"Yes. And no. You look a little wobbly yet. Maybe you shouldn't be going back to work so soon."
"I need to work." Caro straightened her shoulders. "You'd understand."
"Yeah, I get that."
"As does Reva. I know getting back to what she does will help her state of mind. She's not herself. Neither am I. We're not sleeping well, but we pretend we are, for each other's sake. And this isn't at all what I came here to say. Rambling isn't like me either."
"Guess not. You always struck me as being hyperefficient. Have to be to handle Roarke's stuff. But if something like this didn't throw you off stride, I'd have to figure you for a droid."
"Just the right note." Caro nodded. "You know what note to take with victims and survivors, witnesses or suspects. You were brisk, even brusque with Reva. That's the sort of tone she responds best to when she's stressed. You're very intuitive, Lieutenant. You'd have to be... to handle Roarke."
"You'd think." Eve tried not to let the words that had passed between them the night before replay in her head. "What do you need, Caro?"
"Sorry. I know I'm taking up your time. I wanted to thank you for everything you've done, and are doing. I realize you look at variations of what's on that board every day. That you deal with victims and survivors, listen to statements and questions, and work toward finding the answers. It's what you do. But this is personal for me, so I wanted to tell you, to thank you, in a personal way."
"Then you're welcome in a personal way. I like you, Caro. I like your daughter. But if I didn't, I'd be doing the same thing I'm doing now."
"Yes, I know. But that fact doesn't change my gratitude. When Reva's father left us, I was devastated. My heart was broken, and my energies scattered. I was only a bit older than you," she added, "and it seemed the end of the world. I thought, 'What will I do? How will I get through this? How will I get my baby through it?'"
She stopped, shook her head. "And this isn't of any possible interest to you."
"No." Eve gestured Caro back down when she started to rise. "Finish it out. I am interested."
Caro sat again, sighed. "I will, then, as all this keeps running through my mind. I had, at that time, very few personal resources-some secretarial skills I'd let rust as I'd wanted to be a professional mother. There were debts, and though he'd incurred most of them, he was smarter and, well, meaner than I was."
"Must've been pretty smart, then."
"Thank you. I wasn't as... seasoned then as I am now. And he had better lawyers," she added with a ghost of a smile. "So I was in a pit, financially, emotionally, even physically as I let myself become ill with the stress and grief. I was very, very frightened. But it was nothing-no more than a bump that leaves you momentarily off-balance-compared to this. Reva might've been killed."
Caro pressed a hand to her lips, visibly fought for control. "No one's said that, but it's there, the possibility of what might have been. Whoever did this thing might have killed her instead of using her to cover the tracks."
"She wasn't. Might-have-beens shouldn't scare you."
"You don't have children," Caro said with another, stronger smile, but her eyes were beginning to shine with the tears she was fighting off. "Might-have-beens are the monster in the closet for parents. She might have been killed, or she might be in prison waiting for trial if you weren't so very good at what you do. If you and Roarke hadn't been willing to help. I owe him a great deal. Now I owe him, and you, a great deal more."
"You figure he wants payback for pitching in for you and Reva?"
"No. He never does." She opened her purse, took out a tissue and dabbed at her cheeks. Every movement was economical. "It annoys him. And you, I imagine. You're so well-suited."
Eve felt her throat close, and only managed a shrug.
"I wondered if you would be. When you first came to the office, so fierce and tough. And cold. At least that's how I saw you. Then I saw him, after you'd gone. He was baffled and dazzled and frustrated. A rarity for Roarke."
"Really? Well, that made two of us."
"It's been an education watching the two of you find each other." She replaced the tissue, closed her neat black handbag. "He's an important part of my life. It's good to see him happy."
She didn't know what to say to that, so asked a question that was circling in her brain. "How did you come to work for him?"
"I took a secretarial position, entry level, and did drone work at an advertising agency here in New York. My skills weren't as rusty as I'd thought, and I'd scraped together the money for some classes to reacquaint myself with them. For the most part I was a gofer in one of the legal departments for a time. Then I was a revolving clerk, moving from department to department, filling in where and how I was needed."
"Getting a little bit of everything."
"Yes. It pleased me, and I thought of it as training. It was good work, and paid well. At a point, I suppose it's been about a dozen years ago now, Roarke took over the company where I worked, and the company-along with several others-moved into the midtown building."
Her voice was stronger now as she took herself back. Took some distance from the present.
"Shortly after, I was promoted to an assistant to an assistant in one of the project development arms of the company. A year or so into that, I was asked to sit in on a meeting-just to keep notes, fetch coffee, and look presentable as Roarke himself would be attending. The New York branch was quite young then. There was such energy, and most of it came from him."
"He's got more than his share," Eve added.
"He certainly does. During the meeting, one of the execs snapped at me when I didn't move fast enough to suit him, and I responded with something about his manners being as unattractive as his suit, or some such thing."
"So Reva gets her temper from you."
Caro let out a half-laugh. "I suppose she does. Roarke ignored the little altercation-or so I thought-and continued with the meeting. At some point he asked me to run the holo of the building he was designing, and later to bring up the data on something else. He had me hopping around, doing tasks that weren't in any particular domain, but those years of revolving had paid off. Still, once my annoyance with the exec was cleared, I was terrified I was going to be fired. The meeting lasted more than two hours, and it seemed like years. When it was over, all I wanted to do was find a corner and collapse. But he gestured to me. 'It's Caro, isn't it,' he said in that wonderful voice of his. 'Bring those files and come with me, would you?'
"Now I knew I was going to be fired, and I was frantic thinking of how I'd find another job, keep Reva in college, make the payments on the condo I'd bought three years before. He took me in his private elevator, and I was shaking inside, but I wasn't going to let him see it. I'd had enough humiliation from my ex-husband to last me a lifetime, so I wasn't going to let this young turk see how frightened I was."
"He knew," Eve commented, picturing it.
"Of course. He always knows. But at the time I was proud of my composure, and assumed it was about all I had left. He asked me what I thought of..." Her forehead creased. "I've forgotten his name. The exec who'd snapped at me in the meeting. I answered back, very crisply as I thought I was already heading out the door, did he mean personally or professionally, and he grinned at me."
She paused a moment, angled her head. "I hope you won't take offense if I add something here."
"Go ahead. I don't offend all that easy."
"I was old enough to be his mother, and when he looked down at me and grinned, I felt it in the pit of my belly. The power of his sexuality, in a situation that wasn't, in any way, sexual. I'm surprised I could form a coherent thought or word after the exposure."
"I get that, too."
"Undoubtedly you do. When he grinned at me and said he was interested in both my personal and professional opinion of this exec, I was just mortified and stunned enough by my own completely inappropriate reaction to tell him I thought the man was competent enough in his job, but on a personal level he was an ass.
"The next thing I know I'm in his office, and he's offering me coffee, and asking me to wait just a moment. He went to his desk and went to work while I sat there in complete confusion. I didn't know then that he'd pulled up my file, was checking my work evals, my security ratings."
"And very likely what you'd had for breakfast that morning."
"It wouldn't surprise me," Caro agreed. "Then he said, pleasantly, that he was looking for an administrative assistant who could think on her feet, who had good judgment of situations and people, and who wouldn't serve him a plate of bullshit when he wanted the truth. She'd have to be efficient, tireless, and loyal, as she'd answer only to him and there would be times he'd ask the... unusual. He continued on, outlining the job description, but I'm not sure I was hearing it all clearly. And he named a salary that made me very grateful I was sitting down. Then he asked me if I was interested in the position."
"Guess you were."
"I said, with heroic calm, that, yes, sir, I would be very interested in applying for the position. That I'd be happy to sit for an interview and any tests required. He said we'd just had the interview and I'd already passed the tests, so I might as well start now."
"He'd had his eye on you before."
"Apparently so. And because of it, I was able to finish raising my daughter in comfort, in security. And to discover myself. So I owe him a great deal. You've settled me down," Caro said with a sigh. "Just by taking me through all that. You've reminded me that you get through a crisis by doing what needs to be done next. So I'll leave you to do what you have to do next." She rose. "Thank you for taking the time."
"I figure Reva's got some of your spine. So she'll get through this and out the other side."
"I'm counting on that." Caro walked to the door, then turned. "This is a small thing, but I think it might please you, that it might be just a little something I can give back. A lot of busy people have their assistants or admins select gifts for their spouses. Birthdays, anniversaries, tokens to make up for an argument. He never does. Whatever he gives you comes from him. Perhaps that's not such a small thing after all."
15
Peabody hustled in on lime-green high-tops. She no longer clopped, Eve noted, but sort of... boinged. It was just something else to get used to. She also had a big, toothy grin and a line of colorful little beads worked into her hair from crown to chin.
"Hey, Dallas. I gotta say, Jamaica rocks."
"You have beads in your hair."
"Yeah, I got this little braid." She tugged on it. "I can do that now. I'm not in uniform."
"But why would you? Never mind. Where are the units?"
"Detective McNab and I transported the units, personally, through customs and security and accompanied them directly here to the off-site lab for analysis and study. They were never out of our control. McNab is with the EDD team at this location now. I left him there to come report to you. Sir."
"No point in getting sulky because I ragged on your beads."
"Maybe I just won't give you your present."
"Why would you get me a present?"
"To commemorate my first out-of-town as detective." She dragged it out of her bag. "But you don't deserve it."
Eve stared at the little plastic palm tree with the little plastic naked man lounging under it. He held a tiny bowl-shaped glass filled with shimmering green liquid. Alcoholic in nature, no doubt, Eve concluded, from the goofy grin on his face.
"You're right. I don't deserve this."
"It's kitschy." Miffed, Peabody set it on Eve's desk. "And amusing. So there."
"Uh-huh. I'm going to bring you and the rest of the team up to speed momentarily. We'll have a short briefing that includes the civilians, then... Hold on," she said when her 'link beeped. "Dallas."
"We've got trouble."
From the tone of Morris's voice, and the grim look on his face, Eve knew the trouble was serious. "You at the morgue?"
"I'm at the morgue," he confirmed. "Bissel isn't."
"You lost the body?"
"Bodies aren't lost," he snapped, though he'd spent the last thirty-five minutes doing both a computerized and a personal search and scan. "And our guests rarely get up and take a walk to the corner deli for a bagel and schmear. Which means someone came in here and helped themselves to him."
"Okay." He sounded more insulted than angry. She was about to change that. "Lock the place down."
"Excuse me?"
"Lock it down, Morris. Nobody in, nobody out-living or dead-until I get there. And it's going to take me close to an hour."
"An hour to-"
