“And Leo does. Love you?”
“Leo? Leo needs me. And that’s enough.”
“I have to say, it sounds to me like you’re selling yourself short.”
“That’s nice of you. But I’m no prize, Lieutenant. I’m selfish and demanding.” She gave a light, amused laugh. “And I like that about me. I expect to be given my own time and space when I require it, and any man in my life must understand that my work is the priority. If he does, and he’s loyal, needing me is enough. Leo’s weak, I know that,” she continued with an elegant little shrug. “Maybe I need a weak man, maybe that’s why I couldn’t hang on to Roarke for more than a few weeks. Leo suits me. And being weak, Lieutenant, is just one more reason he can’t be the man you’re looking for.”
“Then neither of you have anything to worry about. He lied during our initial interview. Someone lies to me, I’m going to wonder why.”
Her face softened in a way that told Eve whatever she said about need being enough, she loved Leo Fortney. “You frightened him. That’s natural, isn’t it, for someone to be frightened when they’re questioned by the police? Especially about a murder.”
“You weren’t.”
Pepper blew out a breath. “All right. Leo has trouble with the truth occasionally, but he’d never hurt anyone. Not seriously.”
“Can you tell me where he was on Sunday morning?”
Pepper’s lips firmed, and her eyes stayed direct. “I can’t. I can only tell you where he said he was, and he’s already told you that. Lieutenant, don’t you think I’d know if I was living with, sleeping with, if I were intimate with a murderer?”
“I can’t say. You may want to tell him that if he wants to get clear of this, he can start being straight with me. As long as he… has trouble with the truth, I’m going to keep looking at him.”
“I’ll talk to him.” She got to her feet. “Thanks for seeing me.”
“No problem.” Eve walked her to the door, and opening it saw the waiting car. And her aide huffing down the drive on foot.
“Officer… what was her name?” Pepper asked.
“Peabody.”
“Oh yes. Officer Peabody looks to have had a difficult morning already. That storm last night cooled things off a bit, but not enough. Not nearly enough yet.”
“Last gasp of summer in New York. What else can you expect?”
“Teach me to stay in London.” She offered her hand. “I’d still love for you and Roarke to come to the play. Just contact me anytime and I’ll arrange for seats.”
“Soon as things cool off for me a bit, we’ll take you up on it.”
She watched the driver get out, open the rear door of the small town limo. And waited until a breathless and sweaty Peabody rushed up the steps.
“Sir. Sorry. Overslept, then the subway… breakdown. Should’ve contacted you, but didn’t realize-”
“Inside, before you fall over with heatstroke.”
“I think I’m a little dehydrated.” Peabody’s face was lobster-red and starting to drip. “Can I have a minute? Splash some water on my face.”
“Go. Christ, next time take a cab!” she called out as she jogged upstairs to get her jacket and what she needed for the day.
She grabbed two bottles of water from her kitchen, and met Peabody coming out of the powder room. Her aide’s color had calmed down, her uniform was straightened, her hair neatly combed and dry again.
“Thanks.” Peabody took the water, and glugged at the bottle to add to the water she’d slurped up in the powder room. “Hate to oversleep. I was up late studying.”
“Didn’t I tell you that you can over-study? You won’t do yourself any good going into the exam burned out.”
“I just gave it a couple hours. Wanted to make up the time I took checking out apartments with McNab. I didn’t realize we had a meet with Pepper Franklin.”
“We didn’t. She stopped by to defend Fortney.” Eve headed out the door and around to the garage. She hadn’t thought to tell one of the droids to have her car brought out in front. Summerset did it without her asking. The fact that it was the sort of detail that slipped her mind, and never slipped his, just annoyed her.
“Well, at least I know I’m not losing my mind,” Peabody managed as she quickened her pace to match Eve’s. “So much going on right now. Jesus, Dallas, we signed a lease. It’s a good space. Got an extra bedroom we can set up as a shared office, and it’s close to Central. It’s in your old building, so Mavis and Leonardo will be neighbors, and that’s mag, and it was really great of Roarke to put us on to it, but…”
“But what?”
“I signed a lease, with McNab. It’s like, huge. We’re going to be moving in together in thirty days.”
Eve coded into the garage, waited for the doors to open. “I thought you were already cohabitating.”
“Yeah, but informally. Real informally. He just hangs at my place most of the time. This is the real deal. I got the jitters.” She pressed a hand to her stomach as she walked to Eve’s police issue. “So I dove into studying as soon as we got back, then I got the jitters from that. Then I couldn’t sleep because of the jitters, so I jumped McNab to sort of remind myself why I’m doing this, and that took a while because, you know, I was pretty jittery-”
“I don’t want to hear that part.”
“Right. Well, I didn’t settle down until pretty late, and was so conked I must’ve deactivated the alarm before I was fully awake. Next thing I knew it was an hour later.”
“If you got up an hour late, why are you only…” She checked her wrist unit. “Fifteen minutes behind?”
“I skipped some of my usual morning stuff. Was okay until the subway breakdown. That threw me off, and now I’ve got the jitters again.”
“You can just forget about jumping me to take your mind off them. Look, Peabody, if you’re not prepped for the exam by now, you’re not going to be.”
“That doesn’t do a lot to calm me down.” She brooded out the window as Eve drove through the gates. “I don’t want to tank. Embarrass myself, you.”
“Shut up, you’re giving me the damn jitters. You’re not going to embarrass anybody. You’re going to do your best, and it’s going to be good enough. Now pull yourself together so I can brief you on Smith before we talk to him again.”
Listening, making her own notes, Peabody shook her head. “None of this stuff is in his official biographical data, or on any of the unofficial fan sites. I don’t get it. Guy’s a total publicity hound, and he likes to go for the heartstrings. So why not play up how he came from an abusive home, overcame it, and believes in the power of love, cha-cha-cha.”
“Cha-cha-cha?” Eve repeated. “I can think of a couple reasons. First, it doesn’t fit his image. Strong, handsome, romantic male of the so-clean-I-squeak variety. Doesn’t mesh with the poverty level, physically abused son of a part-time LC-who’s still tapping him for money.”
“I get that, but you could play that angle and sell discs out the yang.”
“Yang. Does that go with cha-cha-cha?” Eve wondered. “Okay, yeah, it might make some women feel sorry for him, even respect him, and plunk down the price of a disc. But that’s not what he wants.”
“What does he want?” Peabody asked, though she thought she was beginning to connect the dots.
“It’s not money. That’s just a handy byproduct. He wants adulation, hero worship, and fantasy. He boinks young groupies because they’re less likely to be critical, and he plays to older women because they’re more forgiving.”
“And he surrounds himself with female staff because he needs to be taken care of by women, because he wasn’t taken care of by the woman who should have done so when he was a kid.”
“That’s how it shakes for me.” Eve turned a corner and swung around a maxibus that was lumbering its contingent of commuters to their hives and cubes. “The public image doesn’t want to have to overcome anything, but just to be. The man of your dreams isn’t some kid who got knocked around by his mother after she turned a trick. Or I should say, his view of the man of your dreams isn’t. He’s built himself into an image, and he has to stick with it.”