Celebrity in Death (In Death #34)(57)

“I figure, yeah. It’s the old ‘hell’s got nothing on a woman dumped.’”

“Or words to that effect,” Roarke decided.

“So, I’ve got his go-ahead, and can look through. If I’m right and we find them, I’m free to see what’s on them.”

She led the way down the alley between trailers, turned, and walked to Matthew’s.

While the layout in his was the same as K.T.’s, the feel was entirely different.

Here was casual, lived-in, a little messy. Instead of a bowl of fruit, the table held a music pod and a basket of PowerBars, candy bars, gum. There was a bottle of wine in his Friggie, but it stacked heavily toward fizzies and soft drinks. His freezer held a trio of frozen dessert bars.

Roarke found the first camera fixed to the top of the window trim in under two minutes.

“The other will be in the bedroom,” Eve told him. “You might as well go get it while I finish in here. No point in not looking through his stuff since he gave permission.”

They walked out again in less than a half hour. “No illegals, no drugs except standard blockers, one bottle of wine, no sex toys, and enough snack food for a grade-school class.”

She looked around again. “He and Marlo wouldn’t have snuck in here for a quickie. Too many people wandering around, too much too close. Maybe she thought they would, or maybe she just wanted to spy on him, ended up seeing them do a little kissy-face, or do the kissy-face talk.”

“You have such a way with words,” Roarke observed, and slid an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s hear some kissy-face talk.”

“I’d have to be drunk first.”

“Too true.”

“Either way you work K.T. and the cameras, it’s sick. She was sick and sad.”

“She makes you angry, and she makes you sad.” He hooked an arm around her waist now, pressed his lips to her temple. “Let’s go get that beer and pizza, take a little time away from this.”

“Yeah.” She hooked her arm around him in turn. “Let’s do that.”

12

RECHARGING AND REFUELING WERE FAIRLY NEW concepts for Eve. Before Roarke unwinding time might have been downing a beer at a cop bar, surrounded by other cops talking shop. Occasionally, if Mavis could talk her into it, a night out at a club. But for the most part she’d done the solo, in the apartment now full of color and Mavis’s family.

She’d never looked, particularly, for anyone to share the end of the day with, but doing just that with Roarke—whether it was work or like this, a short interlude without it—had become a habit.

And it was better.

She liked the busy pizzeria with its clatter and conversations, its pretty view of the marina and the boats swaying in their slips. She had cold beer, hot pizza, and a man who loved her to share them with.

Yeah, it was a whole bunch better.

“Why don’t you have a boat?” she asked him.

“I believe I do have one or two.”

“I don’t mean big-ass cargo boats or whatever for shipping your loot from point to point.”

“Loot? That’s a shadowy word. I try to stick to the light now that I’m married to a cop.” He cocked a brow, lifted his beer. “Think of how embarrassing it would be for both parties if she had to arrest me.”

“I’d front your bail. Probably.”

“Good to know.”

“I mean, why don’t you have one of those zippy boats or the sailing jobs?” She bit into her slice, gesturing toward the window and the view with her free hand. “The kind of boats people have who think skimming all over the place on top of the water is such a good time.”

“You don’t want one.”

“Me? No. Looking at the water—it’s nice. Being in the water—a pool, the beach—all good. Riding on it where you might end up in it way out there with things that live under it and want to eat you? Why go there?”

“I’ve been out there, and in addition to the things that live under it and want to eat you, the ocean herself can be very unforgiving.” He looked out, as she did, at the water and beyond. “I’ve lived on an island, one way or the other, my entire life,” he reminded her. “I must like them.”

“But not boats.”

“I’ve nothing against them.” He slid another slice of pizza onto her plate. “I’ve enjoyed some of my time on them—for business, for pleasure. There was a time, when loot was more applicable to my business, I spent considerable time on boats.”

“Smuggling.”

He smiled, so easy, so wicked. “That’s one way to look at it. Another would be engaging in free enterprise. But there’s more than cops and crooks in the mix when engaging in free enterprise on the high seas.”

“Such as?”

“Well.” He glanced at the boats again, then back at Eve. “Once, in the North Atlantic, somewhere between Ireland and Greenland, we hit a storm. Or it hit us, more accurately. That would be my description of hell. The utter dark, then the blinding flashes of lightning that brought waves, taller than a building, wider than the world into terrifying relief. The sounds of the wind and water and screams of men, and the cold that numbed your face and fingers, froze your bones inside your skin.”