Festive in Death

  She knew damn well they did their little finger tap behind her back.

  “Nothing stood out on the run, Lieutenant.” Peabody made up for the finger tap with a brisk report. “A couple minor bumps, one with some outstanding traffic violations, but nothing that rang. Coburn’s run her business out of its current location for nearly six years.”

  “Okay. Nobody liked him. Most of the coworkers don’t come right out and say so, but it’s clear he won’t be especially missed around here. Words like arrogant, sneaky, ambitious, and asshole are the most popular.”

  She nodded to Lill.

  “Lill Byers, the manager, will witness our access to the deceased’s employee locker. I’d also like Detective McNab to take a look at any computer Ziegler would have used.”

  “Oh, man.” Lill did the hand over hair scoop. “Staff lounge on the third floor. We’ve got two minis up there. Mostly everybody brings their own pocket or tab, but we provide the two minis, full software. I don’t know his passcode.”

  “I can get it,” McNab assured her.

  Inside the locker room he pulled a scanner out of his pocket, ran it over the first lock.

  “Changed the factory default, upgraded. Wait.” Using his thumbs he keyed in some sort of code, ran the scanner again. “Serious upgrade. Bank-vault quality on a gym locker. Huh.”

  “How long is this going to take?” Eve demanded.

  “He redid the works, and he’s got a thirteen-digit code on there, layered. It’s going to take a few minutes.”

  Eve jammed her hands in her pockets, thought of Roarke. Her husband, the former thief, would likely slip through the damn locks like smoke. But she could hardly ask him to put a pause on his day as emperor of the business world to open a damn gym locker.

  “Why would he go to all this trouble?” Lill wondered. “What the hell has he got in there?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “Why the hell not get a lockbox at home, or a bank box?”

  Eve watched McNab painstakingly work through the code. “Employee locker’s free, right?”

  “Yeah.” Lill sighed, shook her head. “Cheap bastard. Shit, shit! That’s horrible. He’s dead. I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Eve advised.

  “Maybe I could get you all something. Some juice, a smoothie. We have some really nice teas. Why don’t—”

  “Got it!”

  The last number clicked, disengaging the primary lock.

  “Okay, he put two layers of twelve on this one,” McNab muttered, more to himself than the room. “Total overkill, total waste ’cause all I have to do is . . . Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  Numbers popped up on his scanner, glowing red as he tapped his thumbs, jiggled his hips, tapped his foot in the dance so many e-men choreographed while working.

  Seconds ticked to minutes until Eve had to pace away and back again a few times to keep from nagging him to get the damn thing open.

  “Nearly there, Dallas. Not such a tricky one. Just tedious. He spent a lot of time on the layers, but no pizzazz. Just takes some time.” He glanced over at her, grinned. “Watch it be empty after all this! Wouldn’t that be a bitch?”

  “Don’t make me kick your ass, McNab.”

  “Last sequence coming up, locking in, and . . . bam! Overridden. It’s all yours, Lieutenant.”

  “Okay, let’s see what was so fricking important.”

  It wasn’t empty.

  Wrapped packs of bills formed neat stacks and rows. Low denomination, Eve noted, banded in thousand-dollar packs.

  “Holy shit!” Lill clamped a hand on Eve’s shoulder as she leaned in, goggled. “Holy shit, where did Trey get all that money? Cash money. Who has that kind of real money anywhere?”

  “Good question. Peabody, let’s get an accurate count with Ms. Byers as witness, then seal and log. He put the second lock on when?”

  “Ah. God. Maybe a month ago,” Lill managed. “Maybe more like six weeks. Yeah, more like six weeks ago.”

  Just what kind of side business had Ziegler launched in the past few weeks? Eve wondered. Whatever it had been, it had proven lucrative and deadly.

  “A hundred and sixty-five thousand, Dallas. A hundred and sixty-five thousand-dollar stacks, and one broken stack with five thousand. Crisp new twenty-dollar bills,” Peabody added. “Rubber-banded. Not bank-banded.”

  “Seal it up. McNab, go through the staff comps here, then take his home unit, his ’link. Do the works. We appreciate your time and cooperation,” she told Lill.

  “Will you kind of keep me up on things? I can’t believe Trey had all that money in there. I can’t believe he’s dead. None of this is really getting through, you know?”

  “Will let you know what we can when we can.”

  “Okay. Oh, listen, let me get you a bag. A complimentary Buff Bodies gym bag. You can’t carry all that money out of here in those clear bags.”

  “Good thought.”

  Once it was loaded up in the bold red bag with the glittery double B logo, Eve glanced at her wrist unit. “We’re going to take a good, hard look at his financials. We need to get this into evidence, then double back here, talk to Coburn, check in with Morris, and start working down Ziegler’s client list.”

  “I know but, Dallas? I’m carrying a hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars in a gym bag.” Peabody slung it over her shoulder like Santa Claus as they walked back out into the cold. “I mean, jeez! Ho, ho, freaking ho!”

  “I’ve never held this much money at one time in my life. I thought it would be heavier,” Peabody said as they walked into Cop Central.

  “What kind of asshole keeps that much cash in a staff locker at a gym? Cheap bastard’s right. Wanted the cash,” Eve speculated. “No record of it that way, you can wash cash easy enough.”

  “I’ll start on the financials, but no way that was saved up or legit. It was all new money. New money smells really good.”

  “No sniffing the evidence.” Eve hopped off the glide.

  She wanted to swing into Homicide, check a few things, start her murder book and board while Peabody dug into the vic’s financials. Then they’d circle back around for interviews.

  Plus her office at Central offered the one thing she hadn’t had access to since she’d been rudely called out of a warm bed in the middle of the night.

  Real coffee.

  She turned into the bullpen and the noise of comps, voices, ’links. Someone had dug out a tatty and tawdry length of silver garland, strung it over the side windows. An even tattier sign announcing “HAPPY HOLIDAYS” hung crookedly from it.

  Perhaps the same determined elf had dragged in the pitiful, spindly fake tree, propped it in a corner. ID shots of detectives and uniforms decorated the branches with Eve’s stuck on the stubby top.

  “Seriously?”

  The slick-suited Detective Baxter stepped over to study it with her. “Santiago pulled it out of the recycler.”

  “Waste not, want not,” Santiago said from his desk. “Carmichael did the decorations.”

  “We’re the spirit of Homicide Christmas,” Carmichael claimed. “If murder cops can’t be festive this time of year, who can?”

  “What? ‘Happy holidays, fucker, you’re under arrest’?”

  Carmichael grinned. “Works for me.”

  “It’s not bad. Peabody, financials.” She turned, started toward her office, and got the next surprise when Roarke walked out.

  He looked perfect—as if the gods had gotten together over drinks one night and decided to join together to create something extraordinary. So they’d carved the face of a wicked angel, added eyes of wild blue, then sculpted a mouth designed to make a woman yearn to have it pressed to hers.

  Those eyes warmed now, the mouth curved.

  Love, she thought again
, came in all colors, shapes, and sizes.

  She’d hit the jackpot with hers.

  “There you are, Lieutenant.” The Ireland of his birth wound smoothly through his words. “I just left you a memo cube.”

  “Did I forget my toe warmers?”

  His eyebrows, the same inky-black as the hair that spilled nearly to his shoulders, raised. “Your what now?”

  “Nothing. Come on back if you’ve got a minute.”

  “I do now.”

  He brushed a hand down her arm as they started back. His version, she supposed, of the Peabody/McNab fingertip tap.

  “Your men weren’t sure when to expect you back. I had a quick meeting down this way, so I stopped in.”

  They stepped into her tiny office.

  Roarke cupped her face in his hands, kissed her before she could object. “Good morning.” Then he flicked a finger down the shallow dent in her chin. “You’ve put in a long day already.”

  “Dead guy,” she said simply.

  “And what does the dead guy have to do with Trina?”

  “Ex of a friend. I need coffee.” She turned to the AutoChef, programmed two, hot and black. “I was ready to strangle her with her own hair for getting me up and out at that hour, but— Oh, thank fat Santa and all the pointed-nosed elves,” she said at the first sip of coffee.

  She took another hit, then shrugged out of her coat, tossed it aside. “She and her pal got juiced up, went to the ex’s place to do some mischief—itching powder level. Jesus, are they twelve? Instead they find the ex dead. Bashed in the head, then stabbed. Killer left a festive note.”

  He followed it, and her, easily enough as he sipped his coffee. “You’ve eliminated Trina and the friend?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Guy was an asshole. Worked over at Buff Bodies. We’ve just come from there. I had to send for McNab to access his employee locker. The vic doubled the lock, programmed it to block masters.”

  “A pity you didn’t tag me as I was close.”

  “Didn’t know or I might have.”

  “And what was he hiding?”

  “A hundred sixty-five thousand in cash. All twenties, all new bills.”

  “Interesting. Now, that’s very interesting indeed.”

  “Not a huge haul in the grand scheme—a Roarke grand scheme anyway—but a nice pile for a guy who lived in a cramped little apartment in a dicey neighborhood and liked really nice clothes.”

  “It’s considerable,” Roarke corrected, “in any scheme, when tucked away in a gym locker.”

  “Yeah, it is. The way it looks, he got the windfall in the last few weeks and dumped Trina’s friend shortly thereafter. He was already banging somebody else. And he was up to something at work. Don’t know what, but something. McNab’s on his electronics. Peabody’s on the financials. I’m going to write up the report, open the book, then go talk to the ex before his last ex.”

  “Busy, busy. What did he do at Buff Bodies?”

  “Personal training and massage work.”

  “Hmm. The sort of intimacy that leads people to talk about personal business. Blackmail?”

  “My first pick.” She could appreciate he’d lean there first, too. “I’ve got to figure whatever he was into, it was a new enterprise. He made noises about starting his own place in the tropics.”

  “It would take more than under two hundred K to start up a tropical fitness business.”

  “Yeah, but he was an asshole.”

  “Perhaps one who planned to add to that windfall. I’ll let you get back to it. I can fit a quick bit of shopping in before my next meeting.”

  “Don’t say shopping.”

  He grinned at her. “Haven’t finished yet, have you?”

  “There’s time. Plenty of time.”

  “Mmm. Barely started then.” He kissed her between the eyebrows. “Best of luck there. I’ll see you at home.”

  “I started,” she called out, heard him chuckle as he walked away. “Sort of.”

  Frowning, she picked up the memo cube he’d left on her desk. Activated.

  I was in the neighborhood, so I stopped in. Charming holiday decor in your bullpen, Lieutenant. As I didn’t give you your daily reminder this morning, consider this that. You’ve two days until our holiday party. Meanwhile, take care of my cop.

  “Two days? How did it get to be two days?”

  She dropped down at her desk. Okay, she admitted, shopping had now bumped up to the urgent area on her to-do list.

  But first things first.

  She began setting up her murder board.

  Blackmail, she thought. Extortion. A scam.

  No way she’d buy Ziegler came into more than a hundred fifty large by legal means.

  So who had he blackmailed, extorted, scammed?

  Whoever it was would top her list of suspects. She just had to get there.

  RED SHOES, she wrote on her notes, then grabbed her coat, headed out.

  “Peabody, with me.”

  “Nothing hinky in his financials I can find,” Peabody said, scurrying to keep up. “He lived close, but not because he spent a lot on food and lodging. It’s all clothes, skin care, body and hair services, that sort of thing. He spent on himself, his appearance. No major deposits or withdrawals. A lot of charges, but in the areas I said. He ends up with a lot of late fees, but he eventually pays.”

  “So, it’s all show and self-indulgence. And sex.”

  “Sort of like a licensed companion without the license.”

  “Not bad, Peabody.”

  Eve risked the elevator, wondered who had had the bright idea to pump in holiday music in a cop shop. And how she could punish them.

  “He could’ve started charging for sex on the side, but I don’t care how good he was, nobody’s worth that kind of scratch inside a few weeks. A client could get a good, experienced, safe LC for a reasonable rate. But blackmail’s another thing. Threaten to tell a spouse, maybe.”

  “Shortsighted,” Peabody commented as they reached garage level. “You’d for sure lose the client if you blackmailed her, then you lose the commission and any chance for more.”

  “Some people only see the right now, and end up killing the golden duck.”

  “Goose. The golden goose.”

  “Duck, goose, what’s the difference? They’re both weird-looking birds.”

  “Did you ever play Duck, Duck, Goose?”

  Eve pulled out of the garage, into traffic. “Did I ever play with ducks and goose—geese? Why the hell would I?”

  “No, the kids’ game, where you sit around in a circle, then one kid walks around, tapping the other kids on the head. She says, ‘Duck, duck,’ until she taps one and says, ‘Goose.’ Then that one, the goose, chases her around the circle, tries to catch her before she gets to where the goose one was sitting. If she doesn’t catch her, she goes around the circle.”

  Eve stared out the windshield. “That has to be the dumbest-ass game of all dumb-ass games.”

  “It’s kind of fun when you’re six. We had roast goose when we went to Scotland to visit McNab’s family over Christmas,” Peabody continued, obviously caught in a theme. “It was really good. We’re doing the quick in and out shuttle this year to see my family. It’ll be soy and tofu and lots of veg, which doesn’t compare. But my granny will bake, a lot—and that makes up for everything. She makes the most incredible mincemeat pie.”

  “I thought your guys didn’t eat meat.”

  “Mostly they don’t. Mincemeat isn’t meat.”

  “Then why do they call it meat?”

  Peabody sat a moment, baffled. “I don’t know. Maybe it used to have meat, but my granny doesn’t make it like that. It’s all kind of fruit and spices and I think some whiskey or something. I have to ask for the recipe now. I like making pies.”

  Holi
day shopping had infected downtown. With all the shops open, hyping gifts everyone had to have, parking became more challenging. Eve beat out a mini for a second-level space by punching vertical and zipping up and in with a couple of coats of paint to spare.

  “Jesus, Dallas, warn me next time. Look there’s a bakery. Bakeries sometimes have hot chocolate, and always have pastries. I had a simulated egg pocket from Vending. It was worse than it sounds. A lot worse.”

  “Later,” Eve said and arrowed straight to Natural Way.

  It was a quiet little place, homey, with what Eve thought of as Free-Agey, foresty fairy music playing softly.

  It smelled of cranberries, and a little pine, a hint of cinnamon. And, indeed, she saw the daily special drink was some sort of cranberry-cinnamon tea.

  A few people sat at tiny tables drinking out of mugs the color of stone or eating what looked to Eve like grass and berries, or in one case a muffin that resembled tree bark.

  The countergirl offered a dreamy smile. “Welcome to the Natural Way. What can we do for your body, mind, and spirit?”

  “You can get the owner.” Eve held up her badge.

  “Oh, you’d like to see Alla? She’s busy in the kitchen. We’ve already run out of our yamberry muffins, and we’re low on our nipnanna pie.”

  “That’s a problem. You need to get her.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes, for the good of your body, mind, and spirit.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “What the hell is nipnanna?” Eve wondered.

  “Turnip and banana pie.”

  Eve turned her head, looked hard into Peabody’s face. “You’ve got to be lying.”

  “Not. My aunt makes it. It’s not quite as bad as it sounds, but almost. Yamberry muffins, now—that’s yams and cranberries—that’s pretty good stuff.”

  “Please.”

  “It’s no apple Danish, but it’s pretty good.”

  Alla stepped out. Her chestnut hair was bundled under a squat chef’s cap, leaving her fresh, pretty face unframed. She wore a long, flowered dress over a willowy form, and a gray bib apron over the dress.