In Death 31 - Indulgence in Death

lot higher on the ladder if she’d married Dudley.” Peabody shrugged. “But she’s not exactly scraping bottom. Anyway, with what you dug up last night she’s connected to Dudley and Moriarity with the cousin thing, the college pal thing. Makes you wonder, if we’re right about these two, how far back they’ve been into the nasty.”
    “That kind of partnership requires absolute trust—or stupidity. I don’t think they’re stupid—or not completely stupid.” Eve considered. “And that kind of trust has to build over some time. Because if one of them cracks, it all cracks, if one talks, they both go down. And still . . .”
    “Still?”
    “If it’s competition, one has to lose. Losing would be not making the kill, or getting caught, or screwing up. I can’t turn it any other way.”
    “Maybe neither one of them believes he can lose.”
    “Somebody has to,” Eve countered.
    “Yeah, but when McNab and I play, for instance, I’m always sort of shocked and pissed off if I lose. I go in knowing I’m going to win. Every time. It’s the same with him. I think because we’re pretty well matched in the games we get into. And separately we usually destroy whoever else we’re playing against.”
    “It’s a thought.” Eve squeezed it a little harder. “It’s a good thought,” she decided. “They’re arrogant bastards. Maybe the concept of losing isn’t on the table.” She rolled it around in her mind, let it bump against the other elements. “The killings are planned. They’re orchestrated, and so far we know two were orchestrated back-to-back. There’s no impulse about it. Someone plots and plans and basically choreographs murder, there’s something in there that wants the kill. You can hide it, spruce it up with coats of polish, but that something’s going to eke through off and on.”
    Peabody nodded. “Especially with or around someone who’s close enough to see it. So they, you could say, recognized each other.”
    Recognition . Wasn’t that the same term she’d come to when considering her long friendship with Mavis?
    “Yeah. I would say recognition’s a factor. What we need is to find other people who recognized them. We need to build on that until we have enough to bring them in, sweat them some. Or enough to get a search. Because they have to be communicating after a kill. There’s no way either of them would or could wait until the media hits to confirm the round.”
    “On my fork, I haven’t found any connection between the vics, between the vics and Sweet or Foster, between the vics and Moriarity or Dudley, or any combination thereof, except for the known company connections.”
    “Might still be there, something more subtle, or something that just doesn’t show.”
    Connecticut was different, Eve mused. The space people could claim for their own purposes spread, with lots of green, lots of trees, gardens manicured as luxuriously as any society matron after a salon session. Vehicles showed off their style and shine on paved driveways—and as those private spaces increased in size, she caught glimpses of red clay tennis courts, the Caribbean blue of swimming pools, the dark circles of helipads.
    “What do people do out here?”
    “Whatever they want” was Peabody’s opinion.
    “What I mean is, you can’t walk anywhere. There’s no deli on the corner, no handy glide cart, no buzz, no movement. Just houses.”
    “I guess that’s why people live out here, or move out here. They don’t want the buzz. They want the quiet, and the space. You get to have both,” Peabody pointed out.
    Using the navigation on her wrist unit, Eve turned into a driveway that circled to a house on a small rise. VanWitt had gone for a modified U-shape with the center two-story leg connecting the long, single-story juts in a mix of stone and wood and glass.
    Flowers were cheerful and plentiful, trees tall and shady.
    She angled where the drive widened into a small lot, and pulled in beside a spiffy little topless number in stoplight red.
    “It’s pretty.” Peabody looked around as they walked to the main door. “Probably a nice place to raise kids with all this room. Low crime area, good schools.”
    “You thinking of moving?”
    “No. I want the buzz, too. But I can see how people aspire to places like this.”
    A woman in cropped pants and a tucked white shirt answered the bell. “May I help you?”
    “Felicity VanWitt.” Eve held up her badge. “Lieutenant Dallas and