Born In Death

True enough, she thought. “I’m calling some more hands and eyes.”

“We work on Sunday, so everyone does?”

“Would I be that small and petty?”

He gri

“You’ll have him,” she said, and sitting back laid a hand on her stomach. “I think I feel a little sick.”

“Small wonder after you sucked down a liter of maple syrup.”

“Couldn’t have been that much.” But she thought she could almost hear it swish inside her as she turned to her ’link.

She had a message from the garage manager on Fifty-eighth. The discs were wiped – that was a dead end.

She’d barely finished waking up cops and moving into her office when Mavis walked in with Leonardo.

“I knew you’d be working.” With shadows dogging her eyes, Mavis gripped Leonardo’s hand. “See, I told you she’d be working. Have you found anything?”

“I’m talking to people. I told you I’d let you know as soon as something broke.”

“I know. But…”

“She barely slept all night,” Leonardo put in. “She wouldn’t eat this morning.”

“I’m standing right here,” Mavis said irritably. “Don’t talk like I’m stupid.” She pulled away from him. “I can’t think about anything else. How could I? I should be able to help. There has to be something I can do.”

“You can go home and let me do my job.”

“Don’t you talk to me that way either,” Mavis snapped. “Like I’m defective or whatever just because I’m pregnant. Tandy’s my friend, and she’s in trouble. I’m not going to sit home and do nothing.”

“Why don’t you sit here then,” Roarke began, and she rounded on him.

“I don’t need to sit. Do you see these?” She pointed down at purple gel-sole boots. “They call them feet, and I can stand on them. The next person, the next who says I should sit down, or lie down, or eat is going to get bloody.”

There was absolute silence as three people eyed Mavis as if she were a homemade boomer with a questionable fuse.

“I’m strong and I’m healthy.” She took an audible breath. “And I’m not sitting home on my fat, knocked-up ass while Tandy’s missing. Look at you.” She jabbed her finger at Eve now. “You think I can’t look at you and see you haven’t slept either? You think I don’t know I asked you for a major? If you were in my place, you wouldn’t be brushed off either.”

“I can’t be in your place as I don’t have a fat, knocked-up ass to sit on. Yeah, you asked me for a major, and if you want me to come through on it, you’ll sit down, shut up, and let me work. Bitch.”

There was a second moment of humming silence as color flooded into Mavis’s face. Then she jerked up her chin. “That’s über bitch to you.” Now she sat, and the room seemed to sigh in relief. “I’m sorry.” Mavis pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I’m sorry. Multiple apologies all around. Don’t make me go home. Please.” She dropped her hands. “Please give me something to do.”

“You can write up the time line from my notes for my report. And you can make coffee.”

“Okay. Okay.”

“I could make the coffee.” Leonardo glanced at Mavis. “I’d like something to do, too.”

Mavis reached for his hand, then pressed it to her cheek. “Maybe you could make me one of your special breakfast frappés.” When he leaned down to kiss her, she took his wide face in her hands. “You’re the best thing that ever was, and I’m so sorry.”

“Now that we’ve all kissed and made up…” Eve began.

“I haven’t kissed you yet. Or you,” Mavis added with a flirty smile for Roarke.

He responded by crossing to her and brushing his lips over hers.

“Maybe we could all get something done,” Eve finished. “Roarke, I’ll pass McNab on to you as soon as they get here. Leonardo, make the coffee strong and black.” Eve rose as the men moved in opposite directions, then rolled her auxiliary computer to where Mavis sat.

“Thanks for calling me a bitch. I needed it.”

“Anytime.”

“Dallas, would you tell me what you know?”

Eve ran through it briefly while she set up the comp so Mavis could work.

“You found out so much already, so much I didn’t know. I guess Tandy and I were always talking about now, and tomorrow. She didn’t go into yesterday. Do you think…maybe do you think she and the baby’s father got together? Maybe they’re just taking a couple days alone?”

“I’m going to try to contact him again. We’ll find out.”

“Dallas? Whatever happens with this, I want you to know I’m really grateful. And I love you.”

Eve laid a hand briefly on Mavis’s shoulder. “No mushy stuff while I’m doing cop work. Timeline.”

“I’m all over it.”

Eve went back to her desk to try Aaron Applebee again. With a glance toward Mavis, she put the transmission on privacy mode.

And this time he answered.

“Applebee here.”

“Lieutenant Dallas, New York Police and Security. You’ve been tough to track down, Mr. Applebee.”

“I’ve been on assignment in Glasgow. Just got in.” He rubbed a hand over a face that was shadowed by several days’ worth of light brown beard. “Who did you say you were?”

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. NYPSD.”

“Well, good morning, and I’m baffled. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me the last time you had contact with Tandy Willowby.”

“Tandy?” His face changed in a fingersnap. Eve would have said what came into it was a burst of hope. “You’ve seen Tandy. Is she there? In New York. I never would have thought… She’s had the baby. She’s all right? They’re all right? Oh, God, I can get a shuttle and be there in a few hours.”

“Mr. Applebee, you’re the father of the child Ms. Willowby’s carrying?”

“Yes, yes. Of course. Carrying? You said carrying?” Another flash of hope lit his face even as his voice trembled. “I’m not too late.”

“You claim you didn’t know she was living in New York.”

“No, she – we – It’s complicated. What do you mean ‘was’?”

“Ms. Willowby’s been missing since Thursday evening.”

“Missing? I don’t understand what you mean by missing. Wait, wait a bloody minute.”

She could see him shift, sit down, struggle to orient himself. “How do you know she’s been missing since Thursday?”

“She left work at six p.m. on that evening. She did not return to her residence. She didn’t keep appointments. She hasn’t contacted her midwife, her employer, or her friends. I’m investigating.”

“She’s pregnant. She’s due any time now. Have you checked the birthing centers? Of course, you have,” he said before Eve could answer. “All right, let’s just keep calm. Let’s not lose our heads.” But he gripped the back of his neck with his hand as if to hold his own head in place. “Maybe she came home. She came home and I wasn’t here.”

“There’s no record of her boarding any transportation out of New York. Mr. Applebee, what was your relationship with Ms. Willowby when she left London?”

“Strained, maybe shattered. Stupid, stupid. I was such a bloody jerk about it all. I was just panicked, or God knows. We hadn’t pla

He pressed his fingers to his eyes now. “God. God. What an idiot I am. We quarreled, and she said she’d have the baby, and give it up for adoption. That I wouldn’t have to be bothered. She went to an agency, I think. She was barely speaking to me and I was so bloody righteous.”

“What agency?”

“I don’t know. We weren’t talking so much as sniping at each other. But she changed her mind. At least she left me a message that she had, and that she was going away. She quit her job, and left her flat. I was sure she’d get in touch with me, that she’d come back. I’ve been trying to find her, but I never thought to try the States. She didn’t take a shuttle from here, or from Paris. That’s where, after I’d begged and groveled, one of her coworkers said she’d gone, at least for a bit.”