“I’m strong as an ox, but you’re a good girl. Just on the table there. Sweetie, the girls will be home in a few minutes. Do you want me to steer them off?”
“The lieutenant wants to talk to them, too.”
Mother and daughter exchanged a look. Audrey sat, patted DeLano’s knee. “Well, we’re in this, and everything else, together.”
DeLano tipped her head to her mother’s shoulder. “Always.”
8
Audrey gave her daughter a quick pat on the leg, then shifted to pour the coffee. “Two black—that’s Lieutenant Dallas and me. Two coffee regulars for Detective Peabody and Blaine. And I hope you’ll try my sugar and spice cookies. They’re a favorite around here.”
After she passed around coffee and cookies, Audrey sat back. “Now, what do you need from us?”
“Peabody, photos. I’d like you to look at the photos,” Eve told them.
Mother and daughter huddled together, studied the photos.
“The same person?” DeLano asked. “Brother and sister? It’s hard to see much of either face.”
“Same person,” Eve confirmed. “And at this time the prime suspect in Chanel Rylan’s murder.”
“You can’t see the eyes,” DeLano murmured. “Or the features very clearly. Still, I think if this was someone I knew well, it would click. But it doesn’t. I’m sorry.”
“It’s a woman, isn’t it? At first glance—well, even at a second good look—you assume this one here is a man. But when you see them together like this … You’re looking for a woman?”
“We believe the unsub is female,” Eve said. “And presents herself as the character in the specific murder scene, as written. A woman for the first, a man in this case. This individual clearly selected, studied, and stalked both victims. Very likely selected them from others considered and settled on them because they best represented the victims in the books.”
“It’s more about the books, that’s what you’re saying, than about the women who were killed.”
“It’s more about the books,” Eve agreed. “Which means it’s more about you.”
Eve heard the voices—female—the clatter of footsteps coming from the back of the house.
“The girls.” DeLano squeezed her mother’s hand, got to her feet as the voices—obviously in the heated rush of an argument—ebbed and flowed.
DeLano walked to the foyer. “Heather, Piper! Grand and I are in the living room.”
The voices continued.
“I so did not give Brady Mishner the sexy eyes.”
“You so did. With the hair-flip combo!”
“Cut it out!”
“Brady, Brady!” Kissy noises followed.
“You’re such a wheeze, Piper.” Sounds of a scuffle followed.
Two voices, as one, whined: “Mom!”
“Girls, we have company. Pretend to be civilized.”
As the girls stepped up, DeLano hooked an arm around each of their necks—a kind of affectionate double headlock—and drew them into the room.
The one on the right topped her mother’s height by about an inch, had a long mane of dark blond hair with a couple of bright blue braids worked through it. Startlingly pretty, she wore skinny pants that swirled with color, a sweater that matched the braids, and may or may not have given some boy named Brady the sexy eye–hair flip combo.
The one on the left had the look of a clever, potentially devious elf. The top of her head came to her mother’s cheekbone, and she studied Eve out of long green eyes that tipped up at the corners. She wore her brown, streaked-with-pink hair pixie short, and had on baggies with a sweatshirt t