In Death 22 - Memory in Death

thirty hours after the other injuries. While those were relatively minor in comparison, it’s my opinion they were caused by the same weapon.”
    “Got anything on that?
    “Some fibers in the head wounds. I’ll be sending them over to our friend Dickhead at the lab. A weighed cloth sack would be my preliminary guess. Tox screen’s come back positive for legal, over-the-counter pain meds. Standard blockers. She took one less than an hour before death, chased it with a very nice Chablis.”
    “Yeah, there was a bottle of that in her room, and blockers on the bed table.”
    “She had some soup, mostly chicken broth, and some soy noodles about eight, and some soft meat in
    a wrap closer to midnight. Treated herself to some chocolate frozen dessert, more wine with her late supper. She was, at time of death, nicely buzzed on wine and pills.”
    “Okay, thanks. I’ll catch you in the morning.”
    “Dallas, are you interested in the fact that she’s had several sculpting procedures over the last, I’d say, dozen years? Face and body, tucks and nips. Nothing major, but considerable work, and good work at that.”
    “Always good to know the habits of the dead. Thanks.”
    She ended the transmission, sat back at her desk to study the ceiling.
    So she’d gotten herself roughed up sometime Friday after leaving Roarke’s office. Doesn’t, by their statements, tell her son or daughter-in-law, doesn’t report same to the authorities. What she does, apparently, is hole up with wine and pills and easy food.
    Either leaves her window unlocked, or opens the door to her killer.
    Now why would she do that if the killer had already played a tune on her the day before? Where was
    her fear, her anger? Where was her survival instinct?
    A woman who could run a game onCPSfor over a decade had damn good survival instincts.
    Even if you’re in some pain, why would you get buzzed alone in a hotel room when someone’s hurt
    you, and obviously can hurt you again? Especially when you have family right down the hall.
    Unless it was what was down the hall that hurt you. Possible, she thought. But if so, why stay where
    they could so easily get to you, hurt you again
    She glanced over as Roarke came in through his adjoining office.
    “You get yourself beat up,” she began, “you don’t want the cops involved.”
    “Certainly not.”
    “Right, okay, I get that. You don’t tell your son?”
    “I don’t have one to tell at the moment.” He eased a hip onto the corner of her desk. “But pride might very well prevent me.”
    “That’s guy thinking. Think like a woman.”
    “A stretch for me,” he said with a smile. “How about you?”
    “If I’m thinking like this woman, I whine ASAPtoanyone who’ll listen. But she doesn’t, which gives
    me a couple of possibilities.”
    “One, she doesn’t have to tell her son, because her son’s the one who used her as a punching bag.”
    “That’s one,” she agreed. “One that’s not fitting so well into my memory of their relationship. If that relationship soured since, why does she stay where he can get to her again?”
    He picked up the little statue of the goddess, a symbol of mother, he thought, from her desk. He toyed with it idly as he spoke. “We both know relationships are thorny areas. It’s possible that he made a habit out of knocking her about. She was used to it, and didn’t consider telling anyone, or getting out of his way.”
    “There’s the daughter-in-law. No marks on her, no typical signs of an abusive relationship there. A guy who pounds on Mommy is likely to smack the little woman around, too. It doesn’t fit very well for me.”
    “If you bump that down the list”he set the statue back on her desk”what leapfrogs over it?”
    “She doesn’t want anyone to know. Which isn’t pride, it’s planning, it’s precaution. She had an agenda,
    a personal one.” And yeah, Eve thought, she liked that a lot better.
    “But it doesn’t explain why she drank a lot of wine, took blockers, got herself impaired.”
    She shuffled the close-up still of Trudy’s face to the top of her pile. And took a hard look at it. “That doesn’t say fear to me. She’s afraid, she uses her son as a shield, she locks herself up tight, or she runs. She didn’t do any of those things. Why wasn’t she afraid?”
    “There are some who enjoy pain.”
    Eve shook her head. “Yeah, there’s that. But she liked being tended to. Run me a bath, get me a snack. She’d used