by J. D. Robb
“How hard?”
“In excess of three million. I can get you exact figures, if necessary. He’ll recover,” Roarke added with a shrug for three million dollars Eve knew she would never get used to. “He needs to focus and downsize a bit here and there. I’d say his pride was hurt more than his portfolio.”
“How much was Towers’s share of Mercury worth?”
“On today’s market?” He took out his pocket diary, jiggled some numbers. “Somewhere between five and seven.”
“Million?”
“Yes,” Roarke said with the faintest hint of a smile. “Of course.”
“Good Christ. No wonder she could live like a queen.”
“Marco made very good investments for her. He would have wanted the mother of his children to live comfortably.”
“You and I have dramatically different ideas about comfort.”
“Apparently.” Roarke tucked the diary away and rose to refill his coffee and hers. An airbus rumbled by the window, chased by a fleet of private shuttles. “You suspect that Marco killed her to recoup his losses?”
“Money’s a motive that never goes out of style. I interviewed him yesterday. I knew something didn’t quite fit. Now it’s beginning to.”
She took the fresh coffee he offered, paced to the window where the noise level was rising, then away again. Her robe was slipping off her shoulder. Casually, Roarke tucked it back into place. Bored commuters often carried long-range viewers for just such an opportunity.
“Then there’s the friendly divorce,” she went on, “but whose idea was it? Divorce is complicated for Catholics when there are children involved. Don’t they have to get some sort of clearance?”
“Dispensation,” Roarke corrected. “A complex business, but both Cicely and Marco had connections with the hierarchy.”
“He’s never remarried,” Eve pointed out, setting her coffee aside. “I haven’t been able to find even a whiff of a steady or serious companion. But Towers was having a long-term intimate relationship with Hammett. Just how did Angelini feel about the mother of his children snuggling with a business partner?”
“If it were me, I’d kill the business partner.”
“That’s you,” Eve said with a quick glance. “And I imagine you’d kill both of them.”
“You know me so well.” He stepped toward her, put his hands on her shoulders. “On the financial end, you may want to consider that whatever Cicely’s share of Mercury was, Angelini’s matches it. They held equal shares.”
“Fuck.” She struggled with it. “Still, money’s money. I have to follow that scent until I get a new one.” He continued to stand there, his hands cupping her shoulders, his eyes on hers. “What are you looking at?”
“The gleam in your eye.” He touched his lips to hers once, then again. “I have some sympathy for Marco, you see, because I remember what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that look, and that tenacity.”
“You hadn’t killed anyone,” she reminded him. “Lately.”
“Ah, but you weren’t sure of that for a time, and still you were . . . drawn. Now we’re—” The beeper on his watch pinged. “Hell.” He kissed her again, quick and distracted. “We’ll have to reminisce later. I have a meeting.”
Just as well, Eve thought. Hot blood interfered with a clear head. “I’ll see you later then.”
“At home?”
She fiddled with her coffee cup. “At your place, sure.”
Impatience flickered in his eyes as he shrugged into his jacket. The slight bulge in the pocket reminded him. “I’d nearly forgotten. I bought you a present in Australia.”
With some reluctance, Eve took the slim gold box. When she opened it, reluctance scattered. There was no room for it in shocked panic. “Jesus bleeding Christ, Roarke. Are you insane?”
It was a diamond. She knew enough to be sure of that. The stone graced a twisted gold chain and glinted fire. Shaped like a tear, it was as long and wide as the first joint of a man’s thumb.
“They call it the Giant’s Tear,” he said as he casually took it from the box and draped the chain over her head. “It was mined about a hundred and fifty years ago. It happened to come up for auction while I was in Sydney.” He stepped back and studied its shooting sparks against the plain blue robe she wore. “Yes, it suits you. I thought it would.” Then he looked at her face and smiled. “Oh, I see you were counting on kiwi. Well, perhaps next time.” When he leaned in to kiss her good-bye, he was brought up short by the slap of her hand against his chest. “Problem?”
“This is crazy. You can’t expect me to take something like this.”
“You do occasionally wear jewelry.” To prove his point, he flicked a finger at the gold dangling from her ear.
“Yeah, and I buy it from the street stall on Lex.”
“I don’t,” he said easily.
“You take this back.”
She started to pull at the chain, but he closed his hands over hers. “It doesn’t go with my suit. Eve, a gift is not supposed to make the blood drain out of your cheeks.” Suddenly exasperated, he gave her a quick shake. “It caught my eye, and I was thinking of you. Damn you, I always am. I bought it because I love you. Christ Jesus, when are you going to swallow that?”
“You’re not going to do this to me.” She told herself she was calm, very calm. Because she was right, very right. His temper didn’t worry her, she’d seen it flare before. But the stone weighed around her neck, and what she feared it represented worried her very much.
“Do what to you, Eve? Exactly what?”
“You’re not going to give me diamonds.” Terrified and furious, she shoved away from him. “You’re not going to pressure me into taking what I don’t want, or being what I can’t be. You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing these past few months. Do you think I’m stupid?”
His eyes flashed, hard as the stone between her breasts. “No, I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re a coward.”
Her fist came up automatically. Oh, how she would have loved to have used it to wipe that self-righteous sneer from his face. If he hadn’t been right, she could have. So she used other weapons.
“You think you can make me depend on you, get used to living in that glorified fortress of yours and wearing silk. Well, I don’t give a damn about any of that.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“I don’t need your fancy food or your fancy gifts or your fancy words. I see the pattern, Roarke. Say I love you at regular intervals until she learns to respond. Like a well-trained pet.”
“Like a pet,” he repeated as his fury froze into ice. “I see I’m wrong. You are stupid. You really think this is about power and control? Have it your way. I’m tired of having you toss my feelings back in my face. My mistake for allowing it, but that can be rectified.”
“I never—”
“No, you never,” he interrupted coolly. “Never once risked your pride by saying those words back to me. You keep this place as your escape hatch rather than commit to staying with me. I let you draw the line, Eve, and now I’m moving it.” It wasn’t just temper pushing him now, nor was it just pain. It was the truth. “I want all,” he said flatly. “Or I want nothing.”
She wouldn’t panic. He wouldn’t make her panic like a first-time rookie on a night run. “What exactly does that mean?”
“It means sex isn’t enough.”
“It’s not just sex. You know—”
“No, I don’t. The choice is yours now—it always was. But now you’ll have to come to me.”
“Ultimatums just piss me off.”
“That’s a pity.” He gave her one long last look. “Good-bye, Eve.”
“You can’t just walk—”
“Oh yes.” And he didn’t look back. “I can.”
Her mouth dropped open when she heard the door slam. For a moment she simply stood, rigid, the sun glinting off the jewel around her neck. Then she began to vibrate. With fury, of course
, she told herself and ripped the precious diamond off to toss it on the counter.
He thought she would go crawling after him, begging him to stay. Well, he could go on thinking that into the next millennium. Eve Dallas didn’t crawl, and she didn’t beg.
She closed her eyes against a pain more shocking than a laser strike. Who the hell is Eve Dallas? she wondered. And isn’t that the core of it all?
She blocked it out. What choice did she have? The job came first. Had to come first. If she wasn’t a good cop, she was nothing. She was as empty and as helpless as the child she had been, lying broken and traumatized in a dark alley in Dallas.
She could bury herself in work. The demands and pressures of it. When she was standing in Commander Whitney’s office, she was only a cop with murder on her hands.
“She had plenty of enemies, Commander.”
“Don’t we all.” His eyes were clear again, sharp. Grief could never outweigh responsibility.
“Feeney’s run a list of her convictions. We’re breaking them down, concentrating on the lifers first—family and known associates. Someone she put in a cage for the duration would have the strongest revenge ratio. Next down the line are the uncorrected deviants. UDs sometimes slip through the cracks. She put plenty away on mental, and some of them are bound to have crawled their way out.”
“That’s a lot of computer time, Dallas.”
It was a subtle warning about budgets, which she chose to ignore. “I appreciate you putting Feeney on this with me. I couldn’t get through it without him. Commander, these checks are SOP, but I don’t think this was an attack on the prosecutor.”
He sat back, inclined his head, waiting.
“I think it was personal. She was covering something. For herself, for somebody else. She zapped the ’link recording.”
“I read your report, Lieutenant. Are you telling me you believe Prosecuting Attorney Towers was involved in something illegal?”
“Are you asking me as my friend or as my commander?”
He bared his teeth before he could control himself. After a short internal struggle, he nodded. “Well put, Lieutenant. As your commander.”
“I don’t know if it was illegal. It’s my opinion at this stage of the investigation that there was something on that recording the victim wanted kept private. It was important enough to have her get dressed and go out again into the rain to meet someone. Whoever that was, was certain she would come alone and that she would leave no record of the contact. Commander, I need to speak with the rest of the victim’s family, her close friends, your wife.”
He’d accepted that, or tried to. Throughout his career he had worked hard to keep his loved ones out of the often nasty air of his job. Now he had to expose them.
“You have my address, Lieutenant. I’ll contact my wife now and tell her to expect you.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
Anna Whitney had made a fine home from the two-level house in the quiet street in the suburbs of White Plains. She had raised her children there, and raised them well, choosing the profession of mother over a teaching career. It wasn’t the state salary for full-time parents that had swayed her. It had been the thrill of being in on each and every stage of childhood development.
She’d earned her salary. Now, with her children grown, she earned her retirement stipend by putting the same dedication into nurturing her home, her husband, and her reputation as a hostess. Whenever she could, she filled the house with her grandchildren. In the evenings, she filled it with dinner parties.
Anna Whitney hated solitude.
But she was alone when Eve arrived. As always, she was perfectly groomed: her cosmetics were carefully and expertly applied, and her pale blond hair was coiffed in a swept-back style that suited her attractive face.
She wore a one-piece suit of good American cotton, and held out a hand adorned only with a wedding ring to welcome Eve.
“Lieutenant Dallas, my husband said you would come.”
“I’m sorry to intrude, Mrs. Whitney.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m a cop’s wife. Come in. I’ve made some lemonade. It’s tablet, I’m afraid. Fresh or frozen is so monstrously hard to come by. It’s a little early for lemonade, but I had a yen for it today.”
Eve let Anna chatter as they walked into the formal living area with its stiff-backed chairs and straight-edged sofa.
The lemonade was fine, and Eve said so after the first sip.
“You know the memorial service is at ten tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be there.”
“There are so many flowers already. We’ve made arrangements to have them distributed after . . . but that’s not why you’re here.”
“Prosecutor Towers was a good friend to you.”
“She was a very good friend to me and my husband.”
“Her children are staying with you?”
“Yes, they’re . . . they’ve gone with Marco just now to speak with the archbishop about the service.”
“They’re close to their father.”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Whitney, why are they staying here, rather than with their father?”
“We all thought it best. The house—Marco’s house—holds so many memories. Cicely lived there when the children were young. Then there’s the media. They don’t have our address, and we wanted to keep the children from dealing with reporters. They’ve swamped poor Marco. It’ll be different tomorrow, of course.”
Her pretty hands plucked at the knee of her suit, then calmed and lay still again. “They’ll have to face it. They’re still in shock. Even Randall. Randall Slade, Mirina’s fiancé. He’d gotten very close to Cicely.”
“He’s here as well.”
“He’d never leave Mirina alone at such a time. She’s a strong young woman, Lieutenant, but even strong women need an arm to lean on now and then.”
Eve blocked out the quick image of Roarke that popped into her brain. As a result of the effort, her voice was a bit more formal than usual as she led Anna through the routine questions.
“I’ve asked myself over and over what could have possessed her to go to that neighborhood,” Anna concluded. “Cicely could be stubborn, and certainly strong willed, but she was rarely impulsive and never foolish.”
“She talked to you, confided in you.”
“We were like sisters.”
“Would she have told you if she was in trouble of some kind? If someone close to her was in trouble?”
“I would have thought so. She would have handled it herself, or tried to first.” Her eyes swam, but the tears didn’t fall. “But sooner or later she would have blown off steam with me.”
If she’d had time, Eve thought. “You can think of nothing she was concerned about before her death?”
“Nothing major. Her daughter’s wedding—getting older. We joked about her becoming a grandmother. No,” Anna said with a laugh as she recognized Eve’s look. “Mirina isn’t pregnant, though that would have only pleased her mother. She was always concerned for David as well: Would he settle down? Was he happy?”
“And is he?”
Another cloud came into her eyes before she lowered them. “David is a great deal like his father. He likes to wheel and deal. He does a great deal of traveling for the business, always looking for new arenas, new opportunities. There’s no doubt he’ll take the helm if and when Marco decided to turn it over.”
She hesitated, as if about to add something, then smoothly switched gears. “Mirina, on the other hand, prefers to live in one spot. She manages a boutique in Rome. That’s where she met Randall. He’s a designer. Her shop handles his line exclusively now. He’s quite talented. This is his,” she said, indicating the slim suit she wore.
“It’s lovely. So as far as you know, Prosecutor Towers had no reason to be concerned for her children. Nothing she would have felt obliged to smooth out or cover over?”
“Cover over? No, of course not. They’re both bright, success
ful people.”
“And her ex-husband. He’s having some business difficulties?”
“Marco? Is he?” Anna shrugged that off. “I’m sure he’ll straighten them out. I never shared Cicely’s interest in business.”
“She was involved then, in business. Directly?”
“Of course. Cicely insisted on knowing exactly what was going on and having a say in it. I never knew how she could keep so many things in her head. If Marco was having difficulties, she’d have known, and probably have suggested a half dozen ways to right things. She was quite brilliant.” When her voice broke, Anna pressed a hand to her lips.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Whitney.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m better. Having her children with me helped so much. I feel I can stand for her with them. I can’t do what you do, and look for her killer. But I can stand for her with her children.”
“They’re very lucky to have you,” Eve murmured, surprised to hear herself say it and mean it. Odd, she’d always considered Anna Whitney a mild pain in the ass. “Mrs. Whitney, can you tell me about Prosecutor Towers’s relationship with George Hammett?”
Anna pokered up. “They were dear, good friends.”
“Mr. Hammett has told me they were lovers.”
Anna huffed out a breath. She was a traditionalist, and unashamed of it. “Very well, that’s true. But he wasn’t the right man for her.”
“Why?”
“Set in his ways. I’m very fond of George, and he made an excellent escort for Cicely. But a woman can hardly be completely happy when she goes home to an empty apartment most nights, to an empty bed. She needed a mate. George wanted it both ways, and Cicely deluded herself into thinking she wanted that, too.”
“And she didn’t.”
“She shouldn’t have,” Anna snapped, obviously going over an old argument. “Work isn’t enough, as I pointed out to her many times. She simply wasn’t serious enough about George to risk.”
“Risk?”
“I’m speaking of emotional risk,” Anna said impatiently. “You cops are so literal-minded. She wanted her life tidy more than she wanted the mess of a full-time relationship.”