Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(21)
As she’d concluded the same, Eve nodded slowly. “Which says her side business pays a lot better.”
“I’d certainly say so.”
“Okay, let’s go through the rest to see if there are any hidey-holes or anything of interest. Then that’s it here until I have the safe and electronics picked up.”
They rose together.
“And I don’t have two months’ worth of underwear.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I think the wardrobe is a matter of being seen or photographed, doing an event in a certain outfit and not wanting to be photographed in it again.”
“You were listening.”
“Always. As for why she keeps things she hasn’t worn in two or three years, I think we could speculate that, in some areas, she was a bit of a hoarder.”
“With clothes, jewelry, money, but not with, you know, stuff. Hoarders usually go for stuff.”
“A selective hoarder?”
Eve shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”
But she couldn’t say if it bothered her strictly because of her own sensibilities, or because of her cop instincts.
5
On the drive home, Eve juggled work on her PPC with communications to and from Peabody. She glanced up briefly when Roarke drove through the gates, struck by how the winterscape of trees and grounds and the blank, dark sky set off the fanciful rise of stone, the spears of turrets, and the spread of terraces in the house that had become her home.
Like a black-and-white photograph, she thought, of some otherworldly castle.
“Is it Irish?” she wondered.
“Is what?”
“The house. You know, the design. Like one of those preserved places tourists go to so they can see how people lived, or the ruins of what used to be that you see all over the place.”
He studied the house himself as he wound down the drive. “During my education—and that would be through Summerset—I learned considerable history, whether I wanted to or not. He’s one who believes your origins, who and what you come from, matter. Even if it’s a contrast to what you choose to make of yourself.”
He parked, sat a moment. “I already had a love of books by the time he took me in. That copy of Yeats I found in an alley in Dublin, and squirreled away so the old man wouldn’t take it, sell it. Or burn it just to spite me. The words—the sound of them once you’d figured them out, on the tongue or in the head—were just a marvel to me. So, being a canny sort, Summerset used books on me.”
“How?” she asked as they got out of opposite sides of the car.
“He had a collection of his own, and I was given access to them—on the provision I could discuss them after. Lessons, always, but I didn’t see them as such, but only conversations.”
The winter wind danced through his hair as he walked to her. “And novelties,” he added, “as conversations with adults hadn’t been part of my usual. He introduced me to the concept of libraries, and how I could borrow books. Now and again, he’d buy a book for me, a kind of reward, as I wasn’t allowed to steal them.”
They walked in on that, finding Summerset himself standing in the large foyer, a stick man in black, with the pudge of a cat at his feet.
“So it was fine with him if you stole cars, money, picked pockets, but books were on the forbidden list of loot?”
“One must have one’s standards,” Summerset said. “I trust you’ve had a meal of some sort.”
“We have, thanks.” Roarke removed his coat, which Summerset took from him even as Eve tossed hers over the newel post. Galahad trotted forward to wind himself through three pair of legs.
“Standards? I’m betting most people would rather have the contents of their wallets than a book that ended up on the shelf.”
In that way he had, Summerset looked down his blade of a nose. “Books feed the mind and the spirit. We—”
“‘Don’t take bread from the hand of a hungry man,’” Roarke finished.
Summerset gave Roarke a nod of approval. “You learned well. But then, your mind and spirit both had a voracious appetite. If your body has an appetite, there’s pie. I had some time on my hands today and a nice basket of apples from New Zealand.”
She had a weakness for pie, enough of one to overshadow any sarcasm she might have leveled.
Besides, they were only a couple days away from Summerset’s winter vacation.
“There’s always an appetite for pie,” Roarke said as they started up the stairs. “Good night.”
“Why New Zealand?” Eve demanded as the cat jogged up beside them. “We have apples from here. We’re the Big Apple.”
“Because it’s February, and he’d prefer organic, naturally grown over agridomes or sims.”
“It’s February in New Zealand, right?”
“It is, but it’s in the Southern Hemisphere, which means it’s summer.”
“How can it be summer?” Frustration shimmered all around her. “It’s freaking February.”
Simply delighted with her, Roarke draped an arm over her shoulders and, knowing her, headed to her office. “As with the time zones that baffle and annoy you, it’s all about the planet, darling, its rotation and orbit. In the Northern Hemisphere freaking February equals winter. In the Southern Hemisphere, summer. You can’t change the basic laws of science to your own rather adorable logic.”