Celebrity in Death (In Death #34)(54)

It was titled MULTITASKING MAMA.

“So, I figured I hit the gold with the 50K withdrawals, but I ran through the rest anyway. She’s got auto-payments on her place in New LA, standard autos for standard home expenses, the usual blah stuff. Fees to her agent, her manager. She doesn’t spend a lot considering what she pulls in. Mostly it goes to face and body treatments, wardrobe.”

He swiped through what Eve supposed he considered the usual blah stuff.

“Then I find this nice chunk charged up to I Spy, so I dig down, and it’s the shop here, in Times Square. Follow that up. She bought two spy cams a couple weeks ago. Microminis, with audio, motion, and sound activation, remotes, timers—the works. I got the clerk who sold them to her, and he remembered her. Except he described her as a redhead—a ‘pushy, hard-ass redhead,’ to use his words.”

“Fits. She was a redhead when she hired the PI, and when she rented a safe box at a downtown bank. That must’ve been her go-to disguise. Two cams. Interesting. And interesting timing. That’s good work, McNab.”

“All kudos accepted. One more deal. She also put a hefty deposit down on a high-end, high-class villa—for a two-week stay starting December twenty-third. Olympus Resorts, and she booked a private shuttle—two passengers. She had to give the names. Hers, and Matthew Zank.”

“And again interesting. Send the data to my home unit. I’ll take a look when I get there. Is Feeney in his office?”

“Last I saw him.”

She headed over. The captain of the ship of noise and eye-blasting colors sat hunched at his desk in rumpled shirtsleeves. Silver threaded through his minor explosion of ginger hair. His face sagged like an old, comfortable hammock and looked as lived-in as the rumpled shirt.

As he worked his screen, he reached for one of the candied nuts in the lopsided bowl on his desk.

She gave his open door a one-knuckle rap. “Got a minute?”

“I’m working on a goddamn budget. You can have an hour.”

“I finished mine.”

“Shut the f**k up.”

She smiled, shut the door. And Feeney’s droopy eyes sharpened like arrows.

“You got doughnuts? I don’t smell doughnuts.”

“Because I don’t have any doughnuts.”

“Then why’d you shut the door?”

“I need you to analyze something.”

“I did your anal. The purse recording. It’s clean. Straight through, no edits, no splices.”

“Good. But this is another one. And it’s sensitive.” She helped herself to a couple nuts, studied the crooked orange, green, and blue bowl. “Mrs. Feeney make this?”

“Nah. She can do better than that now. Mostly. My granddaughter made it for me. Now the kid wants a frigging pottery wheel and a kiln for Christmas. Who can think about Christmas this early?”

Apparently Harris had.

“Do you ever take off,” Eve wondered, “go away, like a vacation, for Christmas?”

“Why the hell would we do that? It’s Christmas.”

“Yeah. Okay, so my vic hired a PI to plant a cam in her former bedmate’s and his current bedmate’s loft. I’ve got two recordings, one she kept in a lockbox in a safe in her hotel suite, one she kept in a safe box at a bank.”

“What did she catch them at? Screwing Dobermans? Plotting a terrorist attack?”

“I can’t say as I haven’t viewed them yet, but I expect she caught them doing what people do in bedrooms.”

“Has to be more than that to lock two copies in separate locations.”

“Well, I have to watch it and see. And I want to know if either of the recordings is the original. Can you tell?”

“Yeah.” He turned to his comp, called up a program, fiddled a moment. “Let’s have ’em.”

Eve took them out, unsealed each, noted down the time, the location, her name, Feeney’s. He cued them into his machine. “Run them simultaneous, split screen. The program will pop out any anomalies, determine generation of the recording.”

He ordered the run.

The screen flickered on with identical scenes as Marlo walked into the bedroom of the loft.

“That’s the actress, right? I heard she looked just like you. I don’t see it.”

“It’s closer when she’s made up for it.”

Offscreen, Matthew called out, asking if she wanted some wine.

“I wouldn’t say no.” She walked to a long dresser with a soft silver gleam, opened a drawer. She tossed what looked like a T-shirt and drawstring pants on the bed, then pulled the sweater she wore over her head.

Eyes closed, she stood a moment in her bra and cargo pants, rolling her shoulders.

Matthew walked in with two glasses of wine—and smiled.

“I like your outfit.”

She smiled back. “I got banged around some in the fight scene today.”

“You rocked it.”

“And I’m feeling every bit of it.” She took the wine, sipped, let out a pleased sigh. “But that’s a start. I’m going to get comfortable, then try to stretch some of the aches out.”

“I can help you with that.” He set his wine aside, put his hands on her shoulders, made her groan when he rubbed.