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Maybe he hadn’t had one, Eve thought, and they’d taken him by surprise.
But they’d taken him.
“I’m going to need contact information for Mrs. Betz, and I need to know where the security center is in this residence. Security center first.”
“Dallas, he didn’t order his driver for this morning.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
The droid led her through a second door, and one look told her everything.
“Hard drive and disc are gone. And so’s Betz. They’ve got him.”
She turned to see Sila in the doorway, arms clutching her middle, hands clutching her elbows. “Oh my God, Lieutenant. Oh my God. Do you think he’s... we haven’t been all through the house yet. Do you think he’s...”
“Not yet, but we’ll go through it. I want you to get your mother and... Dara, right? Get them downstairs, into the room at the front. I’m going to need you to tell us exactly what you touched this morning. Peabody—”
“Contacting EDD. Do you want Baxter and Trueheart?”
“Send them to the admin. Send EDD there, too. We’ll probably need a warrant, but I figure we’ve got cause at this point. Let’s have somebody sit on the Easterday house, and see about getting protection for the others. They’re probably all right for the moment, but we won’t risk it.”
It might be too late for Betz, she thought, and that would make it three for three. But she’d be damned if she’d let them add another to their scoreboard.
15
Eve gathered the cleaning team, and got the first buzz from the “retired” Frankie.
“We started on the master—it’s big as a house on its own, especially with the two bathrooms and all the fuss. Started with the bathrooms, and the two sitting rooms. And Sila said why didn’t I go ahead and work on the baby’s room, so I was just about to when she came down to let you in, then you called us off.”
“Okay. Anything strike you?”
“Not there, no, but when you called us off, I thought, Why, something’s going on here, so I poked into the guest suite—the gold one. That’s the big one, opposite end of the house from the master. And it was set up.”
“Set up how?”
She curled her lip, just a little. “For what we’ll call a rendezvous. There’s a bottle of French champagne in a silver bucket up there—sitting in water now, as the ice melted. Got two fancy flutes, and some strawberries been dipped in chocolate. White and dark, though white’s not really chocolate, is it?”
“It’s okay,” Eve heard herself say.
“There’s a rose on the pillow on one side of the bed, and since I was poking, I looked in the drawer of the nightstand, and there’s what you’d call adult play toys, and the like. I’d say the mister was expecting someone not his wife, like he has before.”
“Before?”
“Twice since we’ve been working here I’ve done that room. Both times when we knew the missus was away for a day or two that room was used. The bed was used—and I’ve been doing beds long enough to know when somebody’s had relations in that bed. There’d be that, and the bucket, the empty bottle, the glasses, and so on. The setup. Bathroom would’ve been used, too. Nobody used the bed or the bath in there this time, but it was set up for relations.”
“Mama.” Sila shook her head. “You take the cake and a slice of pie.”
“It’s a terrible thing happened to Senator Mira—and now this other man. I know because while we were waiting upstairs I had Dara look on her handheld to see if there’s been another murder, and there was. A terrible thing, though I didn’t like Senator Mira as far as I could spit rocks. But a man shouldn’t be killed, and killed so mean, just because he’s a prick.”
Dara giggled, then slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”
“No problem. Mrs. Trent, that’s really helpful. Did you notice anything else?”
Frankie sucked air in her nose, furrowed her brow. “Well, I don’t know how much help, but I think he changed out of his business suit when he came home. It was tossed in the chair in the master, and his good shoes were under the chair. Nobody in this house puts a thing away proper. I can’t tell you what he put on, but it looks to me like he came home, took himself a shower in the master bath, and put on fresh clothes. Then he went about setting up for relations in that guest suite. I guess he doesn’t think it counts if he doesn’t take them into the bed he shares with his wife. Put your hand over your mouth in advance, Dara, because I’m going to say a man who cheats is a prick, but I hope he doesn’t get killed for it.”
Since Eve thought the same, she couldn’t argue.
She asked a few more questions, just to see if something else popped up. Then let them go.
