by Nora Roberts
“How about you, hot shot?”
“As it was my casino, if I win, I lose-in a matter of speaking. What about you? Did you have fun?” When she sat there, frowning, he flipped a finger down the dent in her chin. “That wasn’t a trick question.”
“I had to think about it. I have to say I did, in a weird way. I’m surprised. Then this morning, I end up running a breakfast meeting with the core group. Through no plan of mine. And Mavis puts her finger on the killer.”
“Mavis?”
“Yeah. I’ve got all these brains-I don’t mean Mavis is stupid, but I’ve got the police detective, the profiler, the ace reporter, and the doctor. And it’s the former grifter turned music disc star and mother who nails it. I’ll fill you in later if you want, but I guess I’ve got to go down and do whatever I’m supposed to do with everybody until they go the hell home.”
“They’ve all gone the hell home.”
“Don’t toy with me.”
“With many thanks for a wonderful party.”
She started to grin, caught herself. “That’s bad, right? That’s being a crappy hostess. I was just going to go down for an hour while the rest of them were getting breakfast and all that. I was supposed to be down there waving bye-bye and thanking everyone for coming.”
“I can tell you everyone who was still here when we arrived hoped you got some much needed rest. McNab had to come up and wake Peabody, so you weren’t alone. I think you did very well.”
“How long have I been down?”
“I don’t know when you finally fell on your face, but it’s nearly four now.”
“Shit. shit. I have to check, make sure Callendar’s on her way.”
“I can tell you she is, along with the other detective, two prisoners, and a representative of Omega. They had to clear the shuttle with me. So.” He shifted, moved back to sit at the head of the bed, patted the space beside him. “Why don’t you come over here and tell me what prisoners my shuttle is transporting to New York, and how they’re connected to Ricker, Coltraine, and Sandy.”
“It’s going to take a while,” she warned him.
“Believe me, after nearly twenty hours of gambling, naked women, strip music, and extraordinarily filthy jokes, I’m ready for home.”
She rolled over until she was snuggled against him. “I missed you, too.”
And while the cat sat at the foot of the bed washing himself, she filled Roarke in on the progress of the case.
20
ROARKE LISTENED, RELAXING WITH HIS WIFE curled up against him. The cat padded up the bed to bookend him at the hip.
Yes, it was good to be home.
“They’ll shut him down for a while,” he said, thinking of Ricker. “But down the line he’ll find another Rouche, another way. His power’s diminished, his freedom gone-he needs some outlet. Some… entertainment.”
“He has enough power, and freedom, to have caused two murders. Or one, anyway,” Eve considered. “I don’t think he ordered Sandy’s. If Callendar didn’t find a transmission on that, I have to believe it wasn’t there. Grady did that one for free, for herself.”
“Ricker wouldn’t object. Not in the long run. Sandy was on shaky ground, enough to let it show. Ricker might have decided to snip that thread even as he arranged for Coltraine’s murder.”
“I don’t know.” She started to roll away, and Roarke tightened his grip on her. “I’ll be back. He’s used Sandy for years-more than likely,” she continued as she got off the bed. “Sandy, shaky or not, was his best line to his son. His infallible way to keep tabs on Alex. That’s gone now.”
“Grady might think she can find a way to make that work for her.” Roarke watched Eve go to the panel, open it to select a bottle of wine.
“I got ambition from her, and couldn’t figure out why she’s stuck at third grade, working out of that small, low-level squad. Now it makes sense, because her ambitions lie elsewhere.” Eve chose a Tuscan red, opened it. “So yeah, I’ve got to figure she’s got plans. And she’s got to think she’s in the clear on Coltraine. Sandy takes the rap there. Or I work on trying to tie Alex up along with his dead pal. That’s how it’s going to look.”
“You’ve got plans.”
“I’m working on some.” She poured two glasses of wine, then carried them to the AutoChef. She programmed an assortment of cheeses, breads, crackers, fruit. She brought the wine over, handed a glass to Roarke, put hers on the night table before going back for the food. When she laid the tray on the bed, both the cat-who’d propped his head on Roarke’s thigh-and her husband studied her.
“Well now, isn’t this homey?”
“Some…” She reached over him for her wine, brushed her lips over his on the way back. “Might consider it groveling.”
“It might be a start.”
She spread cheese on a small round of crusty bread, offered it. “Alex and Sandy hooked up in college. Father and son weren’t on the best of terms at that point. So it could be Ricker enlisted Sandy to get close, to develop a friendship.” She spread another round for herself. “The thing is, from what I’ve got at this point, Grady went to college. Not the same college, but she did six months in Europe. Some sort of exchange deal.”
“You’re wondering if she was Ricker’s even then, and she recruited Sandy for him.”
“It’s a thought. She’d have been pretty young. But then so were you when you had business with Ricker. You don’t remember her? She might’ve used a different name when she came around, maybe had a different look.”
“There were women, certainly. Young women. He enjoyed them. Used them. Sexually or for whatever purpose best suited. I saw her ID shot, and got a look at her at the memorial. She didn’t look familiar.”
Eve brooded over it. “It doesn’t fit that she’s new to him. He couldn’t know Coltraine would transfer to New York before she knew it herself. Grady’s been in that squad for three years, and a cop for more than eight. And he’d never trust someone that new with an assignment like this. Plus, he’s been in a cage longer than Coltraine’s been in New York, so how would he select and convince Grady to kill her? Hunter. That was his term for her in the transmission. She’s done this before.”
“So she was in place, and it happened to be the right place and the right time for this purpose.”
“Yeah. If not her, he’d have someone else. But it was her, so how, why, and when did she turn, did she sign up? She didn’t join the force right out of college. She took another couple years. I’ve got no employment on record for that period.”
“It’s not unusual to take a few months or a year between graduation and the start of a career. In this case, it would’ve been time for more specific training and education.”
“Detective third grade, small squad-not much notice there. She lives alone, nobody to wonder where she is, what she’s doing. She takes every day-always has-of her vacation and sick leave.”
“Unlike someone we know,” Roarke said to Galahad as he offered the cat a small cracker and a smudge of cheese.
“Flexing time regularly,” Eve added. “Not enough to raise eyebrows, but considerable. Enough time, when you add it up, for her to take other assignments. I need to know where she was during that period between college and going on the job. If she crossed with Sandy during that six months in Europe. Where she goes during her off time. I only need one connection, one time paths crossed. Reo can get me a search warrant on that.”
“I take it we’re working tonight.”
Eve popped a grape into her mouth before she carried the tray over to her dresser. “It’s not night yet.” She crawled back onto the bed, and onto her man. “And I have to finish groveling.”
“That’s right, you do.” In a quick move he reversed their positions. He lowered his head, caught her bottom lip in his teeth. Tugged. “There’s quite a bit of groveling to be done here. So this might take a while.”
“What choice do I have? My word is my bond.”
Sleep, sex, a
little food-it was, Eve thought, the trifecta of energy boosts. And since she was going to use that energy to work, she deserved her most comfortable clothes. In ancient jeans and an even more ancient Police Academy T-shirt, she brought coffee out of her office kitchen. And found Roarke studying her board.
“Because she’s a woman?”
Eve passed him one of the mugs. “I know it sounds shaky. I guess you had to be here. It could be any one of them, but she’s the best fit. And fitting her… it’s all head and gut. That’s the problem. Without more, without some bump along the way, I can’t get the search. And the search may be the only way to find the bumps.”
“If bumps are there, we’d find them with the unregistered.”
“Can’t do it. Before, that was for Morris.” She shook her head, knowing as logic it was again shaky. “I’m going after another cop. I have to do it straight. Every step I take has to be by and on the book for the investigation. And for me. She made a mistake somewhere, overlooked something, sometime. She made one by sending Coltraine’s weapon and badge back. By botching the ambush on me.”
“Assuming it’s Grady. This one.” Roarke tapped Clifton’s photo. “He’s trouble. I know his type.”
“Yeah, and I won’t be surprised to hear at some point he’s ordered to hand over his pieces and badge. And if Coltraine had been knocked around, he’d be top of my list. That was a mistake,” Eve considered. “Grady did it too clean. It just wasn’t physical enough, either of the hits. That’s pride. She’s proud of her work. She does well on the job, she gets kudos from her LT. She does well on her mission, she gets them from Ricker. She covers both.”
“ ‘Don’t disappoint me, dear,’ ” Roarke remembered. “It does strike as a warning to a female. One that puts her in a subordinate position, and one that implies a relationship.”
“Do you ever call your subordinates ‘dear?’ ”
“Good Christ, I hope not. It’s a kind of backhanded slap, isn’t it? If I need to slap an employee, I do it face-to-face.”
“Exactly. Ricker can’t, being all busy in a cage off-planet. The whole phrase is an insult, and a warning. His history with women, it just fits again. So where did she catch his eye? I figure I’ll start with that six months in Europe, the college stint. I might find some intersect with Sandy, then I can work back, and forward from there.”
She went to her desk to do just that. Roarke continued to stand, studying the board.
Attractive woman, he thought. Compact, athletic, a strong face, but very female in the shape of the mouth, the line of the jaw. Certainly one of Ricker’s type, he mused-as far as he could recall. And still, if that connection went back as far as Eve seemed to think, she’d have been eighteen, perhaps twenty. Ricker certainly hadn’t been above using youth for sex, but had he ever taken an actual interest in a girl of that age?
Not in Roarke’s memory of him.
No, that part didn’t fit, not with the man he’d known in his own youth. Women had been commodities, something to be used. Easily discarded. Paid off, discarded, disposed of. Or, as with Alex’s mother, eliminated.
“Look at her mother.”
“What?”
“Her mother,” Roarke repeated. “Run her mother, her parents. Indulge me,” he said when she frowned at him.
Eve ordered the run, and Lissa Grady’s data on-screen.
“Attractive woman,” Roarke commented. “Works part-time in an art gallery where she and her husband retired. Suburban Florida. Respectable salary.”
“No criminal. I ran everyone’s connections before. The father’s clean, too,” she pointed out. “Had his own accounting firm. Small company with two employees. Clean. Now he plays a lot of golf, and works freelance.”
“Hmm. They must have sacrificed considerably to give the daughter the kind of education she had. Where were they when she started college?”
Eve ordered the history. “Bloomfield, New Jersey.”
“No, the employment. She’s a clerk, and he’s working for an accounting firm. Go back on her. Where was she, let’s say nine months before she gave birth?”
“Chicago,” Eve announced. “Working her way through graduate school-art history major-as an assistant manager in a private art gallery. She moved to New Jersey, where her parents lived, during the pregnancy. She took maternity benefits, then the professional mother’s stipend.”
“And was single until, what would it be, she was about four months along.”
“Like that never happens. It’s… Wait.”
“Run the gallery, Eve. Where she worked when she became pregnant.”
She began, shook her head. “It doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for six years. It’s an antique store now. Oh, big, giant pop. I’m an idiot. Not a protegee, not exactly. Not an employee-not only. Not a lover. His freaking daughter.”
“Alex said he’d spent most of his life trying to please his father. Maybe she’s doing the same. Ricker owned several art galleries, an excellent front for smuggling and art forgery. Lissa Grady-or Lissa Neil at the time-could’ve caught his eye.”
“And if she turned up pregnant? He’d get rid of her?”
“Unless she was carrying a son, I imagine so. She’s tested, it’s a female. He might-if he was feeling generous-give the young woman some form of payment. If not, he’d issue a warning.”
“And Lissa took either the payment or the warning, moved back home to New Jersey. Gave up her chance at her graduate degree, her job, had the kid. Married some guy.”
“The some guy’s stuck, more than thirty years. So I’d say Lissa found someone and made something.”
“Would he have kept tabs on her?” Eve wondered. “Looked up the kid?”
“I wouldn’t think so, no. The woman and the child wouldn’t have existed for him.”
“Okay. Okay.” She pushed up to pace. “So, at some point, they tell her. Or maybe they’ve been up front about it all along. Maybe she always knew the guy raising her wasn’t her biological. She gets curious, she starts digging.”
“And finds Max Ricker.”
“Most people, they’re going to be sick if they’re looking for a biological and turn up a criminal kingpin, one suspected of being responsible for more deaths than a lot of small wars. If this is right, if this”-she pointed at Lissa’s image on the wall screen-“is the connection, Grady went to him. She made the contact. I’m your kid, asshole, what are you going to do about it? What would he have done?”
“Depends on his mood again,” Roarke said. “But he might have been entertained by a direct approach. And as he and Alex weren’t on the best of terms at that point, it might’ve intrigued him. The idea of having a chance to mold an offspring.”
“Educate her, train her. Use her.” She knew all about that, Eve thought, all about the methods a father might use to mold. She blocked it out, focused on Grady. “And God, wouldn’t it be sweet to use her to screw with the son who disappointed him?”
“And for her, wouldn’t you think?” Roarke walked back to the board. “For her, also sweet to have a part in undermining the son-the prince, as he’d appear to be from the outside. The one who had all she didn’t. The wealth, the advantages, the attention. The name. It all falls into place with this single element. But then you have to prove this single element is fact.”
“I can do that.” Eve grinned fiercely. “DNA doesn’t lie. I’m going to write this all up, toss it to Mira to add to the stew for the profile. I still need something that puts her and Sandy together, even just the same general place, same general time.”
“That would be my assignment.”
“It would, but you have to play it straight.”
“You’re always spoiling my fun.”
“You already had fun. I groveled.”
“True.” He walked over, laid his hands on her shoulders, laid his lips on hers. “I know you.” He rubbed her shoulders, lightly. “The part of you who isn’t working the case in your head is wondering if all this is true, is
she what she is, did she do what she did because of that DNA.”
Yes, she thought, he knew her. “It’s a question.”
“And the mirror turns so you wonder next about your own blood. What passes from father to daughter.”
“I know I’m not like her. But it’s another question.”
“Here’s an answer. Three fathers-hers, mine, yours-and three products of that blood, so to speak. And all of us have done what we’ve done with it. Maybe because of it. You know you’re not like her, you’re sure of that much. I know you. I’m sure you never could have been.”
He kissed her again before he left her.
She put it away, put away that part of her that wasn’t working the case in her head. That was for later.
She stitched the theory together for Mira, and thought it was a shame Grady’s DNA wasn’t on record. She’d have her warrants in a fingersnap if she proved Grady was Max Ricker’s daughter. Still, it wouldn’t take much. A little spit, skin, hair, blood-whatever came handiest-was all she needed.
She sent messages to her commander, to Reo, to Peabody, and after a brief hesitation, to Morris.
Sitting back, Eve calculated the best, legal, and most satisfying method of collecting Cleo Grady’s DNA.
“Here’s an interesting bit of trivia,” Roarke commented as he came back in. “The football team representing the university where Alex and Sandy became mates happens to play against the team representing the university where Grady was a visiting student.”
“Is that a fucking fact?”
“It is. In fact, these teams hold a deep-seated rivalry and their matches are what you’d call events. Rallies, dances, mad celebrations. They held two of these events-one on each team’s home pitch, during the time Grady was there.”
“I like it.”
“Alex got a bit of press as he scored goals in both those matches. I didn’t find Sandy’s name in any media, but he is listed as a member of the team.”
“Second-string benchwarmer. Has to be a pisser. Reo’s going to make noises-or make noises that her boss is going to make noises-that thousands of people must’ve been at those games. Hard to prove that Sandy and Grady actually met up. But it’s going to be enough. It’s going to weigh. Maybe Alex met her,” she speculated. “Or saw Sandy with her. Would he know about her, about having a sister?”
