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She wanted to swing into Homicide, check a few things, start her murder book and board while Peabody dug into the vic’s financials. Then they’d circle back around for interviews.
Plus her office at Central offered the one thing she hadn’t had access to since she’d been rudely called out of a warm bed in the middle of the night.
Real coffee.
She turned into the bullpen and the noise of comps, voices, ’links. Someone had dug out a tatty and tawdry length of silver garland, strung it over the side windows. An even tattier sign announcing “HAPPY HOLIDAYS” hung crookedly from it.
Perhaps the same determined elf had dragged in the pitiful, spindly fake tree, propped it in a corner. ID shots of detectives and uniforms decorated the branches with Eve’s stuck on the stubby top.
“Seriously?”
The slick-suited Detective Baxter stepped over to study it with her. “Santiago pulled it out of the recycler.”
“Waste not, want not,” Santiago said from his desk. “Carmichael did the decorations.”
“We’re the spirit of Homicide Christmas,” Carmichael claimed. “If murder cops can’t be festive this time of year, who can?”
“What? ‘Happy holidays, fucker, you’re under arrest’?”
Carmichael grinned. “Works for me.”
“It’s not bad. Peabody, financials.” She turned, started toward her office, and got the next surprise when Roarke walked out.
He looked perfect—as if the gods had gotten together over drinks one night and decided to join together to create something extraordinary. So they’d carved the face of a wicked angel, added eyes of wild blue, then sculpted a mouth designed to make a woman yearn to have it pressed to hers.
Those eyes warmed now, the mouth curved.
Love, she thought again, came in all colors, shapes, and sizes.
She’d hit the jackpot with hers.
“There you are, Lieutenant.” The Ireland of his birth wound smoothly through his words. “I just left you a memo cube.”
“Did I forget my toe warmers?”
His eyebrows, the same inky-black as the hair that spilled nearly to his shoulders, raised. “Your what now?”
“Nothing. Come on back if you’ve got a minute.”
“I do now.”
He brushed a hand down her arm as they started back. His version, she supposed, of the Peabody/McNab fingertip tap.
“Your men weren’t sure when to expect you back. I had a quick meeting down this way, so I stopped in.”
They stepped into her tiny office.
Roarke cupped her face in his hands, kissed her before she could object. “Good morning.” Then he flicked a finger down the shallow dent in her chin. “You’ve put in a long day already.”
“Dead guy,” she said simply.
“And what does the dead guy have to do with Trina?”
“Ex of a friend. I need coffee.” She turned to the AutoChef, programmed two, hot and black. “I was ready to strangle her with her own hair for getting me up and out at that hour, but— Oh, thank fat Santa and all the pointed-nosed elves,” she said at the first sip of coffee.
She took another hit, then shrugged out of her coat, tossed it aside. “She and her pal got juiced up, went to the ex’s place to do some mischief—itching powder level. Jesus, are they twelve? Instead they find the ex dead. Bashed in the head, then stabbed. Killer left a festive note.”
He followed it, and her, easily enough as he sipped his coffee. “You’ve eliminated Trina and the friend?”
