Payback in Death, page 13
A wide, paved walkway led to a covered front porch where chairs painted a bright, happy blue, a bench in popping purple, stood ready for people to sit. Pots in every color of the rainbow and more held thriving flowers.
The front door—somewhere between that bright blue and popping purple—of the big, sprawling brick house already stood open.
Saying nothing, Eve pulled into the paved parking area, got out of the car, then stood, hands in pockets, studying the house.
“If I’d imagined a house Mavis would make her home, it wouldn’t have been this. And I’d have been completely wrong. It’s her, it’s so much her. And you,” she added, glancing at Peabody.
“It’s both of you, which shouldn’t make sense. But it does. It’s also a miracle of major proportions. This—the house, this yard business. A couple of months ago, it looked like some rich guy’s neglected shithole. Now? Yeah, it’s abso-mag.”
“I love it so much. I feel like we sort of saved it, you know? It was sitting here, all sad and empty, waiting for the right people to bring it back, fill it up.”
“You’re the right people,” Eve told her.
“You have to see inside. It’s an even bigger miracle.”
As they walked to the house, Mavis ran out to the porch.
“Jesus, she got bigger.”
“Well, she’s six months along.”
And in tiny leaf-green shorts and a baby-belly-clinging pink-and-white-striped tee, she looked it. She had her hair—currently pink with some leaf-green tipping—scooped up so it bounced as she did.
A couple of bouncers, Eve thought. No wonder Mavis and Peabody fused a friendship.
“You’re back! You’re here! Check it!” She threw her arms out, then up.
“Jesus, she shouldn’t bounce like that. I can see what’s in there sloshing around, banging its head against her rib cage.”
“Number Two’s just fine,” Peabody assured her.
Number One came barreling out the door and kept coming.
She wore cropped overalls in pink with big purple buttons to match the shirt under them. Her curly blond hair bounced, like her mom’s, in ponytails on either side of her ridiculously pretty face.
“Das! Das! Das!”
She came at Eve like a heat-seeking missile, then leaped up, fully expecting to be caught. With little choice, Eve snagged her. She smelled like cherries. And since Eve tasted them when Bella smacked kisses over her face, Eve suspected a recently consumed cherry popsicle or sucker.
It wasn’t bad.
She babbled, laughed heartily, then linked her arms around Eve’s neck, hugged fiercely.
“Rub Das.”
“She wants me to rub her?”
“La-la-la,” Peabody said, and Bella laughed again.
“La-la-love Das.”
“Oh, well, hell.”
“Hell,” Bella echoed with a smile.
“You’ll get me in trouble. Anyway, love you back.”
Who wouldn’t? Eve thought.
“La-la-love, Peadobby.”
“She’s almost got it,” Eve noted.
“We’ve been practicing. How about giving me some?” Peabody held out her arms. Bella dived into them to smack more kisses between babbles.
Peabody settled Bella on her hip as they walked to the house with Bella babbling.
“We’ll see August next time,” Peabody told her. “McNab’s coming soon, and Roarke, too.”
“How do you know what she said?”
“You get an ear for it.”
“We missed you!” Mavis threw her arms around Eve as fiercely as Bella had. And what was inside the growing bump, bumped.
“God, it’s moving in there.”
“Number Two’s happy to see you.”
“It can’t actually see me.” Unsure, Eve eased back. “Can it?”
“Bellamina, baby’s kicking.”
“I want!” She scrambled down from Peabody, pressed her ear to Mavis’s belly. “Boom, boom!” she said, and laughed like a maniac.
“How was Greece, how was Ireland? I want to hear. We’ll open some wine. Not for me,” she added, patting her belly.
“Not for me. I’ve still got work. But I want to check things out.”
“So much is happening. It’s beyond the beyond. The amazing maga-god crew knocked off about an hour ago, but they finished Leonardo’s studio.”
Now Peabody bounced. “Totally?”
“Totally and too totally tremendo. He’s up there basking around and fussing. My studio’s complete-o, too. They’re moving the rest of the equipment and furniture in tomorrow.”
Mavis did a hip wiggle that brought Eve more mental images of sloshing fetuses.
“And the— No, wait. Sheesh! You didn’t get to see Peabody and McNab’s place at all last time with Dorian acting like a you-know-what before she came around. How’s she doing at the school?”
“Roarke checked in while we were away. All good. But you’d know that,” Eve said. “You’d have checked with Sebastian, who’d have found a way to check.”
Mavis just rested a hand on her belly and smiled. “How about we go around, go in through Peabody’s side?”
“I run!” Bella announced, and did just that.
“You know what’s absolutely ultra mag? She can. She can run wherever she wants. This one will, too.”
They started around to the side of the house.
“It looks great out here, Mavis. Seriously.”
Now Mavis added a shoulder wiggle to the hips. “Let me say, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
As they rounded the house, Bella scrambled up the steps of a slide in the play area. That had been there weeks before, and the beginning of a vegetable garden, the young flowers and vines, the barest bones of Peabody’s water feature.
As Bella slid down with a delighted Whee, Eve stopped in her tracks.
“Holy shit, Peabody.”
Water spilled and tumbled down stones from a height of about four feet. The stones formed ledges and drops that invited more spills and tumbles that ran into a kind of rocky stream ending in a small, glittering pool, where a stone dragon kept guard.
Flowers, moss, other greenery pushed out of spaces in the rocks.
It looked as if nature had decided to set a waterfall in a backyard in downtown Manhattan.
“Isn’t it the abso-poso ult?” Crossing her hands over her belly, Mavis just beamed.
“Holy shit,” Eve repeated. “It’s all I’ve got. You killed it, Peabody. Holy shit.”
“It really worked. About halfway through I panicked, and thought it was going to look like somebody—me—just piled a bunch of rocks together. Leonardo talked me through it.”
“My moonpie.”
“How?” Eve wondered.
“He said the same thing happens to him sometimes with a design. And sometimes he’s right, and it turns out wrong. But he can fix it when that happens. He can see where he went wrong if he went wrong, and fix it.”
“Well, it’s freaking beautiful.”
“It absolutely is,” Roarke said from behind her. “Peabody, you’re a wonder.” He kissed her cheek. “A genuine wonder.”
Bella spotted him, shouted, “Ork,” and came running.
He scooped her up, kissed her. “I believe you’ve grown. And you as well,” he said to Mavis.
“Bunches of progress. Here.” A pat on the belly. “There.” A smile for Bella. “In there and out here. We picked tomatoes and peppers—from our backyard—over the weekend. Lettuce, too. Peabody made a salad—put nasturtiums in it. And we all sat right out here and ate what we’d grown.”
She swiped at a tear. “I know I’ll get to the point, one day, that I don’t get drippy whenever I stand out here, see all this, watch Bella play. But right now? Every single time.”
“Mama cwy happy,” Bella announced.
“Yeah, she does. Let’s go inside, in Peabody’s place, before I flood. How about we start in the kitchen, Peabody?”
“My happy place. On the side, we have doors straight into the living area, and one into a mudroom.”
“I saw,” Eve said. “You went with that not really purple, not really blue color.”
“Plum Blue. We wanted to keep it coordinated. We’ve got the full accordion doors on the back.”
“Peabody tried to balk,” Mavis said, “but coordinated won. Do it, Peabody!”
Peabody took out her ’link, coded in. And Bella applauded when the glass doors slid open.
Not as wide an opening as Mavis had, Eve noted, but plenty wide enough.
She’d seen the images on Roarke’s tablet, but …
“I’m saying what I said when I got a load of the waterfall. But silently, so Mavis doesn’t give me the hard eye.”
All the soft colors Peabody wanted—cabinets, some with glass fronts, counters, miles of them. Shelves already holding tools and dust catchers—nice-looking ones, Eve admitted—arranged with Peabody’s artistic eye.
What Roarke had called a living wall served, Eve supposed, as a focal point. Pots of quiet blues held green plants that spilled or climbed or spread.
“My sister made the pots.”
“I heard. When I heard, I figured it would look weird, which is fine. But it doesn’t.”
“McNab thought of it. And the baking counter—it’s custom for my height.”
“Yeah, he gets points. And pie. It’s you, Peabody. The wall there, the whole thing. It’s just completely you.”
“I get drippy, too,” she said as her eyes filled and she ran a hand over a counter. “I always had a home. Homes. Because that’s how I grew up. My home, my grandparents’, cousins’. I always had a home. McNab, too. And we made the apartment home, but we always knew that was temporary. This is…”
She drew a breath. “This is ours. I know we’ll help. With security, with the kids, the garden, with just being here. But Mavis and Leonardo gave us ours. We’ll never forget it.”
“Don’t make me cry again.” Mavis wrapped around her, swayed. “You’re ours, too, so think about that. I’m going to go get Leonardo. He won’t want to miss. Let’s get Daddy, Belle of mine.”
“I run!”
“You bet. Show them around, Peabody. We’ll find you.”
“Okay.” Peabody sniffed, swiped. “Okay. So the dining room—it’s all open now. My mom’s making the light—I think I told you. Blown glass.”
“Yeah.”
“She says it’s almost done, but won’t show me. But I have the basic measurements, so I was going to build a table.”
“Of course you were,” Eve murmured.
“But then, last weekend, McNab and I went to this place in Brooklyn. A giant thrift store, flea market, antiques, or just old stuff place. I found this great sofa for the living room, just need to reupholster it—but that’s not the big find. I saw this table and it reminded me of the one my dad made, the one they still have. Live edge, this big, thick plank of oak, farmhouse-style legs. It’d seat twelve. We have the counter here when it’s just us, or casual stuff. It was damaged—somebody’s dog had chewed the hell out of a couple of the legs. But fixable, and affordable if we really, really squeezed.
“Then I checked because it just reminded me of my dad’s work. And I found his name and the date on the underside. He always signs his work. I started bawling.”
“And no wonder. The fates led you right to it.”
Peabody nodded at Roarke. “I felt just that. The date? The year I was born. I mean, what are the odds—in Brooklyn?”
“Fate doesn’t trouble with odds,” Roarke told her.
“I guess not, because there it was. The guy selling in that area came running over because I’m sitting on the floor blubbering. Anyway, he knocked fifteen percent off, and McNab squeezed another five out of him. It’s in the garage—since we don’t have cars, at least right now, I’m using it as a workshop. I’m not telling my dad. We’re hoping they come out for Thanksgiving. We’ll be in by Thanksgiving.”
At her hopeful look, Roarke rubbed her shoulder. “You will, with time to spare.”
“I can see just how it’ll look there. I’m going to start hunting for chairs. I don’t want new, and I don’t want them to match. Coordinate’s different. So the dining room’ll take awhile, the living room, too,” she added as she led the way.
“I swear I’ll decide about the feature wall—yes or no—by the end of the week. But I’m thinking we already have one with the fireplace and the bookshelves.”
The bookshelves, still empty, flanked the fireplace Eve remembered as old and grimy.
It gleamed now in its frame of wood, as did all the wood trim Peabody had raved about at first sight.
“So I think just soft walls—the way it flows into the great room area—and street art. Classic old-timey for the sofa. I guess I’m going for urban farmhouse.”
She hadn’t gone soft in the powder room, but bold, artistic, eclectic.
“We were going to put our office downstairs, then we decided hey, let’s use that for another living space, like a party space, or kick-back-and-watch-a-vid space. We’re going to put a bar down there, a big-ass screen. So we went for the office here.”
She opened double pocket doors, and left Eve blinking.
Peabody had said something about splattering paint on the walls, and they’d done just that.
Name the color, it splattered to create a ridiculous, wild, mad space that reminded Eve of EDD.
“We had the best time doing this. Just a free-for-all, paint everywhere. You should’ve seen Bella.”
Eve glanced back as she heard Bella and her parents approaching.
Leonardo, looking dreamily happy, hugged Eve from behind, set his chin on the top of her head. “Now she wants her playroom walls done like this.”
“And we’ll do it, won’t we, Bella?”
Racing into the room, Bella turned circles. “Paint!” And flicked her little hands everywhere. “Woo!”
“We’re going to put the partner’s desk my dad’s making right in the center. They used this as sort of a formal parlor. And Jesus, the wallpaper. I mean, jeez,” Peabody corrected. “We’ll have screens, a sit-down-and-talk-it-through area, an AutoChef station in the closet. McNab’s building our comps systems. Roarke and Feeney are in on that.”
“Fun for us.”
“You people have strange ideas of fun. It’s a good work space,” Eve said, “even with the crazy walls.”
McNab pranced in. “Am I late to the party?”
He sure as hell fit in with the crazy walls.
“We have to duck out of the party soon,” Eve told him. “I’ve got work. And…” She pointed at Peabody. “Deal.”
“What’s the deal?” McNab wondered.
“We’ve got to push on the dead or disgraced cop list.”
“Oh, that’s smooth.” He put his hands in the hip pockets of his many-pocketed, canary-yellow baggies. “I got another chunk done. Why I’m a little late. Sent to your home and office units, Dallas.”
“Then I’d better get to it. Listen, we’ll come back when we close this case. Get the full house tour, both sides. It looks great, very seriously great.”
“Let’s make another deal.” Mavis snuggled into Leonardo. “The first Saturday night after you close the case, you come for dinner and a tour. We’re getting a grill. Peabody actually knows how to use one, and she’s going to teach Leonardo and McNab. Bella, Number Two, and I are opting out of that one.”
Eve glanced at Roarke, already knowing she’d get a nod. “Okay. That’s a deal.”
Since he’d sent his car away, Roarke got behind the wheel of Eve’s as the family—because damned if that’s not just what they were—waved them off.
“It’s coming right along, and ahead of schedule.”
The gates opened.
“So in before Thanksgiving.”
“I’d set October, but now I think the middle of September. They may still have some fussing to do—we need a this for that space. Or thinking like Peabody: I need to paint that table. But the work, I think yes, mid-September.”
“I see a lot of you in there.”
“Do you?”
“The if you take this wall out here, you’d have this. If you leave this wall here, you’d have that.”
“It’s given me a great deal of fun and satisfaction to be part of it. It’s a happy place now, and will only get happier.”
“I have to agree with you there. Bella and the next one, they’re going to grow up in a home, with the kind of people we never knew existed at that age. Mavis and Leonardo, they’re great at all this. Then you add Peabody and McNab. You’ve got the handy with the Free-Ager and the geek. It’s a sweet deal for all of them.”
She rested her head back, closed her eyes.
“I was going to suggest dinner out on the way home, but I can see that’s not an option.”
“Sorry. The investigation’s not in a happy place. Do you know an organization called Open Doors?”
“Somewhat familiar. What’s its purpose?”
“Former female inmates. Offering housing when needed, training to move into the workforce, that sort of thing.”
“Ah, yes, I know of it. Are they connected to Greenleaf?”
“No—one of their staff was, but she’s in the clear. How about Another Chance?”
“Very well, yes. Dochas often coordinates with them.”
“Darlie Tanaka.”
“Not familiar—wasn’t that one of the names Elizabeth Greenleaf gave you? Her women’s group?”
“Good memory, yeah. She runs it, and she’s clear. How about Della McRoy, so I don’t waste my time there.”
“Yes, I know her a bit and, if my opinion counts, you would be wasting your time there. She founded Open Doors, as I recall now, and works tirelessly to fund and promote it, along with her other good deeds. I find her extraordinary, actually.”
“Fits, and your opinion counts. I can’t say I wasted time hitting those angles. They had to be hit, the people had to be questioned and cleared. I can wish I had the time back, but it wasn’t wasted.”
“We’ll have a meal, and you’ll tell me how I can help.”
