friends she's kept for, again, several years. From all statements none of those friends had any inkling of an affair. Not in the way she behaved, spoke, lived. She had no time missing from work. So when did said athletic boinking take place?"
"The husband traveled fairly regularly."
"That's right, which opens the possibility for an affair if one is so inclined. Yet our victim exhibited all indications of loyalty, responsibility, honesty. She went to work, she came home. She went out in the company of her husband or with groups of friends. There were no unsubstantiated or questionable calls made to or from her home, office, or portable 'links. Just how did she and Mr. C. discuss their next tryst?"
"In person? Maybe he was someone at work."
"Maybe."
"But you don't think so. Okay, she appears to have been committed to her marriage, but outsiders, even close pals, don't really know what goes on inside someone else's marriage. Sometimes the partner doesn't even know."
"Absolutely true. The primary on this agrees with you and had every reason to do so."
"But you don't." Peabody acknowledged. "You think the husband set it up, made it look like she was cheating, either set up the alibi and snuck home to kill her, or had it done?"
"It's an option. That's why we're going to talk to him."
Eve shot up a ramp to the second-level street parking, muscled her vehicle between a sedan and a jet-bike. "He works out of his home most days." She nodded toward the apartment building. "Let's see if he's there."
* * *
He was home. A fit, attractive man wearing athletic shorts and a T-shirt and holding a toddler on his hip. One look at Eve's badge had a shadow moving into his eyes. One that had the texture of grief.