The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [529]
“This and that. Here’s what I haven’t got. Her diary.”
“Maybe she doesn’t keep one.”
“She mentioned she did when Foster was killed. I’m not finding it.”
“They can hide them good.”
“I can find them good, when they’re here.”
“Yeah.” Peabody pursed her lips, looked around. “Maybe she doesn’t keep one after all. Ten’s a pretty much between-age for boys, and boys are the big topic of diaries.”
“She’s got an active, busy brain for any age. So where’s the ‘Mom and Dad won’t let me have a tattoo. It’s so bogus!’ Or ‘Johnnie Dreamboat looked at me in the hall today!’”
“Can’t say, and can’t think what that would tell us if she had a journal going and we found it.”
“Daily stuff—what Mommy said to Daddy, what this teacher did, and so on. The kid notices things. Got a snotty streak, too.”
Peabody grinned. “You think all kids are snots.”
“Goes without saying. But this one’s got something in there.” Eve glanced back at the mirror, saw again the way Rayleen had looked at herself, then the flash in her eyes. “If something pissed her off or hurt her tender feelings, you bet your ass she’d document. Where’s her documentation?”
“Well…Maybe McNab will find something buried on her comp. She’s smart enough, she’d want to keep her observations and bitches where Mommy and Daddy and the au pair wouldn’t find them if they poked around.”
“Put a flag on that.”
“Sure. Seems a little out there, Dallas.”
“Maybe.” She turned, studied the vacation shot again. “Maybe not.”
17
WHEN THE ITEMS FROM THE STRAFFO RESIDENCE were logged, Eve commandeered a conference room. There, she and Peabody spread everything out, grouping according to area, subgrouping by person or persons who owned or used the item.
She dragged in her murder board, clipping up pictures of various items or groupings.
She studied, she circled, she paced.
“Please, sir, I must have food.”
Distracted, Eve glanced over. “What?”
“Food, Dallas. I gotta eat something or I’m going to start gnawing on my own tongue. I can order something in or run down to the Eatery.”
“Go ahead.”
“Mag-o. What do you want?”
“To nail this bastard down.”
“To eat, Dallas. Food.”
“Doesn’t matter, as long as it comes with caffeine. She had a box full of pictures.”
“Sorry?”
“Allika, in her sitting room. A big pretty box, up in her closet, not quite hidden, but not out in the open. It was full of pictures of the dead kid, had a lock of his hair, some of his toys, a piece of his blanket.”
“Jeez.” Peabody’s tender heart ached a little. “Poor woman. It must be awful.”
“Not one picture of the kid anywhere in the open, but bunches of them in her box. Hers.” Eve moved around the groupings again, stopped by the section taken or copied from Oliver Straffo’s office. “Nothing like that in Straffo’s office or in the bedroom or any of the family areas.”
Peabody moved over to stand by Eve, tried to see what her lieutenant might be seeing. “I had a second cousin who drowned when he was a kid. His mother got rid of all his things. All of them except this one shirt. She kept it in her sewing basket. I guess you can’t predict how anyone’s going to handle the death of their kid. I’ll bring food and caffeine.”
She zipped out before Eve could delay her.
Alone, Eve circled the table, the board. And thought about the dead.
The boy had been good-looking, fun-looking, she added. Big, goofy grin on his face in most of the pictures that weren’t taken in infancy. Happy, healthy family, she mused, studying the picture she’d copied of one in Allika’s box—the four Straffos grinning at the camera. Kids in the middle, parents flanking them.
Everyone touching some part of someone else. An attractive unit. Somehow complete.
She compared it to the one she’d copied from Rayleen’s room. One kid now framed by mom and dad. And yeah, even though Allika grinned into the camera there was a hollowness around her eyes,