Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(78)

“You paid Mars to protect your sister.”

“My family. Jenny first—first, last, and always. My father next—but he’s a big boy. I’d throw him to the wolves, but I’d have a second or third thought first. Jenny? Whatever it takes to keep her safe and happy. Jenny’s a sweet, uncomplicatied, loving kid. She’s beautiful, in and out. Smart, funny, kind.”

A smile flickered on, quick and charming. “When she hit puberty, her head spun around a couple of times, she cried and screamed for about five minutes, then it was finished. I love her more than anything or anyone in the world.”

Now she took a shaky breath. “I can be a hard-assed bitch when I need to be, and there are times you need to be. I know how to protect me and mine from the parasites, the hangers-on, and the leeches. I know how to play the game. Killing this leech, and that’s what Mars was, just didn’t occur to me. I guess my brain doesn’t work that way. If it had, I might have tried to figure out how to do it.”

“Missy Lee.”

Almost indulgently, she patted Gregory’s arm. “I’m being honest here, and it feels, well, fucking righteous. I recognize another hard-assed bitch when she’s looking at me so I’m talking hard-ass to hard-ass. Got me?”

“I do,” Eve said, and felt simple respect.

“I might’ve tried to figure a way, but I didn’t. I paid. It’s just money, and I can make more. I’ve made it all my life, and intend to keep on making it. As long as I paid, she didn’t have a reason to go public. I hated her—and hate’s a weak word for it—but I’m pretty smart. Hell.”

She gestured with the glass and its little skim of yellow wine. “I’m being honest, so I’ll say I’m really pretty damn smart. If my brain had worked around to, hey, rip that damn leech off and stomp her dead, it would’ve worked around to she’s probably more dangerous dead. You’re here, and I’m talking about this, because she’s dead.”

Though Eve didn’t respond, she thought: Yeah, you’re smart, and you’re right.

“Dead,” Missy Lee continued, “somebody’s going to find her dirty data, and then, well. Boom.

“Jenny’s my sister. She’s my father’s daughter in every way but, possibly, DNA. He loves her, she loves him. It would break her heart to find out she might have come from someone else. Someone like that fucktoid my mother went off with. Paying to make sure she didn’t have to face that? It was nothing.”

“How did you pay her?”

“Cash. She’d set the amount. Seven, eight, nine thousand, depending, I don’t know, on her mood maybe. I’d meet her at a bistro downtown or she’d tell me to just bring it to that night’s event if we were both attending one. I’ve never been in the bar where she was whiffed. Not legal.” She lifted her glass, smiled. “Can’t buy a drink yet, and drinking’s bad for the image. Anyway, I’m no wild child. I’m a working actor, and I intend to stay one.”

She set down the glass, looked straight into Eve’s eyes. “Don’t screw with my sister.”

“I don’t intend to. Did your father know you were paying?”

“Are you kidding?” She let out an easy laugh, an indulgent one, like an adult about a child’s antics. “No way. I’m in charge of my own money, and my own life, and my own choices. I love him, okay, but he has weak spots. You can’t deal with someone like Larinda Mars when you have weak spots. He’d tell my mother—he couldn’t stop himself—and she’d use that as an excuse to find a new supplier.”

Missy Lee circled her finger in the air. “And around and around we go.”

“You didn’t tell anyone.”

“I’ve been with Marsh for almost a year now. I know how to keep secrets.”

“Did she ever ask you to meet her anywhere private? Her place, or another?”

“No.” Her lips pursed in thought. “Weird, right? Always a public place. Maybe she got off knowing it was just a little humiliating that way. Or maybe she figured it kept me from punching her. Not just me,” Missy Lee said. “I wasn’t the only one, was I?”

Eve rose. “I know how to keep secrets, too.”

“That’s the perfect answer.” Missy Lee got to her feet, held out a hand. “I’m trusting you. I’m pretty good at figuring out who I can trust, and haven’t been burned yet.” Now she held out a hand to Roarke. “I’m trusting you.”

“I imagine your sister loves you very much,” Roarke said.

“She does. And I’m never going to let her down.”





16

On the way down to the lobby, Eve pulled out her PPC.

“You don’t suspect her,” Roarke said.

“I think the money didn’t matter to her—as it’s not going to have mattered to most of the marks. The threat, the invasion of privacy would have mattered more as time went by. But as time went by, I think she’d have had a sit-down with her sister. A few years down the line, then she’d have told Mars to stick it.”

As she spoke Eve scanned the screen on her handheld. “And I think she was telling us the truth. As she knows it.”

“Ah.”