The cat’s look said, as clearly as Summerset’s words: Deal with this.
“Take the blocker. You won’t work well with that headache.”
She started to refuse—he saw that—just as he saw her change her mind. When she took it without protest or excuse, he decided he did, indeed, have something to deal with.
At least it got his mind off his stalled project.
He glanced at her board, saw the stills of the second victim, the crime scene.
“The report said she had two teenage sons.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t suspect the husband.”
She shook her head. “He teaches at Columbia. Dennis Mira knows him. He helped with the notification. The guy was shattered, just broken to pieces. Mr. Mira helped.”
“Dennis is made of kindness and compassion.”
She often thought if everybody in New York had just a little bit of Dennis Mira in them, she’d be out of a job.
“Before Duran—the spouse—taught at Columbia, he taught at Gold.”
“Ah. You have your link.”
“Yeah. A woman had to die to give it to me, but I’ve got the link.”
“Eve.”
She shook her head again, more vigorously. “It’s not on me, I know it’s not on me. But she’s still dead. Jesus, Roarke, her mother found her.”
Saying nothing, he stepped behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders, brushed a kiss over the top of her head. “What can I do?”
She spun in the chair, wrapped her arms around him, pressed her face against him.
“There now.” It broke his heart. “Come away from this for a while.”
“I need to—” She paused, gathered herself. “I need to say something about this morning.”
Set to comfort, he went momentarily blank. “This morning?”
“You’ve already let it go. You were pissed, but you’ve already let it go. I was pissed, too.”
Remembering, he shrugged. “Hardly the first or the last time for either of us.”
“No, but—” She let him go, stood to face him. “I know people get pissed over money. Hell, they bash brains in over it.”
“I don’t see either of us going that far.”
“I know it’s stupid for us to get pissed over it. It’s supposed to be the lack of it, or the carelessness with it, the greed for it, whatever. Not the fact that there’s so damn much of it.”
He traced a fingertip down the dent in her chin. “I don’t plan for that to change.”
“Oh, I got that. The thing is, I don’t want to get used to you peeling off a bunch of money for me whenever I’m running a little short. I wouldn’t have run short if I’d gotten by a machine. And goddamn it, I forgot to hit one today, which makes your stupid point.”
“I still have your IOU.”
“I don’t want to get used to it,” she repeated. “Start depending on it. I’ve gotten used to so much, depend on so much. You, this place, the life we have. The clothes in my closet, the damn coffee I drink.”
“Why should that worry you?”
“It doesn’t—or only a little sometimes—which is my point. It was stupid to get pissed because you lent me some money, but I don’t want to start thinking, hey, no problem. Roarke’ll cover it. I don’t want that for either of us. It’s important to me.”
“I’ll understand that if you understand it’s important to me you don’t walk out of the house with empty pockets.”
“They weren’t all the way empty. Anyway, that’s just part of what I need to say. Duran, he’s shattered, and he’s trying to remember if he kissed her goodbye that morning. Did he say he loved her, did he kiss her goodbye, because she’s gone. And I thought, I was pissed, and I walked out. I didn’t kiss you goodbye. I didn’t tell you I love you. And damn it, who knows better than I do that everything can change, can break, and you never get that chance again?”
“My darling Eve.” He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips.
“It’ll happen again. It may be you who’s pissed and walks out. So I want to say when it does happen, either way, to remember this right here.” She cupped his face in her hands, kissed him. “Just remember.”
“And you.” He kissed her back. Then held her. “How do you feel about spaghetti and meatballs?”
Everything in her drained, then filled again as she rested her forehead to his. “Man, you know what button to push.”
“I do, yes. So we’ll sit, have some pasta, some wine, and you’ll tell me about this link, and what it means.”
“I’ll get the food, you get the wine.”
So they sat and ate while she took him through her day.
“There’s a calculated cruelty, isn’t there, to murdering the spouse of someone you have a grudge against.” He broke some bread, handed her a share. “How does that apply to you telling Summerset not to open deliveries?”
“I not only spent time at the school, asking questions, having EDD access records, I made it clear to anyone paying attention—and if he’s not, he’s an idiot—we’ve made the connection. What better way to take a slap at the primary than to try for her spouse?”
She rolled some pasta. “It’s low odds, but why risk it?”
“Understood. So you’ll look hard at Grange, and the transition period, the change of headmasters.”
“If the school’s the connection, and it is, she’s the strongest link. From everything I’ve looked at, she didn’t give a rat’s ass about the students or the instructors. It was all about prestige, about the big donations.” She forked up a bite of meatball, gestured with it. “So two for you. What do you know about Grange’s ex, Reginald Greenwald of All Fresh?”
“Ah. I believe I’ve met him a time or two. Considering that, I may have met Grange as well. The business is more than solid, and the family has a reputation for running it well. I don’t recall hearing anything particular or peculiar. Do you think he’s involved?”
“They have a lot of labs, a lot of chemists and chemicals. He’s not only CEO, but the grandson of the founder, so who’d question him if he spent time in the labs?” She shrugged, ate some more. “But I don’t see it, at least not with what I have. No love lost between him and Grange. They had an arrangement.”
“Did they?”
“So he says. They married mostly for sex and because they suited each other’s ambitions and images. If either of them wanted sex outside the marriage, all good, as long as they kept it private. She didn’t. Not only did somebody send him photos of her, with her sex buddy’s face obscured, but she dipped into the staff pool, and got caught.”
“Careless of her.”
“There’s speculation she diddled a student.”
“More than careless there. But … She and Greenwald are, as I recall, contemporaries. Wouldn’t that make her roughly a half century older than the students?”
“Greenwald had a twenty-four-year-old live-in Ukrainian tootsie pretending to be his personal assistant. And you want to be careful there, ace, as the age difference falls in the same range.”