Page 17 of Thankless in Death

No one liked Jerry, Eve thought, but nodded. “If she should come back, would you give her my card, ask her to contact me?”

“I’ll do that.”

“And if he comes around, Ms. Crabtree? You contact me.”

The woman spread her lips in a snarling smile. “You can bet on it, sister.”

“Don’t confront him.”

“He hurt somebody, didn’t he?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Had it in his eyes. I’ve tended bar for thirty-three years. I know eyes, and those that got mean in them.”

“He hurt somebody,” Eve confirmed. “Don’t confront him, and tell Lori to contact me as soon as possible.”

“I’ll look out for her—and for him. But he hasn’t come around here in a good month now. Hey!” She shot up a finger. “I’ve got Lori’s pocket ’link number.”

“I’ve got it. I’ll try that next. Thanks.”

She keyed in the number as she headed out and down, and got dead air. Puzzled, she keyed in the data again, checked the number, tried it again with the same result.

Changed it, didn’t you?

Eve hauled herself back, checked with the neighbor, but the number was the same as Eve’s data.

“You know, she said something about getting a new ’link,” Crabtree remembered. “A new number, the works. Said how she was going for fresh wherever she could get it.”

Eve thought, Crap, but nodded. “As soon as you see her, tell her to contact me.”

She headed down again, decided to start on the list of names she got from Mal via ’link on the way to the morgue.

By the time she got there, she’d managed to contact three on the list, and leave word with the manager of the restaurant where Lori Nuccio worked, in case.

Maybe she didn’t need this stop—at least she didn’t need to confirm cause of death on her vics as the cause had been brutally obvious. But it was part of the process, and part of hers. She wanted to see the victims again, take a hard look. And she wanted Morris’s take. The chief medical examiner often gave her another angle, or at least made her think.

She walked into the echoey white tunnel, slowed as she passed Vending. She could really use a nice cold boost, but machines liked to screw with her. She wasn’t in the mood to be screwed with by a damn vending machine.

Shoving her hands in her pockets, she marched on, then pushed through Morris’s doors.

He had both victims on slabs, their bodies washed clean of blood. The mother’s chest was splayed open from Morris’s precise Y cut. He bent over her, studying what lay inside.

He wore microgoggles over his clever eyes and a clear gown over a gray suit with hints of steely blue. He’d tied his long stream of black hair into a trio of descending ponytails and bound them with silver cord.

“Their son, I’m told.”

“Yeah.”

He straightened. “This is considerably sharper than a serpent’s tooth.”

“What serpent?”

Now he smiled and warmth came into his fascinating face. “Shakespeare’s.”

“Oh.” No wonder he and Roarke hit it off. “Nothing poetic about this.”

“He dealt in tragedies, too. And this is one.”