Festive in Death - J. D. Robb Page 0,1

She walked toward the kitchen bump as she pointed. “Dirty dishes, takeout boxes. I bet there’re bugs. Ew, I bet there’re bugs in here.”

“What do you care? You don’t live here, so you don’t have to pick up his mess or worry about bugs.”

“But still. And look at the living room. Clothes tossed all over, shoes just— Hey!” She marched over, picked up a scarlet-red high heel, then scooped up a bra with yellow polka dots over purple lace.

“I never noticed any trany tendencies.”

“Because he doesn’t have any!”

“I know, Sim. It’s like we all told you. He only booted you because he sniffed up a new skirt. And jeez, it’s been like a week since he did the booting, so you have to figure . . . Don’t blubber,” she ordered as Sima started to do just that. “Get even! Come on.”

Focused on the task at hand, she pulled the shoe, the bra away, tossed them down again, took Sima’s arm. “I’ll get you started on the socks.”

“I sort of loved him.”

“Sort of is sort of. He treated you like crap, so you pay him back, then you can move on. Trust me.”

Sima’s tears-and-tequila-blurred eyes tracked back to the bra. “I want to bust something up.”

“You’re not going to. You’re going to be smart and hit him where it hurts. Vanity and wallet, then we’re going to go do some more shots.”

“Lots of them.”

“Bunches of lots of them.”

Sima squared her shoulders and nodded. With her hand in her friend’s—moral support—they started toward the bedroom she’d shared for seven and a half weeks with her cheap, cheating, callous boyfriend.

“He didn’t even put up any Christmas decorations. He has a cold heart.”

She couldn’t have been more right.

Trey Ziegler sat propped on the bed, the long chestnut-and-gold-streaked hair he was so proud of matted with blood. His eyes—most recently tinted emerald green—staring.

The kitchen knife jammed in his cold heart pinned a cardboard sign to his well-toned chest. It read:

Santa Says You’ve Been Bad!!!

Ho. Ho. Ho!

As Sima peeled off screams, her friend slapped a hand over her mouth, dragged her away.

“Trey! Trey!”

“Shut it down, Sima. Just shut it down a minute. Jesus, what a mess.”

“He’s dead. There’s blood. He’s dead.”

“I got that. Holy shit.”

“Whattawedo? Oh God! Whattawedo?”

Running away would be awesome but . . . Even buildings as lousy as this probably have some security. Or somebody might have seen them come in. Or heard them work out the plan over tequila shots. Or something.

“You’ve got to calm down some—and don’t touch anything. Not anything. I’ve got to tag up somebody.”

“You’re going to have somebody come get rid of the body?” Sima dragged her fingers down her throat as if she were being strangled. “Oh my God!”

“Grip reality, Sima. I’m tagging a cop.”

• • •

Two in the morning, two in the freaking morning in the frozen bowels of December, and she had to roll out of a warm bed beside a hot husband and deal with what might be a dead body—or a drunken prank by a woman who drove her crazy on the best of days.

In moments like this, being a cop sucked.

But Lieutenant Eve Dallas was a cop, so she pulled up in front of the dingy box of a building in the West Village, grabbed her field kit—if there was an actual DB, it would save her coming back out for it—and stomped across the icy sidewalk.

She’d have used her master to swipe in, but the door clicked and buzzed as she reached for it.

She didn’t much like the look of the elevator in the skinny, smelly lobby, but opted for it. The sooner to get this over.

She jammed her cold hands—she hadn’t thought of gloves—in the pockets of her long leather coat and scowled with golden brown eyes at the numbers creeping from one to two to three, and finally to four on the dented panel.

When the doors opened, she strode out, a tall, lean, pretty pissed-off woman with a shaggy cap of hair nearly the same color as her eyes.

Before she could bang a fist on the door, it opened. There stood the woman who cut her hair—often whether Eve wanted the service or not. Who’d seen her naked—and that Eve never wanted.

“If you’re fucking with me, I’m hauling your ass in for filing a false report.”

“Hand to God.” Trina shot up a hand—fingers tipped in swirls of holiday red and green—then used the other to yank Eve inside. “His name’s Trey Ziegler, and he’s really dead in the