Origin in Death (In Death #21)(20)

Lifting his head, he grinned down at her. "You tell me."

"I meant with work." Amused, she gave him a little poke.

"Enough to keep us in fish and chips for a bit. Speaking of which, I'm starving. And by the heft of that data bag you hauled in, I'd say the chances of our eating in bed and having another round for dessert are slim."

"Sorry."

"No need." He bent his head to kiss her, light and easy. "Why don't we have a meal in your office, and you can tell me about what's in

that bag."

She could count on him for that, Eve thought as she pulled on loose pants and an ancient NYPSD sweatshirt. Not just to tolerate her work, the horrible hours, the mental distraction of it, but to get it. And to help whenever she asked.

Well, whenever she didn't ask, too.

There'd been a time-most of the first year of their marriage, actually-when she'd struggled to keep him out of it a great deal of the time. Unsuccessfully. But it wasn't simply the lack of success that had eased her toward using him on cases.

The man thought like a cop. Must be the flip side of the criminal mind, she decided. The fact was, she often thought like the criminal. How else did you get into their heads and stop them?

She'd married a man with a dark past, a clever mind, and more resources than the International Security Council. Why waste what was under your nose?

So they set up in her home office, one Roarke had outfitted for her to resemble the apartment where she'd once lived. It was just that sort of thinking-of knowing what would make her most comfortable- that had made her a goner almost from the moment they'd met.

"What'll it be, Lieutenant? Does the case you're working on call for red meat?"

"I'm thinking fish and chips." She shrugged when he laughed. "You put it in my head."

"Fish and chips it is, then." He moved into her kitchen while she organized the data discs and files out of her bag. "Who's dead?"

"Wilfred B. Icove-doctor and saint."

"I heard that on the way home. I wondered if he'd be yours." He came back with a couple of plates, steam rising from the fried cod and chipped potatoes, fresh from the AutoChef. "I knew him a bit."

"I thought you might. He lived in one of your buildings."

"Can't say I knew that." He'd walked back into the kitchen as they spoke. "I'd met him, and his son-son's wife-at charity functions. Media report said he'd been killed in his office, at his landmark center here in New York."

"They got that right."

He brought back vinegar for the chips, salt-his woman used bloody blizzards of salt on damn near everything-and a couple of cold bottles of Harp.

"Stabbed, was he?"

"Once. Through the heart. No lucky jab." She sat with him, ate with him, and filled him in, using nearly the same straight, efficient reporting style she had with her commander.

"Can't see the son for it," Roarke said, forking up some fish-and memories of his own youth in Dublin with it. "If you want an outside opinion."

"111 take it. Why?"

"Both devoted to their field of medicine-a lot of pride in that, and each other. Money wouldn't be a factor. And power?" He gestured with his fork, then stabbed more fish. "From what I know the father's been ceding that to the son, more as time went on. The woman looks professional to you?"

"The hit looked pro. Clean, quick, simple, well planned. But. . ."

He smiled a little, picked up his beer-as comfortable, Eve knew, with the brew and fried fish as he would have been with a two-thousand-dollar bottle of wine and rare filet.

"But," Roarke continued for her, "the symbolism-the heart wound, death in his office in the center he founded, the sheer cojones, to borrow the Spanish she purported to be-of the murder in a place so well secured. A point proven."

Yeah, Eve thought, she'd be wasting a valuable resource if she shut Roarke out of her work. "Maybe she's a pro, maybe not. We've got no hits on her, not through IRCC A, not through Feeney's imaging. But if she was hired, the motive was personal. Personal in a way, I think, that relates to his work. He could've been taken out quick and easy elsewhere."

"You've run his immediate staff by now."

"Whistle clean, every one. And nobody has a bad word to say about him. His apartment looks like a holo-room."

"I'm sorry?"

"You know, one of those programs used to fabricate a home for realtors. Perfect urban living. It was clean and coordinated to fricking death. You'd hate it."

Intrigued, he angled his head. "Would I?"

"You got the high life, same as he did. Got it different ways, but you're both drowning in money."

"Oh," he said easily, "I can tread water quite well, and for quite a while."

"While you're doing the backstroke, he's got a two-level apartment, where everything's squared off, the bathroom towels match the bathroom walls, sort of thing. No creativity, I guess I'm saying. You've got this place, which may be big enough to hold a small city itself, but it's got-well, it's got style and life. It reflects you."

"I think that's a compliment." He raised his beer to her.

"It's an observation. You're both perfectionists in your ways, but his ran toward obsession-everything just so. You like to mix it up. So maybe his need for perfection caused him to bruise somebody, or fire them, or refuse to take them as a patient. I can't make this just so, so forget about it."