Remember When

that. She didn't have anything to add to what she told you. She's going to her parents'.
    Trueheart and I offered to go inform them, or at least go with her. She said she wanted to do it herself. That it would be easier on them if she did. She never met this Bobby character. None of the stoop-sitters or neighbors remember seeing the vic with a guy either. They've got a cheap d and c unit. Trueheart checked it for transmissions."
    "She-Tina Cobb," Trueheart began, "sent and received transmissions from an account registered to a Bobby Smith. A quick check indicates the account was opened five weeks ago and closed two days ago. The address listed is bogus. The unit doesn't store transmission over twenty-four hours. If there were 'link trans, to and from, we'd need EDD to dig them out."
    "Yippee," Peabody said under her breath and earned a stony stare from Eve.
    "You tagging EDD?" Eve asked Baxter.
    "Worth a shot. It's probable he used public 'links, but if they can dig out a transmission or two, we might be able to get some sort of geographic. Get a voice print. Get a sense of him."
    "Agreed."
    "We're going to talk to her coworkers. See if she gabbed about the guy. But from what her sister says, she was keeping him pretty close. Like a big secret. She was only twenty-two, and her record's shiny. Not a smudge."
    "She wanted to get married, be a professional mother." Trueheart flushed as all eyes turned to him. "I talked to the sister about her. It, um, I think you can learn about the killer if you know the victim."
    "He's my pride and joy," Baxter said with a big grin.
    Eve remembered that Trueheart was barely older than the victim they were discussing. And that he'd nearly become a victim himself only a short time before.
    The quick glance she exchanged with Baxter told her he was thinking the same thing. Both let it go.
    "The theory is the killer used a romantic involvement to lure her." She waited until Baxter nodded. "Your case and ours come together through her. She was Samantha Gannon's maid, and as such had knowledge of the security codes to her residence and knew, intimately, the contents and setup of that residence. She was aware that the owner would be out of town for a two-week period. But she was unaware that there would be a house-sitter. Those arrangements were last minute and, as far as we can know, between Jacobs and Gannon."
    "Lieutenant." Trueheart raised a hand like a student in the classroom. "It's hard for me to see someone like Tina Cobb betraying security. She worked hard, her employment record's as clean as the rest of it. There isn't a single complaint filed against her on the job. She doesn't seem the type to give out a security code."
    "I gotta go with the kid on this one," Baxter confirmed. "I don't see her giving it out willingly."
    "You've never been a girl in love," Peabody said to Baxter. "It can make you stupid. You look at the time line, you see that the break-in and Jacobs's murder were prior to Cobb's murder. And, when you calculate the time between her last being seen and time of death, there isn't a lot. He'd been working her for weeks, right? Smoothing her up. It seems to me he'd be more sure she was giving him the straight scoop if it was willing pillow talk or something than if he tried to beat it out of her."
    "My pride and joy," Eve said to Baxter and earned a chuckle. "He beats or threatens or tortures, she might lie or just get mixed up. He eases it out of her, it's more secure. But..."
    She paused while her pride and joy wrinkled her forehead. "He seduces it out, she might talk, or get the guilts and report the lapse to her superior. That's a risk. Either way, if we're right about this connection, he got it out of her. Then after he broke in, killed Jacobs, he had to cover tracks.
    So he killed Cobb, dumped her. Killed and dumped her in such a way that identification would be delayed long enough for him to tidy up any connection between himself and Cobb."
    "What's Gannon got that he wants?" Baxter asked.
    "It's more what he thinks she has or has access to. And that's several million in stolen diamonds."
    She filled them in and gave them each a disk copy of her file. Without realizing it, she'd straightened and was standing. "The more we find out about this old case, and the stolen gems, the more we know about our current cases. We'll learn more, faster, if we coordinate our time and effort."
    "I got no problem with that." Baxter nodded in agreement. "We'll shoot you both