In Death 27 - Salvation in Death

runs normal.”
    The hostess came over. “Your table’s ready. If you’ll just follow me, we’ll bring your wine over. A very nice choice,” she added. “I hope you’re enjoying it.”
    Once they were seated, a busboy brought their wine and glasses on a tray. “Teresa will be your waitress tonight. She’ll be right with you.”
    “How’s the pizza?” Eve asked him, and he beamed. “You won’t get better. My brother’s making it tonight.”
    “Funny,” Eve mused when they were alone. “Family restaurants. Another connection. She worked for the Ortiz family in theirs, then comes here to work in another well-established family business.”
    “It’s what she knows, and maybe what she needs. Her first husband deserted her, and you said there were domestic disturbance reports prior to that. She had her first child very young, and he, too, left her. Or left in any case. Now she’s part of a family again, a link in that chain. She looks content,” he added as Teresa started toward their table.
    “Good evening. Would you like something to start? The roasted artichoke is wonderful tonight.”
    “We’ll just head straight for the pizza. Pepperoni.” Roarke ordered quickly, knowing if he hesitated, Eve might head straight into interrogation.
    “I’ll get the order right in for you.”
    She started for the kitchen, stopping when a diner patted her arm. So she paused long enough to have a quick and lively exchange that told Eve the table was filled with regulars.
    Popular, she noted. Well-liked. Efficient.
    “Keep that up,” Roarke warned, “and half the restaurant will make you for a cop in the next two minutes.”
    “I am a cop.” But she shifted her gaze back to him. “If she’s what she looks to be, I bet she keeps up with the Ortiz family. I wonder if she went to the funeral. Her name wasn’t on the list I got from Graciela Ortiz.”
    “Have you checked the floral tributes? Mass cards?”
    “Hmm. I did, before. But I wasn’t looking for Teresa Franco from Brooklyn. Mira thinks the killer will be compelled to confess—to his priest.”
    “Sticky.”
    “Yeah, could be. Billy was easy. He was impulse and lust in addition to faith and righteousness. He knew I knew, and that just tipped it into my lap. If the killer confesses to López or Freeman, it’s going to bog down. They’ll use the sanctity of confession because they believe it.”
    “And you don’t.”
    “Hell no. You cop to a crime, the person you cop to has a responsibility to report it to the authorities.”
    “Black-and-white.”
    She scowled into her wine. “What am I supposed to see? Purple? There’s a reason we separate church and state. I’ve never figured how that deal slipped through the cracks in the divide.” She snagged one of the bread sticks spearing out of a tall glass.
    “I don’t like the possibility of depending on a priest to convince a killer to turn himself in. Billy? Weak-spined little sanctimonious hypocrite, he couldn’t stomach what he did after the fact. Simple as that.”
    She bit in, pointed the rest of the bread stick at Roarke. “But Lino’s killer? That one thought it through, worked it out, there’s some deep motive in there. May be revenge, may be profit, may be protection of self or another—but it’s no smoke screen like Billy’s ‘save the souls’ bullshit.”
    Since it was pointed at him, Roarke stole the bread stick from her. “While I agree, I’m fascinated by the hard line you’re drawing over religion.”
    “It gets used too much, as an excuse, a fall guy, a weapon, a con. A lot of people, maybe most, don’t mean it except when it suits them. Not like Luke Goodwin and López. They mean it. They live it. You can see it in them. Maybe that makes the bullshit harder to take. I don’t know.”
    “And the killer? Does he mean it?”
    “I’m thinking yeah. That’s why he’ll be harder to hang than Billy was. He means it, but he’s not a fanatic, not crazy. Otherwise there’d have been more, a follow-up, some sort of message to support the act.”
    She shrugged, realized she should at least give him something more than murder over dinner. “So, anyway, I didn’t tell you about the fight I broke up today.”
    “Successfully, I assume, as I see no visible wounds.”
    “Bitch bit me.” Eve tapped her shoulder. “I got a damn good dental impression. Over a handbag. Not a mugging. A sale on purses. Ah, Laroche?”
    “Ah, yes. Highly desired handbags, luggage,