“The heart’s just a pulsing muscle without the head.” She angled to study him. “You look good.” Major understatement, she thought. “And that’s a thing. I might’ve banged you if you’d been a useless user, but I’d have moved on.”
“I believe I was still on your murder board as a suspect when we first banged each other.”
“Technically,” she allowed. “But I didn’t figure you for it. If I’d been wrong, I’d have taken you down, slick. Maybe I’d have banged you one last time first, but I’d’ve taken you down.”
“Darling, that’s so sweet—and oddly arousing.”
“The point is she strikes as too smart and centered to fall for his bullshit.”
“He knows how to charm—and lays it on when he has a goal. He has intellect and can talk a good game.” Roarke shrugged. “He’s, at the core, a grifter with some skill. The smart and steady can fall for a well-oiled grift, especially those who play to the heart. One thinks: Oh, but it’s different with me, or I can change him.”
She frowned as they drove through the gates, and home rose up into the deepening sky with all its wonders and welcomes.
“I was going to say polka dots don’t change their spots, but sometimes they can. They do. You’re married to a cop, and I’m living in an urban castle.”
He stopped the car, leaned over to kiss her. “Polka dots are spots.”
“Until they get smeared and blend together. Then they’re splotches.”
“That’s both true and confusing,” he decided. “So we’ve smeared our spots into splotches for each other.”
“Right, but Banks? His type’s always going to be a polka dot.”
“I’m not completely sure how, but I’m forced to agree. And I suspect Willimina came to the same conclusion, and ended the relationship.”
“But not before she talked to him about the merger, about the negotiations. Not before he . . . leveraged that to sound important, or even more. It just fits.”
They got out of the car, circled around to the door together.
“You do know it’s leopards that don’t change their spots, not polka dots?”
“A leopard’s born, lives, and dies a leopard, so that’s that.”
“That’s rather the point of the adage.”
“Why need an adage on something that’s just that? It’s a waste of words. If people didn’t have stupid sayings about the obvious, they wouldn’t waste so many words and talk so damn much.”
She stepped inside the great foyer of her personal urban castle. There, the black-clad Summerset, back from his winter break, loomed with the fat cat at his feet.
Bony and cadaverous as ever, she thought, but he’d picked up some color in the tropics, and that threw her off. It just threw her off.
Worse, it made her wonder if the tropical color extended to other areas of that skeletal frame. And the wondering made her fear a brain bleed.
“Nearly on time,” he said in that snooty voice, “and together.” His brows arched up. “And with no visible injuries.”
“The day’s young.” Eve pulled off her coat, tossed it over the newel post as the cat padded over to wind through her legs. “You’re not.”
She sailed upstairs as Roarke lingered to exchange some pleasantries. The cat trotted after her.
8
She went straight to her home office to begin setting up her board. By the time Roarke came in, tie and suit coat discarded, she’d made some progress.
He turned on the fire—a nice touch she often forgot.
“I’ve a bit of work to see to,” he told her. “We’ll say twenty minutes till dinner?”
“Thirty’s better.”
“That’ll do.”
With Roarke doing what Roarke did in his adjoining office, she finished the board, programmed coffee, created her book.
Then she put her boots on the desk, sat back with her coffee. Galahad leaped into her lap, and that was fine. She stroked him absently while she drank coffee. And gave herself thinking time.
No suspects. A gut-hunch that potentially tied a wanker—an excellent word—as a conduit of information or a suspect. An innocent man weaponized and his family shattered. Twelve people dead, two successful companies damaged.
She closed her eyes.
Gambling, stock market, profit.
“Explosives,” she muttered, opening her eyes when she sensed Roarke come into the room. “You use explosives for impact, for creating not just loss of life, destruction of property, but panic.”
“And so?” He stood a moment, studying her board.
“There’ve got to be other ways to manipulate the market, less destructive and murderous ways. They weren’t worried about the cops figuring out it wasn’t Rogan—not willingly Rogan. But they wanted that initial impact, and the panic—and the results of both. Who died, how many? Just luck of the draw. One, a dozen, two dozen, that’s not important, not really. Result-oriented, right? Risk takers, gamblers, but focused on results. Blast the window open, grab what you can while the time’s ripe, then sell it at maximum profit.”
When she shifted, Galahad leaped down, sauntered over to her sleep chair, jumped up.
“It could be just a game, the gambling game,” she continued, and rose to join Roarke at the board. “But I put that low on the list. They put too much into it—the time, the effort, the risk, and were too willing to kill an undetermined number of people—even after beating up a woman, terrifying a kid—not to reap a solid reward. But . . . that’s relative, isn’t it? What might be a good profit for you, it’s a different level than say one for Peabody.”
“Ten times an investment—likely more if they played the margins—is, regardless of the outlay, a very solid reward. If Peabody, for instance, bought five thousand of Econo this morning, she’d sell off now, if she chose, at more than fifty.”
“I get that. And they may be more Peabody’s level, or they might be yours. They’re probably something between. Peabody told me she and McNab are going to give you ten k to invest.”
“When they’ve put it together, and are comfortable with it.” He glanced over. “Does that concern you?”
“No. Maybe. No.” She paced away, paced back. “No,” she said more definitely. “It’s their money, or will be, and you’ll be careful. Probably more careful than with your own.”
She stopped, frowned again, paced again. “That’s a thing.”
“Is it?” He strolled over, opened the wall panel for a bottle of wine.
“They could save up the money, invest it themselves, but they don’t know squat about the stock market or trading or investments. They could go to some brokerage house and get somebody to advise them, but why do that when there’s you?”
Still frowning, she took the wine Roarke offered. “So it’s smart on their part. It’s a smart way to invest, to—what do they say—spend to make?”
“They do say that.”
“Trusting you with it, that’s as close to a sure thing as it gets. And this?” She gestured to the board. “That’s what they put together. It’s not so much a gamble if you stack the deck. Yeah, it can still go south, but you’ve skewed the odds in your favor. You’ve loaded the dice,” she murmured.
“And by the time the house is wise to it,” Roarke finished, “you’ve taken your winnings and gone. We’ll eat,” he added, “then work on it. I think it’s a night for red meat.”
She sat down to steak, tiny gold potatoes, tender spears of asparagus. After the first bite, she thought Roarke had been right again. It was a night for red meat.
“When you were still on my board,” she began, “you roped me into having dinner with you here. Steak.”
“I remember, yes.”
“That was the second time I’d ever had real steak. The cow deal.”
He broke a roll in two, handed her half. “You never said. When was the first?”
“When I made LT, Feeney took me out for a steak dinner. You get so used to the fake stuff, you think what’s the big deal.” She cut off a bite, studied it, ate it. “Then you find out. First steak,” she asked him.
“I was eight, or about, and stole one when I was rummaging about in a big house in a fancy part of Dublin. People will hide valuables in their cold boxes, as if any thief worthy of the name won’t look there.”