“I think she needed help, and punishment. She had an abusive childhood. I know you don’t see it that way,” Mira continued at Eve’s instinctive shrug, “but she did.”
“Maybe, but she found a way to make it work for her. I wonder …”
“What?”
“Sometimes I wonder what kind of family or environment Stella came from. Was she born bent—selfish, violent, heartless? Or did she get caught up in the cycle? I don’t excuse what she did or was either way. Cycles have to be broken.”
“I’m sure you know Roarke could find out.”
“What I’m not sure of is if I really want to know. Maybe. Eventually. He’s worried about me. I know he wants me to talk to you.”
“Should he be worried?”
“I don’t want him to worry.”
“That didn’t answer the question.”
Eve sighed. She found, for once, she didn’t want coffee, and got them both a bottle of water. “I dream about her. Not nightmares, not really. But strange, lucid dreams. She blames me, which would fit with the way she thought, was.”
“Do you blame you?”
Eve took a moment before answering. “Harris’s brother? Part of him feels guilty because he couldn’t love his sister, and part of him grieves for her. I don’t know if it’s guilt or just acknowledgment that part of me feels. There’s no grief. I told you that before, and it hasn’t changed. I know I’m not responsible for what happened to her. She is. McQueen is. Even my father holds more of the blame than me. But I started the chain when I took her down in Dallas, before I ever knew who she was.”
Eve studied her water bottle even as that moment flashed through her mind. That defining moment when she’d yanked a suspect around, and looked into her mother’s face.
“I started the chain when I pushed her to flip on McQueen. The chain McQueen broke when he slit her throat. I can’t and won’t pretend otherwise. I was doing my job. And other lives, innocent lives were on the line. But doing my job was a factor in her death.”
“Doing your job saved those innocent lives. The choices she made ended hers.”
“I know that. I believe that. But, I’m involved in the death of both my parents. Directly with my father as my hand held the knife. A child, self-defense, yes, all true, all logical. But …” She fisted her hand, as if around a hilt. “My hand held the knife. With her, I started the chain. It’s hard knowing that, no matter what they did to me, no matter what he’d have continued to do to me. It’s hard knowing I ended, or had a part in ending, the two people who made me.”
“They didn’t make you. They performed an act that resulted in conception, and did so with the purpose of investment and profit. They weren’t your parents, and were your mother and father only in the strictest biological terms.”
“I know that.”
“Do you? You’ve begun to call her Stella, that’s an emotional distance. But you continue to call him your father. Why is that?”
Eve stared, fumbled. “I … I don’t know.”
“It’s something to think about, something we might talk about again.” Mira rose from the visitor’s chair, laid a hand briefly on Eve’s shoulder. “Tell Roarke we talked. He may worry less.”
“Okay.”
Alone, Eve frowned at her board. Only her mother and father in the strictest biological terms. By that same benchmark, K.T. Harris was only a daughter, a sister in those same terms.
By choice, Eve decided, Harris had died no man’s child.
16
Return to the scene of the crime, Eve decided, and revisited all three locations on her way home. Where, she’d determined, she’d attack the case fresh.
At Asner’s apartment building, she talked to the gym buddy neighbor again. Shaken, but cooperative, the man couldn’t add anything relevant to his earlier statements.
She knocked on some doors. Everybody liked A, and nobody had seen anyone entering or exiting his apartment or skulking around the building the night before.
She toured his apartment, the search team’s report fresh in her mind. They hadn’t found so much as a stray data disc. Prints, yes. The victim’s, the gym buddy’s, another neighbor’s who checked out, and a licensed companion named Della McGrue. Eve intended to make another stop and have a chat with Della.
She imagined the apartment before it had been tossed.
Spare, she thought. Inexpensive furnishings, except for the monster wall screen. A guy thing, she noted. A couple of prints on the walls to spruce it up, average-looking landscapes.
Two sets of sheets, one that had been on the bed, she assumed before the killer yanked them off to check the mattress. Spare and simple wardrobe in the closet and drawers. A couple of suits—one black, one brown, a half-dozen shirts, some socks, some boxers. Three pair of shoes, four with what he’d worn when he’d had his head bashed in: one black dress, one casual scuff, and gym shoes.
Sweats, shorts, T-shirts, a couple of ties.
The same style in toiletries, nothing fancy. Nothing fancy in the goody section either, she decided. A sexual performance aid in pill form, one box of condoms—three missing.
She sat on the side of the bed. A simple guy who liked to gamble, who went to the gym in the morning, had a brew and watched his majorly big-ass screen in the evenings. Had an LC over occasionally.
A PI who didn’t mind blurring the line for work. She imagined he enjoyed it, the slightly shadowy areas. Dreamed of owning his own little casino bar somewhere warm and tropical.
A friendly sort. One who inspired grief in his neighbors at his death, genuine tears from an employee.
A. A. Asner. Had Harris picked him because his name came first in the listings? She imagined he’d gotten a lot of clients just that way.
“Should’ve taken a pass on this one,” she murmured.
As Della McGrue lived only three blocks away, Eve tried her next.
The buildings mirrored the same style, but when a puffy-eyed Della let her in, Eve saw her apartment couldn’t be more different than Asner’s.
Color and clutter, the yippy bark of a little fluff-ball dog Della clutched to her ample breasts. A harem’s worth of pillows piled on the red sofa, fat candles, decorative bowls, sparkly glass animals covered tables.
Della stood, her blond hair a luxurious wave framing a face of tipped-up nose, baby-doll lips, and red-rimmed blue eyes. She cooed to the dog to soothe it.
“We’re both so upset,” she told Eve. “Frisky just loved A. Can we sit down? I haven’t felt good since I heard about A. I’m having a soother. Do you want one?”
“No, I’m good. Was your relationship with Mr. Asner professional?”
“Sort of, but not really.” Della cuddled the now quiet but trembling dog in one arm as she drank a pink soother from a tall glass. “If we had sex, I had to charge him. I’ve got to make a living, and A knew that. I always gave him a discount, though. But sometimes we’d just go out to dinner or a vid. Just to spend some time with a friend, without the sex. I liked him a lot.”
“I’m sorry you lost your friend.”
“He was in a risky business, I guess. I mean mostly it was insurance stuff, or divorce stuff. But detective work’s risky. But I never thought anyone would …”
“When did you last see or talk to him?”
“Just yesterday. He got a big payoff from a client, and he was going to buy into a game. He wanted a good- luck bang first. I don’t work that early in the day unless it’s a friend or a regular.”
“Did he tell you about the client?”
