Strangers In Death

“She’s one of Ava’s mothers.”

“Yep.”

“Strangers on a Train.”

“Huh?” Her head swiveled back toward him. “What train? Nobody was on a train.”

“I haven’t run that vid for you, have I?” Coolly, he continued to study the screen, continued to read data. “It’s a good one. Mid-twentieth-century, Hitchcock film. You’ve enjoyed Hitchcock.”

“Yeah, yeah, so?”

“Briefly, two men-strangers-meet on a train, and the conversations turn to how each wishes to be rid of a certain individual in his life. And how it could be done without the police suspecting them if each did in the other’s. Very clever, as there’s no real co

“Strangers,” Eve repeated.

“In this case, the one who wanted his wife done didn’t take the other-an unstable sort, who wanted his father done-seriously. But, the wife was dispatched, and the unstable sort pressured the sudden widower to complete the bargain. It’s twisty and complex. You’ll have to watch it.”

“The exchange is what clicked for me,” Eve told him. “The possibility of that. You do mine, I do yours. We’re both alibied, and who’d look at either of us for the other’s? Why would Baxter look at Ava Anders in the murder of this guy? She doesn’t know him, and even if you note that Suza

“Until you look at Anders’s murder, won’t let it slide as an accident, and dig deep enough to see this. And wonder.”

“Probability scan’s going to bottom out.” Already a

“The stronger personality, the more powerful one, hatches the plan, draws the weaker one in. And does the job first, to add pressure and obligation. Even threat. When the weaker follows through, it’s not quite as clean and tidy. Yes, I’d buy it.”

“It’s easier to pry open the weaker one. We pull Suza

He pushed back from the desk. “Do you still want runs on the other names?”

“I’ll put a drone on that. This is the money shot here, this is the one. I’ve got a tingly.”

“Save it for me, will you?”

“Ha. I need everything I can get on her. Baxter’s got a solid murder book. We just have to look at the data from a different angle now. Suza

“There had to be contact between the two murderers,” Roarke pointed out. “Confirming the first, setting up the second.”

“Where did Custer get the murder weapon, the drug, the enhancer? That’s a place to pick at. Ava had to give her the security code, the layout.” As she spoke, Eve scrawled down names, co

“Baxter would have had EDD check all Custer’s ’links, her comp for communication and activity before her husband’s murder, and-I assume-for a week or so after it.”

“Yeah, but not for before Anders.” Eve planted a finger on Thomas Anders’s name on her notes. “No point. She wasn’t a suspect, not with her alibi, in her husband’s. You look, you check, but Baxter didn’t feel it. Because it wasn’t there to feel. We’ll pull them now, all of them. Anders’s, too. We’ll go back to before the Custer murder on them.”

She drummed her fingers. “Asshole like Custer, I bet he kept cock enhancers around. The barbs, now…where’s a nice mom of two like Suza

“A terrible thing when your husband’s murdered that way,” Roarke commented. “I’ll bet a kindly doctor would prescribe tranquilizers for the widow. Put them all together instead of doling them out for yourself…”

“Good. That’s good. A medical won’t want to give us that information, not without a warrant, but we start with her financials, see if she paid a doctor, paid a pharmacy between the murders. Close to the second murder, yeah, close, I bet. Got cold feet as it got toward the sticking point.”

She engaged her ’link, put through to Baxter’s home. When she hit voice mail, she ordered a transfer to his mobile.

She heard music first, something low and bluesy that said sexual foreplay to her. Baxter’s face came on with dim lighting in the background.

“This better be damn good.”

“My home office, tomorrow, eight hundred hours.”

“I’m not on the roll till Monday. I’ve got-”

“You are now. Tag your boy, too.”

“Give me a break, Dallas. I’ve got a clear field and a hot brunette on tap.”

“Then you’d better turn her on full tonight, because you’re here at eight. How much do you want to close the Custer case, Baxter?”

The irritated scowl vanished. “You got something there?”

“Hotter than any brunette who’d give you a clear field. Eight hundred. If you’ve got any personal notes not in the murder book, bring them.”

“Give me a goddamn hint, will you?”

“Strangers on a Train. Look it up.” She clicked off, contacted Peabody, then Feeney.

“Sounds like we’ll need the standard cop breakfast buffet,” Roarke decided. “And a Saturday one at that.”

“You don’t have to feed them. I want Mira, too,” she considered. “I’d like her take on the suspect profiles.” She glanced at her wrist unit. “It’s not really all that late.”

“While you’re interrupting the Miras’ evening, send me the file. I’ll poke into the financials.”

She frowned at him. “It’s still open and active. Yeah, you could do that. And I can order the full search on the electronics. When you do the financials, see if anything pops back a ways that points toward Suza

After copying and sending the file, Eve stared at her ’link. It wasn’t really that late, she reminded herself. But she had sex aids on the brain, and that nudged her into thinking how the Miras might be spending their night together. “Jesus, way to wig myself out.”

She hedged, and ordered the transmission to go straight to voice mail. “Dr. Mira, I didn’t want to disturb your evening. I’ve got something on the Anders case, a strong possibility of a co

“Eve?”

“Oh, hey.” There was music again. It wasn’t porn vid music, thank God, but it spoke of an intimate evening at home to Eve. “Sorry to bother you when you’re…whatever. I have something I’d like to pull you in on. I’ve set a meeting at my home office in the morning, if your schedule-”

“What time?”

“Eight hundred.”

“I can make that. I’ll be there. Do you want me to study anything in the meantime?”

“I’d actually like you to come into this fresh.”

“Fine.” Mira glanced away, laughed as she sent a warm look off screen. “De

“Thanks.”

Eve swiveled away from the ’link, pressed her fingers to her eyes. “They’re going to do it,” she mumbled. “If not now, soon. I wish I didn’t have to know that.”

To clear the image, and the thought, out of her head, she turned back to Baxter’s file, and started digging.

At some point the cat wandered in to leap on her desk. When he got nothing but, “Don’t sit on my stuff,” he leaped back down to stalk into Roarke’s domain.