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“I see it’s healed cleanly.”
“Yeah, and quickly. What was in that stuff you put on it?”
Humor flickered in his eyes, surprising her. “Oh, just some tongue of bat, a little eye of newt.” He opened the door to a musical chime of bells. “Please be comfortable. I’ll get you some tea to warm you up since I kept you standing.”
“You don’t have to bother.”
“It’s no bother at all. Just be a moment.”
He slipped through a doorway, and Eve took the time to study his living quarters.
She wouldn’t call them simple. Obviously, a lot of the stock from the shelves downstairs made its way up here. Large, many-speared hunks of crystals decorated an oval table and circled a copper urn filled with fall flowers. An intricate tapestry hung on the wall over a curved, blue sofa. Men and women, suns and moons, a castle with flame spewing from the arrow slits.
“The major arcana,” Peabody told her as Eve stepped up for a closer look. She sneezed once, violently, and dug out a tissue. “The Tarot. It looks old, hand-worked.”
“Expensive,” Eve decided. Art such as this didn’t come cheaply.
There were statues in pewter and carved from smooth stone. Wizards and dragons, two-headed dogs, sinuous women with delicate wings. Another wall was covered with odd, attractive symbols in splashes of color.
“From the Book of Kells.” Peabody lifted her shoulders at Eve’s curious glance. “My mother likes to embroider the symbols, like on pillows and samplers. They look nice. It’s a nice place.” And it didn’t give her the willies like the Cross apartment. “Eccentric, but nice.”
“Business must be good for them to be able to afford the antiques, the metalwork, the art.”
“The business does well enough,” Chas said as he came back with a tray laden with a flower patterned ceramic pot and cups. “And I had some resources of my own before we opened.”
“Inheritance?”
“No.” He set the tray down on a circular coffee table. “Savings, investments. Chemical engineers are well paid.”
“But you gave it all up to work retail.”
“I gave it up,” he said simply. “I was unhappy in my work. I was unhappy in my life.”
“Therapy didn’t help.”
He met her eyes again, though it seemed to cost him. “It didn’t hurt. Please sit down. I’ll answer your questions.”
“She can’t make you go through this, Chas.” Isis slipped into the room like smoke. Her gown was gray today, the color of storm clouds, and swirled around her ankles as she moved to him. “You’re entitled to your privacy, under any law.”
“I can insist that he answer my questions,” Eve corrected. “I’m investigating murder here. He is, of course, entitled to counsel.”
“It isn’t a lawyer he needs, but peace.” Isis whirled, her eyes alive with emotion, and Chas took her hands, lifted them to his lips, pressed his face to them.
“I have peace,” he said quietly. “I have you. Don’t worry so. You have to go down and open, and I have to do this.”
“Let me stay.”
He shook his head, and the look they exchanged had Eve staring in surprise. It was baffling enough to speculate on their physical relationship, but what she saw pass between them wasn’t sex. It was love. It was devotion.
It should have been laughable, the way Isis had to lean down, bend that goddess body to reach his lips with hers. Instead, it was poignant.
“You have only to call,” she told him. “Only to wish for me.”
“I know.” He gave her hand a quick, intimate pat to send her off. She shot Eve one last look of barely controlled rage and swept out.
“I doubt I would have survived without her,” Chas said as he stared at the door. “You’re a strong woman, Lieutenant. It would be difficult for you to understand that kind of need, that kind of dependence.”
Once she would have agreed. Now she wasn’t so sure. “I’d like to record this conversation, Mr. Forte.”
