“It was hard for you, but you were protecting him.”
“I wanted to punch the reporter who asked me if he was a suspect. If Professor Dennis Mira was a fucking suspect. But I couldn’t. I have to look out for him, Roarke, but the worthless son of a bitch is my victim, and I have to stand for him, whatever I think of him.”
“You did have an all-around pissy day.”
“That’s not all of it.” She won the war with tears, eased back.
“I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll have an early dinner, and you’ll tell me. Then we’ll work on it. Dennis matters to me as well, very much matters.”
“I know he does. I don’t know if I can eat.”
“That means it has to be pizza, and I’ll make that deal with you if there’s a side salad involved.”
“Okay. Let’s give it a shot.”
She paid a little more attention to the setup while they ate: the replica of her old table where she’d sat for a meal—occasionally. More often she’d eaten, when she’d eaten, at her desk.
It probably wouldn’t kill her to consider a better table, she thought as she poked at the salad. But—
“Tell me,” Roarke said.
So she did, from the early meeting at the Mira Institute to the break for Trueheart’s ceremony, finding the body, notifying next of kin, and on to the Mira home. Then the interviews and her impressions of the women who’d had affairs with the senator.
“You pushed a lot into one day.”
“It didn’t end there. And there’ll be more women, that’s a given. Bagging women was like his fricking hobby. And with them? Guilt or defiance, cold calculation, self-preservation. They all had reasons for cheating, and I don’t buy any of them.”
“You think they’re lying?”
“No—or not exactly. The two I have at the top there?” She gestured toward the board. “Something more, something a little off. But I mean I don’t buy the concept. You stick or you don’t—and you don’t roll around with a married guy because he sticks or he doesn’t.”
“You see it in black-and-white.”
“Damn straight.”
“Fortunately for my skin, I agree with you. But there are many who see the concept as a more gray area, depending on the circumstance.”
“Then why do the marriage thing? Stick or don’t,” she said again. “MacKensie? Needs a harder look. She comes across as the type who stays home, observes rather than participates. And is a—what is it—Plain Joan?”
“That’s Jane.”
“Yeah, right, because it rhymes. I’m not going to say the vic had a specific type, but every other one of the list is a looker, and comes off confident. Is she the exception, or is she putting on a show? Harder look. Same with Downing. Not the Jane bit, but something that felt off. Letting some rich, influential old guy do her for profit and advancement, okay. But there was a lie in there. MacKensie played it too Jane, and too jittery, and Downing? Way too prepared.”
“More prepared than the one with the lawyer already on tap?”
“Yeah, the one with the lawyer was just a stone bitch. Downing? She’s got sly in her eyes. That rhymes, too. Plain Jane and Sly Eye.”
She picked up a slice. It was rare for pizza not to appeal, but she only ate it to avoid the inevitable nudge from Roarke.
“The one you dislike most is the one you suspect least.”
“Right now. But here’s what I started wondering. What if sleeping with the vic isn’t the only connection here? All of them knew him for a dog, banged him anyway. What if they knew each other? Not just knew there were others, but more specifically.”
“An I Slept with Senator Mira Club?”
“I think when you cheat with many, the odds of paths crossing go up. I’m wondering whose paths might have crossed, and what happened then.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t have much time to play the angle before the vic’s son and daughter showed up. And that was the second hardest part of the pissy day.”
She’d eaten a baby bunny’s portion of her salad, Roarke noted, and barely touched the pizza, which usually did the trick.
So whatever the second hardest part had been was still with her.
“Why is that?”
“They’re tight. He’s got Mr. Mira’s eyes. That’s irrelevant,” she said.
“Not to you.”
“To the investigation. They’re tight,” she repeated. “And when you listen to them, observe, it’s clear they’ve always been tight, and basically they only had each other. Parents who had them primarily—maybe exclusively—to present an image. The image of an attractive, traditional, well-heeled family, because that image could further the vic’s career. Lawyer to judge, judge to senator. And likely he hoped for more, but backed off it rather than lose an election.”
“I see,” he said, and he did.
“It’s also clear they understood this, and their expected role from a young age. They understood their parents’ marriage, and the family itself, was surface and show. They were expected to behave in a scripted manner, to follow the family line to Yale, to law, to an advantageous marriage. Just pawns, right from the jump, who knew their parents for cheats and liars and hypocrites.”
She set the half slice of pizza down. “It’s not the same, I know it’s not.”
“Not so very different.” And because he understood, he laid his hand over hers. “Physical abuse is a tangible thing. A child beaten and raped as you were, that shows if anyone cares to look. Emotional abuse leaves marks and scars, but they’re internal. You, as they, knew from a tender age you were created for a purpose. It doesn’t matter that theirs was to walk a golden path, and yours was dark and brutal. You were all caged in and devalued by the very people who should have cherished and protected you.”
“Same with you.”
“Same with me, yes. They had each other, and that got them through. We found each other, and that changed the path for both of us. It’s hardly a wonder, darling Eve, that you related to them, felt for them, and for yourself.”
“It’s not something that can get in the way of the job. It could if I let it, so I needed to come home, settle it all down, start fresh.”
“And walked straight into the redhead in boots. Poor timing all around. I can apologize for the timing adding to the general pissiness of your day.”
“You didn’t know about it, so . . . They’re not in this.” She looked back at the board, at the ID shots. “Not just because he has Mr. Mira’s eyes, or because I can relate. They made their own lives, they didn’t follow the path, made their own. And they’re happy. I’ll look. I’ll cover the ground, but this wasn’t a family thing. It hinges on sex.”
“You may not have done justice to the food, but I’ll help you cover the ground.”
“We can save it for later.” Grateful, she took his hand, gave it a quick squeeze. “Once I get some work under me, I might feel more like pizza.”
“All right then. Let me take the senator’s children. Your instinct says they’re not a part of this, so you won’t waste time looking into them.”
“Or relating.”
“Or that.”
“Okay, then I can start at the top of my list.”
She looked back at the board, and Carlee MacKensie.
10
At her desk, she brought up her incomings, found Peabody’s verification of all alibis, right down the line. Considering, she decided rather than starting with MacKensie, she’d do a run on Downing’s alibi.
Lydia Su.
Make that Dr. Lydia Su, Eve discovered. Biophysicist, on staff at Lotem Institute of Science and Technology, New York. Age thirty-three, single. Asian—Korean and Chinese. One sib, a sister, four years younger—a linguist, Eve noted, living in London. Parents married thirty-five years—a nice run, in Eve’s opinion. Father a neurosurgeon, mother also a scientist. Nanotech.
So, Eve thought, highly motivated, highly intelligent, highly educated family.
Well-educated in Lydia Su’s case, Eve read, at Yale.
“Interesting. Isn’t that interesting?”
But then a lot of really smart people, rich people, motivated people went to Yale.
Still . . .