Glory in Death

"Forget your code, ma'am?"

Her answer was a hard donkey-style kick to the left shoulder. Eve considered herself lucky it had missed her face. Still, she went down, crushing some early tulips. The perp popped out of the window like a cork and bolted across the lawn.

If her shoulder hadn't been aching, Eve might have let her go. She caught her quarry in a flying tackle that sent them both sprawling into a bed of su

"Get your fucking hands off me, or I'll kill you."

Eve thought briefly that it was a possibility. The woman outweighed her by a good twenty pounds. To ensure it didn't happen, she jammed an elbow against the woman's windpipe and dug for her badge.

"You're busted."

The woman's dark eyes rolled in disgust. "What the hell's a city cop doing here? Don't you know where Manhattan is, asshole?"

"Looks like I'm lost." Eve kept her elbow in place, adding just a little more pressure for her own satisfaction while she pulled out her communicator and requested the closest 'burb cruiser.

CHAPTER SIX

By the next morning, her shoulder was singing as fiercely as Mavis on a final set. Eve admitted the extra hours she'd put in with Feeney and a night tossing alone in bed hadn't helped it any. She was leery of anything but the mildest painkillers, and took a single stingy dose before she dressed for the memorial service.

She and Feeney had come across one tasty little tidbit. David Angelini had withdrawn three large payments from his accounts over the last six months, to a grand total of one million six hundred and thirty-two dollars, American.

That was more than three-quarters of his personal savings, and he'd drawn it in anonymous credit tokens and cash.

They were still digging on Randall Slade and Mirina, but so far, they were both clean. Just a happy young couple on the brink of matrimony.

God knew how anybody could be happy on the brink, Eve thought as she located her gray suit.

The damn button on the jacket was still missing, she realized as she started to fasten it. And she remembered Roarke had it, carried it like some sort of superstitious talisman. She'd been wearing the suit the first time she'd seen him – at a memorial for the dead.

She ran a hasty comb through her hair and escaped the apartment and the memories.

St. Patrick's was bulging by the time she arrived. Uniforms in the best dress blues flanked the perimeter for a full three blocks on Fifth. A kind of honor guard, Eve mused, for a lawyer who cops had respected. Both street and air traffic had been diverted from the usually choked avenue, and the media was thronged like a busy parade across the wide street.

After the third uniform stopped her, Eve attached her badge to her jacket and moved unhampered into the ancient cathedral and the sounds of the dirge.

She didn't care for churches much. They made her feel guilty for reasons she didn't care to explore. The scent of candle wax and incense was ripe. Some rituals, she thought as she slipped into a side pew, were as timeless as the moon. She gave up any hope of speaking directly with Cicely Towers's family that morning and settled down to watch the show.

Catholic rites had gone back to Latin some time in the last decade. Eve supposed it added a kind of mysticism and a unity. The ancient language certainly seemed appropriate to her in the Mass for the Dead.

The priest's voice boomed out, reaching to the lofty ceilings, and the congregation's responses echoed after. Silent and watchful, Eve sca

"Angelini," she murmured. "That would be the daughter beside him."

"With her fiance on her right."

"Um-hmm." Eve studied the couple: young, attractive. The woman was of slight build with golden hair, like her mother. The unrelieved black she wore swept down from a high neck, covered her arms to the wrists, and skimmed her ankles. She wore no veil or shaded glasses to shield her red-rimmed, puffy eyes. Grief, simple, basic, and undiluted, seemed to shimmer around her.

Beside her, Randall Slade stood tall, one long arm supporting her shoulders. He had a striking, almost brutally handsome face, which Eve remembered well from the image she'd generated on her computer screen: large jaw, long nose, hooded eyes. He looked big and tough, but the arm around the woman lay gently.

Flanking Angelini's other side was his son. David stood just a space apart. That sort of body language hinted at friction. He stared straight ahead, his face a blank. He stood slightly shorter than his father, as dark as his sister was fair. And he was alone, Eve thought. Very much alone.

The family pew was completed by George Hammett.

Directly behind were the commander, his wife, and his family.

She knew Roarke was there. She had already glimpsed him once at the end of an aisle beside a teary-eyed blond. Now, when Eve skimmed a glance his way, she saw him lean down to the woman and murmur something that had her turning her face into his shoulder.

Furious at the quick pang of jealousy, Eve sca

"How'd that little bastard manage to get in?"

Feeney, a good Catholic, winced at the use of profanity in church. "Who?"

"Morse – at eight o'clock."

Shifting his eyes, Feeney spotted the reporter. "A crowd like this, I guess some of the slippery ones could slide through security."

Eve debated hauling him out just for the satisfaction of it, then decided the scuffle would give him just the kind of attention he craved.

"Fuck him."

Feeney made a sound like a man who'd been pinched. "Christ Jesus, Dallas, you're in St. Pat's."

"If God's going to make little weasels like him, she's going to have to listen to complaints."

"Have some respect."

Eve looked back to Mirina, who lifted a hand to her face. "I've got plenty of respect," she murmured. "Plenty." With this she stepped around Feeney and strode down the side to the exit.

By the time he caught up with her, she was just finishing issuing instructions to one of the uniforms.

"What's the problem?"

"I needed some air." Churches always smelled like the dying or the dead to her. "And I wanted to get a jump on the weasel." Smiling now, she turned to Feeney. "I've got the uniforms looking out for him. They'll confiscate any communication or recording devices he's got on him. Privacy law."

"You're just going to steam him."

"Good. He steams me." She let out a long breath, studying the media horde across the avenue. "I'll be damned if the public has a right to know everything. But at least those reporters are playing by the rules and showing some of that respect you were talking about for the family. "

"I take it you're done in there."

"There's nothing I can do in there."

"I figured you'd be sitting with Roarke."

"No."

Feeney nodded slowly and nearly dug into his pocket for his bag of nuts before he remembered the occasion. "Is that the burr up your butt, kid?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." She started to walk without any destination in mind, stopped, and turned around. "Who the hell was that blonde he was wrapped around?"

"I couldn't say." He sucked air through his teeth. "She was a looker though. Want me to rough him up for you?"

"Just shut up." She jammed her hands in her pockets. "The commander's wife said they were having a small, private memorial at their home. How long do you figure this sideshow will take?"