Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(35)
Eve glanced at Peabody as she cracked her tube of Pepsi.
“Did you see him get up from the table?” Peabody asked.
“No. I guess he was there for a half hour—forty minutes, maybe. I saw he’d left, so I went back, found the cash. He hadn’t called for his bill, and really should have, but he left cash that covered it and a decent enough tip, considering. So I generated a bill and cashed him out.”
She twisted her fingers together, gave another wide-eyed look at Eve. “I’m not helping. I’m sorry, but … Oh! He had a scarf—I remember that. I remember he had a gray scarf, because I wondered why he didn’t take it off, wasn’t he getting hot.”
“I wish I’d seen him,” Kyle put in. “I mean I might’ve seen him, but I wouldn’t know because I don’t know what he looked like. There were other customers in there with hats and coats and scarves. It’s been really cold.”
He brooded into his fizzy. “She was nice to me. Ms. Mars.”
Eve tried different angles, different questions, but ran into a blank wall. So blank she saw no point in pulling Yancy into it.
She let them go, checked the time. “I’m going to update the commander, then I want to talk to Nadine. We’ll wind around to the guy who paid the check in the group of four our suspect merged with.”
“They could have gotten a better look.”
Eve reran the security feed in her mind, the way he’d stayed a couple of steps back, the way the other four engaged with each other.
“We won’t count on it.”
8
After getting the come-ahead from her commander, Eve went straight up to Whitney’s office. He sat, a big man behind a big desk, with the city he served rising through the window at his back.
He served it well, she thought. As solid as they came.
“Sir.”
“Lieutenant. Do you have anything to add to your initial report?”
“We’ve just interviewed a witness, a waitress who was assigned to the table we believe the suspect occupied. It looks like a dead end, Commander. She’s willing and cooperative, but she just didn’t get a good look at him. He used the auto-menu, avoided contact, wore concealing clothing, and paid cash—which he left on the table without calling for his bill. I have a few more lines to tug there, and will do so today. This unsub fits the timing, the timing confirmed by the ME.”
She could, and would, put all of this in an official report, but she wanted to do a verbal, privately, with full disclosure.
“Sir, three years ago during the investigation of the murders committed by C. J. Morse, I met and spoke with Larinda Mars. She offered some insight and information on Morse, and in the quid pro quo she demanded for same, I allowed her to attend a party Roarke held during that period—on the provision she brought in no cameras or mics.”
Whitney steepled his fingers, tapping them together. “Was there anything in that conversation that applies or impinges upon your current investigation?”
“No, sir. She didn’t like Morse, clearly, and was more than happy to give me personally damaging information on him. She wanted an interview with me—and with Roarke. I had ignored her requests up to that point, and continued to do so afterward. Roarke did the same, though he advised me she once tried to corner him at a fund-raiser in the spring following my conversation with her.”
Whitney lowered his hands, kept his eyes level with hers. “And does this apply?”
“Only in that Roarke reports she insinuated a sort of media-style blackmail. That she would be forced to dig up information that might damage his and my reputations if he didn’t cooperate. And this applies, as evidence supports she used various forms of blackmail, and this stands as a strong motive for her murder.”
Whitney sat back, hands steepled again, fingertips lightly tapping the chin of his wide, dark face. “How did Roarke respond to her insinuations?”
“He suggested he might find buying Channel Seventy-Five an interesting investment, thereby terminating her employment. And suggested how difficult it might be for her to find other employment as a gofer for a broadcaster. In Bumfuck.”
Whitney’s lips twitched slightly, but his eyes stayed sober and steady. “Am I to assume there was no further contact or communication between Mars and Roarke, or you and Mars?”
“You can be assured there was not, sir. However, if we assume, and I do, she kept files on her marks, and on potential marks, Roarke’s name and my own might be in them.”
“As may mine, or our chief of police, our mayor.”
At his response, the tension in her shoulders eased. “I’ve contacted Nadine Furst, and will speak with her—as well as others at Channel Seventy-Five. Someone Mars worked with or around may have some information on where she might have kept her data. Detective McNab is working with the electronics taken from her handbag on scene, and I’ve arranged for those at her apartment to be brought in. I’ll do the same with those at Seventy-Five, though I suspect they’ll cite freedom of the press and demand a warrant.”
He only nodded. “I’ll arrange for the warrant. As I’m sure you expect, the media is pushing hard for information. This is not only one of their own, and a kind of minor celebrity, but you were on scene when she was attacked, when she died. It’s a setup made for clicks and bytes and ratings, and you’ll need to address it. Kyung should be here any moment now.”