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“What’s your relationship with the children?”
“They’re fine young people. We get along very well. We need to go see them. I hope they’re with their mother now, but we’ll go see them. They’ve lost their father, and will need family around them.”
“Will they be more inclined to keep the property in the family, Professor Mira?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
She saw he’d made whipped cream. People actually whipped cream to make whipped cream? Who knew?
He set the bowl aside, used another tool to make shavings from the remaining chocolate bar. “Eve—that is, Lieutenant Dallas, Edward, no matter how determined he was, couldn’t sell our grandfather’s house. There was nothing he could do to make me break my promise. I believe we would have remained at odds, but then, as I said, we haven’t been close since my early college days. We were together at Yale, though he was a year ahead of me. If he’d lived, we weren’t likely to ever be close again, but I would never wish him harm. And he would never have bullied me into selling.”
“Sometimes people strike back at bullies.”
“Yes, they do. I counseled my children to do just that. And I’ve done just that myself with Edward for more than forty years.”
He turned, took mugs from a cupboard. “Some mistake a mild disposition for weakness. Do you?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“I can—my family will attest—be extremely stubborn when something is important.”
From across the room Gillian made a little snorting sound that had a smile twitching at the corner of his lips.
“A promise to a man I loved deeply is important, even sacred. I didn’t have to hurt Edward to keep it; I simply had to continue to keep it. I’m not a violent man.”
He poured the rich hot chocolate into the mugs. “And while I didn’t like Edward, didn’t like the man he’d become, I loved him.”
“Professor Mira, would you give me your whereabouts from eleven last night to three-thirty this morning?”
“Right here—or not right here, in the kitchen, that is. In the house. Charlie, my wife, insisted I go to bed early. I can be quite the night owl as a rule. But she was right, I was very tired. I believe I went to bed by ten. She doesn’t think I know she was checking on me every couple hours.”
He smiled, sweetly, toward the breakfast nook. “And our daughter Gillian snuck in twice to make sure I hadn’t lapsed into a coma—which is exactly what she said to her mother at about midnight. I didn’t sleep very well. I did rest,” he added quickly, with another glance toward the nook, as he piled whipped cream on top of two mugs of hot chocolate. “But I was worried about Edward, and didn’t sleep very well.”
“Okay. Okay. Thank you for your time and cooperation. Record off.”
Dennis sprinkled chocolate shavings over the cream, then put the mugs in front of Peabody and Eve.
“Stand up,” he said to Eve.
She got to her feet, braced.
“You need a hug.” He wrapped his arms around her, and melted everything inside her. “There now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It was horrible.”
“Well, that’s all right. It’s all done.”
“I’m so—”
“Hush. You sit and drink your chocolate.”
“I could use a hug.”
Dennis beamed at Peabody, obliged. “You’re a good girl,” he told her. “Gilly, Charlie, come on now. I made enough for everyone.”
Mira walked over, framed his face with her hands. “I love you, Dennis.”
“It’s a good thing. Where would I be otherwise?”
