«It certainly is.»
«Love. Hate. But no passion.» She yawned, hugely. «If I needed to kill you, I'd want you to suffer. A lot.»
He smiled in the dark. «Thanks, darling.»
She smiled along with him, and slipped into slumber.
10
At seven A.M., Eve was drinking her second cup of coffee and studying the data she'd pulled up on Avril Icove.
She noted Avril's date of birth, her parents' dates of death, and that she'd become Icove's legal ward before her sixth birthday.
Eve read through Avril's educational data—Brookhollow Academy, Spencerville, New Hampshire, grades one through twelve, with continuing education Brookhollow College.
So the kindly doctor had put his ward in a boarding school straight off the bat. How had she felt about that? Eve wondered. Loses her mother—and where had the kid been while Mommy was off in… where had it been? Africa. Who'd kept the girl while the mother was off saving lives, and losing her own in Africa?
Then she loses her mother and gets shipped off to school.
No living relatives. Really bad luck there, Eve thought. No sibs; parents were both only children. Grandparents dead before she was born. No records of aunts or uncles or fricking second cousins twice removed.
Kinda weird, Eve thought. Most everyone had some relation somewhere. However distant.
She didn't, but there were always some exceptions to the rules.
Jeez, look what had happened to Roarke. Go around all your life thinking you're it, then bam! Got yourself enough relatives to people small city.
But Avril's records indicated no blood kin except her two children.
So, she's almost six years old, tragically orphaned, and Icove, her legal guardian, puts her in a swank school. Busy surgeon, busy becoming Icon Icove, raising his own kid, who'd have been, what, about seventeen.
Teenage boys had a habit of getting into trouble, causing trouble, bring trouble. But her run of Dr. Will had shown her a record as spotless as his father's.
Meanwhile Avril's doing sixteen years at basically the same school which struck her as close to a prison term. Of course, she considered as she sipped more coffee, school had been a kind of jail for her.
Marking time, she remembered, until she'd been of legal age and could escape the system that had gobbled her up after she'd been found in that alley in Dallas. Then straight to the Police Academy. Another system, she admitted. But her choice. Finally, her choice.
Had Avril had a choice?
Art major, Eve read, with minors in domestic sciences and theater Married Wilfred B. Icove, Jr., the summer after she'd gotten her degrees—putting him in his middle thirties, with no blemish on his official data, no cohabs.
She'd have to nudge Nadine, see if the reporter could find any juice on serious relationships for the young, rich doctor in any old media records.
No employment for Avril. Professional mother status after the birth of her first child.
No criminal.
She heard the faint swish of airskids and took another hit of coffee as Peabody came in.
«Avril Icove,» Eve began. «Personality assessment.»
«Well, hell, I didn't know there was going to be a quiz first thing.» Peabody dumped her bag, squinted her eyes.
«Elegant and contained,» she surmised. «Well-bred and –mannered, and I want to say correct. Assuming the house is her territory—as it most likely would be considering she's a pro mom and he's a busy doctor—I'd say tasteful and discreet.»
«She wore a red coat,» Eve commented.
«Huh?»
«Nothing, maybe nothing. All that quiet elegance in the house, and she wears a bright red coat.» Eve shrugged. «Anything else?»
«Well, she also strikes me as being subservient.»
Eve's gaze whipped over. «Why?»
«Our first visit to the house, Icove told her what to do. It wasn't 'Hey, bitch, get your ass out in the kitchen.' It wasn't harsh, not even really direct, but the dynamic was there. He was in charge, he made the decisions. She's the WIFE, in big letters.»
Peabody glanced hopefully at the coffee, but kept going. «Which is something I've been thinking about. She's used to him running the show, making the decisions. So it's not that off-base that she'd be kind of blank and out of it when you tell her he's dead. Nobody's giving her a playbook now.»
«She's had sixteen years gilded private education, with honors.»
«A lot of people are school smart and don't have any practical skills.»
«Get coffee, you're starting to drool.»
«Thanks.»
«Her father took off, mother's a medical missionary type, off in the wilds. Dies there.» Eve raised her voice as Peabody hotfooted it to the kitchen. «Only connection I find to Icove is the mother's professional association. Could be they were lovers, but I don't know that it matters.»
Eve cocked her head, studied Avril's ID image on screen. Elegant, she thought. Stunning. And at first glance, she would've said soft. But she'd seen that flash, that one instant. And there'd been steel in those eyes.
«We're going back to the scene,» she continued. «I want to go through the house, room by room. Talk to neighbors, other domestic. We'll need to verify her alibi. And I want to know the last time, prior to her father-in-law's death, she was in the Center.»
«Going to be busy,» Peabody said with her mouth full of glaze doughnut. «They were right there,» she mumbled when Eve frowned at her.
«Where?»
«Under D on the menu.» She swallowed hastily. «McNab went in with the electronics, so he got home after me. Way. He said he red flagged them. He'll bring Feeney up to date this morning, save you the trouble.»
«She wasn't worried about the electronics. She wasn't sweating the security, the transmissions, data.» Eve shook her head. «Either she's ice, or there's nothing there to point at her.»
«I'm still leaning toward the adultery angle. If Avril's in it, she had to have a partner. You don't kill for someone unless you love them, or they've got you by the short hairs on something.»
«Or you pay them.»
«Yeah, that. But I was rolling it around. I know it's high yuck factor, but what if the father-in-law had been up her skirt? We're looking at him to have an interest in young women with that project. She was his ward. So he could've been using her sexually. Then passes her to the son so he could, um, keep her handy. Maybe they were tag teaming her.»
«It's crossed my mind.»
«Then how about this? She's been dominated and used by men. So she turns to a woman. Emotionally, maybe romantically. They hatch it up.»
«Dolores.»
«Yeah. Say they meet, become lovers.» Peabody licked sugar of her fingers. «Between the two of them they figure out how to take out both Icoves, without implicating Avril. Dolores might have worked on Junior, hooked up, seduced him.
«He saw her picture after his father's murder. He didn't blink.»
«Okay, that's cold. But it's not impossible. Or she might've looked different with him. Changed her hair, that kind of thing. We damn well know Dolores killed number one. The same method, same weapon used on number two. Probability is ninety-eight and change that she did both.»
«Ninety-eight point seven. I ran it, too,» Eve said. «Going by that and adding my conviction that Avril's in this, they know each other. Or Avril hired her. It also means Dolores was in town after the first murder. And may still be. I want to find her.»
The door between the offices opened, and Roarke stepped through. The charcoal suit that showed off that lithe body somehow deepened the already staggering blue of his eyes. His hair was swept back from that gorgeous face, and the slow easy smile did something almost obscene to a woman's belly.
«You're drooling again,» Eve muttered to Peabody.