Festive in Death (28 page)

“You’d do better, as would I, with something more than popcorn in the system.”

“Maybe.” She fell into step with him. “We could grab a slice after the morgue.”

He took her hand. “See what I meant about fun and fascination? How many people could say just that?”

“All the many people who are cops.”

He laughed a little. She had him there.

A giggling Martella opened the door before Eve buzzed. Both she and Lance Schubert wore coats and scarves, and both had sparkles in their eyes.

Eve recognized the sparkle. While obviously on their way out the door, the couple had enjoyed a little predeparture sex.

“Oh, Lieutenant, you just caught us.” Martella slipped her hand into her husband’s. “We’re ridiculously late.”

“I’m sorry. We need to speak with you.”

“Can it wait until tomorrow?” Schubert asked. “We should have left nearly an hour ago.”

Martella didn’t quite manage to stifle a fresh giggle as she sent her husband another sparkling look. “So rude.”

“I’m afraid it can’t wait. It would be best if we go inside, sit down.”

“Oh, well. Another few minutes can’t matter that much.” As she
stepped back to let them in, Martella’s gaze shifted from Eve to Roarke. “It’s Roarke, isn’t it? It’s nice to meet you. Martella Schubert.” She offered a hand. “My husband, Lance.”

“I suppose this is some sort of official business. We can’t offer you a drink?” Lance led the way into the living area, where he turned up the lights.

“No, but thank you.”

Roarke waited as Eve did while Martella slipped out of a silvery fur coat, tossed it aside. Beneath she wore a hot blue cocktail dress with ice-white diamonds. Schubert didn’t bother to remove his coat, but sat with his wife.

“If this is about Ziegler,” he began, “I don’t know what else we can tell you. I won’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.”

“Lance!”

“There’s no point in pretense, Tella. As far as I’m concerned, he got what he deserved. You’ve got a job to do,” he said to Eve. “But we have our lives to live.”

“We’re not here about Trey Ziegler, not directly. I have difficult news.” The most difficult, and best done quickly. “I regret to inform you that Catiana Dubois was killed earlier this evening. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“What? No.” Martella grabbed her husband’s hand. “That’s a terrible thing to say. Cate’s on a date, with Steven.”

“She was killed, and your sister injured tonight at the Vandam residence. John Jake Copley is in custody, charged with her murder and the attack on your sister.”

“Tash is hurt? No, no.” Color high, breath quick, Martella pushed to her feet. “You’ve got something horribly mixed up. I spoke with Tash this afternoon.”

“Tella.” Schubert rose, put an arm around her, but his eyes stayed on Eve’s. “What happened?”

“But she’s
wrong
.”

“Tella,” Schubert said again, gently, as he drew his wife back down to the sofa. “What happened? Please.”

“Ms. Dubois went to the Quigley-Copley residence. We believe subsequently a confrontation between her and Copley ensued. During which she fell, struck her head on the marble hearth, and was killed.”

“No. No. No.”

“Could I get you some water, Mrs. Schubert?”

Schubert looked at Roarke. “We’ve given the staff the evening off. If you wouldn’t mind—the kitchen . . .”

“I’ll find it. I am sorry,” he said to Martella.

“JJ wouldn’t hurt Cate,” Martella insisted, but tears streamed down her face. “Why would he do that? And Tash—she’s hurt? Where is she? I need to go to her.”

“She was taken to the hospital, is under medical care. I’ll give you the details, but, at the moment, she’s sedated.”

“Please, I have to go to her. She needs me.”

“When we’re done here, I’ll arrange your transportation. I’ve spoken to the medicals personally. She’s stable.”

“JJ wouldn’t hurt her. He’d never— Lance, tell her.”

“I don’t understand it. I played golf with JJ today. We got back around six. He had an exceptional round, wasn’t upset, wasn’t angry. Why do you think he did this? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Ms. Quigley called nine-one-one. On the record she can be heard shouting your brother-in-law’s name, pleading with him to stop, before the ’link was dropped and damaged. An officer arrived on scene within minutes. Copley was alone in the house.”

“Someone broke in—”

“There’s no sign of break-in,” Eve interrupted Schubert as Roarke came back with a tall, clear glass of water. “The security cam shows Ms. Dubois’s arrival. The time stamp of her entrance into the residence is approximately ten minutes before her time of death.”

“She can’t be dead. Oh, Lance, not Cate. Not our Cate.”

“It still doesn’t make sense. JJ and Cate rarely interacted. Why would anyone think he . . .” Schubert stiffened. “Ziegler. It all goes back to Ziegler.”

“I know this is hard, but there are questions I have to ask.”

“Is it my fault? Is this my fault because I let him come here? I had sex with him.”

“You didn’t have sex with him, Mrs. Schubert,” Eve corrected. “Ziegler drugged you and he raped you. That’s not sex. And the person who killed Catiana and attacked your sister is at fault. No one else. Did you know Catiana intended to go to your sister’s home this evening?”

“No. No. I thought she was going home to get ready for her date. I don’t know why she went there.”

“You said she and Copley rarely interacted. Was there friction?”

“Not friction.” Schubert rose to shrug out of his coat, laid it over his wife’s. “JJ can be a dick with women, especially those he views as subordinates, but that sort of thing rolls off of Catiana’s back. I apologized to her more than once, but she’d just laugh it off.”

“Apologized for what?”

“Oh, he’d tell her to get him a drink, as if she were waitstaff. It wasn’t so much what he said, but the tone. Master to servant. I’ve spoken to him about it a number of times, and he feigns ignorance. Since Cate could laugh it off, I let it go rather than stir up family conflict.”

“She didn’t like him. She never actually said so,” Martella said thickly. “She never would, but she didn’t. She’s family, too, Lance.”

“I know, Tella. I know.”

“You don’t like him, either,” Eve observed. “Either of you.”

“He’s family,” Schubert said simply as his wife wept quietly on his shoulder. “You don’t get to choose. Tella and Tash are close. He’s Tash’s husband. I might consider him a bit of a dick, as I said, but I can’t conceive of him doing any of this. You think he killed Ziegler, too.”

Rather than answer, Eve changed tacks. “You and Catiana must have talked about Ziegler. What he’d done, his murder. And now that it’s come out your sister and he had an intimate arrangement, you must have talked about that.”

“We were surprised, all of us,” Schubert confirmed. “But then . . . he’s her type.”

“Oh, Lance.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but good-looking users seem to be Tash’s type.”

“Did the three of you talk about that situation today?”

“Actually, I didn’t really talk to Cate today, just in passing as she was getting ready to go as I got back from Florida.”

“We did. Cate and I did.” Struggling with tears, Martella burrowed closer to her husband. “I was a little angry that Tash hadn’t told me, even when she knew how horrible I felt when I thought I’d cheated on Lance. I told Cate, and she calmed me down. She does that. She did . . . Oh God.”

“I’m going to get you some brandy.” Schubert kissed her temple before he rose.

“You and Catiana talked about the situation,” Eve prompted.

“We did. It was all so . . . so sordid, really. What happened to me. Cate and Lance, they’ve both been so supportive. And Tash, too. So I was upset when Tash finally told me she’d had an affair with Trey, and that JJ was having one with some stripper. I can understand, really, I can, how Tash would turn to Trey. A kind of revenge, I guess.”

“So Catiana knew the details.”

“I told her. She was like my sister, too. She’s family. Her poor mom. Oh, Lance, her mother.”

“We’ll be there for her.” He handed Martella a snifter, swirled his own. “Catiana would never insert herself in Tash’s marital business. Never.”

“Was she invited to the party at the Quigley-Copley residence the night Ziegler was killed?”

“Yes. Well, more, really. Tash asked her to help out with the prep. Cate’s a whiz with party preparations. So she was over there a good part of the day. Family,” she repeated. “Tash and Cate were good friends, were close. She must have gone there tonight to talk to Tash about something. I don’t know. I can’t imagine the rest. I just can’t. It doesn’t seem real.”

“You knew about your sister-in-law’s relationship with Ziegler,” she said to Schubert.

“I just found out.”

“And Copley? To your knowledge when did he learn about it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if he knew or not. He certainly didn’t tell me, or show any signs of it. But then, I didn’t know he was having an affair himself. It’s not the way we live, Tella and I. We don’t live that way.”

“My sister. Please, I need to see my sister.”

“Give me a minute.” Rising, Eve pulled out her comm, stepped out of the room.

“Do you . . . do you know where Catiana is?” Martella asked Roarke. “Can we see her? Can we do something? Anything?”

“I know the person who’s looking out for her now. He’s kind. Lieutenant Dallas is looking out for her now as well. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened. When terrible things happen to those we love, we couldn’t ask for anyone more capable and determined than Lieutenant Dallas.”

“How could he do this to Cate, to Tash? I didn’t even ask. I’m so turned around, turned inside out. What did he do to Tash? Did he hit her?”

“Has he hit her before?” Roarke asked.

“No! Of course not. I . . .” A mixture of horror and grief flashed into her eyes. “I don’t know anymore. An hour ago I’d have said absolutely not. I’d never have believed it of him, even though he had a temper. And I’d have sworn she’d have told me if he ever had. Now I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what happened to my family.”

Eve came back in. “I’ve arranged for officers to take you to the hospital, escort you to your sister’s room. It’s the quickest way.”

“Thank you. I . . . I want to change. I don’t want to go to Tash dressed for a party. It feels wrong. I want to go see Cate’s mother as soon as I can. Am I allowed to do that?”

“Of course.”

“And Steven. Steven Dorchester, the man she’s been seeing. Does he know what happened?”

“I can have that taken care of.”

“They were in love, just the lovely beginning of it. She was happy. And she was so worked up about their date tonight.”

“How? Worked up how?”

“Oh, just in a hurry to get home, get ready. She just seemed worked up about it all of a sudden. Distracted. Excuse me, please. I need to change. I need to get to Tash.”

When she hurried out, Eve turned to Schubert. “Did you notice this distraction?”

“I did, now that you mention it. I wish I’d paid more attention. I suppose that’s always the way. You always think, Oh, we’ll talk about that tomorrow. And then . . . I don’t want Tella to be alone.”

“We’ll let ourselves out,” Roarke told him.

“Gotta get this down,” Eve said when they went back outside. “Need to work it around, sort it out.
Sordid.
It’s a good word. Also
convoluted
.”

“Do you still want to go by the morgue?”

“Yeah, I need to do that. And I need to get this down.”

“Do that. I’m driving.”

He left her to her notes, her muttering, her short periods of silence, eyes closed, then more notes and muttering.

“When I was a kid,” she said abruptly, “in the whole foster/state school cycle, I sometimes wished I had a sibling. Did you ever?”

“I had my mates. That was family for me.”

“
Mates.
You think of that word first as lovers, that two-person connection. But it’s a good word for friends when you mean it. My sense is Tella and Catiana were mates. She loves her sister, feels close to her, but for the deep and down, she’d turn to the mate. She’d have told Catiana about what happened with Ziegler before she told her sister. And here’s what else. Neither of them much like Copley. They’d golf with him, hang out, go to parties, have family deals, but neither of them would have considered confiding in him. They wouldn’t have trusted him to keep a confidence. And it irked them
he treated Catiana like a servant—but they sucked it up, mostly for the sister’s sake.

“And still,” she said when they arrived at the morgue. “Both of them claim, with apparent sincerity, they can’t conceive of Copley hurting anyone.”

“I think, speaking of general population and not cops, or me, most can’t conceive of someone they know well, are family with, killing anyone.”

“A lot of the general population are wrong.”

Eve strode briskly through the tunnel, and through the double doors of Morris’s room.

He wore a clear protective cape over a steel blue suit with steel- gray chalk stripes, a braided tie that twined the two tones. His dark hair slicked into three slim, stacked tails. He sat at a counter working at a comp while some sort of hymn soared through his music system like angel wings.

“Sorry to pull you in.”

“Don’t be. The nights are long; work shortens them. And her nights?” He rose, walked to where Catiana lay on a slab. “Are over. Filling in for Peabody?” he asked Roarke with a faint smile.

“I am.”

“I spoke with our favorite detective shortly ago. Catiana’s family is coming in soon. They don’t want to wait to see her until tomorrow. I’ve enough time to soften the worst.” He indicated the head gash. “She has no other injuries to speak of. The fall broke her nose, and as you can see, there’s some minor lacerations, contusions on her knees, forearms. They would have been incurred in the fall.”