In Death 26 - Strangers in Death

heard Mira’s door open. And staring, quickly ended the call. “Thanks. Later. Hey, Charles, small world.”
    She might have bashed him with a brick. His expression jumped from shock to disbelief and ended on flustered. “I’ve heard people call New York a small town,” he managed. “I guess this is what they mean. I was just…Well.”
    “Eve.” With a warm and welcoming smile on her pretty face, Mira stepped beside Charles. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting. Come right in. Charles, always a pleasure.”
    “Thank you. I’ll…” He gestured without any of his usual style. “Let you get to work.”
    Over her shoulder, Eve watched him stride rapidly away as she moved into Mira’s office. “What’s all that about?”
    “Have a seat. We’ll have some tea.”
    While Eve frowned, Mira moved with her usual graceful efficiency between the two scoop chairs to the AutoChef to order the flowery tea she seemed to live on. Her hair, a cannily highlighted sable, swung smoothly around her patient face, setting off her calm blue eyes. Her suit, a warm and dull gold today, showed off good legs.
    “Since you don’t have a hair out of place, I’m guessing he didn’t drop by to bang you.”
    Mira set delicate cups on the table between the chairs, and laughed with delight. “Wouldn’t that have been interesting? Because it is, I have no intention of confirming or denying.” She sat, crossed her legs smoothly, studied Eve’s face. “You’re annoyed because two of your friends have some private business they’re not inclined to share with you.”
    “I’m not annoyed.” Irked, Eve decided, maybe she was a little irked. “The vic’s wife is one of Charles’s clients, and I interviewed him regarding that this morning, so—”
    “I’ll tell you that what Charles and I discussed has nothing whatsoever to do with your investigation. Now, about your investigation—”
    “Is he in trouble?”
    Mira’s eyes softened. “No, Charles isn’t in trouble. He has a lot on his mind at the moment.”
    “So he keeps saying,” Eve replied, and dropped into a chair. “People are too much damn work.”
    “They certainly can be.”
    “I could find out. It’s my damn job to find things out.”
    “But you won’t, because I’ve just told you he isn’t in trouble, and you won’t intrude.”
    “If these people wouldn’t crisscross all the time in front of where I need to go, I wouldn’t have to think about them.”
    Mira sipped her tea, but hiding her smile didn’t hide the open amusement in her eyes. “Your life’s more crowded than it used to be. And you’re more contented.”
    “Yeah, I’m feeling real cozy right now. Forget it.” She shrugged it off. Charles was a big boy. “You read the file?”
    “Yes.” Mira took another sip of tea as—Eve knew—she aligned her thoughts. “In my opinion, Anders knew his killer. The method used, the staging surrounding it, wasn’t just personal, but intimate. Sexual, of course, but sex isn’t always intimate. And there is no physical or forensic evidence that the victim engaged in sexual relations with the killer, or anyone on the night of the murder.”
    “Nope, he was still holding a full load. No fluids on the sheets or on the body itself. No hair, but for a few strays from the vic, skin.”
    “Yet it was staged to appear otherwise, and the staging’s important. It took time, and planning and preparation. The killer thought about how this could and would be done for some time. There’s no impulse here, no passion. A sense of the dramatic, even the theatric, but that underlying sense of order. It feels female. That may be sexist, but it doesn’t feel like a same sex crime.”
    “If it was, he’d’ve staged the body differently. Given the logistics of man-on-man sex, I think a male killer would have positioned the body differently.”
    Mira nodded. “That’s a good point.”
    “And even though I told Peabody not to jump to female off the get, it strikes me that if we were dealing with a man—again, if sex was part of it—there’d have been more anger. If Anders was gay, he was deep in the closet. Added to it, in my interviews with the wife, she admits they’d had discussions about his sexual preferences, and she always speaks of women.”
    “A female killer, then, one who is able to resist impulse, at least long enough to plan, and to execute that plan. One who enjoys the elaborate, the symbolic. Who had or believed she had an intimate