hurry to get home, get ready. She just seemed worked up about it all of a sudden. Distracted. Excuse me, please. I need to change. I need to get to Tash.”
When she hurried out, Eve turned to Schubert. “Did you notice this distraction?”
“I did, now that you mention it. I wish I’d paid more attention. I suppose that’s always the way. You always think, Oh, we’ll talk about that tomorrow. And then . . . I don’t want Tella to be alone.”
“We’ll let ourselves out,” Roarke told him.
“Gotta get this down,” Eve said when they went back outside. “Need to work it around, sort it out. Sordid. It’s a good word. Also convoluted.”
“Do you still want to go by the morgue?”
“Yeah, I need to do that. And I need to get this down.”
“Do that. I’m driving.”
He left her to her notes, her muttering, her short periods of silence, eyes closed, then more notes and muttering.
“When I was a kid,” she said abruptly, “in the whole foster/state school cycle, I sometimes wished I had a sibling. Did you ever?”
“I had my mates. That was family for me.”
“Mates. You think of that word first as lovers, that two-person connection. But it’s a good word for friends when you mean it. My sense is Tella and Catiana were mates. She loves her sister, feels close to her, but for the deep and down, she’d turn to the mate. She’d have told Catiana about what happened with Ziegler before she told her sister. And here’s what else. Neither of them much like Copley. They’d golf with him, hang out, go to parties, have family deals, but neither of them would have considered confiding in him. They wouldn’t have trusted him to keep a confidence. And it irked them he treated Catiana like a servant—but they sucked it up, mostly for the sister’s sake.
“And still,” she said when they arrived at the morgue. “Both of them claim, with apparent sincerity, they can’t conceive of Copley hurting anyone.”
“I think, speaking of general population and not cops, or me, most can’t conceive of someone they know well, are family with, killing anyone.”
“A lot of the general population are wrong.”
Eve strode briskly through the tunnel, and through the double doors of Morris’s room.
He wore a clear protective cape over a steel blue suit with steel- gray chalk stripes, a braided tie that twined the two tones. His dark hair slicked into three slim, stacked tails. He sat at a counter working at a comp while some sort of hymn soared through his music system like angel wings.
“Sorry to pull you in.”
“Don’t be. The nights are long; work shortens them. And her nights?” He rose, walked to where Catiana lay on a slab. “Are over. Filling in for Peabody?” he asked Roarke with a faint smile.
“I am.”
“I spoke with our favorite detective shortly ago. Catiana’s family is coming in soon. They don’t want to wait to see her until tomorrow. I’ve enough time to soften the worst.” He indicated the head gash. “She has no other injuries to speak of. The fall broke her nose, and as you can see, there’s some minor lacerations, contusions on her knees, forearms. They would have been incurred in the fall.”
“She went down hard.”
“The depth of the wound would indicate considerable force. The secondary wounds on her limbs? She didn’t have time to brace for the fall, to try to catch herself. She fell face-first, striking a solid edge.”
“Marble hearth.”
“Yes.”
“Tripped or shoved?”
“Hmm. It can be both. A slip’s unlikely, as unless she’d been impaired in some way—and I found no illegals or alcohol in the blood—she should have attempted to catch herself. Her palms would show some impact. Again the depth and width of the gash indicate force. I’d speculate she was shoved from behind, lost her footing—”
“She was wearing those high, skinny heels.”
“Harder to regain balance as heels, by construction, lean the body forward. She went down hard and fast, and had the very bad luck to have a marble ledge in the way of the fall. You won’t get Murder One on her. I found no sign of offensive or defensive wounds other than what I’ve told you.”
“No, I know it. Murder Two’s enough. Still. Are you sure about her being shoved from behind?”
“Highest probability given the angle of the wound, the lack of other injuries to the body.”
“She turned her back on him. Maybe walking away, except the fireplace is on the other side of the room from the doorway