Ceremony in Death (In Death #5)(54)

The lights were viciously bright, merciless, really. The heart wound had bled profusely. She’d worn heels and a little black suit to the viewing. Of course, she would ruin both now. She was kneeling beside the body, tearing her stockings on the concrete and removing the murder weapon now that the scene had been duly recorded.

She sealed it, bagged it for evidence, but he’d gotten a good look at it. The handle was a deep brown, possibly horn of some sort. Yet there had been no mistaking its similarity to the one left at the last murder. An athame. The knife of ritual.

“Bad business.”

Roarke made a sound of assent as Feeney walked up to him. The man looked uncharacteristically fragile, Roarke observed. Eve was right to be concerned about him.

“You know anything about it? I’m not getting much buzz except that Dallas was talking to him outside, he ran, and ended up dead.”

“That’s about it. He seemed nervous about something. Apparently he had reason to be.” It wasn’t a place they could go together, Roarke decided and shifted away from it. “I hope you’ll take Eve up on the offer of the house in Mexico.”

“I’ll talk it over with my wife. I appreciate it.” Then he moved his shoulders. “I guess she doesn’t need me here. I should get home.” But he studied the scene another minute. Behind the fatigue in his eyes lurked the cop. “Screwy business. Some guy getting stuck in here. Fancy knife took out that stiff left at your place last night, too, right?”

“The other had a black handle. Some sort of metal, I think.”

“Yeah, well…” He rocked back on his heels a moment. “I’d better head home.”

He crossed to Eve, careful to avoid getting too close in his untreated shoes. She looked up, distracted, wiping the blood off her sealed hands with a rag.

And she watched him walk away until he was out of sight.

She rose, raked her not quite clean hands through her hair. “Bag him,” she ordered, and walked to Roarke. “I’m going to go in, do the report while it’s fresh in my mind.”

“All right.” He took her arm.

“No, you should go home. I’ll catch a ride with one of the team.”

“I’ll take you.”

“Peabody — “

“Peabody can catch a ride with one of the team.” She needed a few minutes, he knew, to decompress. He touched a button on his wrist unit to signal his driver.

“I feel stupid going into Central in a limo,” she muttered.

“Really? I don’t.” He walked her out of the garage, then around to the front of the funeral parlor. The limo streamed up to the curb. “You can catch your breath,” he suggested as he slid in behind her. “And I can have a brandy.” He poured one from a crystal decanter, and knowing Eve, programmed her coffee.

“Well, since we’re going it this way, you can tell me what you know about Wineburg.”

“One of the irritating rich and pampered.”

She took the hot, rich coffee served in a thin, classy cup of bone china, and gave Roarke — his plush limo, his pricey brandy — a long, cool look. “You’re rich.”

“Yes.” He smiled. “But pampered? Certainly not.” He swirled his brandy, kept smiling. “That’s what stops me from being irritating.”

“You think so?” The coffee helped, got her circuits running. “So he was a banker. He ran Wineburg Financial.”

“Hardly. His father’s still hale and hearty. This little fish would have been more of a minion. The type given busy-work and a useless title and a big office. He’d gobble up his expense account, shuffle forms, and have his cosmetician in for weekly sessions.”

“Okay, you didn’t like him.”

“I didn’t know him, actually.” He gave the brandy a lazy swirl and sip. “Just the type. I don’t have any business dealings with Wineburg. In the dawn of my… career, I needed some backing for a couple of projects. Legal projects,” he added at Eve’s speculative look. “They wouldn’t let me in the door. I wasn’t up to their level of client. So I went elsewhere, got the backing, and made a killing. Figuratively speaking. The Wineburg organization took it poorly.”

“So they’re a conservative, established, family-run institution.”

“Exactly.”

“It would be embarrassing to have the scion… Would he be like the scion?”

“If there’s such a thing as a minor scion, I suppose.”

“Okay if he was into Satanism, it probably wouldn’t go down well at the company picnic.”

“It would turn the board of directors white with shock — and, family or not, this little Wineburg would have been out on his ass.”

“He didn’t look like the type to risk it, but you never know. Sex, he said. Just for the sex. He could have been one of the ones who had at Alice. Then he’s guilty or cunous and comes by the viewing. The one thing he was, was scared. He saw something, Roarke. He saw someone murdered. I know it. If I’d gotten him in, I’d have pulled it out of him. I could have broken him in ten minutes.”

“Apparently, someone else thought so, too.”

“Someone who was right there. On the spot. Watching him. Watching the viewing.”