Chapter One #2
“Get a load of us,” Mavis said with another giggle. “We’re all mag to the ex. You ever figure it, Dallas, you and me, duded to the mega max and doing the totally uptown gala thing?”
“No.”
“And she’d still rather be chasing a psycho down a dark alley.”
Eve looked at Nadine, and thought it was good to have friends who knew you.
“Yes.”
“Ah, let it chill, Dallas. Lap up the moment. This is my last gig before Number Two makes an entrance.”
“I don’t have to ask how you’re feeling,” Louise said as she took her seat. “I can see it. Not much longer now.”
“How do you perform carting all that around?”
Mavis’s eyes twinkled at Eve. “Wait and see. The guys’ll be here soon. Leonardo just stepped out to tag August, make sure everything’s aces at home with Bella. He’s spending the night because it’ll be a long one.”
Since she’d run August, the nanny, former military, solid, Eve didn’t worry there. Plus, Peabody and McNab shared the big, rambling, sort of fascinating house.
“Jake’s with us,” Nadine said. “They’ve spread the band around the tables before they take the stage.”
Leonardo swept in wearing what Eve imagined he considered a tux with a long, billowing coat that reminded her of dusters in old Western vids. His hair didn’t fountain like Mavis’s, but it did spill in curls around his wide, copper-hued face.
He shook Roarke’s hand, bent to kiss Eve, then repeated with Charles and Louise.
“And how is the beautiful Bella?” Charles asked.
“Perfect. Just perfect. They’re having a dance party. August said Bella claimed since Mama and Daddy went to a party, she should have one, too. So Peabody and McNab came over and they’re having a dance party before bedtime.”
“You’ve made a happy home.”
Leonardo beamed at Charles as his big hand covered Mavis’s.
People began to take their seats at their tables when Jake came in from a door to the left of the stage. Then several of them jumped up again. So Eve watched as he did the walk, stop, talk, and in his case, pose for a selfie or sign the evening’s program.
A good guy, she thought. He handled it all smooth as silk, patient and easy, but still making progress. Rather than a tux, he wore rock star black—jeans, shirt, leather jacket, and boots that suited his tall, lean frame.
No colorful streaks in the black mane tonight, she noted.
When he finally got to the table, Nadine poured him a glass of wine. “You earned it.”
“Did. Hey, everybody.” He grinned at Eve. “Hardly ever see you without the badge and weapon.”
She tapped the evening bag—the one just big enough to hold her essentials. “You’re still not.”
“Oh. Okay then. Feel safer already.”
They served the salad; they started the speeches. The first, fresh and pretty, the second, mercifully short and heartfelt enough she noted several people dabbing at their eyes.
As the main course came out, Mavis sighed. “Gotta waddle.”
Eve gave her a blank look. “What?”
“Ladies’ room.”
As Leonardo helped her out of the chair, Nadine rose. Louise rose. Eve started to cut into what looked like some sort of actual beef. And Nadine tapped her shoulder.
“What? Really?”
“You’re security. Bring your weapon bag.”
“Security, my ass.” But Eve grabbed her bag and rose. “You couldn’t have had to waddle during the speeches?”
“Number Two was sleeping, but now? Sometimes they sit on your bladder. Sometimes they dance on it.” Rolling her eyes, Mavis rubbed at the mound. “Someone else is having a dance party.”
Since Eve didn’t want that image stuck in her brain, she said nothing more. And didn’t have to pull her weapon on the trip to the restroom.
She didn’t mind the dinner portion, in fact enjoyed it. Maybe it wasn’t pizza and beer with friends, but it was still sharing a meal with friends. And the Ellisons had stories to tell or conversational gambits that pulled stories out of others.
“I read,” Sylvia began, “that you and Lieutenant Dallas met when she arrested you. That can’t be true.”
“Solid fact.” Mavis lifted her glass of sparkling water, toasted Eve before drinking. “I had an off day that turned out to be the best day because Dallas busted me.”
“What did you do?” Martin asked. “If you don’t mind telling us.”
“What’d I do, Dallas?”
“Fumbled a wallet lift. You got the wallet—some tourist—but you’d been trailing him, and I caught the lift.”
“Caught me, too. I was better at the grift than the lift. Short cons, I ruled short cons back in the ago.”
Then she put a hand over Martin’s. “The street was better to me, for me, than where I ran from. What you’re doing tonight? What you and Sylvia do, what Dallas and Roarke do? I’m all in. Anytime I can help.”
Martin brought her hand to his lips. “You’re a beautiful soul. It shines right out of you.” He gave her hand an extra squeeze before turning to Eve. “And do you often make lifelong friends with former grifters and thieves?”
“Mavis was the first.”
He laughed. “And the last as well?”
Eve thought of the man sitting beside her, so obviously amused. “Not exactly.”
As dessert came out, Jake turned Nadine’s face to his, kissed her. “Gotta rock.”
And rock they did.
After an enthusiastic introduction from Martin, Avenue A took the stage to the thunder of applause.
And with the blast of the opening riff, people poured onto the dance floor.
They shook it in their tuxes, designer gowns, sparkling jewels.
Some—more than some, by Eve’s estimate—held up their ’links to capture the moment.
Halfway through the first set, Mavis wiggled. “Gotta waddle.”
“Again?”
“Not that way. Gotta waddle up there. Haul me up, moonpie.”
“Just how,” Eve murmured to Roarke, “is she going to do whatever she does up there when somebody has to haul her out of a chair?”
He just smiled. “Wait and see.”
She waited, and she saw.
The drums went to a pulsing beat, like a heart quickening. Jake held his hands over his head, clapped in a steady rhythm along with his other bandmates. And so, Eve noted, did people on the dance floor, at tables.
“How do we rock tonight?” he shouted.
And in call and response, the ballroom shouted back, “Loud!”
“How do we rock tonight?”
“Hard!”
“How do we rock tonight?”
“Wild!”
He did something on the guitar that sounded like a primal scream. Mavis, dancing onto the stage, managed to do the same with her voice.
The crowd roared.
As the music roared back, Mavis twirled around the bass player. The dozens of glittery strips that formed her skirt spun as she did.
Then she and Jake, eyes locked, moved together.
“Down went the sun, so the waiting’s done. You and me, baby, gonna have some fun. Rock me. Loud. Rock me. Hard. Rock me. Wild.”
Leonardo gripped Eve’s hand. She’d have sworn his irises went from round to heart shaped. “Isn’t she … Isn’t she…”
“Yeah. She’s all that.”
During the next song, Mavis hip-bumped the keyboardist aside, and took over herself.
“When did that happen?”
Leonardo grinned at Eve. “She’s been practicing.”
“She’s good.” Beside Eve, Charles let out a half laugh. “She’s really good.”
“The band’s been teaching her,” Nadine said. “They’re crazy about her. Well, who isn’t? Jake says she’s got a lot of untapped, and she’s thirsty. So he’s into helping her tap and drink it up.”
Eve turned to Roarke. “Did you know she could do that?”
“I didn’t, no.”
“She wanted to surprise you.” Leonardo just kept beaming. “She really hoped you wouldn’t have to work tonight so you’d be here, see her play in public for the first time.”
She did three numbers, the last in the set of her own composition. When the band took their break, Mavis came back to the table.
She sat with a Whew!, shook back her curly fountain.
“You astound me,” Roarke told her.
“Aw.” Then she looked at Eve.
“Wow.”
“Really?”
“Serious wow, and I don’t give up my serious wows lightly. You were great.”
“I love gigging with Avenue A now and then. They’re all just mag. Just mega mag.”
Leonardo urged a glass of water on her. “Hydrate, my moon and stars.”
“Yeah. Whew.”
“Did you know,” Eve wondered, “that Number Two sometimes moves one way when you move another?”
Now Mavis grinned. “Yeah. Number Two knows how to rock it. Loud, hard, and wild.”
“Duty calls.” Roarke took Eve’s hand.
“Did someone get dead?”
“No.” He shook his head at Mavis. “Part of the duty for me and mine tonight is socializing.”
“Right.” Marriage Rules, Eve reminded herself. “We’ll be back.”
“You gotta. The second set slays.”
She did her duty, shook hands, made the small talk—or listened to it, when she had a choice. She watched women, and more than a few men, look at Roarke as though they wanted to lap him up like ice cream.
The second set slayed. She had to spend some time on the dance floor—part of the duty. She didn’t mind that part when it was Roarke on a slow one.
“You’re enjoying yourself.”
“More than I figured, yeah.”
“It’s nice, darling Eve, to have an evening like this with you now and again.”
She looked at him as they swayed on the crowded dance floor, as Mavis’s bright voice blended with Avenue A’s on lyrics about forever love.
“But unlike me, unlike Mavis, you always imagined yourself here—in a place like this. Owning a place like this.”
“It helped me escape to believe it.” He touched his lips to hers. “I didn’t imagine you. That was beyond my ken. But here we are.”
“Here we are,” she repeated, and laid her head on his shoulder.
When the music stopped, and the ballroom thinned out to staff and a few stragglers, Mavis rubbed a hand on her belly.
“I’m not ready to call it. The bar’s open, right, Roarke?”
“It is, of course.”
“Are we up for it? I’m pulling the pregnant card. In a few weeks I won’t be up for sitting in a bar with friends after midnight. It’ll be rocking-chair time. It’s Friday night, and we’ve got an overnight babysitter.”
“Up for it, Lois?” Jake asked Nadine.
“Why not? It’s Friday night. We’re young, we’re beautiful.”
“Absolutely true.” Charles turned to Louise.
“Nobody says no to a pregnant woman.”
“Come on, Dallas,” Nadine urged. “If you can work half the night on a case, you can have a drink in a bar after a gala.”
“The first one’s my job,” Eve began. And Mavis gave her the puppy eyes and kept circling her hand over her belly.
Ten minutes later, it occurred to her here was something else she’d never imagined.
That she’d all but take over a fancy bar in a fancy hotel with a rock band, a pregnant rock star, a fashion designer, a reporter with an Oscar under her fancy belt, a doctor, a former LC, and an Irish gazillionaire who happened to be her husband.
Or that she’d have fun doing it.
Maybe it was the wine—damn good wine—or the bar snacks, the spicy little nuts, the fat olives, the crunchy something or other.
But no, she had to admit, it came down to the company.
Nadine shifted to her. “Jake and I got the full tour of the house.”
“It’s something.”
“It is. It’s so frigging happy. Not just the colors, the things, the style.
It’s in the damn air. Peabody and McNab’s section, so different from Mavis and Leonardo’s, but the same vibe.
Happy-as-shit vibe. That blown-glass chandelier Peabody’s mother made?
Jesus! I want one for my own. Mavis says they’re coming to the housewarming.
I’m going to try to talk her into making me something. ”
Nadine reached for some crunchy stuff while Mavis had the band doubling over with laughter.
“Don’t call me crazy.”
“I don’t think I ever have. Called you a lot of other things.”
“True. Jake and I are looking to buy a vacation place. Together.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not crazy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Where’s crazy?”
“Tropical, that’s what we want. Beaches, privacy. We’re going to talk to Roarke about where. Why not tap somebody who knows about all of it?”
“Okay.” So she turned to Roarke. “Best place for Nadine and Jake to buy a vacation home. Tropical, beaches, privacy.”
He leaned around Eve to speak to Nadine. “Investment property or a second home?”
“Second home.”
“Villa or condo?”
“Villa. We want a house. Ah, something big enough to have guests when we want. With a pool, beach access, close enough, but not too close to restaurants and shops, some nightlife. He’d need a music space, I’d need an office space. We’d want at least four bedrooms, maybe a guesthouse. It’s crazy.”
“Not at all. You might want to explore Saint Lucia or Turks and Caicos.”
“We’ve been looking at both of those. And Saint Bart’s. And, well, too many others. It gets overwhelming.”
“Why don’t I send you a list of what I think may suit you?”
“Really? I’d appreciate that so much. We’re both turning in circles about it. You found my condo, and it’s exactly right. Then when we did the tour of the new house, saw how right it is for all of them, I thought, well, maybe Roarke can find what’s right for us on this wild idea.”
“I’ll send a list, but you’ll be the judge of it.”
“Jake? I’m going to kiss Roarke.”
“Okay.”
Nadine nudged Eve back, leaned over, gave Roarke a smacking kiss.
Louise let out a peal of laughter and rubbed Mavis’s baby mountain. Charles signaled for another round.
And Eve’s communicator sounded.
“Uh-oh,” Nadine said.
Eve pulled it out of her purse. “Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. See the officers at 1120 York Avenue. Possible homicide.
“Acknowledged. Contact Peabody, Detective Delia. I’m on my way. Dallas out.”
Conversation had stopped, and eyes had turned to her.
Mavis lifted her shoulders, gave Eve a sympathetic smile.
“Well, hey, at least they waited to kill somebody until after we got to party.”
“Yeah, some murderers are considerate that way. Gotta go.”
“Drinks on the house,” Roarke said as he rose. “Stay as long as you like.”
Nadine looked up from her ’link. “That’s the Barrister House.
Owned until his death last winter by Henry J.
Barrister, founder of Zip—global and off-planet shipping.
Current residents his son, Nathan—current head of Zip—and his spouse, Aileen, two college-age daughters.
Nathan has a sister, also in New York, divorced, no kids. ”
“Only you, Lois,” Jake murmured.
“Good to know. Later. I would be dressed like this,” Eve muttered as they walked out.
“We can stop at home on the way.”
She wanted to, but … “Better to get there. Swing back after, change, get my ride if I have to go into Central. Except I’ll need a field kit.”
“In the car.”
She glanced up at him. “You’re always handy. Anyway, this is more my version of Friday night.”
“It is, but, Lieutenant, it’s now Saturday morning.”