She’d been covering herself with the transmission. Don’t call me tonight, I’ve got a hot one. It just happens to be your husband, but what you don’t know won’t hurt me.
Or so she’d believed when she’d placed the bubbling call.
And there was a look in those eyes, a kind of live-wire excitement that told Eve Blair Bissel had likely been with her already, just out of range of the ’link.
And when he’d called home, at seventeen-twenty, Eve noted, he’d been very careful to have nothing but his own face on screen. His eyes, cat green, were heavy. The smile, curve of that handsome mouth, was weary, like his voice.
She could see why Reva had fallen for him, more so on the transmission than in the ID still Eve had studied. You added that lazy animation to the face, that slow, sexy voice, and you got a powerful punch.
Hey, baby. I was hoping you’d be home by now. Should’ve called your pocket ’link. Pretty fuzzy with the travel and time change. I’m going to shut down, so you won’t be able to reach me. I’ve just got to catch some serious zee’s. I’ll try you again as soon as I surface.
Miss me, baby. You know I’m missing you.
Covered his ass, too, and gave himself a clear night to play with his bed pal.
Still, it was careless. Reckless. At least it would’ve been if she’d trusted him less. What if she’d tracked the transmission as Eve would do. What if she’d gotten a wild hare and decided to transport herself to where he’d said he’d be?
What if . . . a dozen things that often happened to blow up the secret affair and leave the cheating spouse with his or her ass in the sling.
Instead he’d ended up dead. Because someone else had been tracking, someone else had been watching and waiting for the right time and place.
But why?
“Matching set of cooking tools,” Peabody reported as she walked in. “Missing the bread knife.”
“Would that be a bread knife in our evidence bag?”
“Yes, sir, it would. I also checked the log on the AutoChef. It looks like Reva Ewing had a single serving of chicken piccata and a garden salad at nineteen-thirty last night. Prior to that, there was a double serving of wheat waffles and a pot of coffee at seven-thirty yesterday morning.”
“So they had breakfast together before he left on his fake business trip and she went to work.”
“Security logs also show Reva Ewing entering, alone, at eighteen-twelve. And the gate bell sounding, as per her statement just after twenty-three hundred. Her leaving to retrieve the package and returning with it to the house after a scan also checks.”
“You’ve been busy.”
Peabody grinned. “We detectives do what we can.”
“You’re not going to be able to milk that much longer.”
“I figure I’ve got at least a month to mention my detective status at least three times a day. After that, I’m weaning myself.”
“So noted. I want to take the security discs and the ’links to EDD. If Reva’s being set up, whoever’s doing it knows as much about security as she does.”
“You said if. Do you have doubts?”
“There’s always room for doubts.”
“Okay, so I was thinking—and it doesn’t really gel for me, but since there’s room . . . What if she set it up to look like a setup? It’d be cold, and it’d be risky. But it’d be smart, too.”
“Yeah, it would.” Eve began to go through the desk drawers methodically.
“You already thought of it.”
“Peabody, we lieutenants are always thinking.”
“But you don’t buy it.”
“Look at it this way. If she did it, it’s a dunk. The case fell whole into our laps. Nothing to do but file the reports and wait for it to come to trial. But if she’s telling the truth, we’ve got a real, live mystery on our hands. I just fucking love a mystery.”