Down the Rabbit Hole

“I’d agree, but if you’re angling from that to whoever she was paying somehow pushing her to murder/suicide, why? Forget the how for a moment. Why? A dollar shy of ten large a week is a very nice income from one source.”


“Maybe she’d decided that was it.” Demonstrating, Eve swiped a finger through the air. “Maybe she’d figured out whoever she was paying was full of bullshit, maybe argued, threatened. Could be this bullshit shucker figured out a way to get more if he eliminated her, and her brother. A lot of ropes to tug there.” She jammed her hands into her pockets. “I need her tox.” She hadn’t given Morris enough time, and found that frustrating. “I need how. She was high, and everyone says she didn’t use, but damn it, she was high. So maybe she didn’t know she was using. Still doesn’t tell me why she’d kill her brother. If we stretch it to mind manipulation—not a big stretch since we’ve dealt with it before—it still doesn’t explain the why.” She’d taken a turn around his office before she caught herself. “Sorry.”

“I never tire of watching you work.”

“I’m working these angles because two people who loved her insist she couldn’t do what she did.”

“Not just because of that.”

She blew out a breath. It could be disconcerting to have someone who knew her inside and out.

“No, not just,” she admitted. “My sense of her, too. Money’s part of it. Gia Gregg—lawyer. Do you know her?”

“Not personally, but she has an excellent reputation. Specializes in estate law, high-end clients.”

“Too early for her, too. I’m going to get out of your hair, go on in. I can start running the list on the way, and maybe get lucky and push Morris on the autopsy.”

“Would you like me to look for more?”

“More what?”

“Money, darling.”

“You can give it a glance if you have time. Thanks. I’ll be . . . communing with the dead for a while, one way or the other.”

“Give them my best or my worst, depending. And take care of my cop.”

“I can do all that. See you later.”

She started her run on the psychics at the top of the list as she drove downtown, letting the in-dash do the work. She eliminated one straight off, as he was doing time for fraud.

Two others had done time. Eve bumped them down, figuring Darlene had enough brains and certainly enough resources to have gotten the same information. And while she might have been gullible, she didn’t strike Eve as brick-stupid.

She toggled that with Darlene’s travel. Though she had flown to Europe twice in the last six months, there was nothing for the last eighteen weeks.

Eve bumped down anyone on the list out of the country. But she’d check with Henry Boyle, and with Darlene’s office, just to be sure she hadn’t snuck any travel in that didn’t show.

She continued the runs as she walked through the white tunnel of the morgue—and tried to resign herself to spending a good chunk of her day talking to woo-woo shovelers.

She found Morris with Darlene’s shattered body, and with the brother laid out on a second table.

“Jumpers or floaters,” she began, “which is worse?”

“Floaters go on a sliding scale. The longer they’re in the water, the higher they rate.”

He wore a steel gray suit today, paired with an electric blue tie. He’d gone silver with the cord that twined through his single thick braid of black hair.

And he looked, she thought, both rested and alert.

“Jumpers,” he continued. “We can judge them on a sliding scale as well. The higher they go, the higher they rate.”

“Fifty-two floors. She rates pretty high.”

“She does. Years ago I had a jumper—literally. A skydiver.”

“Why do people do that?” It absolutely baffled her. “People actually pay to do that.”

“It’s exhilarating.”

“You?” Surprised, she frowned at him. “You’ve jumped out of a plane? On purpose?”

“An amazing sensation. I’m quite a fan of sensations.”