“Jesus, that’s, what, in the land of a quarter of a mil annually for vanity.”
“That’s the geography. And this is nothing, really, up against what he’s invested and continues to invest in the Institute. He put in twenty million of his own to launch it, and though he receives around a million annually from it, he pumps that, and a bit more, back in to keep it running. I can tell you that in the last eighteen months to two years, money has become a serious issue for him.”
“Okay, he needs to sell—that’s his motive. We need to find out who gets his share of said potential sale on his death. Wife and/or kids, most likely.”
She circled the board again. “The wife doesn’t want to give up the lifestyle. Would she have him killed over it?” Pausing, Eve studied the ID shot. “Wouldn’t surprise me. She’s got the chops for it. He probably has death insurance. He kicks, she’s not only the grieving widow, but she’d be pretty well set.”
She stuck her hands in her pockets, rocked back on her heels. Shook her head. “But the method’s all wrong for it. Even if she hired somebody. Here’s a bunch of money. Beat up my husband, kill him—and do it in this location because maybe she figures Dennis would agree to sell under those conditions.”
“My cousin’s grieving wife, he was killed here. Selling it will help us all heal. Yes.” Considering, Roarke offered her the rest of the coffee. “I could see it. Convoluted as it is.”
“Too convoluted. Plus, if they’re hired hits, be done with it. You don’t haul him off.”
“You’re back to personal.”
“Yeah, I am. He doesn’t owe anybody, no signs he’s paying or extorting blackmail?”
“Not that I’ve found, no.”
“So, it’s about the money for him, but it’s not about money for whoever has him. Sex.”
Roarke wrapped his arms around her waist. “Delighted.”
“Not us, ace. Money, politics, women—those appear to be his main deals. Money just isn’t playing. Politics—he’s not a senator anymore, but there’s that brain trust. I’ll look into that, but if he’s fueling it to keep it running, how much influence does it, or he, have . . . politically? So it comes down to sex. The suite at your hotel. I bet it makes a nice love nest.”
“We do try to keep such things well-feathered.”
“Ha. I bet you could tug a line and get me some names of lovebirds Senator Hound Dog might have roosted with. That doesn’t sound right,” she realized with a frown. “I’ve lost the colorful metaphor.”
“But it held long enough. I can tug a line, of course. And if he used it to entertain, I’ll have names or at least faces for you. Give me a few minutes.”
She went back for more coffee, then sat down to do the runs.
It didn’t surprise her when Roarke finished his task before she did.
“Five women in the past year. I’ve sent you their names. All multiple visits, on a weekly basis, most lasting between six and eight weeks. I want a brandy.”
“Five, in a year. And he’s nearly seventy.”
“Medical science, and we salute it, has made that issue moot.” He opened the wall slot, took out a decanter. “I’ve sent them to you in order of appearance. I can also tell you: While the senator uses the suite on the average of once a week for personal purposes, he generally stays the night. The lady of the moment rarely does.”
She generated ID shots, added them to the board. “All but two legally married. And the latest is twenty-five. I mean, humping Jesus, he has more than forty years on her. It’s just wrong.”
When Roarke just swirled and sipped brandy, she narrowed her eyes. “He’s old enough to be her grandfather.”
“I don’t like the man—less now than I did before—but I can’t help but admire his . . . stamina.”
“That’s dick-thinking.”
“Well . . .” Roarke glanced down at his own. “It does have opinions.”
Muttering to herself, she got up to circle the board. “They’re all lookers, I’ll give him that. And not one of them within fifteen years of his age. This Lauren Canford’s his oldest pick at forty-two. Married, two kids, a lobbyist. That’s a political thing. And the baby of the bunch, Charity Downing, twenty-five, single, an artist who works at Eclectia—a gallery in SoHo. Asha Coppola, on her second marriage, works for a nonprofit—age thirty-one. Allyson Byson, third marriage—is that optimism or insanity? Anyway, third marriage at age thirty-four, no occupation. And Carlee MacKensie, twenty-eight, single, freelance writer.
“I’ll take a look at them, and their spouses.”
“I’ve some work of my own unless you need something more.”
“No, go ahead. Thanks.”
He gave her until midnight and, as expected, found her starting to droop over the work.
“That’s a big enough jump on things for one night.”
She didn’t argue, knew she had to let it simmer and settle. And if she was wrong, Edward Mira might limp home before morning.
But she wasn’t wrong.
“Did you know Mr. Mira and his cousin both went to Yale? The senator was a year ahead of him—would’ve been two but Mr. Mira graduated early. And he came out of Yale with that Latin deal—the magnum thing.
“Magna cum laude.”
“Yeah, that. And the Phi Beta deal, too. Graduated third in his class. The senator graduated like seventy-whatever in his. Mr. Mira has all these letters after his name. Don’t know what half of them are, and he served as class president his senior year, was the valedictorian. The senator did more than okay, but on an academic level, Mr. Mira kicked his ass.”
“I imagine that didn’t sit well with the future senator.”
“I’m thinking not. Anyway, the Urbans were just starting to rumble, and Mr. Mira was a frigging captain of the campus peace patrol. The campus was far enough out of the city, so reasonably safe, but there was trouble, and demonstrations, and regular bomb threats.”
In the bedroom, she sat to take off her boots. “The senator got his law degree, and took a job with a law firm in Sunnyside—away from the conflict. Mr. Mira came back to New York, got his master’s from Columbia. He got the doctorate from there, too, so they’re
both
Dr. Mira. He and Mira cohabbed for like a year.”
She shook her head as she undressed. “I never figured them for cohabs, you know? And looking into that stuff felt weird. Voyeuristic, but still. And they’re both starting out their careers and their life together in a city shaking from the Urbans. They got married at the grandparents’ house. There was this whole story I dug up. I shouldn’t have been taking time to look at stuff like that, but . . .”
“It’s lovely.”
“Yeah. And it shows another reason why the house matters so much
to him.” She pulled on a sleep shirt, crawled into bed. “The senator and Mandy tied it up at the Palace—before your time—in a big, splashy deal.”
She turned to him when he slid into bed with her. “You could’ve had a big, splashy deal when we tied it up. Why didn’t you?”
“You wouldn’t have liked it.” He wrapped around her, drawing her in where he liked her best. “And for myself, I wanted our lives to begin where it mattered most. Home. I wanted that memory to be here—like the painting you had done for me. Of the two of us, under the arbor on our wedding day.”
She let out a sigh. “Maybe we’ll make it there.”
“Make it where?”
But she’d already dropped away into sleep, and didn’t answer.
She hovered just under the surface of sleep with strange little dreams winding through, braiding together, then fading off like ribbons of smoke.
Despite the misty parade of dreams, more odd than disturbing, she felt warm and secure and content.
So when Roarke shifted away, she edged over, holding on to that warmth, that security, that contentment.
His lips brushed her brow as he started to untangle himself from her.
She said, “Uh-uh.”
“Sleep,” he murmured, and would have lifted her arm away but she tightened her hold.
“Too early. Still dark. Stay.”
“I’ve a holo conference in—”
She just didn’t care, and angling her head found his mouth in the dark.
She wanted not just the arousal, but the intimacy of the quiet, the silky splendor of unity before the world woke and pulled them both back into the bright and the hard.
Just him—she wanted just him—in the big bed under the sky window before dawn crept in cold.
So she drew him with her into the soft and the sweet.
He heard her sigh with the kiss that built a shimmering bridge between night and day, one that poured love into him like liquid gold. And she shifted over him, laying heart to heart, mouth to mouth, body to body.
The long lines of her enchanted him: smooth skin, firm muscle. His hands roamed, slid under the thin shirt she slept in, glided up the lean length. He thought he could be content, his world complete, if a moment just like this spun into forever.
Then she rose up, tugged her shirt up and away, and took him in.
Pleasure leaped, one hot, hard bound, then settled into soft beats, like a pulse, a proof of life. They were shadows in the dark, cocooned in its secrets, bathed in its silence, enspelled by each other. She rocked him, rocked herself, toward bliss with slow, undulating movements that gripped his heart, ruled his body.
He rose up to her, his hands lost in her hair, his mouth locked on hers, and his heart—all its chambers—flooded with love. They took each other now into the slow burn of sensations kindled by that steady flame of love, beat by beat until the pulse was all.
Joined, they rose and they fell together.
Again she sighed, still wound around him, her cheek pressed to his. “Okay,” she said, sighing again. “Okay.”
When he lay back with her, she was limp as melted wax and just as warm. He brushed his hand over her hair, over her cheek, made her smile.
“I think we’ll make it.”
“Didn’t we just?”
Still smiling, she jabbed a finger in his belly. “Not that—though that was really nice. I guess my brain keeps circling around the Miras. You weren’t there with them at the crime scene. It was . . . it’s the way they look at each other, and touch. A couple times I had to look away because it felt like I was intruding. They’ve been married for decades, but when you see them like that . . . like last night? You know why.”
She closed her eyes. “I want that. I never thought I did or could or would, but I want that. I want to be with you for decades and have you still look at me the way he looks at her.”
“You’re the love of my life. And always will be.”
“Maybe you could tell me that in like thirty years.”
“That’s a promise. And now, love of my life, go back to sleep.”
She frowned when he rolled out of bed. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s near to half five now.”
“Some people, who aren’t you, consider that the middle of the night.”
“It’s the middle of the day in Europe, and I’ve a holo conference very shortly.”
While he went to shower, she half dozed, but found her mind wouldn’t shut down again. She barely heard him come out, dress—the man moved like a shadow.
Which probably factored into his success as a thief back in the day.
Alone, she lay another few minutes, then gave it up.
“Lights twenty-five percent.”
When they came on, she nearly jolted. The cat was sprawled at the foot of the bed, giving her the beady eye.
“Christ, you’re as bad as Roarke, skulking around.”
She figured the early morning sex had annoyed the cat, but it had set
her up just fine. She programmed coffee, started fueling her brain as she went into the shower.
Since she beat Roarke to the AutoChef, she programmed breakfast for both of them—nothing like waffles on a cold January morning to her mind—and left them under their warming domes while she dressed.
She sat down with coffee, her PPC, and got a jump on her workday.
“Now, here’s a lovely sight on a bitter winter’s day.”
She glanced over, decided he was a pretty good sight himself in his ruler-of-the-business-world suit. “Finished buying Europe already?”
“Not buying today—so far—just a bit of engineering and tech advancing through the R&D stage. And well advancing.”
He sat, poured coffee from the pot on the table, then uncovered the breakfast plates. “Waffles, is it?”
“It should almost always be. I’m having Peabody meet me at the Mira Institute at eight sharp. I want to get a sense of the place, what Edward Mira had going there. We should have time to grab an interview with a couple of his skirts before we have to head back. Trueheart’s getting his shield at oh-ten hundred.”
“I hate to miss that, particularly since you’ll be in uniform.” He watched her drown her waffles in butter and syrup.
So did Galahad, who began a stealthy inch-by-inch bellying forward until Roarke cocked an eyebrow at him. The cat rolled onto his back, batting busily at the air.
“I’ll be stripping off the uniform as soon as the ceremony’s over.”
“I
really
hate to miss that.”
“Ha ha. We’ll hit the rest of the skirts, then talk to his offspring. Maybe they’ll have more to say than his wife.”
“I assume you’ve already checked, and he hasn’t shown up. Alive or dead.”
“Not so far. I’ll check in again later with Missing Persons, and have Peabody keep up a running check with hospitals. Got a BOLO on him, and an alert.”
She stuffed in more waffles, and thought if every day started off with sex and waffles, people would maybe be less inclined to kill each other.
Or maybe not.
“If he shows up dead, I’ll get tagged,” she added. “Meanwhile, I’m having the locals check his other residences, just in case. I expect the lab to confirm the elephant this morning.”
“That’s not a phrase you hear often.”
“Heavy object used to whack Mr. Mira. Fancy elephant statue. I dreamed it came to life and started rampaging through that brownstone. It’s only about this big.” She stopped eating long enough to hold up her hands. “But still, elephant.”
“There are times I envy the creativity of your dream life.”
“I think I stunned it before it got out and tore up the neighborhood, but it’s vague, and it sort of rolled into another one.”
“The elephant rolled into another elephant?”
“No, the dream—well, sort of the elephant. I had it in Interview. You know like: You’re looking at attempted murder, Mr. Phant, but if you cooperate I can see about dealing that down to simple assault.”
He laughed hard enough to have Galahad making another try for waffles. Roarke just waved the cat away. “Is it a wonder I adore you? ‘Mr. Phant.’”
“Yeah, it seems funny now, but I was pretty serious. I think the damn elephant’s the only tangible thing I’ve got here, and it was nothing more than handy. It doesn’t apply.”
“It was used to hurt someone who matters a great deal to you.”
“Yeah, I guess. I’m going to try to swing by there sometime today, depending on how things go.” Since they were there, she plucked a fat
blackberry out of the little bowl, frowned. “Am I supposed to take something? Like, I don’t know, flowers or something?”
“I wouldn’t think it’s necessary, but flowers or a small token? Never wrong.”
“Okay, well, we’ll see how it goes.” She polished off the waffles. “I’m going to review a couple things, check in with Mira, and get going.”
“Let me know if the senator shows up, one way or the other, would you?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll be seeing Nadine later today,” he said when Eve rose to strap on her weapon harness, toss a jacket over it. “She’s got where she wants to be down to a warehouse space prime for conversion and a triplex on the Upper West Side.”
“Triplex—a penthouse kind of thing, slick building, fully secured, lots of amenities?”
“It is, yes.”
“Tell her to take the triplex. She might think a warehouse is frosty, and how she can renovate it, make it slick and sleek, but the process would make her crazy. Plus, when? She’s got her gigs at Channel Seventy-five, the book thing, blah blah.”
She glanced back at him. “Both of them yours?”
“They are—she eliminated several other locations and properties, then asked me to suggest two of mine. And asked if I’d take her through both today. She’s been having nightmares and wants to get out of her apartment.”
“Told her not to open the damn door,” Eve muttered. “Triplex, done.” She walked back, leaned over, and kissed him. “Later.”
He tugged her back for another kiss. “Take care of my cop.”
“I gotta, since you’ve got something to tell me about thirty years from now. Triplex,” she repeated as she started out. “Tell her to stop fucking around and do it.”
—
S
he’d assumed she’d left in plenty of time—even early—but traffic snarled and stalled the entire way. She reached the Chrysler Building, wondering why more people didn’t work from home and leave the streets to those who really needed them. She hunted up parking, then traveled two blocks on foot.
Roarke had been correct about the bitter morning. The sky was a bowl of hard, pale blue, and the air was just as hard and pale. She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her coat, searching for warmth, and found gloves.
New gloves, with some sort of lining that felt like a warm cloud. It wouldn’t take her long to lose them, she thought, but for the moment, they were welcome.
She started to tag Peabody to get an ETA, then spotted her partner at the crosswalk.
There was no mistaking that pink coat in a sea of blacks, grays, and dark blues. Add the multicolored hat on the short flip of dark hair, the mile of scarf—in bleeding blues today—and she could’ve spotted Peabody six blocks off.
She waited while her partner joined the river surge across the street.
“How’s Mr. Mira?” Peabody asked immediately. “Did you check this morning?”
“Not yet. I don’t want to bother them if they’re sleeping.”
“Yeah, but if he has a concussion—”
“Mira will haul him to the hospital if he needs it. He looked okay yesterday by the time I sent them home.”
“I hate that somebody hurt him.”
“They could’ve done worse—be glad they didn’t.”
She turned toward the entrance of the grand Deco building.
“I never put it together he was related to Senator Mira. I mean, could they be less alike?”
Eve frowned as she pushed through the door. “You know Edward Mira?”
“Yes. I mean, not personally. Politically. Free-Ager,” Peabody reminded her. “I pretty much disagree with everything he’s for, but . . .”
Peabody trailed off, gaping and neck-craning like a tourist. “I’ve never been in here. It’s abso mag!”
“Stop gawking.” Eve added an elbow jab. “Be a fricking cop.”
It impressed, sure, with its three-story entrance, the golden-red marble walls, the glow of the golden floors and palatial pillars.
But cops didn’t gawk.
Eve left Peabody trailing behind her—likely still gawking—and approached one of the info screens.
Welcome. Please state your desired destination.
“The Mira Institute.”
The image of the iconic building on screen morphed into the logo for the Institute.
The Mira Institute occupies floors thirty and thirty-one, with its main lobby on floor thirty. Please state the party or department you wish to visit, and you will be directed.
“The main lobby works.”
Please see the guard at the security station for screening and admittance. Enjoy your visit and the rest of your day.
Even as Eve turned, two uniformed guards stepped in front of her.
“Keep your hands visible. You need to come with us.”
Already been screened, she thought, and their weapons had alerted security.
“We’re NYPSD. I’m going to reach for my badge. Got that?”
She kept her moves slow just in case one of them had a jumpy stunner finger, took out her badge.
The man she showed it to took it, ran it with a pocket scanner. “Lieutenant,” he said, handing it back. “We’ll need to see yours, too,” he added to Peabody.
Once satisfied, he nodded and his companion stepped away, murmured into a lapel mic.
“You’re clear. Take the east bank of elevators to thirty. I’ll alert them. Otherwise, you’ll be stopped when you get off. They have secondary security on thirty.”
“Appreciate it.”
They crossed the lobby, joined a small, chatty group getting on the elevator. She smelled coffee in someone’s go-cup, so sweet it nearly made her teeth ache, and someone else’s overly floral perfume. Two women chirped like mynah birds about hitting the inventory sales downtown on their lunch break, while some guy in a Russian cossack hat droned on into his pocket ’link about a nine o’clock staff meeting.
Eve decided if she was forced to always work in an office, she’d just jump out the nearest window and be done with it.
The mynah birds got off on twenty. Coffee-flavored sugar on twenty-three. Drenched in flowers glided off on spike-heeled boots and a swish of black coat on twenty-seven.
They got off on thirty with the droner.
Reception centered around an S-shaped counter backed by a floor-to-ceiling logo in sober and serious block letters. The waiting area faced the wide window, tinted to cut the glare. Black gel sofas ranged
alongside a trio of gold scoop chairs with controls in their wide backs for music, refreshment, privacy settings, and communication. A life-size portrait of Edward Mira peered down righteously from the far wall.
A woman manned the first wide curve of the counter. She wore a black suit with thin silver piping and triangular shoulders sharp enough to slice bread. She worked busily at a muscular computer, but paused to flash a welcoming smile.