The in Death Collection Books 11-15 - J. D. Robb [455]
She blew out a breath, swallowed hard because her throat was dry. “That’s the theory I’m working. Are you going to tell me it blows?”
“How’d you come to it?”
“I kept looking at the reports, the data, the photographs. I read the statements until my eyes hurt. Then I was lying in bed last night with all that running around inside my head. So I put it all like in this corner of my brain, and used the rest of it to try to think like you. Or how I thought you’d think. You know, how you walk onto a crime scene and you start visualizing, sort of like you’re watching it all happen. And that was the way I watched it all happen. A little murky, but that’s how I saw it.”
She started to take another deep breath, then blinked. “You’re smiling.”
“You’re going to want to get to her when he’s not around. You’ll want to question her when she’s alone. With him and the kid, she’s got defenses built up. She can tell herself she’s protecting them. Get her into Interview. Make it formal. She won’t want to, but the uniform will intimidate her into it. It’s not likely she’ll yell lawyer straight off, because she’ll worry it’ll make her look guilty. Let me know when you’re ready to set it up, and I’ll try to observe.”
Peabody felt her heart beating again. “You think I’m right? You think she did it?”
“Oh yeah, she did it.”
“You knew it. The minute she walked into the apartment, you knew.”
“Doesn’t matter what I knew or what I know. It’s your case, so what matters is what you know and getting her to tell you.”
“If you did the interview—”
“I’m not doing the interview, you are. Your case. Work out your approach, your tone, then bring her in and break her down.”
Eve pulled into a driveway, and Peabody looked around blankly. Somehow they’d gotten from city to suburb.
“Now put it away,” Eve ordered. “Pettibone’s front and center now.”
She sat a moment, studying the rosy redbrick house. It was modest enough, even simple until you added the gardens. Floods, rivers, pools of flowers flowed out from the base of the house, streaming all the way to the sidewalk. There was no lawn to speak of, though there were tall clumps of some sort of ornamental grasses creatively worked in to the sea of color.
A stone walkway ribboned its way through to the base of a covered porch where flowering vines, thick with deep purple blooms, wound their way up round posts.
There were chairs with white cushions on the porch, glass-topped tables, and yet more flowers in pots that had artistically faded to verdigris. Obviously Shelly Pettibone liked to sit and contemplate her flowers.
Even as Eve thought it, a woman stepped out of the front door carrying a tray.
She was deeply tanned, her arms long and leanly muscled against the short sleeves of a baggy blue T-shirt. Her jeans were worn and cropped off at midcalf.
She set down the tray, watched Eve get out of the car. The mild breeze stirred her sun-streaked brown hair worn short and unstyled around the weathered, appealing face of a woman who lived a great deal of her life outdoors.
As Eve drew closer, she saw that the woman’s eyes were brown and showed the ravages of weeping.
“Is there something I can do for you?”
“Mrs. Pettibone? Shelly Pettibone?”
“Yes.” Her gaze shifted to Peabody. “This is about Walter.”
“I’m Lieutenant Dallas.” Eve offered her badge. “My aide, Officer Peabody. I’m sorry to disturb you at this difficult time.”
“You need to ask me questions. I just got off the ’link with my daughter. I don’t seem to be able to do anything to help her. I can’t think of the right words. I don’t think there are any. I’m sorry, sit down please. I was going to have some coffee. I’ll just get more cups.”
“You needn’t bother.”
“It gives me something to do, and just now I don’t have nearly enough to do. I’ll just be a minute. It’s all right if we talk out here, isn’t it? I’d like to be outside for a while.”
“Sure, this