Page 82 of Concealed in Death

“So I see.” Now he brushed his lips over the bruise.

“She really objected when I put her on the ground and cuffed her. So I won.”

“There’s the upside,” he said. “Still, it could use a cold pack.”

“Maybe later. Mavis should be up here soon. I wanted to talk to her about street kids, girl packs. Girl packs now, ice packs later.”

“Hmm. You’ve identified more, I see.”

“Yeah. I was going to update you, but I guess it should wait for later. We’ve still got five more outstanding. I’ve made some connections, and I’m trying some new angles.”

“Such as this.” He tapped Montclair Jones’s photo. “Lion fodder.”

“Yeah. The timing bothers me, so I’m just playing around with it. The timing, his lack of real work or apparently any desire for it. His mother’s suicide—slit wrists, bathtub. His treatment for depression like his mother.”

“He’s your top suspect. I can hear it.”

Damn it, she thought when she jammed her hands in her pockets, he was.

“He just fits. But I can’t interview him, I can’t look at his eyes. I can’t know it. I can tell you Shelby Stubacker forged docs to skip out of the home. Jones claims he didn’t sign the doc, and I’m having the signature tested. Nobody knows who took her out, if she walked out on her own, what. It was all moving-out-and-in confusion.”

“You think she had help.”

“I think she was pretty canny, but where does a kid get the document paper, because it looked legit at a glance. How does she know what documents, what paperwork? The judge’s name on it, real. The caseworker, real. I think a girl who knows how to trade blow jobs for brew knows how to trade for information and documentation. Montclair Jones was early twenties, young enough to be stupid. Well, men are stupid about blow jobs.”

“It’s difficult to resist challenging you to prove that. I believe my intelligent quotient can stand the test.”

“Even you, pal, lose brain cells when your dick’s involved. But let’s stick with Jones, the younger. She bartered bjs for favors. He could have gotten her the doc paper, the names. Nobody’s going to say anything if he goes into his brother’s office, right?”

“I’m sorry, I’m having difficulty understanding. I was thinking about my penis.”

“Funny. And probably true.”

She got up again, circled again. “You ran with a pack. Would you have just ditched them, taken off on your own?”

In the end, he supposed he had. “Some are more loyal than others.”

“Yeah, I get that, too, but the instinct, if you’ve formed a pack, is to keep it. I wonder if she planned on getting the others out. Could she have had the idea they’d all flop back in the old building? Familiar place, but without the rules, the supervision. Before she can follow through, she’s dead. This one gets reinstated with her rehabilitated mother.”

Eve tapped Mikki’s photo. “The last thing she’d want if she had plans to hunker up with her friends. Before long, she takes off from there, and violently.”

“And if she’d been meeting or intended to meet Shelby at the building...”

“She’d walk right in, and she’s dead.”

She circled again. “Still...”

“We’re late!” Mavis bounced in on thigh-high platform boots as red as Rudolph’s nose. Her hair, a twisting, curling, corkscrewing mass of sunshine covered with silver glitter, tumbled around a face that lasered out smiles.

She danced over, a high-on-the-thigh skirt of Christmas green scattered with silver stars fluttering as she tossed her arms around Roarke, then Eve for hugs.

“I’m totally juiced you thought of get-together time, because we haven’t—just us—in a while. Leonardo’s down with Bella, but you said I should come up, Dallas. The house looks ultra mag Santa time. Bellamina’s seriously dazzled. And—”

She broke off, frowned at Eve’s board.

“Work. I was just finishing up. I just wanted to ask you a couple questions about street life, girl packs, street packs, flops, chain of command. Anything I can get.”

“It’s work,” Mavis said slowly, in an un-Mavis-like tone. “The girls in the building on the West Side. Their bodies, in the old building. I turned off the screen because I didn’t want to hear about it.”