“Once the papers are drawn up and you sign, you will have. It’s a good investment,” he continued as she goggled at him. “Solid bones there and an excellent location. I’d advise investing, oh, another two-fifty, three hundred into it. Give it a good polish and upgrade.”

  “You don’t mean hundred. It’s thousand, three hundred thousand.”

  “If a thing’s worth doing.” He offered her half a slice of buttered brown bread. “There are other tenants, of course, but the inconvenience to them could be minimized—and the benefit to them worth that inconvenience—if you decided to concentrate that work primarily on the commercial area, and the unit directly above.”

  “Stoner’s and his I-Bang-and-Discard-Women apartment.”

  Roarke sampled a chip. “His unit does have that vibe, doesn’t it? Well, in point of fact, the commercial area needs some work on the infrastructure, which is why negotiations took a bit of time.”

  Enjoying himself, he drank some wine before he continued.

  “Of course, with that kind of investment, and the time it takes for the polish and upgrade, the current bar owner may need to find another venue for his business. Up to you,” he said again.

  “It’s kind of mean, but all I have to do is think of Covino locked in that basement for days. That’s on Dawber, but Stone sure as hell added to it by not giving a rat’s ass. But I don’t know what to do with a damn building, how to polish and upgrade. I can’t go around owning a building.”

  “Aren’t you lucky to have someone who not only knows but enjoys it? Your find, after all, and a bloody good one at that. Now, your day?”

  She stabbed a chip and decided not to think about owning a building. “Ups and downs. Nearly had Bernstein nailed—nearly. Then she lawyers—and that smug snot Spindal buys her a BFD lawyer just for spite. Even Summerset doesn’t like that smug snot.”

  He smiled at that. “Is that so?”

  “Not important. She made bail, Bernstein—and Spindal’s responsible there, too. Bernstein’s wearing a bracelet, and I’ve got men on the building, but.”

  More than annoyance here, he thought. Something more under that.

  “Are you worried she’ll manage to undermine the tracker and try for Eliza Lane again?”

  “No.” She stabbed another chip. “Maybe she’d work on the tracker, but if she managed that, she’d rabbit. Or try to.”

  “Cut her losses.”

  “Yeah, so cops on the building, and if she tries, there goes the bail money the smug snot put up, and it weighs heavy on Bernstein’s: ‘Okay, I did all of that, but I didn’t kill anybody,’ when we have her back in the box tomorrow.”

  “Big-deal lawyer or not, you’ll break her down.”

  “Peabody played her like…” Eve mimed drawing a bow over strings.

  “A violin?”

  “Yes, but no. The person doing the playing.”

  “Violinist, Eve.”

  “No. Bigger.” She spread her arms up to demonstrate. “Big deal like the lawyer.”

  “Virtuoso?”

  “That’s it! She played her like that. Virtuoso—good word. But.”

  She scowled at the fish, ate some.

  “You’re not worried about pulling a confession out of Bernstein,” Roarke realized. “You’re worried she didn’t do the murder after all.”

  “She was there, and she shouldn’t have been. And she spent a hell of a lot of other people’s money to get there. I checked with the salon she used, and she spent over four thousand, fucking thousand, on treatments and services.”

  Scowling over that alone, she reached for her wine.

  “Then the party dress and shoes—close to another four on that. That’s over half the fifteen she had right there. Her fee to get the references and the verification to get the cleaning job. I’d say she got the friends and colleagues discount there, but it’s another three. So the problem is, when you factor in the food and lodging, what she had left, what she had in her damn shopping bags when we busted her, it adds up.”

  She drank some wine while he watched her.

  “She could’ve had more,” Eve continued. “Could’ve had more in cash, or she brought the poison before she hit New York and wheedled the fifteen.”

  “But,” Roarke said.

  “Yeah, but, but, fucking but. Peabody’s playing her like the virtuoso deal, and Bernstein’s singing the tune. It’s all, ‘She did this to me, and all I wanted was that.’ We’ve got her, it’s all right there. But we hit her with the murder, and…”

  “An and instead of a but,” Roarke commented as Eve stared at the board.

  “I saw her face. Is she that good? She likes to pump herself up as a performer. Is she that good? Maybe it’s like you said, a good con artist has to believe the con. Maybe it’s that. And maybe she’s that stupid under it all. She admits everything—not that she had much choice, because we had her. She more than admits it, though, going off on how she hates Lane, how Lane’s responsible for her dead daughter. She hands up motive on a platter.”

  “The smart thing would be to play up how she only wanted the memento, the award. A mother in perpetual mourning. You could pick that apart, of course.”

  “Sure, if that was all, why didn’t she steal the damn thing and leave with the rest of the crew? Then poof. But she didn’t, because she did want more. They’ll play it that way tomorrow, on her lawyer’s advice, and he’ll get shrinks in there and all that.”

  Brooding over it, she ate some of the mushy peas on her plate. “And we’ll pick it apart, and they’ll move to she wanted to stand in for her dead daughter at the party, the celebration of this landmark revival, blah blah. Harmless, really, just a chance to play dress-up and hob with the nob.”

  Rolling it, rolling it, rolling it, she ate more fish. “It’s sick, it’s twisted, it’s stupid, it’s obsessive. But what if it’s true?”

  He considered it as he topped off his wine. “You’re fond of saying coincidence is bollocks.”

  “Because it is. But isn’t there this thing about you need one to prove that out?”

  “Ah. The exception proves the rule.”

  “This could be that. Coincidence, yeah, but it’s also, from another angle, just another point on the circle when you start the circle with Rose Bernstein’s death.”

  She sat back with her wine while the evening breeze floated in the open doors.

  “Why don’t I top off your glass there, and you and I take a walk out to the pond while you tell me what’s running round in that cop brain of yours?”

  She started to object, then considered that laying it out, and doing so away from the board, the book, the notes, might open it up. Or shut it down. Either way was a kind of progress.

  “Let’s do that.”

  “I’ll deal with the dishes so the cat doesn’t end up on the table lapping at the plates.”

  She wandered back to the board, studied the players. That’s what most of them were, weren’t they? she thought. Players of one kind or another. Being someone else for long periods of time, and like a successful grifter, they had to believe the pretense while they lived it.

  They walked out, leaving Galahad sprawled on her sleep chair, his belly content with the cat treats Roarke offered in lieu of fish and chips.

  “So, I talked to Rose’s—or Leah’s, depending on who you’re talking to—boyfriend from back in the day. Married, father of three, still working pretty steady on the stage.”

  “And how did he strike you?”

  “Like he’s put it behind him, like most people would. He remembers it, and remembers some details.”

  She filled him in as they walked through the summer evening, around flowers scenting the air, under a sky slowly deepening its blue toward twilight.

  “The summary,” Roarke commented. “Debra pushed herself into, interfered with, and did her best to run her daughter’s life. Rose pushed back, but often caved. Debra, in temper, struck both Proctor and Eliza in separate incidents, accused them of having an affair behind Rose’s back and colluding to pressure Rose so she’d fall back on the pills and alcohol.”

  “That’s the upshot.”

  “Do you believe Eliza and Proctor were involved and/or conspired to push Rose deeper into her addictions?”

  “It’d be handy, but no. And what would Proctor get out of it? If he’d wanted Lane and vice versa, what’s to stop them? And there’s nothing to indicate that. Peabody dug up the gossip crap from back then, and I rechecked. Nothing linking those two except as members of the cast. And he said Lane was seeing somebody back then, and she was. That came out after she hit. Didn’t last more than a few months, but there’s no indication she was involved with Proctor.”

  “And you believed him.”

  “And I believed him,” she confirmed. “I believed him when he said he wanted to save her, he cared about her, and I believed him when he said he’d finally had enough. And I believe he still feels that little stab when he thinks about how he left it that night. He feels that and, if he goes back to it, wonders if ending it that way helped her along to the OD.”

  “Eighteen years old.” Roarke ran a hand over Eve’s hair as they walked through the grove of peach trees. “So troubled, and under such pressure.”

  “All that, but she knew what she wanted, she worked to get it. All the reviews from back then for the out-of-town performances, the VIP ones, the one that night, full of kudos for her. Not only her, but always her, right? And she drinks and drugs herself to death right after a zillion curtain calls?”

  “Let me follow you here.” They came out of the trees, walked toward the pond with its floating lilies, its tender young tree. “You’re questioning that it was an accidental overdose. But not a suicide.”

  “She was an addict,” Eve began, “with a mother who absolutely contributed to that addiction. And she’d overdosed before, but … She’s coming off a really big night. The next night, opening night, that’s the dream she’s worked for all her life. So yeah, maybe she falls back on the bottle and pills to take the edge off. But she just holes up in the dressing room, alone, drinking, hitting more pills while the rest of the cast and crew are celebrating?

  “Why?”

  “Lost herself in them, in that bottle, in those pills.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it looked with her history, with those circumstances. But when you really start scraping off how it looked, you could see something else.”

  “Such as?”

  The breeze fluttered sweet, carried the scents of summer as the light softened.

  And Eve looked back, to another time, another place.

  “Say you start at that night, that point, those circumstances, those results. You’ve got death by poisoning. That’s what it is. Twenty-five years later, pull in a couple of the same players, the same play, and you’ve got a death by poisoning.”

  They sat on the bench by the water, in the quiet evening.

  “You’re considering murder for both,” he concluded. “And you’re not looking at Debra Bernstein.”

  Eve shrugged, drank. “You always look at the spouse.”

  “What would possibly be her motive for killing Brant?”

  She shifted toward him. This, she realized, was exactly what she needed. To play it out, lay it out.

  “I’ll get to that, but stick with me on the first. Who benefitted when Leah Rose died? Eliza Lane. Who knew about the addiction besides her mother and her boyfriend? Lane. Others may have, but we know Lane did, as she’s said as much.”

  “For a part, Eve? For a part she’d certainly have played at least a handful of times as understudy?”

  “You wouldn’t think so, but she had to settle for second place. In Interview, Debra claimed Lane had talked Rose into letting her perform a matinee every week, and a night performance monthly. Take some pressure off, rest her voice and all that. But that night, before the performance, Debra pushes into her daughter’s dressing room and goes off about just that. Both Proctor and Lane claim Rose was upset, but she didn’t let it affect her performance. Between acts, Debra goes after Lane, tells her to forget about standing in for Rose the way they’d agreed. She’d fixed that, and she’d see to it Rose made every performance.”

  “That would be next to impossible.”

  “Yeah, but you’re eighteen, you have this shot to show how damn good you are, and now it’s shut down. You want that shot, you deserve that shot. Not only has this old bitch taken that away, she slugs you right before your cue. You get her booted, but you’re a—what is it?—trouper. And you hit the stage, do the job.”

  Eve let it play through her mind because she could see it. “You have a chance to confront Rose backstage. Maybe Rose brushes it off, or tells you to back off, whatever, it’s not what you want to hear. Or maybe you’re pissed enough not to care what the hell she says because you’ve already taken care of things. You know where the bottle is, where the pills are. It wouldn’t be hard to drop some pills into the bottle. Maybe you’re thinking she’d just get sick—not your fault she popped more pills—just get sick enough to take her out for opening night.”

  Thoughtfully, she drank more wine. “The investigation didn’t miss anything back then. It all added up. Yeah, Debra made accusations, but she’s a lunatic, somebody who attacked her dead kid’s little sister at the funeral. Somebody most of the company had complaints about. And both Lane and Proctor were at that bar, dozens of wits. It added up to accidental OD, but what if it wasn’t all the way accidental?”

  “A lot of supposition, Lieutenant. But I never bet against your instincts. Still, how do you tie this to Brant Fitzhugh’s murder?”

  Eve drew a circle in the air. “They call it an encore, right? When somebody comes out and does another song or whatever. A kind of repeat. Big party, big plans, same play, same theater. Twenty-five years older, so the mother role—which is, actually, the starring role. Your money as well as your time and talent’s invested this time. It’s a big one, and again, a kind of encore.

  “For the next six months your husband’s going to be on the other side of the planet, focused on his own career. You’re not happy about that. Nobody interviewed spoke of real conflict, any real fights, just being unhappy about it. Never been separated for that long before. Who’ll rub my feet?”

  “Hard to swallow murder due to lack of foot rub.”

  “Attention,” Eve said. “Being there. It’s her big deal, and now he’s decided to have his own big deal, and not be there for her. Even when she’s wiping away tears, she mentions it. It’s in there, it matters.”

  “All right.”

  Knowing she hadn’t convinced him, Eve pressed on. “She handed the glass back. She never took a sip. Not one—she said so herself. And he routinely brings her that drink, her signature drink. Nadine even mentioned he did when she met them at some Oscar deal.”

  Eve lifted her own glass. “All she had to do was wait. She said something stupid and hurtful to her friend, and I’m saying that was scripted in her head. I’m saying if Sylvie Bowen hadn’t suggested she do a song, she’d have said it herself. And handed the untouched glass to her husband. After she added the cyanide.”

  “They’d been married nearly a decade. I’ve seen them together. They were devoted.”

  “That’s right. And how’s he going to be devoted to her when he’s in New Zealand and she’s in New York? That night, I believed her. She’s shocked, she’s shattered, she’s struggling. I believed it because she was, all of that. I believe she loved him, and he loved her. But nobody knows what goes on tight inside a marriage but the people in it.”

  “Well, true enough that.”

  “They had words about this, Roarke. She demands perfection, loyalty, and like … center stage. He wasn’t giving that, as she sees it. He broke a bargain, like Rose had. They had plenty of words about it, but he didn’t give up this vid, this part, for her.”

  “You found no trace of the cyanide in the penthouse.”

  “She flushed whatever she had it in. I did a quick follow-up with the doctor. When they took her upstairs, she went into the bathroom. Insisted she needed a moment of privacy. Flushed it, done. No trace. I believed her that night,” Eve repeated, “but not today.

  “She lied today when I talked to her. I could see the lie when I brought up Rose Bernstein. How she didn’t tell Leah about the broken bargain. You can bet your ass she did, and lying there is cover. It’s cover so she presents the image of a young, naive girl, a loving friend, a supportive colleague who’d just reacted, justifiably, to being slapped. I could see the lies because she said that bargain mattered a hell of a lot more than the slap.”

  Eve shook her head. “It wasn’t in the file.”

  “The slap?”

  “No, what she spun for me today about confronting Leah about it, about telling her to keep her mother out of the theater. She didn’t tell the investigators that, and neither did anyone else.”

  Sipping wine, she studied the pond and the purity of the floating white lilies. Tangled roots down there, she bet; you just had to look under the surface.

  “I have to conclude if she did have that conversation, she kept it low-key, so it was strictly one-on-one. She lied about what she said, did, because it changes the whole story line if she confronted Rose about keeping the deal. She has to look like a kind of victim in all of that. Like she is now, playing the strong but grieving widow.”

  Eve shook her head. “They weren’t mistakes in memories, a slipup in details after twenty-five years—I’d have bought that. She lied. No reason to lie unless you’re covering up something. She’s going back into rehearsal tomorrow.”

  “I’ll give you that’s fast. I’d have thought she’d take a few days at the least.”

  “Can’t. She can’t. That’s the thing. This play—whatever she’s done between the first time and this? This makes her circle. It’s her triumph again. The first, only more so as she stepped into the part of a dead friend. And this?”

  “She continued on,” Roarke finished. “And the show must go on, as the brave widow.”

  “Yeah. She didn’t take a single sip of that drink. That bothered me, had a bell ringing. But everything else pushed away from that. Until you start at the beginning and start connecting the points.”