Indulgence In Death Part 25

"Not bad, but no cheers from the crowd." She studied the remaining names on screen one. "Only five. Okay, computer, run a full background on the individuals on screen one, highlight military service."

While it worked, she rose to update her board, to circle it, to consider it until the computer announced her secondary task complete.

She studied the composites Feeney had sent her from the partial image on the amus.e.m.e.nt security.

Could be Dudley, she mused, sporting a fake goatee and long brown hair. Could be Urich. Could be an army of other men. Which is just what the defense team would point out.

The shoe was a better bet. But she'd have the composites as weight, she'd have them to help tip those scales if she needed them, and when she was ready.

She ordered the names on screen two saved and removed, and replaced with the new data.

One ex-wife each, she noted, and each from prestigious, wealthy families. Same circle again. Barely two years for Dudley, shy of three for Moriarity. Just over two years prior to his marriage to one Annaleigh Babbington, Dudley's engagement to a Felicity VanWitt had been announced and its dissolution announcement had come some seven months later.

"I thought that was my job."

"Huh?" She glanced back, mind elsewhere, as Roarke came in.

"The relations."

"This is something else. What?"

"Felicity VanWitt, engaged to Dudley for slightly more than half a year, is first cousin to Patrice Delaughter." He nodded toward the screen.

"Moriarity's ex-wife."

"f.u.c.ker."

"When I can, and only with you, darling."

"Not you." But she laughed. "Delaughter married Moriarity right after Dudley and the cousin broke it off. Moriarity would've been twenty-six, Dudley twenty-five. They met through the women. I want to talk to the women. Hold on," she snapped when the computer interrupted with another completed task.

She took a breath, cleared her head again. "On-screen."

Pacing, she read the data on each name. "See this one? Joseph Dudley, good old Joe. Great-uncle to our current Dudley. Joe gets tossed out of Harvard, drops out of Princeton, gets a couple knocks for drunk and disorderly. Then he joins the regular Army as a grunt. He's the only private, regular Army of the bunch, and he's the closest relation. Not a cousin six times removed or whatever it is. But the great-granddaddy's brother."

"He served during the Korean War," Roarke added. "Earned a Purple Heart."

"I bet he had a bayonet. I bet you my a.s.s he did."

"I already have your a.s.s, or intend to."

"Cute. I raise that bet with Joe bringing that bayonet home as a memento, where it ended up being pa.s.sed down to Winnie."

"Difficult to prove."

"We'll see about that, but even if I can't, it's another strong probable. We're loaded with them."

"By the way, they didn't attend the same schools. But the fiancee and the ex-wife-the cousins-both attended Smith-as did a female cousin of Dudley's at the same time."

"Okay, so they go back. They go back, ran in the same pack, at least in their twenties. And they're still running in the same pack. Both had marriages that failed. Neither had offspring, and both remain unmarried and unpartnered. Lots of common ground. Like minds? Compet.i.tive."

She blew out a breath. "Murderous, that's a different matter. Look at the fiancee. She's married now, married for eleven years, two kids. Lives in Greenwich, that makes it easy. Worked as a psychologist until the first kid. Professional mother status until last year."

"The youngest would have started school."

"She's the one I want to talk to first. Tomorrow. They're not going to hold off the next round too long. Not too long."

She sat, went back to work.

CHAPTER 13

EVE WOKE IN THE QUIET , IN THE STILLNESS, and for an instant thought the waking a dream. But she knew the arms around her, the legs tangled with hers. She knew the scent of him, and drifted into it as her mind waded through the thinning fog of sleep.

She barely remembered going to bed. He'd carried her, as he often did when she conked out over her work. Reams of data, she thought, and nothing solid in that fluid stream to push the investigation beyond theory.

She'd run it all again, picked at it and through it, re-angled it. Connections to connections always meant something, so they'd conduct more interviews.

Swim in the stream long enough, she told herself, you'd rap up against something solid.

"You're thinking too loud."

She opened her eyes, looked at Roarke. I t was rare to wake with him on a workday as he habitually rose well before she did. She often thought he conducted more business in the hours just before and after dawn than most did in a full day.

Did they live their work or work their lives? And boy, her brain wasn't ready to tackle that kind of question at this hour. Better just to know whichever it was-or maybe it was both-they did okay with it.

In the normal course of things, by the time she got up he'd be checking the stock and other financial reports on-screen, drinking coffee, fully dressed in one of his six million perfectly fitted suits.

And why did men wear suits? she wondered. How and why had it worked out so men wore suits and women wore dresses, unless you were talking about trannies? Who decided these things? And how come everybody just went along so guys said, "Sure, I 'll wear suits and tie a colorful noose around my neck," and women said, "No problem, I 'll wear this thing that leaves my legs bare, then stick these shoes with stilts on the back on my feet"?

That was something to think about, she decided. But some other time because right now it was nice to wake this way, all warm and soft and naked together, as they had on vacation.

"Still too loud," he murmured. "Mute your brain."

I t made her smile, the slurry voice, the before-coffee irritability. That was usually her job. She tried to judge the time by the soft gray light sliding through the sky window, tried to calculate how much sleep they'd managed to catch.

He opened his eyes. Like a blue bolt of lightning, she thought, in the soft gray.

"Not going to shut up, are you then?"

The h.e.l.l with the time, she decided. I f he was still in bed, it was pretty d.a.m.n early.

"I guess I could think about something else." She stroked a hand down his flank. Watching his eyes as she glided it up again between their tangled legs. "Since you're up anyway. I t's funny, isn't it, how a guy's d.i.c.k wakes up before he does. Why is that?"

"I t doesn't like to miss an opportunity. Such as now," he added when she guided him inside her.

"Nice." She sighed, and when she began to move, it was just as slow and easy.

Soft, sweet-this aspect of his cop, his warrior never failed to dazzle him. His mind and body woke to her, roused to her in a long, quiet rise while day took its first breath in the sky above them.

Her whiskey-colored eyes intoxicated, but more, in them was the light he'd yearned for all of his life. She was his daybreak, his sunrise after the long, hard shadows of night.

Wanting more, needing more, he shifted to bring her under him, pressed his lips to the curve of her neck. And with the taste broke his fast with her.

She sighed again, but longer, deeper with a catch in her throat as pleasure saturated every pore. Her mind emptied so all those circling thoughts drifted away under the blissful hum of sensation. That steady beat that was heart and blood and breath belonged to them in this still and hazy moment before dawn. With it there were no questions, no cases, no sorrows, no regrets.

She gave herself to it, and him, let herself open on that slow ride.

When her breath quickened, when it all coalesced inside her, burgeoning on that thin line between need and release, she framed his face in her hands. She wanted his face in her eyes when the line dissolved.

For a long, lovely moment the world slid away so the morning shimmered to life with quiet joy.

With the jump start to the day, she didn't feel guilty about loitering over a breakfast of berries and a bagel. While the morning reports scrolled on- screen, she indulged in a second cup of coffee.

"Ninety-six." She nodded toward the forecast. "And look at that humiture."

"The city'll be a steambath."

"I like steam." She bit into her bagel as the cat watched her with hope and resentment. "And we'll be out of the city for a while anyway.

Connecticut," she reminded him. "I spent a lot of time getting the skinny on Dudley's former fiancee, and his ex-wife, and Moriarity's ex. n.o.body knows you like an ex, and generally, n.o.body's happier to share the c.r.a.ppier sides of you."

"Then I 'd better keep you."

"Be a fool not to. Neither of them's been able, or maybe it's willing, to maintain a serious long-term relationship. Except, the way it looks, with each other." She plucked a fat black raspberry out of the bowl. "That's telling. I burned my eyes reading society squibs, articles, gossip s.h.i.t. They've dated a lot of the same women, and that's interesting, too. Another kind of compet.i.tion maybe."

She scooped up more berries. "And another thing I found interesting. There's all these little bits about one or both of them being at some bullfight in Spain, some big premiere in Hollywood, or skiing the Matterhorn or whatever. Doing the shiny spots when other people in that strata do the shiny spots. Would we be doing that if I wasn't such a b.i.t.c.h about it?"

"Absolutely. Pa.s.s me that coffee, b.i.t.c.h."

She snorted out a laugh. "Remember your c.r.a.ppier side, ace, and my knowledge thereof. Anyway, what was interesting was none of the exes were in any of the shiny spots at the same time as they were. Not once that I could find a mention of. They still occupy that same strata, and the ex- wives in particular run the same kind of loop, but they never seem to hit the same spot at the same time. Running with that, I sc.r.a.ped a little more off. Ex-Moriarity has a second ex, but they do. Hit the same spot at the same time, often. I want to get her to tell me why that is."

She paused. "Did you know there are all kinds of write-ups and little features on us, on our vacation?"Roarke pointed a finger at Galahad who'd begun his crouch toward the berries. The cat turned his head toward the screen as if suddenly enraptured by the financial news.

"I expect there would be."

"Doesn't it bother you?"

"No, it's just what is." He watched her drink some of the orange juice he'd fortified with a vitamin supplement. "And none of those who write up that sort of thing have any idea I 'm sitting here having breakfast with my b.i.t.c.h of a wife after some very pleasant morning s.e.x."

She shifted her gaze. "The cat knows."

"He'll keep his mouth shut if he knows what's good for him. We have home." He touched a hand briefly to hers. "Outside of it? Privacy isn't as important, or as possible."

"I get that, mostly. Some of these people, and I think these two are in that type, they seek out that kind of attention. They want to read about what they were wearing when they had pizza in some trattoria in Florence."

Apparently she'd been wearing cropped celadon pants and a white, sleeveless float. She shrugged that off.

"They like attention," she continued. "I think that plays into why they chose this sort of murder game, with the attention-getting elements. They like hearing the media buzz about it."

"Another reason they may have timed it so it favored the odds of you being called in as primary."

"Maybe." She downed the rest of the juice having no idea how much that pleased him. "I need to get going. I 'm going to swing by and pick Peabody up at her place, save some time."

"Will you spread the word about Sat.u.r.day, or should I?"

"Sat.u.r.day?"

"Your gathering of friends."

She stayed blank another moment. "Oh. Right. I 'll do it."

He pulled out a memo cube. "A reminder." He took her chin, drew her over for a kiss. "Try not to come home with any more slices or holes."

She trailed a finger down his side, where he'd had a slice of his own. "Same goes."

She used the time she poked along in traffic to send e-mails for what Roarke called the gathering of friends, got it off her plate. And promptly forgot about it.

Attention, she thought. Her killers enjoyed it. Considered it their due? Possibly. A different matter from the killer who sought attention because on some level he wanted to be caught, wanted to be stopped, even punished.

I f it was, as her line of theory followed, some sort of contest or compet.i.tion, getting caught wasn't an issue. Winning was-or if not winning, the compet.i.tion itself.

However, compet.i.tions had rules, she concluded. Had to have some sort of structure, and in order to win, someone else had to lose.

How many more rounds of play? she wondered. Was there an endgame?

Questions circled in her mind as she stopped at a light, idly watched pedestrians cross. Ordinary people, she mused, off to their ordinary day.

Breakfast meetings, shops to open, marketing to deal with, jobs waiting to be done.

People with a direction to keep, ch.o.r.es to be done, lists in their heads, duties to perform. Most people, most ordinary people, ran by the clock.

Work, school, family, appointments, schedules.

What did these two run by? They weren't ordinary people, but two men born into the top level of privilege. Men who could have whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it, and ordinary people served it up for them, ran on their schedule, even their whim.