Down the Rabbit Hole

“I needed to know they’re all right. In a better place. I can see them there, and it’s beautiful. It’s Wonderland!”

“Okay.” He set a hand on her shoulder. “Okay.”

“I brought you something, like a peace offering.”

“Fine. Take off your coat, let’s sit down. We need to talk.”

“In a minute,” she muttered. She opened her bag, stared at the red scarf. Her fingers floated over it, through it, and down to the bright red rose beneath.

“For you,” she said and pushed it at him. In him.

He looked at her so strangely, but then he wasn’t the sort of man who expected a flower. Delighted, she pulled it back, pushed it at him again.

And again, until he sprawled in the meadow covered with red roses.

“I’ll get Mama and Daddy now, so you can talk to them. Sit right there!” She raced across the meadow, pushed past long, flowering vines that barred the view. And climbed to the top of the hill.

She saw her parents dancing by a silver lake and, laughing, flew toward them.

And flying, never felt the fall.

CHAPTER TWO

Instead of enjoying a rare night off sprawled out with her ridiculously sexy husband watching a vid where lots of stuff blew up, Eve Dallas stood over death.

She’d pulled rank—a favor for a friend—to take primary on what, on the surface, struck as a murder/suicide. Sibling rivalry taken to extremes.

The friend was currently in the kitchen area of the crime scene—the swank Upper East Side penthouse of the late Marcus Elliot Fitzwilliams—with her own pretty sexy husband. And the uniformed cop who kept them in place.

Eve studied the silver shears deeply embedded in the victim’s chest. Cause of death might have been apparent, but she opened her field kit, crouched to do her job.

“Visual identification of Fitzwilliams, Marcus, confirmed with print match on scene. Victim is thirty-six, single Caucasian male, owner and only listed resident of this unit. Employed CEO and president of Fitzwilliams Worldwide.”

She took out microgoggles, lifted one of the victim’s hands with her own sealed ones. “No visible defensive wounds, no signs of struggle. COD, three puncture wounds to the chest. ME to confirm.”

Bled out right here, she thought.

“An attempt to resuscitate the victim resulted in some compromising of the scene.”

Rising, she crossed over to the open terrace door, studied the bloody palm print on the glass. Running it, she ID’d the victim’s sister. Who was even now splatted on the sidewalk below.

Eve stepped out into the cold, looked down to the street, the police barricades, the crowd lined up behind them.

The icy wind dragged at her short, choppy brown hair, had her sticking her hands in the pockets of her long leather coat to warm them.

“Long drop,” she muttered.

And since she’d gotten a report from the first-on-scene, she knew Darlene Fitzwilliams had taken that long drop less than ten minutes after the doorman had let her into the building.

She’d talk to the doorman herself, but for now . . .

She wandered back inside. “She comes in. Not much time for an argument or to get heated up. Plus, who carries a pair of scissors that size in a handbag? Stabs the brother in the heart, three times, walks over, goes outside, jumps.”

Eve scanned the room.

Rich, tasteful, with some humorous touches, like the pencil sketch of a frog wearing a crown.

She’d have her partner do a solid run on both of the dead, and the family business, when Peabody got there. But for now, she’d get a sense of things from Doctor Louise Dimatto and Charles Monroe.

The kitchen—a lot of steel and glass—flowed into a lounge area—lots of leather and wood. Charles and Louise sat hip-to-hip on a long, low sofa the color of fog. He had his arm around her shoulders; she had her head tipped toward him.

She’d changed her hair, Eve noted, wearing the gentle blond in a straight, chin-length deal, sharply angled.

And she’d been crying, which made Eve uneasy.

While Louise looked delicate, Eve knew her to be tough as they came, strong enough to defy her wealthy, conservative family and start her own clinic, run a mobile medical that serviced some of the diciest areas in the city.

But now she was pale and puffy-eyed, and fresh blood stained her elegant blue sweater.

Her eyes, nearly the same color as the sofa, met Eve’s.

“Dallas. I couldn’t save him. Marcus. I couldn’t save him.”

Eve nodded to the uniform standing by to dismiss her, then, nudging a shallow bowl of wooden balls aside, sat on the table to face her friend.

“I’m sorry. You knew Marcus Fitzwilliams.”

“We’ve known each other since we were kids. We even dated awhile. Our families . . . There was some hope we’d make a match of it, but we didn’t suit that way. We’ve been friends for most of our lives. You met him—Marcus and Darlene and their parents—you met them at the wedding.”

“Okay.” Eve had a vague recollection of the man she’d just examined dancing with Louise, lifting her off her feet with a laugh, spinning her around.