Festive in Death (In Death #39)(54)

“Because I’ve not only been a victim, I’m not only a cop, but I’ve killed.”

“Yes. To save your own life, to save the lives of others, you’ve taken lives. It weighs on you every bit as much as what happened to you when you were a defenseless and innocent child. And it makes you who you are.”

“Maybe it’s bollocks because I don’t want it to be her.” Because that weighed on her, too, she stuck her hands in her pockets, wandered his space. “Because, objectivity aside for the right here and now, I want it to be Copley because it would go down easier.”

“I may be able to help you there.”

“Yeah?” She stopped, turned back to him. “I’ll take it.”

Roarke lifted the cat, giving him an apologetic stroke as he set him on the floor. Then he swiveled his chair toward Eve, smiled, and patted his knee.

“Get serious. I’m not playing office whoopee.”

“The price, and a fair one, for the data.” He patted his knee again.

She rolled her eyes, but walked over, sat on his lap. “Satisfied?”

“I hope to be, eventually. But for now.”

He danced his fingers over keys, put data on the wall screen.

“As you can see the Quigley money—and here Natasha Quigley’s share of it, which is quite comfortable.”

“Ha. A paltry quarter billion?” She angled her face toward his, grinned. “Chump change from where I’m—literally—sitting.”

“Be that as it may.”

“Yeah, be it or may it, this part I knew. The sister’s got about the same. Investments, trusts, and whatnot, all down the same road until each hit twenty-five. Some divergence there, choices—different investments, expenses, big sister purchased the New York brownstone and a second home in Aruba, a flat in Paris—all in her own name. Little sis and her husband, who also has an even paltrier hundred and seventy-five-ish mil of his own. They bought the New York townhouse together. She also has a Paris flat—same building as big sis, bought on her own a couple years prior to her marriage. And as a couple they own a place on St. Lucia. Copley, on the other hand, has a pathetic six million in his own name.”

“All but begging on the street.”

“Comparatively.” Shifting, she hooked an arm around Roarke’s neck, studied the numbers. “He gets credit for earning it, a mil at a time, but it’s going to sting, isn’t it, to have his whole shot be what his wife would think of as pocket change?”

“Does it?”

This time she rested her head against his. “Not as long as you keep the coffee coming. But for him? He strikes me as a showboater, just the way he came across today.”

“He has a taste for the finer things, I can’t quibble with that. Wardrobe, vehicles—though the wife appears to be reasonably generous there. His expense account at the firm is consistently at the max. He travels very well, professionally and personally.”

“This is all on the up-and-up?”

“This part, yes. He does, however, have two other accounts, both set up offshore—since the marriage—and both under very thin fronts. He went to some trouble to hide them, and they’d likely stay tucked away from any surface search his spouse or her money people might engage. Unless it got serious.”

“Or it got serious in a murder investigation with an exceptional civilian consultant poking into it.”

“Or that.”

He switched screens manually. “Twelve million here, eight there.”

“Where’d he get it?”

“Those were some of the ends I was tying up. I’ll want to dig a bit deeper, but again on the surface, from skimming. Personal and business expenses, carefully and craftily—and the personal would be from his wife.”

“He’s stealing from his wife.”

“A bit at a time, and those bits, I’ve found, go back to the early days of their marriage. Not particularly greedy in it, but consistent. Some of it’s earned right enough, just separated out into these other areas—out of the family coffers you might say. Solo investments, some tax wrangling—all close to the line but not really over it.”

“What’s that one? The monthly direct pay deal. Six thousand, the first of every month.”

“Ah, you’ve a sharp eye. That would be the management fee, which includes thrice-weekly cleaning, all maintenance and so forth on a condo. Upper East Side. Bought with one of his shells about six months back. As there’s no coordinating income from the property, I wouldn’t call it an investment.”

“A place of his own—opposite end of the city from the family house.” Eve shifted again, angling her head as she followed the numbers. “Smells like a love nest to me.”

“It has that cachet. You’ll also see some outlay—hotels, restaurants, boutiques. Go back about four months, there’s considerable to design vendors, furniture.”

“Feathering the nest. What does that mean? Do birds use feathers to make their nest? Why would they? How would they? I don’t get it.”

“I couldn’t say, but I agree with the idiom. He bought it, furnished it, and as some of the outlets he paid out of these accounts are ladies’ boutiques, I’d say he also outfitted the bird he’s nesting with.”