“Back. She’s so beautiful. And she’s so good. Just this morning-”

“Mavis.”

“Sorry. Back.” Mavis blew out a breath that fluttered the lavender bangs spiking over her eyes. “I’m kicking out to the studio later, working on a new disc. I’ll be around grown-up people, lots of crazy artistic types. That’ll help.”

“Yeah, crazy artistic types. That’s the ticket. I just have a question.”

“Lay it down.”

“If you and Leonardo were having problems in bed-”

“Bite your tongue in three sections and swallow it!”

“Just hear me out. If you were, and it got sticky.”

“It wouldn’t get sticky in bed if we were having problems there.”

“Ha. Serious. If it got serious, would you tell me?”

“Affirmative.” The purple eyes registered quick worry. “You and Roarke aren’t-”

“No. Second part of the question. If you started going to an LC-”

“Can it be a really frosty one? Can it be two frosty ones, with really big wanks?”

“Solid ice, mongo wanks. If you did that, you’d tell me about it.”

“Dallas, if I was doing it with a pro, you couldn’t shut me up. Which you’d want to because you wouldn’t want to hear how they licked warm, melted chocolate off my-”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“But since my big, cuddly bear already does that, and his wank is mucho mongo, I wouldn’t need the LC.”

“Okay.” Eve turned when she heard Mira’s door open. And staring, quickly ended the call. “Thanks. Later. Hey, Charles, small world.”

She might have bashed him with a brick. His expression jumped from shock to disbelief and ended on flustered. “I’ve heard people call New York a small town,” he managed. “I guess this is what they mean. I was just…Well.”

“Eve.” With a warm and welcoming smile on her pretty face, Mira stepped beside Charles. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting. Come right in. Charles, always a pleasure.”

“Thank you. I’ll…” He gestured without any of his usual style. “Let you get to work.”

Over her shoulder, Eve watched him stride rapidly away as she moved into Mira’s office. “What’s all that about?”

“Have a seat. We’ll have some tea.”

While Eve frowned, Mira moved with her usual graceful efficiency between the two scoop chairs to the AutoChef to order the flowery tea she seemed to live on. Her hair, a cannily highlighted sable, swung smoothly around her patient face, setting off her calm blue eyes. Her suit, a warm and dull gold today, showed off good legs.

“Since you don’t have a hair out of place, I’m guessing he didn’t drop by to bang you.”

Mira set delicate cups on the table between the chairs, and laughed with delight. “Wouldn’t that have been interesting? Because it is, I have no intention of confirming or denying.” She sat, crossed her legs smoothly, studied Eve’s face. “You’re annoyed because two of your friends have some private business they’re not inclined to share with you.”

“I’m not annoyed.” Irked, Eve decided, maybe she was a little irked. “The vic’s wife is one of Charles’s clients, and I interviewed him regarding that this morning, so-”

“I’ll tell you that what Charles and I discussed has nothing whatsoever to do with your investigation. Now, about your investigation-”

“Is he in trouble?”

Mira’s eyes softened. “No, Charles isn’t in trouble. He has a lot on his mind at the moment.”

“So he keeps saying,” Eve replied, and dropped into a chair. “People are too much damn work.”

“They certainly can be.”

“I could find out. It’s my damn job to find things out.”

“But you won’t, because I’ve just told you he isn’t in trouble, and you won’t intrude.”

“If these people wouldn’t crisscross all the time in front of where I need to go, I wouldn’t have to think about them.”

Mira sipped her tea, but hiding her smile didn’t hide the open amusement in her eyes. “Your life’s more crowded than it used to be. And you’re more contented.”

“Yeah, I’m feeling real cozy right now. Forget it.” She shrugged it off. Charles was a big boy. “You read the file?”

“Yes.” Mira took another sip of tea as-Eve knew-she aligned her thoughts. “In my opinion, Anders knew his killer. The method used, the staging surrounding it, wasn’t just personal, but intimate. Sexual, of course, but sex isn’t always intimate. And there is no physical or forensic evidence that the victim engaged in sexual relations with the killer, or anyone on the night of the murder.”

“Nope, he was still holding a full load. No fluids on the sheets or on the body itself. No hair, but for a few strays from the vic, skin.”

“Yet it was staged to appear otherwise, and the staging’s important. It took time, and planning and preparation. The killer thought about how this could and would be done for some time. There’s no impulse here, no passion. A sense of the dramatic, even the theatric, but that underlying sense of order. It feels female. That may be sexist, but it doesn’t feel like a same sex crime.”

“If it was, he’d’ve staged the body differently. Given the logistics of man-on-man sex, I think a male killer would have positioned the body differently.”

Mira nodded. “That’s a good point.”

“And even though I told Peabody not to jump to female off the get, it strikes me that if we were dealing with a man-again, if sex was part of it-there’d have been more anger. If Anders was gay, he was deep in the closet. Added to it, in my interviews with the wife, she admits they’d had discussions about his sexual preferences, and she always speaks of women.”

“A female killer, then, one who is able to resist impulse, at least long enough to plan, and to execute that plan. One who enjoys the elaborate, the symbolic. Who had or believed she had an intimate relationship with the victim, who certainly at some point had a sexual one with him. Someone who finds sex both powerful and compelling, and demeaning.”

“There are LCs like that,” Eve speculated. “Who get wrapped up in it-like an addict-then burn out.”

“Yes, which is why they’re screened so thoroughly before licensing and thereafter to keep the license.”

“Are you leaning toward pro?”

“It certainly could be-there are factors that indicate that sort of intimacy again, and distance. A professional companion must subjugate his or her own needs in order to tailor the relationship to the client’s demands. The nature and the length of the relationship is completely in the client’s hands.”

“That’s what they’re paid for,” Eve commented.

“Yes, and the most successful are able to consider it as a profession.” They enjoy their work, or consider it a public service. Here, the victim was bound, was naked. He was the supplicant, the submissive. The scarfing, another symbol of who is in control, who is dominant.

“And speaking of S-and-M, bondage, and other fringe areas of sex, Mira sipped her flowery tea. “This was a sex crime, certainly, but not one of sexual rage, or revenge. The genitals aren’t destroyed or mutilated, but spotlighted.”

“There’s the word for it.”

Mira smiled a little. “Your crime scene notes indicate he insisted the bedroom door remain closed, had black drapes, and so on. This was a private man, one who had strong feelings about bedroom privacy. So by spotlighting his most private area, his most private business, the killer demeans him. Humiliates him even after death. And yet-”

“She-since we’re going with she-tranqs him halfway to a coma first. She didn’t want him to feel the pain or the fear. Didn’t want him to suffer the pain.” And that was a particular element that stuck in Eve’s craw. “It doesn’t fit.”

“It’s a contradiction, I agree. But people can be contradictory. It may have been an accident, may have been she miscalculated the dose. And before you say it, I will: No, I don’t think it was a miscalculation. Too much prep work to make such a big mistake.”

Eve sat a moment, then picked up the tea and drank before she remembered it wasn’t coffee. “Ah.” She set it down again. “I like the wife for it.”