Eva glanced at her watch: five-fifteen
P.M.
The caterers were late. The valet parking service and the band were supposed to arrive in thirty minutes, the guests in an hour and fifteen. Time to get dressed.
As she climbed the steps, she could hear her husband talking on the phone in the second bedroom, his home office. A political campaign required 100 percent of the politician’s effort, much of it devoted to raising money. Dylan spent hours in that little room, calling friends, family, acquaintances, anyone he’d ever met, and asking for checks up to twenty-five hundred, the maximum allowable by law.
“Of course,” he said. His voice sounded puzzled and uncertain, not the tone he usually used to make his political pitch. “Yes. I mean no, I can’t do it tonight. We’re having a fund-raiser at our house.”
Eva stopped in his doorway. Dylan sat at the steel and glass desk in his usual position, phone to ear. With his sandy hair going gray at the temples and the light tan acquired from picnic fund-raisers, he was better-looking than when they’d met eleven years ago. He was staring down at a legal pad. She knocked on the doorframe to get his attention. He looked up, and she impatiently pointed to
her watch: Time to get dressed. The party was black-tie-optional; Dylan would trade his suit for a tux. He nodded and looked back down at his pad.
In the master bedroom, she took off her Diesel jeans and button-down shirt and threw them on a chair. She’d specifically worn this shirt to the hairdresser so that she wouldn’t ruin her sleek updo when she undressed. She’d also had her makeup professionally done at the salon. She didn’t like the smoky eyes and full red lips they’d painted on her, but it was too late to change it now.
She admired her semi-nude figure as she walked past the full-length mirror. Daily workouts and teaching self-defense classes made her petite body more buff than most political wives’. She had well-defined muscles on her arms and legs, a flat stomach, and a toned butt. She walked into the large walk-in closet attached to the master bedroom. When they’d bought the house, they’d thought this room would be a nursery. Now she had no baby, just a walk-in closet, her figure, and the time to focus on her career—Dylan’s career, really.
Eva tried to appreciate the silver linings, although they felt thinner these days. As she’d tried to find the elusive problem behind their inability to have a baby, several doctors mentioned her “advanced maternal age”—as if being thirty-seven were some kind of disease. And Dylan was working later and later more nights a week.
Six months ago, Eva had suspected an affair with someone at the office. She’d hired a private detective. When he told her the truth, it was worse. She was wounded but not surprised.
After all, she’d met Dylan while working as an escort at Discretion herself. She had been twenty-six years old, working for Madeleine to pay for grad school. Dylan was a young corporate lawyer and a big client of Discretion. He soon became one of her regulars.
He was engaged to someone else at the time—some rich girl from a rich family. His own rich family approved. Although his family loved the fiancée, he didn’t. He was bored. He broke off his engagement and asked Eva to marry him. She was the girl in a fairy tale. It was what all the escorts hoped for. A perfect life awaited.
After they got married, she’d assumed he stopped seeing other
women. But six months ago, her investigator had found that he was back using Discretion—a regular customer again. She confronted him, furious, and he swore to put an end to it.
Eva took down the hanger holding tonight’s outfit and peeled off the Nordstrom garment bag. Underneath was a scarlet cocktail dress. She stepped into it, zipping up the back herself. She looked in the mirror approvingly. The one-shouldered red sheath showed off her muscular arms and set off the dark upsweep of her hair. The hem, just above the knee, highlighted her tanned legs while covering enough thigh to be sufficiently demure for a political function. She’d calibrated the precise balance between sexy and appropriate. She put on diamond earrings and a pair of crystal-encrusted silver heels in which she would still be six inches shorter than her husband.
Dylan came into the bedroom, pulling off his tie. She waited for him to appreciate her in all her styled, lipsticked, red silken glory. But he looked at her with a troubled expression.
“That was the police on the phone. They wanted to know where I was Tuesday night.”
Eva froze. “What did you tell them?”
“I was at that meeting you set up with the church group. Then they asked if I’d taken out any money from our bank account recently, and if we had a safe-deposit box, could they look in it.”
“No!”
Dylan pulled off his shirt, tossed it into the laundry hamper, and shook his head. “I can’t say no. I raked Lionel over the coals for not cooperating with the police. And why shouldn’t I let them? I said they could look in the box tomorrow morning.”
“Dylan! Call them back right away. Tell them you can’t see them until Monday.”
“Why?” He frowned at her, then slowly turned to face her full-on. “Dammit, Eva! Is there something in the safe-deposit box I should know about? The fucking police are calling.”
“Don’t speak to me in that tone! If you need to know something, I’ll tell you.”
“It’s my bank account, too.”
“I’m the one who handles everything around here. Look at the
house downstairs. Who do you think did that? The tent, the crystal, the flowers? Practically for free! I do everything for you.”
“You get a pretty good deal out of it.” He gestured around their large master suite.
“I deserve it. I could have had anyone. I gave up my life for you. I gave up having a baby for you! While you were running around, fucking those whores!”
Dylan sighed. “Oh, Eva. I’ve said I was sorry.”
“If you’re sorry, call back the police and cancel. Tell them they can’t see the safe-deposit box, and you’re not answering any questions.”
“God, Eva. What’s in the box?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I’m going to see it for myself. With the police.”
It might’ve been a bluff, but her rage was faster than her intellect at that moment.
“You ungrateful bastard! Do you want to go to jail as an accessory to murder?”
Dylan took a step back. “What are you talking about?”
“It was all going to come out! Madeleine was going to turn over a book full of details of every night you spent with those girls. They would know I was an escort, that we met because you hired me.”
“It was a grand jury investigation. Those are secret.”
“Oh, come on. There are always leaks. That bitch Madeleine could write some tell-all book, and we’d be chapter one! We would have been destroyed. What were you doing about it? Nothing. Well, I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
“What did you do, Eva?”
“I gave up everything for you. I put off having a baby for your career. And now I can’t. The only thing we have left is your political star. I’m not letting that burn out.”
Dylan sank down on the bed. His voice was a whisper. “What did you do?”
“I went to her house, and I made her an offer. Fifty thousand for her books. She wouldn’t take it. She was going to tell them about you. About me. About the money I offered her, about everything.
You have to go
through
your opponents. So I shot her.” Eva smiled. “Which was a brilliant move, I have to say. I saved our money and got the books. Don’t worry, I burned the records. But the cash is in our safe-deposit box. I have to figure out how to launder it. Literally. It’s all bloody.”
“Are you crazy?” Dylan looked like he would vomit. “Have you fucking lost your mind? How could you?”
“How could
I
? You were going to do nothing. You weak, incompetent ass. I gave you an alibi, and I fixed the problem. You ought to be thanking me.”
Dylan stood, strode over, and slapped her flat across the cheek with more speed and power than she would’ve thought possible from her politician husband. Her head snapped back. She collapsed into a white leather chair.
When she’d learned that he was still hiring Discretion girls, she’d contemplated a divorce. But she had too much invested in his success. She was too old to start over. Now she buried her face in her knees and let one small sob escape.
“Eva.” His voice was softer. He had never hit her before. “I’m sorry. Come here.”
She looked up at his outstretched hand. She took it. He helped her to her feet. She let her husband pull her in to him. Then she went through him.
Eva pistoned her knee between his legs, her signature move. Dylan grunted and folded into himself. She grabbed his head and slammed his face down on her knee. She felt the cartilage in his nose collapse, saw the blood streak across their plush white carpeting.
“It’s too late for sorry,” she said. “Now I have to go and fix it.”
She left him bleeding on the floor.
51
A
s Sam pulled the Durango into the Youngbloods’ driveway, Anna could see a portion of a large white tent out back. A blue van was parked in front of them, and men in tuxedos were unloading sound equipment and brass instruments. Anna knew the fund-raiser was due to start in about an hour. But this couldn’t wait.
When they’d called him, Dylan had been so accommodating on the telephone, answering their questions so easily—he sounded like a man who had nothing to hide. He claimed that fifty churchgoers could swear to his whereabouts the night Madeleine Connor was murdered, and he seemed to know nothing about any recent activity in his bank account. It was Eva they wanted to talk to now.
They were stopping by unannounced to do the interview with no advance notice. They wanted to give Eva as little time as possible to think about what to say, to prepare any fake stories, or to consult with anyone. They had finished their phone call with Dylan less than fifteen minutes ago. This was as good as they were going to get.
Anna and Samantha walked up the stone path to the boxy white contemporary. The walls were sheer glass. It seemed rather exposed for a house on a main artery, Anna thought, but to each her own.
Samantha rang the doorbell. When no one answered, Anna peered in the floor-to-ceiling window next to the bleached white wooden door. The foyer was all white, with a brushed metal table holding a vase of big white flowers. No one was there. Sam rang the doorbell again.
Finally, Dylan Youngblood descended the staircase. He stopped on the landing as if uncertain whether to come to the door. Anna was stunned by the City Councilman’s appearance. He wore gray pinstriped pants and a white undershirt spattered with bright red blood.
One of his eyes was swollen shut and his nose canted in a sickening C shape. He held a blood-soaked Kleenex under his nostrils. The wounds were fresh. He swayed dizzily.
Samantha pushed open the door and rushed to Dylan’s side. She flashed her badge, keeping her other hand on her gun. “Sir, I’m Samantha Randazzo, FBI. We just spoke a moment ago. What’s going on?”
“Eva! She just did this to me!”
He made a vague pointing gesture, then stumbled and grabbed the banister for support.
Anna stared at him in horror. Eva had battered her husband? The ground seemed to shift beneath her feet. Anna had worked on hundreds of domestic-violence cases and knew that violence happened between all kinds of people: rich and poor, old and young, to male and female victims. But Eva and Dylan? They were supposed to have the perfect marriage. Eva was supposed to be the perfect wife. And yet here was Dylan, clutching a Kleenex so soaked with blood that red rivulets streamed down his forearm and dripped onto the white marble floor.
Anna expected he would react to this assault like any other domestic-violence victim. He would tell them the truth now, while he was shocked and upset by what had happened. By the time of the trial, he would probably be reconciled with Eva and would refuse to testify against her. But what he said now would be admissible in court.
“What happened, sir?” Anna asked. She took a pack of tissues from her purse.
“She killed Madeleine Connor.” He sat on the stairs. “Dear God.”
Anna handed him a fresh tissue. He told them everything that had happened.
The Friendship Heights
branch of Bank of America stayed open until six
P.M.
on Fridays. Eva could just make it under the wire. Although her instinct was to speed over there, she deliberately drove the speed limit. No time to get pulled over.
Inside the branch, the male teller gave Eva’s red cocktail dress a curious once-over. “Just remembered a brooch I want to wear at my party,” she told him. He smiled and led her to the vault. He put his key in the lock next to Eva’s, and they unlocked the little steel door together.
Eva took the metal box to the privacy cubby. There was the stack of money, now brown and wavy with dried blood. She tucked the brick of cash into her purse. Amazing how small fifty grand was in denominations of a hundred.
When she was done, Eva walked out of the bank’s glass doors and exhaled with relief. She’d take the money, tie a rock to it, and throw it into the Potomac. It was a shame to throw away the cash, but it was the only safe thing to do now. She’d been willing to spend the money for peace of mind, anyway.
Then there would be nothing tying them to the crime. She’d bought the Beretta at a Virginia gun show many years ago. The seller had taken cash and kept no record of the sale. Since her days at Discretion, Eva had never felt entirely safe. Having an untraceable weapon had helped give her a feeling of security. On Tuesday night, she’d been careful to wear gloves while loading the gun, so there would be no prints on the cartridges. She’d wiped the gun clean before putting it in the madam’s hands. She hadn’t touched anything in Madeleine’s house.
She and Dylan would figure out how to approach things tomorrow, after they both calmed down. Eva smiled grimly as she walked down Wisconsin Avenue. With luck, by the time she got home, the caterers would’ve set up their warming dishes, the band would’ve set up their instruments, and the valet parkers would’ve set up their sign on the front lawn. She would glide through tonight’s fundraiser on autopilot. Her hostess instincts had allowed her to do that many times, when inside she felt like killing someone. She wasn’t sure Dylan had the same talent, but she expected his sense of self-preservation would kick in. He could say he got his black eye from a thrown elbow during a basketball game.