Glory in Death

"We all thought it best. The house – Marco's house – holds so many memories. Cicely lived there when the children were young. Then there's the media. They don't have our address, and we wanted to keep the children from dealing with reporters. They've swamped poor Marco. It'll be different tomorrow, of course."

Her pretty hands plucked at the knee of her suit, then calmed and lay still again. "They'll have to face it. They're still in shock. Even Randall. Randall Slade, Mirina's fiance. He'd gotten very close to Cicely."

"He's here as well."

"He'd never leave Mirina alone at such a time. She's a strong young woman, Lieutenant, but even strong women need an arm to lean on now and then."

Eve blocked out the quick image of Roarke that popped into her brain. As a result of the effort, her voice was a bit more formal than usual as she led A

"I've asked myself over and over what could have possessed her to go to that neighborhood," A

"She talked to you, confided in you."

"We were like sisters."

"Would she have told you if she was in trouble of some kind? If someone close to her was in trouble?"

"I would have thought so. She would have handled it herself, or tried to first." Her eyes swam, but the tears didn't fall. "But sooner or later she would have blown off steam with me."

If she'd had time, Eve thought. "You can think of nothing she was concerned about before her death?"

"Nothing major. Her daughter's wedding – getting older. We joked about her becoming a grandmother. No," A

"And is he?"

Another cloud came into her eyes before she lowered them. "David is a great deal like his father. He likes to wheel and deal. He does a great deal of traveling for the business, always looking for new arenas, new opportunities. There's no doubt he'll take the helm if and when Marco decided to turn it over."

She hesitated, as if about to add something, then smoothly switched gears. "Mirina, on the other hand, prefers to live in one spot. She manages a boutique in Rome. That's where she met Randall. He's a designer. Her shop handles his line exclusively now. He's quite talented. This is his," she said, indicating the slim suit she wore.

"It's lovely. So as far as you know, Prosecutor Towers had no reason to be concerned for her children. Nothing she would have felt obliged to smooth out or cover over?"

"Cover over? No, of course not. They're both bright, successful people. "

"And her ex-husband. He's having some business difficulties?"

"Marco? Is he?" A

"She was involved then, in business. Directly?"

"Of course. Cicely insisted on knowing exactly what was going on and having a say in it. I never knew how she could keep so many things in her head. If Marco was having difficulties, she'd have known, and probably have suggested a half dozen ways to right things. She was quite brilliant." When her voice broke, A

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Whitney."

"No, it's all right. I'm better. Having her children with me helped so much. I feel I can stand for her with them. I can't do what you do, and look for her killer. But I can stand for her with her children."

"They're very lucky to have you," Eve murmured, surprised to hear herself say it and mean it. Odd, she'd always considered A

A

"Mr. Hammett has told me they were lovers."

A

"Why?"

"Set in his ways. I'm very fond of George, and he made an excellent escort for Cicely. But a woman can hardly be completely happy when she goes home to an empty apartment most nights, to an empty bed. She needed a mate. George wanted it both ways, and Cicely deluded herself into thinking she wanted that, too."

"And she didn't."

"She shouldn't have," A

"Risk?"

"I'm speaking of emotional risk," A

"I had the impression that Mr. Hammett regretted that, that he loved her very much."

"If he did, why didn't he push?" A

Eve drove out of the quiet suburbs, and on impulse she pulled her car over to the curb and slumped down in the seat. She needed to think. Not about Roarke, she assured herself. There was nothing to think about there. That was settled.

On a hunch, she called up her computer at her office and had it get to work on David Angelini. If he was like his father, maybe he had also made a few poor investments. While she was at it, she ordered a run on Randall Slade and the boutique in Rome.

If anything popped up, she would have a scan on the flights from Europe to New York.

Damn it, a woman who had nothing to worry about didn't leave her warm, dry apartment in the middle of the night.

Stubbornly, Eve retraced all the steps in her head. As she thought it through, she studied the neighborhood. Nice old trees spreading shade, neat postcard-sized yards with one-and two-story fully detached houses.

What would it have been like to have been raised in a pretty, settled community? Would it make you secure, confident, the way being dragged from filthy room to filthy room, from stinking street to stinking street made her jittery, moody?

Maybe there were fathers here who snuck into their little girls' bedrooms, too. But it was hard to believe it. The fathers here couldn't smell of bad liquor and sour sweat and have thick fingers that pushed themselves into i

Eve caught herself rocking in the seat and choked back a sob.

She wouldn't do it. She wouldn't remember. She wouldn't let herself conjure up that face looming over her in the dark, or the taste of that hand clamping over her mouth to smother her screams.

She wouldn't do it. It had all happened to someone else, some little girl whose name she couldn't even remember. If she tried to, if she let herself remember it all, she would become that helpless child again and lose Eve.

She laid her head back on the seat and concentrated on calming herself. If she hadn't been wallowing in self-pity, she would have seen the woman breaking the window at the side of the modified rancher across the street before the first shard fell.

As it was, Eve scowled, asked herself why she'd had to pull over at just this spot. And did she really want the hassle of dealing with intra-jurisdiction paperwork?

Then she thought about the nice family who would come home that night and find their valuables gone.

With a long-suffering sigh, she got out of the car.

The woman was half in and half out of the window when Eve reached her. The security shield had been deactivated by a cheap jammer, available at any electronic outlet. With a shake of her head for the naivete of suburbanites, Eve tapped the thief smartly on the butt that was struggling to wiggle through the opening.