Page List


Font:  

Eight

Eve had Peabody stop at the bank Hopkins had used for his loan on Number Twelve. But there was no safety deposit box listed under his name, or Bray’s, or any combination.

To Peabody’s disappointment, Eve took the wheel when they left the bank.

She couldn’t justify asking Roarke to do the search for a safety deposit box, though it passed through her mind. He could no doubt pinpoint one, if one was there to be pinpointed, faster than she could. Even faster than EDD. But she couldn’t term it a matter of life and death.

Just a matter of irritation.

She put in a request to Feeney to assign the task to EDD ace, and Peabody’s heartthrob, Ian McNab while she and Peabody headed back to Bygones.

"McNab will be so completely jazzed about this." Smiling - as if even saying his name put a dopey look on her face - Peabody wiggled in the passenger seat. "Looking for a ghost and all that."

"He’s looking for a bank box."

"Well yeah, but in a roundabout way, it’s about Bobbie Bray and the ghost thereof. Number Twelve."

"Stop saying that." Eve wanted to grip her own hair and yank, but her hands were currently busy on the wheel. She used those hands to whip around a farting maxibus with a few layers of paint to spare. "I’m going to write an order forbidding anyone within ten feet of me from saying Number Twelve in that - what is it - awed whisper."

"But you just gotta. Did you know there are all these books, and there are vids, based on Number Twelve, and Bobbie and the whole deal from back then? I did some research. McNab and I downloaded one of the vids last night. It was kind of hokey, but still. And we’re working the case. Maybe they’ll make a vid of that - you know, like they’re going to do one of the Icove case. Completely uptown. We’ll be famous, and - "

Eve stopped at a light, turned her body slowly so she faced her partner. "You even breathe that thought, I’ll choke you until your eyes pop right out of their sockets, then plop into your open gasping mouth where you’ll swallow them whole. And choke to death on your own eyeballs."

"Well, jeez."

"Think about it, think carefully, before you breathe again."

Peabody hunched in her seat and kept her breathing to a minimum.

When they found the shop closed and locked, they detoured to the home address on record.

Maeve o

pened the door of the three-level brownstone. "Lieutenant, Detective."

"Closed down shop, Ms. Buchanan?"

"For a day or two." She pushed at her hair. Eve watched the movement, the play of light on the striking red. "We were overrun yesterday, only about an hour after you left. Oh, come in, please. I’m a little flustered this morning."

"Overrun?" Eve repeated as she stepped into a long, narrow hallway brightened by stained glass windows that let in the winter sun.

"Customers, and most of them looking for bargains. Or wanting to gawk over the Bobbie Bray collection." Maeve, dressed in loose white pants, a soft white sweater and white half boots led the way through a wide doorway into a spacious parlor.

Tidy, Eve thought, but not fussy. Antiques - she knew how to recognize the real thing, as Roarke had a penchant for them. Deep cushions in rich colors, old rugs, what looked to be old black-and-white photographs in pewter frames adorning the walls.

No gel cushions, no mood screen, no entertainment unit in sight. Old-world stuff, Eve decided, very much like their place of business.

"Please, have a seat. I’ve got tea or coffee."

"Don’t worry about it," Eve told her. "Your father’s here?"

"Yes, up in the office. We’re working from here, at least for today. We’re buried in inquiries for our Bray collection, and we can handle those from home."

She moved around the room, turning on lamps with colored shades. "Normally, we’d love the walk-in traffic at the shop, but not when it’s a circus parade. With only the two of us, we just couldn’t handle it. We have a lot of easily lifted merchandise."

"How about letters?"

"Letters?"


Tags: J.D. Robb In Death Mystery