Origin in Death (14 page)

"Okay." She sat on the edge of her desk and studied him. "What if I didn't love you anymore?"

"Then my life would no longer be worth living, and I'd have probably self-terminated or simply died of a broken, battered heart."

She had to grin at him, then sobered and shook her head. "She didn't love him. The widow. She put on a dignified show, but she didn't have all the lines, and she didn't- What's it when actors . . ." She threw out her arms, put a horrified expression on her face, slapped her arm-crossways over her chest.

"Miming? Please don't do that again. It's rather frightening."

"Not miming. People should be allowed-no, they should be required to chase mimes down the street with bats. Emote, that's the word. Avril didn't emote believably. See there was a tone when she talked about him, and another when she talked about her kids. She loves the kids. She didn't love their father, or not anymore. Not through and through. Peabody figures she had some side action."

"Seems reasonable. You don't?"

"When do I have time for side action when you're nailing me every chance you get?"

He reached out, gave her hair a quick tug. "Quick tonight, aren't you?"

"Must be the buzz, because I've got one going on this. Maybe she had a side dish. And maybe she's that smart and that quick and calculating. Duplicating her father-in-law's murder to muddy the waters. But I'm thinking it is what it looks like. Connected murders by or on behalf of the same parties. And she's in it."

"Why? Money, sex, fear, power, rage, jealousy, revenge. Aren't those the headliners?"

"Power's in there. They were powerful men, killed with a tool of their own trade. If it's rage, it's ice cold. I don't see fear, and money doesn't give me the buzz. Jealousy's unlikely. Revenge-that's the unknown."

"The money's plentiful, and well channeled. I haven't, as yet, found any that's questionable. Their accounts are ordered, extremely well organized and maintained."

"There's more somewhere."

"Then I'll find it."

"Here's the gist."

Eve ran it through for him quickly. As she spoke, he came in, opened a recessed door, and took out brandy. He poured a snifter for himself, and knowing his wife, ordered her a cup of black coffee. He hoped it would be her last of a long day.

She didn't like them, her victims, he thought. It wouldn't stop her from pursuing whoever was responsible for their deaths, but it wasn't punishing her as murder often did.

It was the puzzle that gave her the buzz she'd spoken of, the buzz she'd use and burn through until she found the answers.

But the dead, this time, didn't haunt her. The girls she believed they'd used would. And for them, he knew, she'd burn through until she found those answers and exhausted herself.

"It's not impossible the system was compromised," he said when she'd finished. "Depends on the skill of your B-and-E man." He passed her the coffee. "But in that neighborhood, at that time of the evening you'd have to have extreme skill. Particularly extreme if when EDI examines the system they still find no sign of tampering."

"It's more likely she had the codes, and a voice box or clearance We've taken in the droids, too, and EDD will take them apart, see if any were compromised. If Icove's orders were countermanded by the wife at some point earlier today, one of the droids could have opened the door for the killer, then had its memory washed."

"It would show. Unless, again, you're extremely skilled."

"He wasn't eating-Icove. No appetite. So if his tummy rumbled okay, he wants a little bite. But he's working in his office. Sequestered there. Wiping data, I'll bet your fine ass."

She paced now, walking it through. "He doesn't go downstairs to the kitchen to order a tray of food. It's not efficient. And you know what it is-a pretty tray with pretty fruit, artfully arranged cheese and whatnot. It's wifely."

"I wouldn't know," Roarke said dryly. "I don't believe my wife ha-ever artfully arranged cheese on a tray for me."

"Bite me. You know what I'm saying. It's female and fussy. The sort of thing fussy females do to cajole somebody to eat. But it wasn't the wife. She's in the Hamptons, eating ice cream with the kiddies, entertaining the neighbors. Making damn straight sure somebody can swear on a mountain of Bibles she was somewhere else when that scalpel went into Icove's heart. So maybe Icove was fooling around and somehow his side dish and his wife are in league."

"Back to sex."

"Yeah. Maybe he was cheating on both of them. Maybe his sainted father was a perv and diddled with all three. But that's not it." She shook her head. "It doesn't feel like sex. It's the project. It's the work. She lied to me about knowing about his work, knowing about any long-term private research. That was the missed beat in her routine. There was the rage, just a flicker. I saw it in her eyes."

She sipped her coffee. "She could've planted the weapon at the Center. Who's going to question Dr. Will's wife if she wanders around? Easy enough to palm a scalpel, conceal one. She's the main link between the two victims. Former ward of one, wife of the other. Maybe, if this project goes back far enough, she was part of it."

"It's a long time to wait to take your revenge," Roarke pointed out. "A lot of emotional ties during that time. She couldn't have been forced to marry and live with, have children with Will Icove, Eve. It had to be her choice. If she's involved, isn't it more likely she found out about this project-objected, was appalled or enraged?"

"Then she's still got a choice. If you're that appalled, you report it. Could do it anonymously. Give the authorities just enough to make them investigate. You don't kill the father of your children because you're upset about his side work. You leave him, or you fry him legally. You kill two men like this? It's a personal act, caused by a personal act."

She shrugged. "I think. I'm going to talk to Mira."

"It's late. Let's get some sleep."

"I want to write this up first, while it's fresh in my mind."

He crossed to her, kissed her brow. "Don't drink any more coffee."

Alone, she wrote the report, added some case notes. Then some questions.

Avril Icove-living relatives?

Exact date and circumstances of Icove's guardianship?

Daily, weekly routines? Times out of the house alone? Where?

When?

Possible connection to woman known as Dolores Nocho-Alverez. Any body or face work? Last visit to the Center prior to father-in-law's death.

I'm what he wanted.

What, if anything, did she take to the Hamptons. She sat back, let it circle through her mind another time or two. Wished for coffee.

She shut down and walked to the bedroom. He'd left the light on low, so she wouldn't come into the dark. Eve stripped, dragged on a nightshirt. When she slid into bed, he drew her into his arms to spoon

"I wanted more coffee."

"Of course you did. Go to sleep."

"She didn't want them to suffer."

"All right."

She started to drift, warm in his arms. "She wanted them dead, but she didn't want them to suffer. Love. Hate. It's complicated."

"It certainly is."

"Love. Hate. But no passion." She yawned, hugely. "If I needed to kill you, I'd want you to suffer. A lot."

He smiled in the dark. "Thanks, darling."

She smiled along with him, and slipped into slumber.

Chapter Eight

AT SEVEN A.M., EVE WAS DRINKING HER SECOND cup of coffee and studying the data she'd pulled up on Avril Icove.

She noted Avril's date of birth, her parents' dates of death, and that she'd become Icove's legal ward before her sixth birthday.

Eve read through Avril's educational data-Brookhollow Academy, Spencerville, New Hampshire, grades one through twelve, with continuing education Brookhollow College.

So the kindly doctor had put his ward in a boarding school straight off the bat. How had she felt about that? Eve wondered. Loses her mother-and where had the kid been while Mommy was off in ... where had it been? Africa. Who'd kept the girl while the mother was off saving lives, and losing her own in Africa?

Then she loses her mother and gets shipped off to school.

No living relatives. Really bad luck there, Eve thought. No sibs; parents were both only children. Grandparents dead before she was born. No records of aunts or uncles or fricking second cousins twice removed.

Kinda weird, Eve thought. Most everyone had some relation somewhere. However distant.

She didn't, but there were always some exceptions to the rules.

Jeez, look what had happened to Roarke. Go around all your life thinking you're it, then bam! Got yourself enough relatives to people small city.

But Avril's records indicated no blood kin except her two children.

So, she's almost six years old, tragically orphaned, and Icove, her legal guardian, puts her in a swank school. Busy surgeon, busy becoming Icon Icove, raising his own kid, who'd have been, what, about seventeen.

Teenage boys had a habit of getting into trouble, causing trouble, bring trouble. But her run of Dr. Will had shown her a record as spotless as his father's.

Meanwhile Avril's doing sixteen years at basically the same school which struck her as close to a prison term. Of course, she considered as she sipped more coffee, school had been a kind of jail for her.

Marking time, she remembered, until she'd been of legal age and could escape the system that had gobbled her up after she'd been found in that alley in Dallas. Then straight to the Police Academy. Another system, she admitted. But her choice. Finally, her choice.

Had Avril had a choice?

Art major, Eve read, with minors in domestic sciences and theater Married Wilfred B. Icove, Jr., the summer after she'd gotten her degrees-putting him in his middle thirties, with no blemish on his official data, no cohabs.

She'd have to nudge Nadine, see if the reporter could find any juice on serious relationships for the young, rich doctor in any old media records.

No employment for Avril. Professional mother status after the birth of her first child.

No criminal.

She heard the faint swish of airskids and took another hit of coffee as Peabody came in.

"Avril Icove," Eve began. "Personality assessment."

"Well, hell, I didn't know there was going to be a quiz first thing." Peabody dumped her bag, squinted her eyes.

"Elegant and contained," she surmised. "Well-bred and -mannered, and I want to say correct. Assuming the house is her territory-as it most likely would be considering she's a pro mom and he's a busy doctor-I'd say tasteful and discreet."

"She wore a red coat," Eve commented.

"Huh?"

"Nothing, maybe nothing. All that quiet elegance in the house, and she wears a bright red coat." Eve shrugged. "Anything else?"

"Well, she also strikes me as being subservient."

Eve's gaze whipped over. "Why?"

"Our first visit to the house, Icove told her what to do. It wasn't Hey, bitch, get your ass out in the kitchen.' It wasn't harsh, not even really direct, but the dynamic was there. He was in charge, he made the decisions. She's the WIFE, in big letters."

Peabody glanced hopefully at the coffee, but kept going. "Which is something I've been thinking about. She's used to him running the show, making the decisions. So it's not that off-base that she'd be kind of blank and out of it when you tell her he's dead. Nobody's giving her a playbook now."

"She's had sixteen years gilded private education, with honors."

"A lot of people are school smart and don't have any practical skills."

"Get coffee, you're starting to drool."

"Thanks."

"Her father took off, mother's a medical missionary type, off in the wilds. Dies there." Eve raised her voice as Peabody hotfooted it to the kitchen. "Only connection I find to Icove is the mother's professional association. Could be they were lovers, but I don't know that it matters."

Eve cocked her head, studied Avril's ID image on screen. Elegant, she thought. Stunning. And at first glance, she would've said soft. But she'd seen that flash, that one instant. And there'd been steel in those eyes.

"We're going back to the scene," she continued. "I want to go through the house, room by room. Talk to neighbors, other domestic. We'll need to verify her alibi. And I want to know the last time, prior to her father-in-law's death, she was in the Center."

"Going to be busy," Peabody said with her mouth full of glaze doughnut. "They were right there," she mumbled when Eve frowned at her.

"Where?"

"Under D on the menu." She swallowed hastily. "McNab went in with the electronics, so he got home after me. Way. He said he red flagged them. He'll bring Feeney up to date this morning, save you the trouble."

"She wasn't worried about the electronics. She wasn't sweating the security, the transmissions, data." Eve shook her head. "Either she's ice, or there's nothing there to point at her."

"I'm still leaning toward the adultery angle. If Avril's in it, she had to have a partner. You don't kill for someone unless you love them. or they've got you by the short hairs on something."

"Or you pay them."

"Yeah, that. But I was rolling it around. I know it's high yuck factor, but what if the father-in-law had been up her skirt? We're looking at him to have an interest in young women with that project. She was his ward. So he could've been using her sexually. Then passes her to the son so he could, um, keep her handy. Maybe they were tag teaming her."

"It's crossed my mind."

"Then how about this? She's been dominated and used by men. So she turns to a woman. Emotionally, maybe romantically. They hatch it up."

"Dolores."

"Yeah. Say they meet, become lovers." Peabody licked sugar of her fingers. "Between the two of them they figure out how to take out both Icoves, without implicating Avril. Dolores might have worked on Junior, hooked up, seduced him.

"He saw her picture after his father's murder. He didn't blink."

"Okay, that's cold. But it's not impossible. Or she might've looked different with him. Changed her hair, that kind of thing. We damn well know Dolores killed number one. The same method, same weapon used on number two. Probability is ninety-eight and change that she did both."

"Ninety-eight point seven. I ran it, too," Eve said. "Going by that .and adding my conviction that Avril's in this, they know each other. Or Avril hired her. It also means Dolores was in town after the first murder. And may still be. I want to find her."

The door between the offices opened, and Roarke stepped through. The charcoal suit that showed off that lithe body somehow deepened the already staggering blue of his eyes. His hair was swept back from :hat gorgeous face, and the slow easy smile did something almost obscene to a woman's belly.

"You're drooling again," Eve muttered to Peabody.

"So?"

"Ladies. Am I interrupting?"

"Running a few things," Eve told him. "We're going to head out shortly."

"Then my timing's good. How are you, Peabody?"

"Up, thanks. And I wanted to thank you for the invite to Thanksgiving. We're bummed we can't make it, but we're going to shuttle it to my parents' for a couple days."

"Well, it's about family, isn't it, and give them our best. We'll miss you. I like your necklace. What's the stone?"

It was somewhere between red and orange, and chunky. Eve's only thought on seeing it around her partner's neck was that in a chase it would probably swing up and put Peabody's eye out.

"Carnelian. My grandmother made it."

"Really?" He stepped forward, lifted the pendant. "Lovely work. Does she sell her jewelry?"

"Mostly through Free-Ager channels. Indie shops and fairs. It's kind of a hobby."

"Tick-tock," Eve grumbled, and had both of them glancing over at her, Peabody bemused, Roarke amused.

"It certainly suits you," he continued and let the pendant drop again "But I have to confess, I rather miss your uniform."

"Oh, well." She pinked up as Eve rolled her eyes behind Peabody's back.

"I'll be out of your way in a minute, but I have a thing or two that might interest you." Roarke glanced down at the cup Peabody had forgotten, in a hormonal haze, she held. "I could use some of that coffee

"Coffee?" Peabody all but sighed it, then snapped back. "Oh yeah sure. I'll get it. I'll get it."

Roarke smiled after her. "She is a treasure," he stated.

"You got her stirred up. You did it on purpose."

His expression was all innocence. "I haven't any idea what you mean. In any case, I'm glad you'd asked her and McNab for dinner and I'm sorry they won't make it. Meanwhile, I've done some poking around for you, after my morning meeting."

"You had a meeting? Already?"

"Holo-conference. Scotland. They're five hours ahead of us, and I accommodated them. I needed to speak with my aunt in Ireland as well."

Which explained, she thought, why he hadn't been in his usual spot in the sitting area of their room when she'd gotten up at six.

"You find me money?"

"In a sense." He paused, smiling over at Peabody again as she brought in a tray.

"I got fresh for you, Dallas."

"In the sense of what?" Eve demanded impatiently.

But Roarke took his time, personally pouring coffee all around. "Ir. the sense of large bequests and annuities channeled through various arms of Icove's holdings. On the surface, extremely generous and philanthropic. But added up, pushed through the surface and carefully examined, questionable."

"How?"

"Nearly two hundred million-so far-over the last thirty-five ears that I can't account for through his income. A man gives away that kind of green, it should put a bit of a dent here and there in his rockets. Not so." He drank coffee.

"Indicating another source of income. A hidden source."

"It would seem. I suspect there's more. I've only just started on this line. Interesting, isn't it, that a man with a questionable income would moose to donate it-quietly, even anonymously-to worthy causes. Most would buy themselves a nice little country."

"Anonymously."

"He's gone to considerable trouble to distance himself from the donations. A lot of layers between. Trusts, nonprofits, foundations, all crisscrossing, padded between with corporations and organizations." He shrugged. "I don't imagine you need or want a lesson in tax shelters or the like, Lieutenant. Let's just say he has excellent financial advice, and had elected to dump these funds without taking credit for them. Or the considerable write-off on his income. Then again, he isn't reporting the income."

"Tax evasion."

"In a sense. Difficult though, even for the Internal Revenue to squeeze anything out, since the money was shifted to charities. But surely there's an infraction."

"So we need to find the source of the income." Eve took her coffee, circled the office. "There's always a trail."

Roarke's lips curved, slyly. "There isn't, no. Not always."

She shot him a narrowed look. "Somebody who knows how to erase trails ought to be able to find one."

"Somebody should."

"Maybe start at the back end," Peabody suggested. "Places that got the money."

''Give me, say, the five biggest beneficiaries," Eve said to Roarke. "You can shoot it to my office at Central."

"I'll do that. The biggest, by far, is a small private school."

"Brookhollow?" Eve felt the sizzle.

"Gold star for you, Lieutenant. Brookhollow Academy, and its higher-education companion, Brookhollow College."

"Pop." Eve turned back to her wall screen with a thin, satisfied grin "Guess who got her entire education at those institutions."

"It rings," Peabody agreed. "But it could be argued he sent his ware there because he believed in the school and put his money in it. Or h; put his money in it because his ward went there."

"Check it out now. When was it established, by whom? Lists of faculty, directors, whatever the hell. Find me a list of the current students .   And the names of female students who took the tour with Avril Hannson."

"Yes, sir." Peabody hurried to Eve's desk unit and set to work.

"This feels hot," Eve said, then looked over at Roarke. "It's good lead."

"My pleasure." He tipped her chin up with his finger, touched his lips to hers before she could object. "On a personal front, would you like me to contact Mavis about Thanksgiving? We're getting close to the mark, and it appears your plate's more full than mine at the moment."

"That'd be good."

"Anyone else?"

"I don't know." She shifted, uncomfortable. "I guess Nadine, maybe Feeney'll probably be doing a family deal, but I'll run it by him."

"What about Louise and Charles?"

"Sure. Fine. Are we really doing this?"

"Too late to turn back." He kissed her again. "Keep in touch, will you? I'm caught up now." He strolled back into his office, shut the door.

"I love McNab."

Even as she turned toward Peabody, Eve could feel the muscle under her right eye vibrating toward a twitch. "Oh man. Do you have to do this?"

"Yeah. I love McNab," Peabody repeated. "It took me a while to resize it, or get there, however it works. But he's the one. If you were to drop down dead, and Roarke decided I could comfort him with wild

sex I probably wouldn't do it. Probably. But even if I did, I'd still love McNab."

"At least I'm dead in your sexual fantasy."

"It's only fair. I wouldn't cheat on my partner. So I probably wouldn't have sex with Roarke, should the opportunity arise, unless both you and McNab were killed in a freak accident."