Shelly took both, held them side-by-side. "She's very pretty, in both looks. But, no, I've never seen her before. Who is she?" "What were you doing the night of your husband's party?"

She drew a small breath, as if she'd known this was a blow she'd have to face. "I don't really have what you'd call an alibi as I was alone. I did work out in the garden until almost sunset, and one of the neighbors might have seen me. I stayed home that night. Friends had asked me to dinner at the club, The Westchester Country Club, but I didn't feel like going out.

You might know them. Jack and Anna Whitney. He's a police commander in the city."

Eve felt her stomach sink. "Yes. I know the commander and his wife."

"Anna's been trying to fix me up since the divorce. She just can't understand how I can be happy without a man."

"And are you? Did you wonder that if your husband's relationship with his current wife failed, as you felt it would, he'd come back to you?"

"Yes. I thought of that, considered that. And the fact is I don't think he would have come back."

A butterfly, creamy white, flitted across the porch and fluttered down to flirt with the potted flowers. Watching it, Shelly sighed.

"And I know I wouldn't have had him if he did," she added. "I loved him, Lieutenant, and he'll always be a vital part of my life. Even now that's he's gone. This is a man I lived with, slept with, had and raised children with. We share a grandson we both adore. Memories no one else has, and those are precious. But we weren't in love with each other anymore. And I've come to like the life I'm making on my own. I enjoy the challenge, and the independence of it. And while that baffles Anna and some of my other friends, I'm not ready to give that independence up. I don't know that I ever will be. Walter was a good man, a very, very good man. But he wasn't my man anymore."

She handed the photographs back to Eve. "You didn't tell me who she was."

She would hear it, Eve thought, either through the media or her connection with Anna Whitney. "She's the woman who gave Walter Pettibone poisoned champagne. And our prime suspect."

"I liked her," Peabody said as they drove back to the city. "So did I."

"I can't see her hiring a hit. She's too direct, and I don't know, sensible. And if the motive was payback for the divorce, why not target Bambi, too? Why should the replacement get to play grieving widow and roll around in an inheritance?"

Since Eve had come to the same conclusions herself, she nodded.

"I'll see if Whitney can give me any different angle on the divorce and her attitude toward Pettibone. But at this point we bump her down the list."

"What's the next step?"

"If Julianna was a hired hitter, she'd be costly. We'll start on financials, see if anybody spent some serious money recently."

Julianna wasn't concerned about money. Her husbands, God rest them, had been very generous with the commodity. Long before she'd killed them, she'd opened secure, numbered accounts under various names in several discreet financial institutions.

She'd invested well, and even during her hideous time in prison, her money had made money for her.

She could have lived a long and indulgent life anywhere in the world or its satellites. But that life would never have been complete unless she could take the lives of others.

She really enjoyed killing. It was such interesting work.

The one benefit of incarceration had been the time, endless time, for her to consider how to continue that work once she was free again.

She didn't hate men. She abhorred them. Their minds, their bodies, their sweaty, groping hands. Most of all, she detested their simplicity. With men, it all came down to sex. However they dressed it up-romanticized, justified, dignified it-a man's primary goal was to stuff his cock inside you.

And they were too stupid to know that once they did, they gave you all the power.

She had no sympathy for women who claimed they'd been abused or raped or molested. If a woman was too stupid, too weak, to know how to seize a man's power and use it against him, she deserved whatever she got.

Julianna had never been stupid. And she'd learned quickly. Her mother had been nothing but a fool who'd been tossed away by one man and gone scrambling for another. And always at their beck and call, always biddable and malleable.

She'd never learned. Not even when Julianna had seduced her idiot second husband, had lured him to bed, and let him do all the disgusting things men lived to do to her fresh and supple fifteen- year-old body.

It had been so easy to make him want her, to draw him in so that he would sneak out of his wife's bed and into his wife's daughter.

Panting for her like an eager puppy.

It had been so easy to use it against him. All she'd had to do was dangle sex, and he'd given her whatever she'd wanted. All she'd had to do was threaten exposure, and he'd given her more. She'd walked away from that house at eighteen, with a great deal of money and without a backward glance. She'd never forget her mother's face when she'd told her just what had gone on under her nose for three long years.

It had been so viciously satisfying to see the shock, the horror, the grief. To see the weight of it all crash down and crush. Naturally, she'd said she'd been raped, forced, threatened. It always paid to protect yourself.

Maybe her mother had believed it, and maybe she hadn't. It didn't matter. What mattered was that in that moment Julianna had realized she had the power to destroy.

And it had made her.

Now, years later, she stood in the bedroom of the townhouse off Madison Avenue she'd purchased more than two years before. Under yet another name. Studying herself in the mirror, she decided she liked herself as a brunette. It was a sultry look, particularly with the gold dust tone she'd chosen for her skin.

She lit an herbal cigarette, turned sideways in the mirror. Ran a hand over her flat belly. She'd taken advantage of the health facilities in prison, had kept herself in shape.

In fact, she believed she was in better shape than she'd been before she'd gone in. Firmer, fitter, stronger. Perhaps she'd join a health club here, an exclusive one. It was an excellent way to meet men.

When she heard her name, she glanced toward the entertainment screen and the latest bulletin. Delighted, she watched her face, both as herself and as Julie Dockport flash on. Admittedly, she hadn't expected the police to identify her quite so quickly. Not that it worried her; not in the least.

No, they didn't worry her. They-or one of them- challenged her.

Detective Eve Dallas, now Lieutenant.

She'd come back for Dallas. To wage war.

There had been something about Eve Dallas, she thought now, something cold, something dark that had spoken to her.

Kindred spirits, she mused, and as the idea intrigued her she'd found herself spending endless hours of her time in prison, studying that particular opponent.

She had time still. The police would be chasing their tails searching for a connection between her and Walter Pettibone. They'd find none because there was none to find.

That was the tone of her work now, other women's husbands. She didn't have to have sex with them. She just got to kill them. Strolling out of the room, she walked toward her office to spend the next hour or two studying her research notes on her next victim. She might have taken a forced sabbatical, but Julianna was back. And raring to go.

CHAPTER 6

Because stalling made her feel weak and stupid, Eve only managed to put off the trip to Commander Whitney's office until the middle of the day.

The only satisfaction in heading up was being able to ignore Channel 75's ace on-air reporter, Nadine Furst, as she requested an interview regarding the Pettibone-Dunne story.

That was something else she'd have to shuffle in, she thought as she caught a glide out of Homicide. Nadine's investigative skills were as sharp and savvy as her wardrobe. She'd be a handy tool.

As she was shown directly into Whitney's office without even a momentary wait, Eve had to figure he'd been expecting her.

He sat at his desk, a big-shouldered man with a worn, wide face.

He had good, clear eyes, and she had reason to know his time off the streets hadn't softened him.

He sat back, giving her a little come-ahead signal with one finger.

"Lieutenant. You've been busy." "Sir?"

"You made a trip out to my neighborhood this morning, paid a visit to Shelly Pettibone." He folded those big hands, and his face was unreadable. "I just got an earful from my wife."

"Commander, it's standard procedure to question any and all connections to the victim."