The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [248]
“You’re back to Zana.”
“Yeah.”
“Try this. What is it about Zana Lombard that keeps you circling back?”
“Well, like I said, she cries a lot.”
“Eve.”
“It’s irritating. But beyond that personal annoyance, she’s on the spot, both incidents. She’s the only one who saw her alleged abductor.”
“Why make up a story like that? It only brings her to the foreground. Wouldn’t she prefer to stay in the back?”
She rose to walk over, study her murder board. “Criminals are always complicating things, saying or doing more than they should. Even the smart ones. Add ego. Look what I pulled off, but nobody knows. Nobody can say, ‘Wow, that was pretty damn clever of you. Let me buy you a drink.’ ”
He lifted his eyebrows. “You think she did it.”
She drew a line with her finger from the photograph of Trudy, to Bobby, to Zana. A very handy triangle, she decided. Neat and tidy.
“I’ve thought she did it since I opened the door and found Trudy dead.”
He turned in the chair now, studying her face. “Kept that one close to the vest, didn’t you?”
“No need to get pissy.”
“I never get pissy.” He rose, deciding it was time for a brandy. “I do, occasionally, become irked. Such as now. Why didn’t you say earlier?”
“Because every time I circled around her, she’s come up clean. I’ve got no facts, no data, no evidence, no clear motive.”
She stepped closer to Zana’s photo. Big blue eyes, wavy blond hair. The guileless milkmaid, whatever the hell a milkmaid was.
“I’ve run probabilities on her, and they come up low. Even my head tells me it’s not her. It’s my gut saying otherwise.”
“You generally trust your gut.”
“This is different, because my gut’s already involved because of my connection to the victim.” She walked away from the board, back to her auxiliary station. “And the suspect on the top of my gut list hasn’t given me any solid reason to have her there. Her actions and reactions, her statements, her behavior are pretty much what they should be under the circumstances. But I look at her, and I think: It ought to be you.”
“And Bobby?”
“Could be working with her. One or both of them knew what Trudy was up to. One or both of them seduces the other, uses sex, love, money—all of the above.”
She stopped, pulled the fresh scene photos of Bobby’s injuries out of her file, and moved over to tack them to her board.
“But this, the incident that landed him in the hospital, doesn’t fit with that. I made sure I saw him before she did. He gave no sign she’d pulled a double-cross on him. They were wired on their walk around the city, and Baxter’s oral indicated they talked about shopping and lunch. Nothing about Trudy, nothing about any plot or plan. It just doesn’t feel like him, doesn’t feel like teamwork. But—”
“You’re afraid your memory of him colors your instincts.”
“Maybe. I need to push the pieces around some more.”
Task completed. There are no matches in the manifest with files currently on record . . .
“Well, that was a bust,” Eve complained. “We can try name combinations, look for aliases.”
“I’ll set it up.”
Eve poured more coffee, waiting until his back was turned to avoid a caffeine lecture. “You’re married to someone—and you work with them, live with them, sleep with them—don’t you figure you’d get an inkling if they were stringing you? I mean, day after day, night after night. The stringer’s got to make a slip sometime and put the stringee on guard.”
“You’ve heard the expression ‘love is blind.’ ”
“I think it’s bullshit. Lust dazzles, sure, at least for the short term. But love clears the vision. You see better, sharper, because you feel more than you did before.”
His lips curved as he stepped to her, touched her hair, her face. “That,