Calculated in Death (In Death #36)(66)

“Well, now that you mention it.” When she laughed, he touched her lips with his. “But no, not even there. Just right here, right now.”

“It’s a good place.”

“And we can see about that tropical beach after the holidays, which are coming right along.”

“I can’t think about the holidays.” The idea had panic rising up in her belly. “I don’t even want to think about this premiere deal everybody’s all jazzy about.”

“We’ll have some fun with it. Try not to get any more bruises between now and then. Your dress shows a lot of skin.”

“See? One more thing to worry about? I’m going to look for a mistress.”

“I’ll look for corporate misdeeds. And we’re already having fun.”

She poured more coffee, and since Roarke settled at her desk, once again took the auxiliary station. She noted Galahad had come in at some point and now stretched out like overfed roadkill on her sleep chair. And all around the office Roarke had designed for her to resemble her old apartment, her old comfort zone, the big, beautiful house stood quiet.

No, she thought, there wasn’t anywhere else she’d rather be, right here and now.

She wrote up her notes first, reviewed, fiddled, then shot them off to Peabody. After reading her partner’s notes, she took a few minutes, feet up, eyes on the board to consider everything Roarke had said.

Young-Sachs too lazy, Biden too proud, Pope too self-effacing (and potentially just too honest).

Highlight on Sterling Alexander.

Maybe, she thought. Just maybe. And if so, the probability ran high that folded in Jake Ingersol and Chaz Parzarri. Smaller possibility, but still possibly, Robinson Newton, playing fast and loose with one of his partner’s clients.

She looked forward to her first face-to-face with Parzarri. That could turn the tide here. Kick him when he’s down, she decided. Hurting, weakened after a serious accident.

Maybe try to convince him it wasn’t an accident, though she’d vetted the report. A trio of just-out-of-college guys, drunk, celebrating a minor win at the casino, plowed straight into the cab transporting Parzarri and Arnold from their own casino trip back to their convention hotel.

Everybody involved did some hospital time, and she’d found nothing on the three drunk idiots to lead her to conclude they’d been hired to bash up a couple of auditors and themselves.

Just an accident, the luck of the draw, and an innocent woman was dead.

Yeah, she thought, yeah, she could use that, all that to try to crack Parzarri.

Meanwhile, she’d take a look at Alexander’s mistress.

The first thing she noted regarding Larrina Chambers was her age. At fifty-seven the woman didn’t qualify as a young, gold-digger bimbo. Next, she noted Chambers and her dead husband had opened an eatery in New Jersey twenty-two years before that had blossomed into a national chain over the following decade, and took the woman out of gold-digger status. As she’d copped a scholarship to MIT at the age of eighteen, and had earned her master’s in business at twenty-five, bimbo didn’t likely apply.

Eve’s suspicious mind nudged her to research how the husband met his demise, then had to set the idea of foul play aside. Neal Chambers died during a sudden squall off the coast of Australia when his sailboat was swamped. At the time, the widow was in New York, helping her mother recover from minor surgery. The investigation into the drowning—Chambers and four others, crew and passengers—had been thorough. She couldn’t find any holes, or indeed any motive.

As she poked, prodded, dug, she found no evidence Larrina Chambers was, as the term went, being kept. She had very deep pockets of her own. But she found considerable that indicated Larrina and Alexander were connected, and over the just shy of nine years since the husband’s death, had very likely rekindled the spark that had flickered during their early twenties.

Might be worth a conversation, Eve mused, and wrote up some notes.

Alexander, Ingersol, and Parzarri, she thought again, and began to slowly, methodically dig deeper into each man’s life.

14

HE WAS ONTO SOMETHING. ROARKE FELT IT shift and slide, very much like a lock under the pick.

He’d already found three off-shore or off-planet accounts for Alexander—two of them absolutely legal if not wholly, technically, ethical.

He wouldn’t quibble with wholly, technically ethical as Eve might. They had a different threshold there. Even the one—technically again—illegal wouldn’t equal serious damage or problems. Fines, a naughty-boy finger wag and a bit of hot water for his money manager.

And the manager could, very likely, lure more clients with the incident.

But those accounts had been playfully easy to find, especially for someone who knew where and how to look for such things.

Which caused him to believe there would be more, not so playfully easy to find, and not at all legal.

He’d find them, Roarke thought. People had patterns and tells, habits and rhythms. It was simply a matter of finding them, using them.

But there was more, he felt that, too.

He remembered the sensation, from ago as he thought of it, of popping a lock and finding more than expected. That frisson of heat and energy in the fingertips.

Exciting, he recalled, in an almost mystical way no one but another thief would recognize or truly understand.

But ago was then, and this was now. He found nearly the same heat and excitement from tapping into the vault of secrets and misdeeds, to work with his cop.