“That’s good.”

“It’s so good. But I’m nervous because I want the wedding-that one day-to be so perfect, so exact I’m making myself nervous about all the things that can go wrong. Silly. I’m caught up in the fairy tale of the day.”

“Because you’re not nervous or worried about what comes after it. The two of you already changed your lives, made your life. It’s right here in this house.”

To Eve’s concern Louise’s eyes went damp. “Oh God, I do need you.” She threw her arms around Eve. “That’s right, you’re exactly right. We did, we have. I’m not.”

Flummoxed, Eve patted Louise’s back. “Okay.”

“I can worry about the limo being late picking me up at the hotel, or the flowers being off a shade, or what size flutes for the champagne because marrying Charles doesn’t make me nervous at all. It makes me happy and settled and content. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

“Let’s get out of here. We’ll go down and have some coffee.”

“I really can’t. I’ve got to get back to work.”

Louise stepped back, her gray eyes going somber. “It’s that young girl, isn’t it? The one who was raped and murdered in her own bedroom. I heard the report, and they said you were leading the in vestigation.”

“Yeah.”

“I hope you find him quickly,” Louise said as they walked back downstairs. “Her parents must be devastated.”

“We’re working some angles.”

“Then I won’t keep you, even though I wish you could stay. I’m so glad you came by. Now I can be nervous without being nervous about why I’m nervous.”

“So you say.” Eve paused at the door as something clicked. “What hotel?”

“Sorry?”

“Why do you need a car to pick you up at a hotel?”

Louise shrugged, and her expression turned sheepish. “More obsession. I don’t want Charles to see me before the wedding because of the ridiculous bad-luck myth. But maybe it’s not a myth so, why take the chance? And since I’m going to need all day to get ready and deal with details, I decided I’d stay in a hotel the night before, get my spa services there, have Trina come in to do my nails, hair, makeup, that sort of thing.”

Here, Eve realized, was something she could do, should do as matron of honor. “Cancel that. You can’t stay in a hotel room, alone, the night before the deal. You can stay at the house, where it’s all happening anyway.” And she thought, here was the major sacrifice for friendship. “Trina can do whatever you need there. Maybe you want a couple of women friends with you. It’s a ritual thing, right?”

Face glowing, stunned, Louise shot out her hands to grip Eve’s. “That would be absolutely amazing. Absolutely perfect. It would mean a lot to me.”

“Then it’s done.”

“Thank you.” Louise hugged Eve again. “Thank you.”

“Go log it on your board. I’ll see you Friday night.”

“Five o’clock rehearsal,” Louise called out.

“Sure.” Did she know that, Eve wondered. Rehearsal? Jesus, they had to do it all twice? She pushed a hand through her hair as she walked back to the car. They’d probably have more charts and time lines, and…

“Shit!” Ignoring the insulted look from the pair of women she passed, Eve snatched out her communicator. “Feeney, check back on the security. See if there’s another glitch, a lag, any anomaly previous to the night of the murder. Not too close,” she added. “He wouldn’t rehearse it, time it, too close to the actual murder.”

“You want me to pull off this to wade through weeks?”

“What if he’d been in the house before? Cased it? Wait. Let me talk to MacMasters first, see if he noted any blip.”

She cut Feeney off, tried MacMasters as she quickened her pace to the car. “Captain, can you tell me if you experienced any problems with your security system over the past six months. Even minor glitches?”

“No.” His eyes seemed to have sunken into his skull. “I run a system check weekly as a precaution. The upgrades added a few months ago claim that’s unnecessary, but-”

“What upgrades?” She got behind the wheel.

“The maintenance company automatically informs us if and when upgrades are available.”

“When did you last upgrade?”

“I’m not sure, I think… Sometime in March. I coordinated it with our annual maintenance check.”

“Does the company do the upgrades and the check in house or on site?”

“Both.”

“I need the name of your maintenance company.”

“Security Plus. We’ve used them for years. They’re top-rated. Do you think someone there-”

“I’m going to cover that angle, Captain. We’re going to cover them all. I’ll get back to you.”

She pushed her way uptown while she hit Feeney again. “Start in March,” she told him. “MacMasters got an upgrade on the system in March, and his maintenance company came in to add it. Company’s Security Plus, and I’ll run that down.”

“It would take balls to walk right into the house that way-and brains. He’d get a firsthand look at the system. Where it is, how it works, right on site. But we’ve already checked out the company. It’s what we do. I’ve got the upgrade, and the tech who plugged it in. He’s clean, and he’s twenty years too old to fit our guy. Worked for the company fifteen years.”

“Damn it. Maybe this guy’s connected. Maybe he’s got the same system, and got the same upgrade. He’d get the same notice. Maybe he doesn’t rehearse on site, but he damn well practiced. Run it anyway. I’ll run down other clients with the same system, the same upgrades.”

“Save yourself the time. I’ll get a man to run that down. It’ll be quicker.”

“Get back to me. Wait, shit, wait. Does this company have more than one location?”

“They’ve got a dozen in the metro area, counting New Jersey.”

“He could still work for them. Work for them, be a client-or both.” It felt right. “Let’s push this. I’m in the field, then I’m working at home. Send me everything you get.”

“You asked for it,” Feeney muttered and clicked off.

13

TO SAVE TIME, EVE ASSIGNED TWO OF HER DETECTIVES to retrieve the stuffed toy from the crime scene and hand-deliver it to the lab. She wanted to push on the possible connection to the security company.

When she walked into the house, she gave Summerset one brief glance. “Why don’t you just outfit a droid in one of those funeral director suits and have it lurk in the foyer? It’d be livelier.”

“Then I would miss your daily attempts at wit.”

“I only need to attempt as the target comes in at half.” She bounded up the steps, pleased. Half-wit, she thought. Pretty good one.

She went straight to her office, shedding her jacket on the way to her desk to check her incomings.

The lengthy list of names from Peach Lapkoff proved the woman fast and efficient. Eve wished she had her on the payroll. Peabody had come through with a list of vendors within the city that carried all the items in question, and added a memo that she’d be in the field checking them.

She read over the list of Security Plus locations in Manhattan, the data on the tech who’d worked at MacMasters’s, and fought impatience when there was nothing incoming from Yancy before she got coffee.

With it, she circled her board. “One connection, just one solid link, that’s all I need. If you couldn’t access the house and the system prior to the night of the murder, you’d still want to walk it through, wouldn’t you? You’re so careful, so precise. Working for the company you could access the data without sending up any flag. Or maybe you’re good enough to hack into it from outside.”

She turned and circled back.

“I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Outside poses too many variables. But maybe you don’t have to do that because the vic’s given you enough data about the layout. That’s not as precise, not as detailed, but it would be enough.”

She stopped, drinking coffee, rolling up to her toes, back to her heels. “Maybe there’s no glitch for us to find because you could test that on your own. Solid e-skills, but not genius. If you were stellar you could have found a way to bypass the cameras without setting up a flag with a remote before you went in, but you had to do it from the inside, input the virus to corrupt the hard drive. The system’s too good for your skill set.”