Indulgence in Death (In Death #31)(63)

If it was, as her line of theory followed, some sort of contest or competition, getting caught wasn’t an issue. Winning was—or if not winning, the competition itself.

However, competitions had rules, she concluded. Had to have some sort of structure, and in order to win, someone else had to lose.

How many more rounds of play? she wondered. Was there an endgame?

Questions circled in her mind as she stopped at a light, idly watched pedestrians cross. Ordinary people, she mused, off to their ordinary day. Breakfast meetings, shops to open, marketing to deal with, jobs waiting to be done.

People with a direction to keep, chores to be done, lists in their heads, duties to perform. Most people, most ordinary people, ran by the clock. Work, school, family, appointments, schedules.

What did these two run by? They weren’t ordinary people, but two men born into the top level of privilege. Men who could have whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it, and ordinary people served it up for them, ran on their schedule, even their whim.

Power and privilege.

Roarke had both, and, yeah, she thought, maybe part of the reason he was who and what he was was due to the fact he’d grown up hard, and grown up hungry. But that wasn’t the sum of it.

She thought of him and Brian Kelly, that long, strong connection, affection, trust. Brian owned and ran a successful pub in Dublin, and Roarke owned and ran half the damn world. But when they came together, as they had at the park, at a murder scene, at a family farm, they were simply friends.

Equals.

It was more than what you had, even more than how you’d come by it. It was what you did with it, and with yourself.

Power and privilege, she thought again. Just another excuse for being an asshole.

Two blocks from Peabody’s, Eve tagged her partner. “Five minutes. Get your ass down.”

She cut transmission without waiting for a response.

When she pulled up, double parking while other vehicles objected bitterly, she scanned the building where she’d once lived.

Ordinary again, a squat tower like so many others in a city jammed with people who needed space to eat, sleep, live. A hive, she thought, honeycombed with those spaces, those people, all living on top of each other. Now she lived in a home far from ordinary, one Roarke had built through ambition, need, style, wealth—and which she was still faintly embarrassed to admit was a mansion.

Maybe she wasn’t exactly the same woman she’d been when she’d lived in the hive, and maybe she’d come to understand that she was better for it. But the core remained, didn’t it? She still did what she did, still did the job, lived the life.

Maybe you just were what you were, she considered. Evolving, sure, changing as your life changed. But that core was still the core.

She watched Peabody come out, her dark hair pulled up and back in a short, bouncy tail; a thin, loose jacket swinging at her hips; short, summer pink gel boots on her feet. A long stretch from the square helmet of hair, the buffed and polished uniform she’d worn when Eve had taken her on as aide.

Changes, and Eve admitted she wasn’t always comfortable with change. But pink shoes or not, Peabody was a cop right to the bone.

“Money doesn’t make you an asshole,” Eve said when Peabody opened the door, “it just makes you an asshole with money.”

“Okay.”

“And people who kill for thrills? They always had the thirst for it, the predilection for it. Just maybe not the stones.”

Peabody wiggled her butt to settle in. “And you think we’re going to see that about Dudley when we talk to the ex-fiancée?”

Cop to the bone, Eve thought again. “I’m going to be pretty damn surprised if we don’t.”

“From the background I ran, she seems like the solid type. Volunteers as a counselor at the local youth center and he coaches softball. They belong to the country club, and she chairs a committee here and there. Feels like sort of the usual bits for that social and financial lifestyle.”

Ordinary people, Eve thought again, with money.

“She’d have been a lot higher on the ladder if she’d married Dudley.” Peabody shrugged. “But she’s not exactly scraping bottom. Anyway, with what you dug up last night she’s connected to Dudley and Moriarity with the cousin thing, the college pal thing. Makes you wonder, if we’re right about these two, how far back they’ve been into the nasty.”

“That kind of partnership requires absolute trust—or stupidity. I don’t think they’re stupid—or not completely stupid.” Eve considered. “And that kind of trust has to build over some time. Because if one of them cracks, it all cracks, if one talks, they both go down. And still . . .”

“Still?”

“If it’s competition, one has to lose. Losing would be not making the kill, or getting caught, or screwing up. I can’t turn it any other way.”

“Maybe neither one of them believes he can lose.”

“Somebody has to,” Eve countered.

“Yeah, but when McNab and I play, for instance, I’m always sort of shocked and pissed off if I lose. I go in knowing I’m going to win. Every time. It’s the same with him. I think because we’re pretty well matched in the games we get into. And separately we usually destroy whoever else we’re playing against.”

“It’s a thought.” Eve squeezed it a little harder. “It’s a good thought,” she decided. “They’re arrogant bastards. Maybe the concept of losing isn’t on the table.” She rolled it around in her mind, let it bump against the other elements. “The killings are planned. They’re orchestrated, and so far we know two were orchestrated back-to-back. There’s no impulse about it. Someone plots and plans and basically choreographs murder, there’s something in there that wants the kill. You can hide it, spruce it up with coats of polish, but that something’s going to eke through off and on.”