Thankless in Death

mama bought it for him,” Sanchez said.
    “Your mama bought it for me, as a thank-you for last night.”
    “It’s so she can see you coming from two blocks away and get gone.”
    Before Jenkinson formed a witty repartee, Baxter walked in, slick in a dark chocolate suit, expertly knotted tie that picked up the color with minute checks of brown and muted red.
    He stopped as if he’d hit a force field. “Jesus, my eyes!” He pulled out a pair of fashionable sunshades, slid them on as he studied Jenkinson. “What is that around your neck? Is it alive?”
    “Your sister bought it for him.” Still quietly working at his comp, Trueheart didn’t even look up. “A token of her esteem.”
    The kid was coming along, Eve thought, amused, and left her men to their byplay.
    In her office with its single narrow window and miserably uncomfortable visitor’s chair, she aimed straight for the AutoChef. Thanks to the Roarke connection she didn’t have to settle for bad cop coffee.She programmed a cup, hot and black, settled with it at her desk, prepared to be righteous with paperwork.
    Her communicator signaled before she’d taken the first sip.
    “Dallas.”
    Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. See the officer 735 Downing Street, Apartment 825. Two DBs, one male, one female .
    “Dallas responding. Will contact and coordinate with Detective Peabody en route.”
    Acknowledged. Dispatch out .
    Well, shit, she thought, gulped down coffee—burned her tongue—she had jinxed it. And grabbing the coat she’d just taken off, she headed out.
    Others had arrived in the bullpen, and Jenkinson’s tie remained the topic of the day. Peabody, still wearing her coat, added her opinion that the tie had jazz.
    But then Peabody loved the neon-sporting McNab.
    “Peabody, with me.”
    “What? Where? Already?”
    Eve just kept walking so Peabody had to trot after her in her pink cowgirl boots.
    What was her department coming to, Eve wondered, with pink ties, pink boots. Maybe she should ban pink from Homicide.
    “What did we catch?”
    “Looks like a double.”
    “A two-for-one start of the day.” As she waited for the elevator, Peabody took a scarf out of her pocket, looped it around her neck.
    Pink and blue checks, Eve noted. She definitely had to work on the logistics of banning pink.
    “It’s a totally gorgeous day, too,” Peabody continued, her square face wreathed with a smile, her dark eyes shining.

    “Were you late because you grabbed morning sex?”
    “I wasn’t late. Two minutes,” Peabody amended. “We got off the subway early to walk it. You won’t have many more days like this.”
    They squeezed into the elevator with a boxful of cops. “I love fall when everything’s all crisp and breezy, and they’re roasting chestnuts on the carts.”
    “Definitely had sex.”
    Peabody only smiled. “We had a date night last night. Just on the spur, you know. We got dressed up, went dancing, and had grownup cocktails. We get so busy we forget to do the ‘just you and me’ thing sometimes. It’s nice to remember.”
    They corkscrewed out on the garage level.
    “Then we had sex,” Peabody added. “Anyway, it’s a really nice day.”
    “Too bad the two DBs on Downing can’t enjoy it.”
    “Well … yeah. It just goes to show.”
    “Show what?”
    “You should get dressed up, go dancing, drink grown-up cocktails, and have sex as much as you can before you’re dead.”
    “That’s a philosophy,” Eve said as she slid behind the wheel of her vehicle.
    “It’s almost Thanksgiving,” Peabody pointed out.
    “I’ve heard rumors.”
    “We had this tradition, my family. We’d write down all the things we were grateful for, and put them in a bowl. And on Thanksgiving, everyone would pick out a few. The idea is, it reminds you of things you should be grateful for, or what other people appreciate. Like that. It’s nice. I know we’re not going out to be with the family this year, but I’m sending them my grateful notes.”
    As she battled downtown traffic, Eve considered. “We’re murdercops. That must mean we have to be grateful for dead bodies or we wouldn’t have a job. But contrarily, the dead bodies aren’t likely to be grateful.”
    “No. We’re grateful we have the skill and the smarts to find and arrest the person or persons who made them dead bodies.”
    “The person or persons we catch and arrest aren’t going to be grateful. Somebody’s got to lose.”
    “That’s a philosophy,” Peabody