Celebrity in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Sherri Wendall,” Eve added, tapping the next ID. “An actress known for her comedic timing and fierce temper. Their marriage lasted four years, was described as tumultuous. Three years after their divorce, Wendall died in what was determined to be an accidental drowning due to a fall and alcohol consumption. It was the tragedy and scandal of the Cannes Film Festival that year. Steinburger attended, as one of the partners in the fledgling Big Bang Productions.”

  “She was brilliant, really. You’ve seen some of her vids.”

  “Yeah. Funny lady. Five years after the funny lady drowned in the south of France, Buster Pearlman, one of Steinburger’s partners, ingested a terminal cocktail of barbiturates and single malt scotch. The ruling of self-termination was additionally fueled by speculation of embezzlement on his part, and what Steinburger regretfully testified was the threat of internal audit.”

  “Yes,” Roarke murmured, “I’ll be looking more at finances.”

  “We go seven years. A long stretch, so I’ll be going over the interim again. Allys Beaker, twenty-two. An intern at the studio, found dead in her apartment. She’d slipped in the shower, the report claims, and fractured her skull. Her ex-boyfriend was detained and questioned, but there was no evidence to charge him with anything. He did, in his statement, claim he believed Allys was seeing someone else, an older man, a married man. This supposition was reinforced by a female friend of the deceased, who stated Beaker believed the man she was involved with intended to leave his wife and marry her. Steinburger was two years married to his last ex-wife.

  “Which brings us to current events. So, with this data, what do you see here on the board?”

  “A pattern. You believe he’s been killing for—Christ—forty years? Without slipping, without suspicion?”

  “I stopped thinking it halfway through the forty. I know it. It’s a way to solve a problem, it’s a choice. It’s going to take more to find out what the problem might have been in each case. Some are obvious,” she continued, gesturing at the board as she paced in front of it. “An affair resulting in a pregnancy, and the other party wouldn’t let go. Money difficulties pawned off on a partner, one who might have either been in on the skimming or learned of it. A nosy photographer who saw or photographed something damaging. A stupid young girl who pushed for marriage, likely threatened to tell his wife.”

  “Sex and money, as you said all along.”

  “Most are violent, somewhat impulsive. A shove, a blow. A cover-up. He might even see them as accidents. Or self-defense in a twisted way.”

  Roarke laid a hand on her shoulder when she stopped beside him. “Nine people.”

  “Very likely more, but it’s a hell of a start. He’s a serial killer who doesn’t fit the standard profile. He doesn’t escalate, or stick to type, stick to method. His connections or involvements with each pop out when you lay it out, but otherwise, it’s just a four-decade span of accidents, suicide, misadventure. Just bad luck. Who’s going to connect an almost ninety-year-old hiker slipping off a canyon path with a drunk twenty-year-old college kid falling down the stairs six years earlier?”

  “You.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know if I would have. I looked at this—at Harris—as a first kill. I looked at the list of suspects and thought argument, impulse. Period. Panic, cover-up. Mira thought the same, though she did talk about there being two different styles—the impulse, the calculation. I saw it, but I didn’t. Not clearly. Then you said maybe he’d done it before. I never considered that. Never considered this.”

  “What do you see now, when you look at the pattern?”

  “Ambition, greed, self-indulgence, an obsessive need to preserve status and reputation. Sociopathic tendencies and a need to control, absolutely. He killed Asner rather than pay him off, risking that second kill. But there’s calculation there. He’s alibied, and while Asner was connected to Harris, he was also connected to any number of unsavory types given his line of work. He paid Valerie off for the alibi. He can’t afford a third kill, not now. But eventually she’ll have an accident. He’ll make sure she’s paid and rewarded until he can get rid of her.”

  “He killed Harris because she’d seen the pattern.”

  Eve nodded. “Or some of it—even one element—and she hired Asner to dig into it. He may have seen more of the pattern. We’ll probably never know the full extent of what he and Harris knew.”

  She sat on the edge of her desk, picked up her empty coffee cup, scowled at it. “I can’t prove any of it.”

  “Yet.”

  “It’s nice having somebody believe I can work small miracles.”

  “Every day. It’s likely he’s made other payoffs. I can look for that, near the dates of each of these deaths. I can look into the embezzlement for accounts opened during that period. And starting with the college roommate, into his academic records.”

  “I’ve got a couple of ex-wives I can approach, police reports I need to go through again—investigators to nudge. There’s no such fucking thing as a perfect murder. There will be mistakes, more connections. He may have gotten away with this for longer than I’ve been alive, but his time’s up.

  “It’s up,” she murmured. “And he’s going to pay for every face on these boards. I need coffee. Then let’s start working some small miracles.”

  Cold cases had their own tone, approach, dynamics. Memories faded or altered. Evidence was misplaced. People died.

  For once she had an advantage in the time zone area. It was early enough in California for her to start making contacts, asking questions, requesting additional data.

  She got lucky with Detective McHone—now Detective-Sergeant—who’d been secondary lead on the Buster Pearlman suicide.

  “Sure I remember. Pearlman downed enough barbs to kill himself twice. Waste of good scotch, or so my partner said at the time. He had the lead on that. He’s retired now, lives out in Helena, Montana. Spends all his time fishing.”

  “The data I’ve been able to access indicated Pearlman was—allegedly—embezzling funds from the studio.”

  “He’d skimmed fifty large just that morning, into an offshore account under his wife’s maiden name. She swore he wouldn’t steal a gum-ball. They weren’t living over their means. Their means were pretty damn good as it was. The funds skimmed came up to ten times what we found. Never could zero in on the rest.”

  “What tipped you to the embezzlement?”

  “The wife. She and the kids had been visiting her parents for a few days. When they got back, they found him. She said it couldn’t have been suicide. He’d never kill himself, never leave her and the kids. Pushed and pushed. It didn’t take long for us to find the money, or to smell out the problem at the studio. They had an audit scheduled for the next week.”

  “Tell me about Steinburger.”

  “Is he on your list for K.T. Harris?”

  “He was there, so he’s on the list.”

  “I remember he was adamant about Pearlman being innocent. About it being some kind of accident. Pretty damn pissed we’d smear a good man’s name, upset his family. Went public on it, too. Got a lot of play for standing up for his friend and partner, trying to support the widow and kiddies.”

  “Did it ever angle as a setup to you?”

  “It looked straightforward. The rest of the money was a puzzler, but from what the forensic accountants could pull out, he’d been dipping here and there for a couple years. Could’ve washed it a dozen different ways.”

  “No records,” Eve prodded. “No second set of books?”

  “He’d wiped his electronics. Given every last one of them a virus. We couldn’t do as much back then as we can now.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  “Jesus, that’s a while—what, fifteen years, give or take. I can’t tell you.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d check, D-S McHone. And given what we can do now, if those electronics are still in evidence, you may find something relevant on them.”

>   “I haven’t thought about this case in God knows. I can check. You’re liking Steinburger for Harris.”

  “I am. And if he killed my vic, I’m betting he killed yours, too.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  She talked to more cops, made more notes, drank more coffee.

  Roarke came in, eyed the coffeepot on her desk. He went into the kitchen, came back with a bottle of water. “Change it up a bit.”

  “What, are you the coffee police?”

  “If so, you’d be doing life without parole. I’ve a couple of potentially interesting transactions. One a transfer from an account Steinburger has quietly buried under the name B.B. Joel.”

  “Big Bang Joel? Really?”

  “Not particularly inventive, but B.B. pays his taxes like a good boy. The day of Angelica Caulfield’s death, he transferred twenty thousand into a new account, one opened by Violet Holmes.”

  “The day of?”

  “Yes. The body wasn’t discovered until the next day.”

  “Possible premeditation. Setting up the alibi in advance. Wait a minute.” Eve swiveled back to her machine, calling up files as Roarke continued.

  “Holmes was, at that time, an emerging star—young, fresh, primed for her first major starring roll. Steinburger and Big Bang made her a full-fledged star. He and Holmes have been linked together a few times between marriages.”

  “She has a boat, moored at the marina where we located Asner’s car. Peabody and McNab found four possible connections between individuals who have boats here and Steinburger and others on the list.”

  “Holmes and Steinburger lived together, for a few months, at one time,” Roarke told her. “Apparently remain friends.”

  “Friendly enough I bet he knows where she keeps her boat, how to operate it.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. There was also a withdrawal of ten thousand from the B.B. Joel account the day after the ex-wife drowned. No transfer, but then some people will insist on cash in the hand.”

  “Fussy. Where does the money in this account come from?”

  “Working on that. Going back, small—under five thousand—deposits were made during the first months after the account was opened. Which was some twenty months prior to the partner’s supposed suicide. They graduated to larger amounts, but still under ten. He taps the account regularly. He may see it as a kind of petty cash drawer. Want a bit of something you’d prefer your accountant didn’t see? Tap.”

  “To the public, he lives a high life—power, glamour, shiny friends, juicy travel. But it’s a straight one. Maybe B.B. Joel likes the more sinuous.”

  She looked over at her boards. “Time to tie it together so it holds enough weight to convince Whitney and the PA.”

  “Eve,” he said when she turned to the ’link. “It’s past midnight. Who are you waking up?”

  “Peabody. We need a conference room in the morning, with Whitney, Reo if we can get her, Mira—” She paused, gave Roarke a thoughtful look.

  “I have several steps toward world financial domination scheduled in the morning, but—”

  “No, who wants to get in the way of that? Can you just copy everything to Feeney? I’ll bring him in, with his favorite boy.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  There was a breathy pause on the ’link, then a husky “Peabody,” with blocked video.

  “Locate Violet Holmes,” Eve ordered.

  “Huh? Who? Oh. Sir?”

  Eve ignored the sound of rustling, a slurry male murmur, a quiet, groaning sigh. “Holmes—the boat. I want her location. Arrange a conference room, zero-eight-hundred. Be there. Bring McNab.”

  “Okay. What … Sorry, we were just—”

  “I don’t want to know what you were just. In fact, I’ll issue a thirty-day rip if you so much as hint what you were just. Holmes, conference room. Report to my office thirty minutes prior for an update.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good work on the boat.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Go back to just,” Eve said and cut her off.

  She sent priority requests to the others she wanted at the briefing, but through message only.

  “In case they’re just?” Roarke wondered.

  “I’m ignoring that, because I’m not picturing that. I need to put this in solid order. I’m close, but I want to fine-tune.”

  “I’ll do the same so Feeney can easily intercept the pass.”

  “Appreciate it. I guess I just owe you.”

  He laughed, leaned down and kissed her head. “I’ll just have to collect another time. In the meanwhile, lay off the coffee.”

  She waited until he’d gone into his office to roll her eyes. But she reached for the water instead.

  18

  WHEN HE FELT HER STIR BESIDE HIM, ROARKE rew her closer, rubbed her back.

  “Ssh,” he said. “Ssh now. Hold on to me and sleep.”

  She shivered a little, burrowed closer still.

  He’d lit the fire before they’d slipped into bed. Now, only a few hours later, it simmered in the hearth and tossed its gold-washed red light into the room.

  Quiet, warm, soothing. It’s what he’d wanted for her in sleep.

  Yet she clung, anchored to him against the dreams.

  He brushed his lips over her hair, wanting to will the tension in her body away, to erase those images and emotions that gave her so little peace.

  With his eyes closed, he continued to stroke her back in light, rhythmic movements designed to lull.

  In the dark, curled against him, her body seemed so fragile. It wasn’t, he knew. His Eve was strong, tough and athletic. He’d seen her take a punch—more than once—and execute one. He’d been on the receiving end of her fist, so could attest she packed some power.

  He’d tended her wounds, as she had his, and knew she healed well, healed fast. His resilient, hardheaded cop.

  But there were parts inside that tough, disciplined body that remained fragile—perhaps always would. And those vulnerable places pulled at him to protect, to comfort, to do anything he could to spare her a bruise or blow.

  The vulnerability undid him even as the strength brought him pride. And the whole of her brought him love beyond the measuring of it.

  Of all he’d craved in his life, all he’d dreamed of having, all he’d fought to gain by fair means or foul, he’d never imagined having such as she as his own. Never imagined himself the man he’d come to be because she was.

  Now he felt her begin to relax again, degree by degree, and hoped she drifted toward that quiet and that warmth where there were no bruises or blows. And he let himself drift with her, wrapped around her like a shield.

  So when she lifted her face to his, when he lowered his lips to hers, it was another kind of dreaming, as soft and lovely as the firelight playing on the walls.

  His heart poured to hers, a murmured stream of Irish while she melted against him.

  She knew some of the words; he’d said them before. But there was more now. He always seemed to have more to give her. Now he gave her tenderness when she hadn’t known she’d needed the tender. He gave her unity when alone hurt.

  A touch, a taste, all slow, all easy, as if patience and love were one steady heartbeat.

  Worries that had dogged her in sleep broke apart, dissolved so there was only the welcome weight of his body, the lazy stroke of his hands, the stirring taste of him on her tongue.

  She flowed along that gentle current of sensation, its lazy rise, its graceful fall. Breathing him, touching as she was touched. As if nothing in the world mattered more than the moment. And nothing existed in the moment but them.

  When she opened, he filled. When he filled, she surrounded.

  As they moved together in the dance of firelight, the tenderness brought tears to her eyes, a catch of them in her breath.

  “I love you.” Overwhelmed, undone, he pressed his face to her shoulder. “A ghra. A ghra mo chro
i.”

  “Love,” she sighed as she rose to peak, light as a feather on a cloud.

  “Love,” she repeated when she lay warm against him. She rested her hand on his cheek. He curled his over her wrist.

  She slept, in the quiet and warm.

  Roarke slept with her.

  When she woke to sunlight, it pleased her to see him in the bedroom sitting area, drinking coffee—the cat sprawled over his lap—while he watched the financial reports whiz by on-screen. And fully dressed in one of his god of the business world suits.

  Which meant he’d been up an hour, probably more, and tended to some of his realm.

  So not as worried about her.

  She glanced at the time, grunted, then rolled out of bed to shower. In the drying tube, she closed her eyes as the warm air swirled around her. Time to get your head in the game, she ordered herself.

  Who the hell had a head to get in any game before coffee?

  She grabbed the robe on the back of the door, shrugged into it as she strode back into the bedroom and straight to the AutoChef.

  She drank half the first cup as though her life depended on it, then turned, studied Roarke again.

  “Morning.”

  “She speaks.”

  “And she’s going to have to do a lot more of it.”

  She crossed over to the closet, started to reach for clothes at random.

  “Not today,” Roarke said from behind her.

  “What? I’m not wearing clothes today?”

  “Oh, if only. Today, you take a rare moment to think about clothes.”

  “I think about them. They keep me from being arrested for indecent exposure. And if I have to tackle some asshole during the course of the day, it prevents him from thinking I’m a sex fiend.”

  “Both excellent purposes for wardrobe. Another is presentation. You’re going to be presenting your case—and yourself—to your commander and others.”

  “Which is cop work.” She may have been barefoot, but she prepared to dig in her heels. “I’m not fancying up for cop work.”

  “There is, Lieutenant, considerable area between indecent exposure/ sex fiend and fancying up. Such as …”