Festive in Death (In Death #39)(24)

“But he’s your dead f**ker.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he is.”

• • •

So she gave Ziegler her time, her attention, the best she had.

She wrote up her notes, put together a progress report, including all the interviews conducted.

She created a chart listing the clients who had so far admitted to having any kind of sexual relationship with Ziegler, and how much each had admitted to paying in cash, gifts, hotel expenses.

Beside each name she added marital status, or cohab status, added how many of those husbands, cohabs, were also on Ziegler’s client list.

She ran each one, digging in for any instance of violent behavior or criminal offenses.

She cross-checked with the names Trina had provided, did a pass on coworkers.

And considered.

When Roarke walked in, she had her feet up on the desk. “Another angle,” she began.

“It’s not the financial one. Unless he’s a great deal more clever than I give him credit for, he doesn’t have any accounts other than what you have on record.”

“Didn’t figure on it, but it’s good to have an expert opinion on it. A competitor. I’ve been narrowly focused on clients and sex. But he was bashed with a trophy. He gets and keeps a lot of wealthy female clients not only because—by all accounts—he’s good at his work, but because he offers them some hard-bodied sex. He makes solid commissions, the extra from sex, and he gets recognition. The trophy—I checked—also comes with a cash prize of a grand. He’s won the last three years running, and was favored to win this year. But instead of going to AC for the conference, and campaigning for the competition, he’s in the morgue.”

“You think another trainer killed him for a thousand dollars and a trophy?”

“Prestige, potentially more clients, bragging rights. He didn’t have friends at Buff Bodies. I bet he didn’t have any at other centers, either. Somebody he knew—it was a face-to-face, close-in attack. So, yeah, maybe a competitor, an associate, a peer who’d had enough of him.”

“An associate,” Roarke repeated, “a competitor or a peer. You could add the sex in—because you can never have too much of it—and speculate that this competitor was also used for sex, or cheated on.”

“That’s a good one. That’s a thought. I’d say Peabody and I are going back to the gym tomorrow.”

“With that in mind.” He took her hand, pulled her up. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Didn’t we do that already?”

“And sleep. It’s nearly midnight. If you keep at this much longer you’ll have been up for twenty-four hours.”

“I feel like I want to push it, and it’s because I don’t like him.”

“You won’t like him any better tomorrow. You can push then.”

“It looks like I will. Whatever else you can say about Ziegler, he wasn’t lazy. Between work and sex, the guy kept revved every damn day.”

“As you do.” He tugged her along. “Time to shut down the engines.”

• • •

She woke to the scent of coffee, and really, it didn’t get better than that.

And yet it did.

When she slit open her eyes, she saw Roarke. Fully dressed in one of his ruler-of-the-business-world suits—the cat sprawled over his lap. He sat on the sofa in the bedroom sitting area, working on a tablet. Financial numbers, data, codes, scrolled by on the screen he’d switched to mute.

The faint blue wash from tablet and screen provided the only light, making him look both mysterious and fascinating.

She had no idea of the time, was too lazy to look. Instead she watched him work while she ticked off the order of what she needed to do that morning.

She needed to tag Peabody, tell her partner they’d meet at Buff Bodies, pursue the angle of competitor killer. Swing by the lab, browbeat or bribe Dickhead—Chief Tech Dick Berenski—on the tea and incense. Talk to Trina and Sima again. And she thought another pass through the crime scene was in order, this time looking specifically for tea and incense.

Do that, she decided, before the lab. Have the samples right there in hand—if she found more.

And onto more interviews with the vic’s clients.

Someone who knew him. Someone he’d let in the apartment, let into the bedroom while he packed for his business trip.

Client. Coworker. Blackmail mark. Lover.

Would he have been confident or arrogant enough to let a mark or a seriously pissed-off client, lover, associate into the bedroom?

She suspected not, but it wouldn’t hurt to get an expert opinion.

Add a quick session with Mira to the list.

“Lights on, twenty percent,” Roarke said, looking over into her eyes. “You might as well have some light since you’re thinking so loud.”

“I was thinking very quietly. You have bat ears.”

“When it comes to you, apparently.”

She pushed up to sit. “What’re you working on? I can take an interest,” she added when he cocked an eyebrow. “At . . . shit, five-thirty-eight in the morning.”

“Actually, you might be interested. We’ve made a few changes to the design of An Didean, and have added a memorial roof garden.”

The old building in Hell’s Kitchen, she thought, he’d bought with the plan to rehab and turn it into a safe house for troubled kids. And where the bones of twelve young girls had been discovered behind the walls.