Strangers in Death (In Death #26)(58)

So she did. “Why?” she asked. “Why did you pick me up in this ostentatious street yacht?”

“First, I don’t find it ostentatious, but convenient. And very comfortable. Second, I had a bit of work to polish off on the way over and didn’t want to drive myself. Third, you mentioned work, so if you need to do any, this is more comfortable than a cyber-café.”

“Maybe that’s logical.” She drank more coffee, closed her eyes a moment. And Roarke’s fingers brushed her cheek.

“Did the man sprawled on the sidewalk and under your boot get any licks in?”

“No. He never saw it coming. I’ve just got a lot in my head.”

Now he brought her hand to his lips. “Why don’t you let some of it out.”

She eyed him. “Was there a fourth reason we’re in this boat, and was that so you could put moves on me?”

“Darling, that would be the underlying reason for all my decisions.”

Because she could, she grabbed his lapel, yanked him over, and took his mouth in a kiss full of heat and promise. Then pushed him away again. “That’s all you get.”

“I’d prove differently, but it seems a little crass as we’re biding some time before attending a memorial.”

He could prove differently, she knew. And the hell of it was, she enjoyed when he did. She sat a moment, trying to put her thoughts back in order. “You got any crullers on tap?”

“You want a cruller?”

“No. Damn that Peabody. Anyway—”

Roarke held up a finger, pressed the intercom. “Russ, swing by a bakery, will you, and pick up a half a dozen crullers.”

“Yes, sir.”

No wonder her head was screwed up, Eve thought. A couple of minutes before she’d had her boot on some idiot’s chest while she dressed down a couple of lead-footed uniforms. Now she was gliding around New York drinking outrageously good coffee and getting crullers.

“You were saying?” Roarke prompted.

Might as well go with the flow. She crossed her booted ankles. “I spent the morning conducting interviews. So yeah, it’s been a chatty day.”

She ran it through for him, which never failed to organize her thoughts for herself. She paused only when the driver passed Roarke a bakery box, shiny white this time. She wrapped it up snacking on sugar and fat.

“It appears,” Roarke said, offering her a napkin, “that when people scrape the veneer away, as you’ve prompted them to do, Ava Anders doesn’t appear quite so smooth and glossy.”

“They don’t like her. What they liked, with the exception of Leopold who liked nothing about her, ever, was filtered through Anders. Tommy. With him not there as filter, the smudges are coming through. She doesn’t care about being liked. Or cares only because being liked is a stepping-stone to being admired. Being admired, now that’s important, and it’s a stepping-stone to being influential.”

“And Tommy. Another stepping-stone.”

“Yeah. People have been sleeping and/or marrying their way to the top since the first cavewoman said: ‘Ugh, that one’s the strongest and has the biggest club. I’ll shake my mastodon-skin-covered ass at him.’”

“Ugh?”

“Or whatever cave people said. And it’s not just women who do it. Cave guy goes: ‘Ugh, that one catches the most fish, I’ll be dragging her off to my cave now.’ Ava sees Tommy and—”

“Says ugh.”

“Or today’s equivalent thereof. There’s a rich guy, a guy people like, who has good press. A nice, easygoing sort. You can bet your ass she researched him inside out before she settled on him. Worked the transfer to New York, made sure to put herself in front of him as often as possible. Four-walls him, too. But subtly. Too aggressive, you could scare him off, too delicate he might not pick up on it. You put on the suit, the ‘what Tommy likes and how Tommy likes it’ suit, and you wear it like skin. And after you reel him in, you keep the suit on. Maybe a few adjustments here and there, but you keep it on. You get some power, you get the big houses, fancy life. You get some prominence, some position. And nudge him out of the house every chance you get so you can take the suit off and f**king breathe.”

“For nearly sixteen years?”

“She could’ve done it for twice that. But you know what happened? His father died. I gotta look at that.” She tucked it into a handy corner of her mind. “And I need to check with Charles, but I’ll lay you odds her first session with Charles was only weeks after the old man went under and Tommy inherited. Boy, the stakes just went way up. ‘Look at all this, and it could all be mine. How can I have it, and get out of this frigging suit.’ It’s gotta be itching some, and he’s only got a decade on her. He could live another fifty, sixty years. It’s just too much. Anyway, she’s earned it. God knows, she’s earned it. Divorce won’t do. She could work it, sure she could work it so it was all his fault, like she did the first husband.”

“But as that’s already been done, it wouldn’t do to repeat herself.”

“You got it,” she said, pleased. “And the payoff wouldn’t be enough in a divorce. Not anymore, not with all the years she’s put in. If he’d just die, she could be the shattered widow, the widow who picks up the pieces of her life and goes on. Why can’t he just die, why can’t he have a fatal accident, why…What if?”