Indulgence in Death (In Death #31)(56)

“Can’t help you,” Eve told her. “You’re not real, anyway.”

The woman paused mid-scream to smile wearily. “Who is? What is?”

“I haven’t got time for philosophy. They’ve already picked out the next.”

“The next what? The next who? The next what?”

“Do you mind,” one of the hooded men said. “You’re interrupting the program.”

“Fine. Carry on.”

She moved into the next room, sweeping her weapon, right, left. In the sleek black-and-white drama, the bold red on the floor was blood, and on the blood floated a chauffeur’s cap.

Leaving signs, she thought. They liked leaving clues. Liked thinking they were too smart, too insulated, too rich to be caught.

She stood in the center of the room, studying it. What was missing? What had she missed?

She stepped through and into her own office at Central where her murder board dominated.

Was it there? Already there?

Limo driver, crossbow, transpo center.

LC, bayonet, amusement park.

Who, what, where.

But why?

She eased out the door, turned toward the bullpen.

But rather than the cops, the desks, the smell of bad coffee, she stepped into what she imagined to be a room in some exclusive club. Big leather chairs, a simmering fire though the heat was fierce, deep colors, paintings on the wall of high-class hunting.

Hounds and horses.

The two men sat, swirling amber-colored brandy in balloon glasses. Long, slim cigars smoked on the silver tray on the table between them.

They turned to her as one, and their smiles were sneers.

“I’m sorry, you’re not a member. You’ll have to leave or face the consequences. It takes more than money to belong.”

“I know what you did, and I think I know how. But I don’t know why.”

“We don’t answer to you and your kind.”

It was Dudley who lifted the gun, an enormous silver weapon.

She heard the snap when it cocked.

She jerked, and her eyes flew open. She swore she heard—even smelled—the explosion of gunfire.

“Shh.” Beside her Roarke pulled her closer, wrapped her in. “Just a dream.”

“What’s it telling me?” she mumbled. When she tried to shift, an annoyed Galahad dug his claws into her butt. “Ow, damn it.” She maneuvered him off, and ended up face-to-face with Roarke. “Hi.”

“Again.” He trailed his fingers lightly over her wounded arm. “How?”

“Idiot with a plastic knife sharpened to a shiv, right in fucking Central. The worst was Whitney made me get a medic on it while I gave him my report.”

“Why the bastard, forcing one of his cops to have a wound tended.”

“I’d field-dressed it. Jacket’s toast.”

He snuggled her in on the remote chance they’d both just drift off again. “There’s more where that came from.”

“I don’t like Dudley or Moriarity.”

“Isn’t that handy? Neither do I, particularly.”

“Dudley comes up smarm and charm, with that ‘I just love women’ light in his eyes, and the other’s all ‘I’m a busy and important man so move this along, peon.’ And maybe that’s what they are, on top of it. Maybe it is. But under it they were smirking.”

He watched her face as she spoke, and decided that remote possibility didn’t exist. “I know that look,” he murmured. “You think they did this—together.”

“It’s a theory.” She scowled at nothing. “It’s the right theory. And not just because I don’t like them. I didn’t like that little bastard Sykes either, but I didn’t look at him for murder.”

“All right, so you know who. How?”

She took him through it, the alibis, the lack of them, the friendship.

“It’s not a hell of a lot, but there was . . . a tone, a feel, a sense that they’d been waiting to play those scenes. And . . . I know what I missed. Family. Family firms, right?”

When she started to sit up, he just kept his arm hooked around her waist. “Let’s just lie here a bit. I’m listening.”

“Well, why wasn’t there anything of or about family in their offices? They’ve got huge spaces, all fancied up. No family photos, or photos at all. No, there’s the cricket mallet my—”

“Bat. It’s a cricket bat.”

“It doesn’t look like a bat. Or mallet either, but it doesn’t matter. Here’s the cricket whatzit my dear old dad gave me on my tenth birthday, or yes, that’s my great-grandfather’s pocket watch. They’re generational firms without any generational tokens in their spaces. Nothing. Neither of them. They’re running a company passed down from father to son, and so on, and there’s nothing.”

“Devil’s advocate. It might be a deliberate show that they’re their own men.”

“That’s part of where I’m going. Legacies are a deal with those types, even if it’s for show. And family weighs. Mira’s got her family all over her office. Whitney’s got stuff, Feeney, like that, and maybe that’s a different kind of thing, but there ought to be some sort of show. It’s off, isn’t it, that neither of them has anything, at least visibly, that connects them to their family but the company itself?”