In Death 29 - Kindred in Death

Move it, Baxter.”
    “Moving it.”
    Lieutenant Dallas, who would charge through a firefight to do the job, closed her eyes with her stomach quivering as they dipped toward touchdown.
    She was better when they were zipping along the roads in some spiffy, topless rental with the heavy Southern air whipping around her head.
    “A little late for a cop call to a family man,” she said. “Good, it gives us another advantage.”
    “It’s not that late. We’re on Central time,” he told her. “We’re an hour earlier here.”
    She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “So we’re here before we left. How does anyone keep their brain from frizzing over stuff like this?”
    Unable to resist, Roarke gave her a poke and a grin. “And when we go back, we’ll lose an hour.”
    “See? It’s senseless. How can you lose an hour? Where does it go? Can someone else find it? Does it get reported to the Lost Time Division?”
    “Darling Eve, I have to inform you the world is not flat, nor is New York its center.”
    “The first part, okay, but the second? Maybe it should be. Things would be simpler.”
    He slowed, sliding onto a suburban street where the trees were plentiful and the houses jammed so close Eve wondered why the occupants didn’t just live in apartments. They’d probably have more privacy.
    Tiny yards spread until the wash of street and security lights, and the scent of grass along with something deep and sweet, wound through the air.
    Following the vehicle’s navigational assistant, Roarke turned left at a corner, then stopped at a house—much like all the other houses—in the middle of the block.
    Eve frowned at the house. Had she become spoiled and jaded living in the enormity of what Roarke had built, or was the house the size of your average shoe box? Two little cars sat, nose to butt, in the narrow driveway. Low-growing flowers crawled along its verge.
    Lights beamed against the window glass. In their glow, she saw a bike parked beside the front stoop.
    “These people couldn’t afford to send a kid to Columbia. Unless he bagged a scholarship—and that’s out of profile—how could they pay that kind of freight?”
    “Well, the wise and foresighted often begin saving and investing for college educations while the child is still in the womb. Even then, yes, it would take considerable.”
    She got out, started toward the house. Stopped dead with her hand resting on the butt of her weapon. “Do you hear that?” she demanded as she cocked her head at the repetitive basso belch that rose into the steamy air.
    “Of course I hear it. I’m standing right here.”
    “What the hell is it?”
    “I’m not entirely sure, but I think it may be some sort of frog.”
    “Frog? Seriously? The green hopping things?” She scanned the dark and the streams of streetlights. “It sounds really big. Like alien-frog big.”
    “I don’t have much personal experience with frogs, but I don’t believe they have alien frogs in Alabama. At least not the sort that require stunning with a police-issue.”
    “We’ll see about that.” Just in case, she kept her hand on her weapon.
    Through the front window she saw the movement on the entertainment screen, and the man kicked back in a recliner, the woman with her feet curled up on the sofa.
    “Quiet evening at home in front of the screen,” Eve murmured. “Could they, would they, if they had any part in . . . what’s she doing? The woman? What’s she doing with those sticks and the fuzzy thread?”
    “I have no idea. Why should I have the answers to these things?”
    “Because,” she said and made him laugh.
    “Well, at a guess again, it appears to be some sort of . . . craft.”
    She continued toward the door, studying the sticks, the yarn, the woman. It popped out of some file of buried facts. “Knitting!” Eve punched Roarke’s shoulder. “I got one. She’s knitting.”
    “If you say so.”
    “I saw that stuff—the sticks, the thread, somewhere, some case. She’s knitting, he’s watching the screen and having a beer, and the girl’s bike is parked by the door—and not chained down. These aren’t master criminals who helped plan the murder of a teenager, and if they’re involved in hacking or identity fraud, I’ll take up knitting.”
    “All that from a glance through the living room window?”
    “Security? Minimal, and right now it’s not even activated. No curtains drawn, nothing to hide here.” She stepped to the door, knocked. In a