Delusion in Death (In Death #35)(42)

“You don’t think the two of them are involved?”

“No, but I can’t prove it. If I thought they were involved, I couldn’t prove it. Let’s get data.”

Eve glanced at the time. “Aw, gee, I missed the media conference. That’s a shame.”

“That statement hits the red zone on the lie-o-meter.”

“But it feels good. I want thirty minutes in my office to check incomings and status, then we’re going back to the crime scene.”

“Do you think they’re not involved—the Lester brothers—for the same reasons as me?”

“Probably not.” Eve headed out, moving fast so Peabody had to hustle to keep pace. “Devon’s not stupid. Roarke doesn’t have stupid people managing any of his interests. But when I push him on buying the place—would he if he could—he’s all pissed off, damn straight. Smarter to say it’s tainted, his friends died there. Smarter, too, to go straight to pissed or shocked when I led him to our looking at him and his brother. Instead he’s just confused at first. He didn’t have an answer for everything. He didn’t have the right answers for everything. If he had, I wouldn’t bump him down the list.

“The brother’s smart, real smart, and a lot more cynical. He caught on fast. I want to look at his research, his experiments, I want a feel for what he does and how he does it. But it would be stupid for him to kill a whole bunch of people in his brother’s bar. If he were going to do it, he’d have done it somewhere else, not so readily connected.”

“Part of your reasoning’s like mine. It’s the kind of people they are—the stand-up-for-your-brother people.”

“Half a point.”

“Three-quarters.”

“Three-quarters because I’m too busy to argue.”

“Yay!” Peabody said as Eve swung off and into her office.

She’d barely started on the first report when Baxter came to her door.

“Need a minute.”

“Take it,” she told him.

“Adam Stewart. We just finished up with him. He’s alibied for the time line, and I’ve got nothing that puts him in that bar yesterday, or at f**king all.”

“But?”

“He’s a bad bastard, Dallas, and he’s cagey. Bad and cagey fits whoever did this.”

She saw his eyes flick toward her AutoChef. Under the circumstances, she thought, what the hell. “Go ahead, but don’t spread it around you got coffee in here.”

“To the grave.” He moved quickly before she could change her mind, programmed a mug for each of them. Knowing its miseries, he sat on the edge of her visitor’s chair.

“But,” Eve prompted again.

“With him being a bad bastard and a cagey son of a bitch, I figure he’s capable of doing this. But I don’t think he had the means or opportunity. Plus, poking around, the sister—that’s Amie Stewart—didn’t go in there routinely. Now and then, sure, but she wasn’t a regular. How’d he know she’d be there? They weren’t close, didn’t hang out together, or make regular contact. But …”

Baxter let it hang a moment while he drank coffee. “He’s sweaty in Interview. He’s evasive, and not doing such a hot job of pretending to be sorry his sister’s dead. I had Trueheart drill down into his financials, and they don’t add up. It looks like he found a way to siphon off some funds from the trust deal, so with a little work we could get him there.”

“We don’t have time to poke at some bad bastard for embezzlement right now.”

“I get that, but there’s more. The trustee who oversees all that stuff went missing two weeks ago. Being a detective, I detect two ways, the trustee was in on it with Stewart and went on the lam, or the trustee found out what Stewart was up to, and Stewart made him disappear. Either way …”

“Yeah.” She calculated. “Do you have any problem turning this over to Carmichael and Sanchez?”

Baxter winced, comforted himself with coffee. “I gotta say, I want to see it through. The f**ker’s dirty, and he just makes my ass twitch. But I can live with passing it on, at least until we clear this case.”

“Do that, and move to the next.”

“That’d be Callaway, then Weaver. They’ve been in meetings all morning, but we’re going over to the offices, corner them, separately, try to follow up with some of the others. That place lost five people.”

He rose, set aside the empty mug. “I wish it was Stewart, because he needs to go away.”

She made a note to stay on top of Stewart, then toggled back to continue with the reports, read Strong’s, and saw the Illegals detective currently pushed on a lead on sources for large or regular purchases of LSD.

Back to the beginning, Eve decided, and returned to the bullpen. “Peabody, with me. Unless otherwise notified, I want everybody in that briefing at sixteen hundred. I’m in the field.”

“I went to Reo for the warrant,” Peabody told her on the way to the garage. “She doesn’t see a problem getting it, and quick. Everybody’s on full alert on this one.”

“I want at least two men on that, with experience and knowledge in Lester’s field. Send in a request to Whitney.”