by J. D. Robb
“Former boyfriend who doesn’t want to be former pulls a knife on the current boyfriend, and sticks him pretty good before current can get his own sticker out. Current’s losing a lot of blood while ex is putting holes in him, and doesn’t have much left to put holes in the ex. The girlfriend picked up the pipe and whaled on the ex. She says she was trying to stop him from killing current—too late for that, but it holds up pretty well. Maybe she wailed harder and longer than might be strictly on the line, but current’s lying there dead or dying.”
“Are you charging her?”
“The thing is, we talked to some people, and they confirm the ex was hassling them, threatening them, started other fights. And he knocked her around pretty good, too, which is what makes him her ex. Maybe we get Man One, maybe Man Two. The PA made some noises, but isn’t enthusiastic about it. Carmichael and me don’t see the point in it.”
“See if Carmichael can talk her into going into one of the victim programs, then spring her if the PA’s good with it.” “Thanks, LT, that’s the way we wanted it to work.” Sometimes, Eve thought, as she sprinted to catch the elevator to the garage, things worked the way you wanted them to work.
She badged her way through security at the studio, and informed them to clear through her expert consultant, civilian, on his arrival.
She went straight back to the small city of trailers.
Lined up close, she noted. Not much privacy here. They looked the same from outside, she thought, except for the names on the doors.
She followed the guard’s directions until she came to Harris’s and the sealed door. Between the woman playing Nadine and the guy playing Feeney. Not, she noted, beside Matthew’s or Marlo’s or Julian’s. She bet that gave Harris something else to bitch about.
She unsealed the door, stepped in.
Sitting or living area, she mused, with brightly colored sofas, an oversized swivel-style leather chair. A table held a bowl of fruit, not as fresh as it had been. In the small kitchen area, the Friggie was fully stocked—water, wine, soft drinks, a selection of cheeses, berries in a clear, unopened container. A bottle of vodka in the freezer.
To get the feel of the place, she started back toward the sleeping area, glanced in the bathroom. Flowers, again not as fresh as they had been, on the counter, and a low-sided box holding soaps, shampoo, lotions.
While the bedroom wasn’t spacious, it held a bed, neatly made, a fancy side chair, a wall screen. The closet was outfitted with rods and drawers.
She started there. She found another bottle of vodka—opened and half empty—in a drawer, and a small bag of zoner tucked into the toe of a boot.
She’d nearly finished the bedroom when she heard the trailer door open. Laying a hand lightly on her weapon, she stepped out—and Roarke came in.
Jesus, would she ever get over how gorgeous he was?
He smiled at her—only more gorgeous—and closed the distance to kiss her.
“Hi,” she said. “How was Cleveland?”
“Windy. And what are we looking for in the late, largely unlamented K.T. Harris’s trailer?”
“Nothing I think we’ll find, but I’ve got to look. I’m about finished in the back. I’ll fill you in.”
He skimmed a fingertip down the dent in her chin. “One of my favorite times of day.”
“You’re in a good mood,” she observed as they walked back.
“I am. It was a productive day.”
“You didn’t buy Cleveland, did you?”
“Just a small piece.” He lifted his eyebrows at the vodka bottle, the bag of zoner, and the box of herbals Eve suspected was laced with the illegal. “Are we having a party?”
“It’s looking like the late and largely unlamented spent a lot of time at least partially drunk or stoned. And she’d been busy the last couple weeks.”
While she finished the room, she caught him up to date, moved to the bathroom, found the tranqs—another prescription, a different doctor.
“She sounds like a sad woman, one who found it more natural to make enemies than friends.”
“And because of that I have a houseful of suspects she’d alienated, upset, pissed off, or threatened.”
“I hate to ask, as he seemed a likable sort, but with her booking the transportation and vacation for both of them, could Matthew have been working with her to scam Marlo somehow? Get close to her, arrange for this blackmail, and then add the actual payoff in later.”
“It’s a thought, and I’ve had it.” But she shook her head. “It’s not gelling well. Why the actual PI and payment? All they had to do was convince Marlo there’d been a PI, a break-in, a plant. Matthew could have planted the camera and saved them a bundle.”
“True enough.”
“I’m going to take a dip in his financials anyway, see if there’s anything hinky. I tagged him, asked for permission to look through his trailer. He gave me the go.” She shrugged. “There’s nothing here.” Eve shoved at her hair. “She wouldn’t risk it. The drugs, the drink, the illegals, they’re only here because she needed them.”
He walked out with her, waiting while she sealed the door. “My money says she planted the cameras she bought in Times Square in Matthew’s trailer, then trashed it when she heard or saw something between him and Marlo.”
“I figure, yeah. It’s the old ‘hell’s got nothing on a woman dumped.’”
“Or words to that effect,” Roarke decided.
“So, I’ve got his go-ahead, and can look through. If I’m right and we find them, I’m free to see what’s on them.”
She led the way down the alley between trailers, turned, and walked to Matthew’s.
While the layout in his was the same as K.T.’s, the feel was entirely different.
Here was casual, lived-in, a little messy. Instead of a bowl of fruit, the table held a music pod and a basket of PowerBars, candy bars, gum. There was a bottle of wine in his Friggie, but it stacked heavily toward fizzies and soft drinks. His freezer held a trio of frozen dessert bars.
Roarke found the first camera fixed to the top of the window trim in under two minutes.
“The other will be in the bedroom,” Eve told him. “You might as well go get it while I finish in here. No point in not looking through his stuff since he gave permission.”
They walked out again in less than a half hour. “No illegals, no drugs except standard blockers, one bottle of wine, no sex toys, and enough snack food for a grade-school class.”
She looked around again. “He and Marlo wouldn’t have snuck in here for a quickie. Too many people wandering around, too much too close. Maybe she thought they would, or maybe she just wanted to spy on him, ended up seeing them do a little kissy-face, or do the kissy-face talk.”
“You have such a way with words,” Roarke observed, and slid an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s hear some kissy-face talk.”
“I’d have to be drunk first.”
“Too true.”
“Either way you work K.T. and the cameras, it’s sick. She was sick and sad.”
“She makes you angry, and she makes you sad.” He hooked an arm around her waist now, pressed his lips to her temple. “Let’s go get that beer and pizza, take a little time away from this.”
“Yeah.” She hooked her arm around him in turn. “Let’s do that.”
12
RECHARGING AND REFUELING WERE FAIRLY NEW concepts for Eve. Before Roarke unwinding time might have been downing a beer at a cop bar, surrounded by other cops talking shop. Occasionally, if Mavis could talk her into it, a night out at a club. But for the most part she’d done the solo, in the apartment now full of color and Mavis’s family.
She’d never looked, particularly, for anyone to share the end of the day with, but doing just that with Roarke—whether it was work or like this, a short interlude without it—had become a habit.
And it was better.
She liked the busy pizzeria with its clatter and conversations, its pretty view of the marina and the boats swaying
in their slips. She had cold beer, hot pizza, and a man who loved her to share them with.
Yeah, it was a whole bunch better.
“Why don’t you have a boat?” she asked him.
“I believe I do have one or two.”
“I don’t mean big-ass cargo boats or whatever for shipping your loot from point to point.”
“Loot? That’s a shadowy word. I try to stick to the light now that I’m married to a cop.” He cocked a brow, lifted his beer. “Think of how embarrassing it would be for both parties if she had to arrest me.”
“I’d front your bail. Probably.”
“Good to know.”
“I mean, why don’t you have one of those zippy boats or the sailing jobs?” She bit into her slice, gesturing toward the window and the view with her free hand. “The kind of boats people have who think skimming all over the place on top of the water is such a good time.”
“You don’t want one.”
“Me? No. Looking at the water—it’s nice. Being in the water—a pool, the beach—all good. Riding on it where you might end up in it way out there with things that live under it and want to eat you? Why go there?”
“I’ve been out there, and in addition to the things that live under it and want to eat you, the ocean herself can be very unforgiving.” He looked out, as she did, at the water and beyond. “I’ve lived on an island, one way or the other, my entire life,” he reminded her. “I must like them.”
“But not boats.”
“I’ve nothing against them.” He slid another slice of pizza onto her plate. “I’ve enjoyed some of my time on them—for business, for pleasure. There was a time, when loot was more applicable to my business, I spent considerable time on boats.”
“Smuggling.”
He smiled, so easy, so wicked. “That’s one way to look at it. Another would be engaging in free enterprise. But there’s more than cops and crooks in the mix when engaging in free enterprise on the high seas.”
“Such as?”
“Well.” He glanced at the boats again, then back at Eve. “Once, in the North Atlantic, somewhere between Ireland and Greenland, we hit a storm. Or it hit us, more accurately. That would be my description of hell. The utter dark, then the blinding flashes of lightning that brought waves, taller than a building, wider than the world into terrifying relief. The sounds of the wind and water and screams of men, and the cold that numbed your face and fingers, froze your bones inside your skin.”
He took a sip of beer, shook his head. “That’s a memory.”
And the sort he rarely shared and she rarely asked about. “What happened?”
“Well, we fought all night, and into the day, to keep afloat. It was like being rattled about like dice in a cup. The water heaving over the deck. You’re never so alone as that, I think, than in a storm at sea. We didn’t all make it, and there was no help for those who went into the water. The instant they did, they were lost.”
She could see he’d gone back, felt it through and through, so said nothing while he took a moment for the rest.
“I remember being slammed, tumbling toward the rail and the sea that waited to swallow a man down. And ramming into something, I can’t say what even now, that stopped me before I pitched into the maw of it. And as I managed to brace myself, I caught someone’s hand as those bloody waves heeled us up, caught it as he was sliding by me. I saw his face in a sheet of lightning. Little Jim they called him as he was small and slight. Tough one though, Little Jim. I’d taken fifty from him the night before the storm in a poker game. I’d had a heart flush over his full house. I had him, I thought, I had him, but the water slammed us again, and he slipped out of my hold, and went over the side.”
He paused, lifted his beer, sipped it, like a toast. “And that was all of Little Jim from Liverpool.”
“How old were you?”
“Hmm? Ah, eighteen. Maybe younger, maybe a bit younger than that. We lost five men that night. You wouldn’t have called them good men, I suppose, but it was a hard death for them just the same. And still, we got the cargo in. So …”
He shrugged, bit into his pizza. “I’ve no yearning to travel about on a boat. But I can pilot one well enough if you get a sudden yen.”
“I think we’re both safe from that.” She laid a hand over his. “Was it worth it?” she wondered. “All the risks you took?”
“I am where I am, and you’re with me. So it was, yes, worth it all just for this.” He turned his hand over under hers, linked fingers. “For this.”
She thought about it on the drive home. She rarely asked specifics about the life he’d led before they’d met. She knew about the misery of his childhood, the poverty, the hunger, the violent abuse at the hands of his father.
Neither of them had cheerful, happy Christmas memories from what people called the formative years.
She knew he’d been a Dublin street rat, a thief, pickpocket, an operator, and one who’d used those street skills and more to build the foundation for what was, essentially, a business empire.
She understood that while he’d been moving toward full legitimacy when they’d met, he’d still had his fingers in a few messy pies—more for amusement than need. He’d pulled his fingers out, plugged up those holes for her. For them.
She knew bits and pieces of the time between, but there were large chunks, like a storm at sea, she didn’t know.
When she wondered—and cops always wondered—she usually just let it be. Because he was right. Whatever he’d done, wherever he’d gone, it had all brought him to her.
But there were times she wondered why, and how.
“What do you think hooks people together? Besides the physical. I mean, sex hooks all sorts of people together that don’t work.”
“Other than chemistry? I suppose recognition plays a part.”
She rolled her eyes toward him. “That wifty Irish woo-woo.”
“Wifty?”
“You know.” She shook her hands in the air. “I see how Matthew hooked up initially with K.T. Harris. Same business, same place, both attractive. I even see, to a point, why when he shook her off she dug in. That can be pride, stubbornness, or just obstinacy. But this is—was—more. Obsession’s more than pride and obstinacy. She followed him, spied on him, hired a PI at considerable expense to perform illegal acts, and hoped to blackmail him with the results. She was so dug in on it she planned their holiday vacation together. It didn’t matter to her he didn’t want her, or that if he caved and went along with her it would be under duress. It’s a kind of rape.
“So I just answered my own question.”
“Power, control, and careless violence. Everything you’ve told me about her speaks to her wanting power, over people, her image, her career.”
“You know more about power—getting it, keeping it—than anyone I know. When you want something, you find a way to get it. You wanted me.”
Reaching over, he danced his fingers over the back of her hand. “And I’ve got you, don’t I?”
“Because I wanted you back. I mean, think of the coffee alone. I’d’ve been a fool to say no.”
“And you’re no fool.”
“But if I’d been one, if I’d said no—”
“You did, initially.”
“Yeah, and you walked away. That was pride, but it was also strategy. You cut me off, and because I was stupid in love with you, I came to you.”
“Came to your senses.”
“I needed the coffee. But if I hadn’t. If I’d found another means to feed my need for coffee, what would you have done?”
“I’d have done anything I could to persuade you you’d never be happy without my coffee.” Including groveling, he thought. But why bring that up?
“Not everything,” she corrected. “A man in your position could do anything, that’s the point. You could have pressured me, threatened me, blackmailed me. You could’ve used violence. But you wouldn’t have.”
“I love you.” His eyes met her
s briefly, and it was there. The simplicity of it. The enormity of it. “Hurting you wasn’t the goal—or an option.”
“Exactly. For K.T. hurting was just a means, because possession was the goal. And in fact, hurting was a bonus, I think. She wouldn’t have stopped.”
“What does that tell you?”
“Killing her was the means to stop her. Not personal in the intimate sense, but like closing and locking a door when what’s inside the room is dangerous or just really unpleasant. The lack of real violence in the killing’s part of that. She falls—or gets pushed. The killer doesn’t keep at her, doesn’t strike, hit, choke. What he does is drag her into the water, tidy up a little. There now. All better.”
“You’ve eliminated Matthew.”
“The recording covers him, and Marlo, though we could argue they staged it. It’s what they do. But you add the lack of physical payback. Her intentions were to force him into a sexual relationship he didn’t want. That’s personal, it’s intimate—but the murder wasn’t. So yeah, Matthew’s low on the list. Marlo now …”
“Really?”
“Not as low. I’d expect more physical from her—punch, slap, scratch—something. But I can see them intending to confront her as they stated. I can also see Marlo facing off with her first, giving her a shove, then either panicked or just really pissed off, finishing it off with the pool. Matthew would cover for her. He loves her. It doesn’t play real pretty for me, but it makes a tune.”
She let it simmer while he turned in the long, winding driveway toward home. The setting sun washed the stones in gold, flashed spears of red against the many windows. Leaves, still green from summer, took on that light and hinted of the creeping autumn.
When she got out of the car, the air held that same hint—fresh, she thought, rather than chilly.
“Summer’s toast,” she said.
“Well, it had a long, hot stretch of it. It’s cool enough we could have a fire in the bedroom tonight.”
The idea appealed so much she continued to smile even when she walked in and saw Summerset looming in the foyer.
“Halloween’s weeks off yet, but I see you’ve got your costume. It’s good to be prepared.”
