AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I... his bathroom!” Peabody shot her two index fingers in the air. “She’s all pink and shiny in hers, and his is full of man. What woman wants to go into a bathroom after a guy?”
“We do all right,” McNab said.
“Abso-true.” But when his back was turned again, Peabody rolled her eyes at Eve. “You’re thinking potential hidey-hole.”
“Let’s check it out.”
If the hers bathroom was an explosion of pink and fuss, the his was a study in desperate masculinity. Black tile with red flashes covered the floors, the walls. The odd addition of a bar—red, with cherub carvings—along one wall stood before a portrait of a zaftig reclining woman eating a fat purple plum. The black counter held a large square of red sink with a wolf’s head faucet that would vomit out the water.
Shelves held bottles and bowls, the manly versions of creams and lotions and oils, as they were all cased in red or black leather.
The rest of the wolf pack occupied the shower, where they’d spit out water from the showerhead and jets.
The drying tube had a padded bench, in case its occupant grew too tired and needed to rest in the two minutes it took to dry most humans.
He had a vanity of his own, fashioned to resemble a desk. Peabody started there.
“I think this may be uglier than hers, but it’s neck and neck,” Peabody said. “Wow, he’s got as many face and body enhancements in here as she does—almost. Big on the tanners and bronzers, and hair products. This vanity’s an eyesore, Dallas, but it’s well-constructed. I’m not finding anything out of proportion, nothing that looks like a secret compartment.”
“How about the bar?” Eve circled around it. “You’ve got a good eye for compartments.”
It was how Peabody had first come to her notice, as a uniform finding a hidey-hole in a murderer’s apartment.
“Well. Again, really good work wasted on the ugly.”
Peabody swiveled on the vanity stool, studied the bar from that perspective. “All that carving—I mean it mirrors what they’ve got all through the house, but it’s also the kind of thing that can hide a mechanism. And a cabinetmaker this good? He could hide one really well. My dad’s done some totally mag hideys.”
She angled her head as Eve ran her hands over cherubs. “Maybe microgoggles would help—if there’s anything to see.”
“Go get some from the field kits.”
Eve hunkered down, putting aside how odd it was to rub her fingers all over fat, naked butts.
Wouldn’t be on the front face, she decided. What if someone inadvertently hit the release? If there was one.
She straightened, moved around the back.
Glasses and mixers and liquor on shelves, and a single cabinet with the carved front. She opened it, peered in at the ice machine, the wine friggie.
Closed it again, opened it. Closed it.
“Got the goggles.”
“Why have a door in front of the ice-maker thing, the wine friggie? Anytime you want ice, you have to open the door. Everything else is on open shelves. Handy.”
“Could just be the design. Or he didn’t want the mechanics to show.”
“Maybe. But how deep are these units? They wouldn’t be the depth of the bar, right?”
Now Peabody hunkered down beside her. “Dad and Zeke have made some nice bars—fully outfitted, custom. One this size... Seems like the ice deal wouldn’t need that much depth.”
Eve closed the door again, wiggled her fingers for the goggles. With them on, she began to scan inch by inch.
“This one.” Eyes huge behind the goggles, Peabody gripped a cherub butt between her fingers. It turned fractionally.
“Why does it turn and not open any damn thing?”
“A code or a pattern,” Peabody muttered, “like a puzzle. Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen this kind of thing. We have to figure out which ones to turn, in what order. It’s pretty damn clever. It’s really good work.”
