by Robb, J. D.
She whirled back. “Lying to try to extort money.”
“He kept records,” Eve repeated. “He had a routine, and he had a type. We also confiscated date rape drugs he kept in a locked cabinet in his office.”
She folded her hands again, and those knuckles stayed bone white. “You’re saying … oh, if you’re lying to me, I’ll have your badge. You’re saying Nigel drugged and raped women. It will destroy her, Geena. She’s already shattered, but this … Can you not tell her? She loved him, and she believed he’d stopped.
Stopped cheating. She’d believed it before, but this time, she was so sure. She was so happy.”
“There’s no way to keep this from her, and due to the multiple women involved, there’s no way to keep it from coming out in the media.”
“Keep what from me?”
At the top of the stairs, Geena McEnroy stood with one hand gripping the polished rail, the other pressed to her heart. She wore a straight, simple black dress. Its mourning color accentuated her delicate beauty. Everything about her read fragile, from the quiet brown hair swept back in a knot, to the long neck, to the slender build. Her eyes, soft blue, were swollen from weeping; her lips, unpainted, trembled.
The only bright point came from her nails, glowing in hot red.
“The girls?” Francie asked.
“Sleeping. Finally sleeping.” Geena started down, hesitated, swayed.
Rising, Roarke moved to the stairs and up to take her arm. “Let me help you.”
“Nothing seems real. It feels as if I might take a step and fall off the world.”
“I’m so very sorry,” he said as he led her to a chair. “Shall I get you some water?”
“I— Francie?”
“Some tea.” Francie took a mini remote from her pocket. “You’ve barely eaten all day.” Her tone turned matter-of-fact.
A smart move, Eve decided, as Geena looked as if she needed to be reminded to breathe in and out.
When the droid came in, Francie ordered tea. “A pot, as I could use some myself. And perhaps our … guests would like a cup.”
“You said …” Geena looked around blankly, finally focused on Eve. “I can’t remember who you are.”
“Lieutenant Dallas. Ms. McEnroy—”
“Oh yes, of course. The girls nagged and nagged to see the vid, the one about the clones, so I screened it. I thought it too violent and frightening for them. They’re too young. I don’t want them exposed to—But now. Oh God, now.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. McEnroy, and I know this is a very difficult time, but we need to ask you some questions.”
“I don’t understand any of it. How can I have answers when I don’t understand? The girls ask and ask where their father went. Why can’t he come back? Why did he have to die? Was he sick? Did he fall down? And I can’t answer. What do I tell them?”
“That’s for you to say.”
“But I don’t know. You said someone … but I don’t understand why anyone would hurt him. Was it a robbery? Was it—”
“We don’t believe robbery was a motive.” Deal with it, Eve thought as the droid wheeled in a tea cart. Stringing it out only prolonged pain.
“Your husband was killed in a location unknown at this time, then his body was transported back to this building and left outside. We’ve traced his movements on the night of his death. He left the building at approximately nine-eighteen P.M., took a limo to a club called This Place, where he had reserved a VIP booth. A privacy booth.”
“A—a business meeting.” Geena’s voice wavered as she spoke, and her eyes pleaded for Eve to agree.
“No, not a business meeting. We’ve confirmed Mr. McEnroy frequented This Place and other venues for the purpose of acquiring women for sexual activities.”
“That’s not true.” Flushes of color, high and bright, rode her cheekbones. “I won’t have you slander my husband, the father of my children. I won’t have it.”
Blind eye, Eve thought. Deliberately, desperately blind.
“We’ve confirmed, with evidence and with firsthand accounts, what he did, where he did it, and in many cases already with whom. You were aware of his proclivities, Ms. McEnroy. Attempting to protect your husband now also protects his killer. It’s my job, my duty, my purpose to find his killer and bring that individual to justice.”
“Do you think I care about your duty?” Her voice pitched high as the color on her cheeks. “You’d destroy a man’s reputation for your duty? Destroy his family?”
“Your husband hunted women for sport,” Eve snapped out. “He used them like toys. He drugged them, and in many cases brought them to your bed, recording the sex for his private library—and to humiliate them, to prevent them from taking action against him. Were you unaware of this?”
“You’re lying!” She hissed it out, a venomous snake with terrified eyes. “You’re a liar.”
“Geena.” Roarke spoke softly even as Francie rushed over to sit on the arm of Geena’s chair, wrap an arm around her. “This is a terrible time for you, and these are horrendous shocks, one after another. Someone killed your husband out of a twisted sense of justice that is in reality revenge. The lieutenant’s purpose is justice. She’ll stand for your husband, work to find the person who took him from you and your children.”
“She’s saying terrible things about him.”
“You loved him very much. That only made it more difficult for you, more painful when he was unfaithful. You understood, through all that, he loved you and your children.”
“He did! He did!” Weeping now, she buried her face against Francie. “He wasn’t perfect. None of us is perfect. He had a weakness, but he fought it. For me, for the girls, he fought it. And he stopped. He swore to me he stopped.”
“You have some tea.” Gently, Francie drew away, picked up the cup to press it on Geena. “Dry your eyes now and have some tea.”
“He was so attractive, you see. Women were drawn to him,” Geena claimed as she obeyed and dabbed her face with a tissue. “And with his weakness he sometimes … He faltered. It shamed him, and he struggled. But in the last year, he renewed his vows to me, and kept them. He swore it. And he never used drugs, he never touched illegals. He’d have no need to use them on a woman. He was magnetic.”
Eve let that slide for the moment. “Did you speak with anyone about this aspect of your marriage? The difficulties you had when your husband faltered?”
“No one. Francie,” she corrected, reaching for Francie’s hand, gripping it. “She’s family, and more of a mother to me than my own.”
“Anyone else? A friend, a therapist, a doctor?”
“It was no one’s business but ours. It is no one’s business but ours. If you try to say he did these things, used illegals on women, brought them into my home, I’ll sue you for slander. Do you hear me? I’ll go to your superior and have you fired.”
Eve let the fury, and the fear behind it, roll off her. Duty, she thought, couldn’t always be kind and patient.
Could rarely be either.
“Would you like to see one of the vids? He liked redheads, curvy ones. He kept date rape illegals locked in his office. Did he ever use them on you, with or without your consent?”
Shock came first, stripping even a hint of color out of Geena’s face. But her eyes went hard. “How dare you?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“He did not. My husband loved me. Why are you trying to destroy what I have left of him?”
“Someone knew his habits, his routines, and used that knowledge to lure him to his death. If you told no one, someone else did or one of the women he used sought and found her revenge. If you lie to me, or hide information that relates to the investigation, you’re obstructing that investigation. If you knew of and/or participated in his use of illegals for sexual compliance and deny same, you’re obstructing.”
“I say you’re a liar, a woman so blinded by ambition she would smear a good man, a family man, a father, to
further those ambitions.” Fury forced color back into her face as she surged to her feet. “I want you out of my home, and I’ll see to it you’re removed from this investigation if not removed from the NYPSD over this vicious vendetta you’re waging against my husband.”
“Geena,” Francie began, but Geena shook her head.
“Get them out. Get them out,” she repeated, and rushed to the stairs, all but sprinted up them.
“I’m very sorry.” Francie twisted her hands together. “She’s not herself. Understandably. I’ll talk to her, but I can assure you she knew none of this. He was so attentive, so loving to her and the girls.”
“But you knew.”
“Not about the illegals. I swear it. She’s like a daughter to me, and those girls are my grandchildren in all but blood. If I’d known, I’d have told her. I’d have found a way. I allowed myself to believe he’d turned a corner and was faithful, but there were signs I ignored because Geena and the girls were happy.”
Francie paused, pressed her fingers to her eyes, then dropped them. “I can tell you this, with no hesitation or doubt. She was telling you the truth as she knows it. She believed him, absolutely, and she would have told no one but me about the other women. She needed her illusions, Lieutenant, so she believed him.”
Francie rose. “I’ll talk to her. I’ll do what I can.”
“One more question. Did you speak to anyone else about Mr. McEnroy?”
“Whatever Geena shared with me stayed between her and me. He broke her trust time after time in the past. I wouldn’t, couldn’t. I never would.”
“Thanks for your time.”
“She’ll want to see him,” Francie added as she walked them to the door. “If not tomorrow, then soon. She’ll need to see him.”
“I’ll arrange it.”
Eve stepped out, started for the elevator. “Don’t tell me I was hard on her.”
“Well now, you were hard on her, but you had to know, didn’t you?”
She jabbed the call button. “Know what?”
“If she knew what he was about, if she had any part in it, overtly or by her silence. If knowing, she finally had enough and helped arrange his murder. Or simply cried on shoulders who might do it for her.”
Saying nothing, Eve strode onto the elevator, jammed her hands in her pockets.
“And now you know,” Roarke finished, and called for the garage level. “So you can stop being hard on yourself for doing your job.”
Eve shot him a look. “You gave her strokes and pats.”
“I felt sorry for her, true enough—as did you. But it wasn’t my job to go hard. It seemed clear enough she’s one who needs someone to lean on likely in the best of times, so certainly in the worst of them. She has the tutor, her surrogate mother, but it seemed to me she’d respond to a man. Was I wrong in that?”
“No.” Eve hissed out a breath. “You’re a hundred percent right, which is why you’re the emperor of the business universe. You read people fast and accurate. You stay with someone who cheats on you, time after time, out of love—to a point. Love might be there, sure, but you really stay out of need, out of insecurity, out of not knowing what the hell else to do. She rings all the bells to me.”
“You don’t suspect her of having a part in his death after this.”
“If you don’t eyeball the spouse and eyeball hard, you’re stupid. But she’s about as low on the list as it gets. She didn’t know about the drugs. I’m betting some part of her knew he was still cheating, but she buried that. But not the drugs. She was shocked, and an instant later, even though she went off, she knew it was true.”
“I think you’re right on that.” Roarke led the way to the car, slid behind the wheel. Then he turned to Eve. “It’s why she denied it so strongly. The truth makes it impossible for her to keep believing she loved and stayed with a good man. He was a rapist, an opportunist, not just unfaithful. And he brought the women he victimized into her home, into her bed. How does she live with that, how does she keep his light shining for her daughters if she accepts the truth of it?”
Tired, tired to the bone, Eve let her head fall back against the seat. “She can accept whatever she wants at this point.”
“She’ll go after you,” he warned as he drove out of the garage. “The foundation of her world demands it.”
“Maybe. I’ll handle it.”
“I’ve no doubt.” He went quiet, letting her think until he approached the gates of home. “We joke about what each would do if the other strayed—and I admit you usually outdo me in creativity there. But the fact is we never would. It’s not only love that keeps us faithful. It’s respect, for each other, for ourselves. That’s a bond that holds.”
“I know it. Still, I can be even more creative if you ever tested it.”
“And I know that.”
He shot her a grin as he drove through the gates.
The house rose and spread, lights gleaming in the windows. Its turrets and towers speared under a glass-clear sky that opened the night to the April chill.
Home, she thought, no longer just the house he’d built, but home. Because they’d learned how to make it one together.
“I thought, when I first moved here, it couldn’t last. You’d realize: Jesus, what was I thinking with her? Or you’d start bitching about the job, the hours, and I’d start bitching about the wife-of-the-business-emperor deal, and it would all just go south.”
She turned to him as he pulled up in front of the house, then leaned over, took his face in her hands. Kissed him. “It’s really nice to be wrong.”
“I had moments when I wondered if you’d walk away, unable to accept who I am, who I was, what I’ve done. It’s very nice, yes, to be wrong.”
When they got out of the car, he met her, took her hand. “But then again, I knew I had you at the cat.”
“At the cat?”
“You brought Galahad here, and that I took as a sign in my favor.”
“Maybe I just wanted to dump him on you.”
“No,” Roarke said simply, and walked inside with her.
She shrugged out of her coat, tossed it over the newel post as Roarke hung his own in the closet. Then she simply stood there in the wide, quiet foyer.
“Problem?”
“I’m just waiting to see if Summerset slithers into view.”
Roarke rolled his eyes, well used to her digs at his majordomo, and started up the stairs. “I let him know we’d be late, and would have dinner out. The night’s chilly enough for a fire. I expect you’ll want to set up your board and book.”
“Yeah, and more, I need to review more of McEnroy’s vids. We need to ID the women, run them, interview them. I’ve had the London cops hit his offices and residence there. I’ve got copies of more vids coming.”
They made their way to her office, where he walked to the fire, ordered it on low. The cat, sprawled in her sleep chair, rolled his tubby body over, stretched. “You haven’t spoken with his partners as yet?”
“On for tomorrow.”
Since Galahad deigned to jump down, stroll over to wind through her legs, she bent to scratch him.
“If I were going to kill the guy, I might try to cover it by doing it in New York if I lived elsewhere. So I’ve got travel to check.”
“Why don’t I see to that for you when you have it ready?” An equal opportunist, Galahad wandered to Roarke, ribboned there until he got a good stroke. “I’ve a few things to deal with, so you can let me know if you want that help.”
“I will, thanks.”
When Roarke went into his adjoining office, Eve programmed a pot of coffee. She poured a large mug, began to set up her board.
Drinking coffee, adjusting her board, she glanced over to where Galahad lay, once again, sprawled in her sleep chair.
“You know, he had that right—big surprise. I wasn’t dumping you on him. I was bringing both of us home. You just got used to it faster.”
Once she had her board and book finish
ed, she sat to open the file from London. And found a very helpful detective inspector had written a detailed memo attachment. She’d identified the hotel McEnroy used, statements from staff at the clubs McEnroy had detailed in his memo book—the London version also locked in his office there.
She’d also confiscated the illegals and all electronics.
Same pattern.
Moreover, Detective Inspector Lavina Smythe had reviewed a full dozen of the vids and run face recognition on the women.
Eve now had a list of names to work with, in addition to a comprehensive report. Smythe ended the memo with:
While Nigel McEnroy’s murder occurred in New York City, he is now posthumously under investigation for possession and use of illegals, for rape, extortion, and abduction, all of which took place in London. We will arrange interviews with all individuals related to said investigation, and subsequently copy you on these reports. We request any information you gather in the course of your investigation be shared.
“You got it, DI Smythe.” And in that spirit, Eve wrote her own memo, attached it to a report, shot it to London.
She printed out the ID shots Smythe sent her—all redheads—added them to her board under a section she headed as LONDON.
She walked over to Roarke’s office, where he sat working on his comp, making minute changes to some weird-ass schematic.
“I’ve got a dozen names from London, if you want them.”
He glanced over. “That was very quick.”
“London did the work. There’s a DI Smythe, and if I’m reading between the lines, she looks at it like I’ve got the DB, but she’s got a lot of female vics—potentially suspects, but vics. And she’s going to see they get justice. So we’ll share salient data. I can hope I get the same level of cooperation from Paris and so on.”
“I’m nearly done here so—”
“How can you tell?”
He merely smiled. “Do you really want to know?”
She looked at the wall screen, the lines, curves, tiny notes and numbers. “Absolutely not.”
“Well then. Shoot me the data, and I’ll check the travel.”
“Smythe would probably do it, but—”