Reunion in Death

*** CHAPTER 6 ***

Because stalling made her feel weak and stupid, Eve only managed to put off the trip to Commander Whitney's office until the middle of the day.

The only satisfaction in heading up was being able to ignore Channel 75's ace on-air reporter, Nadine Furst, as she requested an interview regarding the Pettibone-Dunne story.

That was something else she'd have to shuffle in, she thought as she caught a glide out of Homicide. Nadine's investigative skills were as sharp and savvy as her wardrobe. She'd be a handy tool.

As she was shown directly into Whitney's office without even a momentary wait, Eve had to figure he'd been expecting her.

He sat at his desk, a big-shouldered man with a worn, wide face. He had good, clear eyes, and she had reason to know his time off the streets hadn't softened him.

He sat back, giving her a little come-ahead signal with one finger. «Lieutenant. You've been busy.»

«Sir?»

«You made a trip out to my neighborhood this morning, paid a visit to Shelly Pettibone.» He folded those big hands, and his face was unreadable. «I just got an earful from my wife.»

«Commander, it's standard procedure to question any and all connections to the victim.»

«I don't believe I said otherwise.» His voice was deep, rumbling, and as unreadable as his face. «What was your impression of Shelly Pettibone?»

«That she's a sensible, steady, and straightforward woman.»

«I'd have to say that's a perfect description, and I've known her about fifteen years. Do you have any reason to believe she had anything to do with her husband's death?»

«No, sir. There's no evidence leading me in that direction.»

He nodded. «I'm glad to hear it. Lieutenant, are you afraid of my wife?»

«Yes, sir,» Eve said without hesitation. «I am.»

His lips trembled for an instant in what might have been a smothered smile. Then he nodded again. «You're in good company. Anna is a very strong-willed woman with very definite and particular opinions. I'm going to do what I can to keep her off your back on this, and as Shelly isn't on your short list, that seems very doable. But if it comes down to you or me, you're on your own.»

«Understood.»

«Just so we know where we stand. Let me give you some basic background here.» He gestured to a chair. «My family has been very friendly with the Pettibones for a number of years. In fact, one of my sons dated Sherilyn when they were teenagers. It was a bitter disappointment to my wife that the relationship didn't end in marriage, but she got over it.»

There was a framed holograph of his wife on his desk. In a subtle move, Whitney tapped it until it faced toward the wall instead of toward him. «Anna and Shelly are very good friends, and I believe Anna took it harder than Shelly did when Walter left. In fact, Anna refused to see or speak to Walt, which is why we, and our children were not at the party. We were invited, but one doesn't butt heads with Anna over social issues.»

«I don't think less of you for it, Commander.»

His brows arched and for another instant there was a flash of humor in his eyes. «Anna is bound and determined that Shelly marry again, or at the very least develop a serious romantic interest. Shelly hasn't cooperated. She is, as you said, sensible and steady. She's made a comfortable life for herself and maintained, to Anna's bafflement, a cordial relationship with Walt. As for Walt himself, I was fond of him.»

The humor died away. «Very fond of him. He wasn't a man to make enemies. Even Anna couldn't dislike him. His children adored him, and as I know them nearly as well as I know my own, I'll say that though you'll have to follow through on them investigatively, you'll find they had no part in his murder.»

«I've found no evidence nor motive that leads in their direction, Commander. Nor toward their spouses.»

«But you have found Julianna Dunne.»

«Yes, sir.»

He pushed away from his desk, rose. «There are times, Dallas, the system fails. It failed by not keeping that individual in a cage. Now a good man is dead because the system failed.»

«No system is foolproof, but knowing that doesn't make it easier when you lose a friend.»

He acknowledged this offer of condolence with a nod. «Why did she kill him?»

Because he stood, Eve rose. «Her pattern had been to target a man of some wealth and prestige, develop a relationship with him that led to marriage, legally attaching herself in order to gain all or a portion of that wealth upon his death. In the three cases we know of, the target was no less than twenty-five years her senior, and she became his second wife. While Pettibone fits the general type of her favored target, no evidence has come to light that he knew her personally. She was not a legal heir to his estate, and therefore couldn't profit from his death by her usual means.»

Eve took the discs of her reports out of her pocket, set them on his desk. «The most logical motive remains financial gain. I'm pursuing the possibility Dunne was hired out. We've made a first-level pass on the financials of the family and closest business associates. I've found nothing to indicate any large withdrawals, or consistent smaller ones that would meet the fee for a professional hit. I need to go deeper, and have requested authorization for a second level.»

«She'd be good at it,» Whitney commented.

«Yes, sir, she would.»

«Her pattern's also been to move, to re-establish herself in another location after she has the money in hand.»

«She's already broken pattern. But if she's left New York, it would be for another major city. And one, in my opinion, she's familiar with. She's still getting her legs under her, and would prefer the familiar. I've asked Feeney to keep in touch with the police in Chicago and East Washington. I've also asked Dr. Mira to consult. I want her to study the reports and testing results on Dunne.»

«You don't intend to tag the original profiler?»

«No, sir. In my opinion the previous profiler and shrink were too soft on her, and I'd prefer Mira's take. Dunne knows how to play people. Also, her mother and stepfather are still alive. She may attempt contact there at some point. In addition, McNab has compiled a list of people she may have formed a relationship with while in Dockport. I think a trip there might provide some insight.»

«When do you plan to leave?»

«I'd hoped to go tomorrow, sir. I thought to request that Feeney come with me in this case. We both dealt personally with Dunne, and while Peabody could use the experience, her plate's full. Her parents are in town, and I recently gave her a cold case to investigate.»

His brow furrowed. «A homicide? Is she ready for that?»

«Yes, sir, she's ready. She's on the right track, and I believe she can close it.»

«Keep me apprised on all counts. I'll be out of the office most of tomorrow afternoon. Saying good-bye to a friend.»

It felt strange to be able to clock off at end of shift and head home on time. It was stranger still to walk in the front door and not have Summerset lurking in the foyer ready with some pithy remark or observation. She actually found herself standing there for a minute or two, waiting for him, before she caught herself.

Oddly embarrassed, she started upstairs, almost certain he'd be there, sort of lying in wait. But she made it all the way to the bedroom without a sign of him. Or the cat.

It didn't, she realized, feel quite like home.

Until she heard the shower running, and voices murmuring from the adjoining bath. She stepped in and saw Roarke's long, lanky form through the wavy glass of the shower wall.

It was enough to make a woman want to lick her lips.

The voices came from a screen recessed in the shower tiles, and seemed to be some sort of financial report. The man's mind was full of numbers half the time, she thought, and decided to shift it to another occupation.

She stripped where she stood, moved quietly into the criss-crossing sprays behind him, slid her hands around his waist. And down.

His body braced, a quick ripple of muscle and animal instinct.

«Darling.» His voice purred out. «My wife could come home any minute.»

«Screw her.»

He laughed. «Happy to,» he said, and turning had her pressed against the wet tiles.

«Raise water temp to one-oh-one degrees.»

«Too hot,» he muttered against her mouth as the spray heated, steamed.

«I want it hot.» In a quick move, she reversed their positions, clamped her teeth over his jaw. «I want you hot.»

She was already wet, and she was randy. Her hands and mouth busy on him, taking him over in a kind of cheerful aggression. He no longer heard the brisk, clipped voice on-screen that detailed the latest stock reports, the market projections. Only the hiss of spray and the beat of his own blood.

He could want her, every minute of every day. Was certain he would go on wanting her after he was dead and gone. She was the pulse, the reason, the breath.

When he caught her dripping hair in his hand, yanked her head up so his mouth could fuse to hers, it was like feeding a hunger that was never, ever quite sated.

She felt it from him, the edge of that violent appetite he so often masked in elegance and style and patience. When she tasted it, it made her crave the primitive, made her lust for the danger of letting the animal inside them both spring loose to feed.

With him she could be tender, where there had never been tenderness. And with him she could be brutal, without fear.

«Now. Now, now, now! Inside me.»

He gripped her hips, fingers sliding over slick, wet skin until they dug in. Her breath caught when he shoved her back against the tiles, then released on a cry when he rammed himself into her.

Her body plunged through the first vicious orgasm, then raced for more.

Her eyes locked with his. She could see herself there, swimming in, drowning in that vivid blue. Trusting his strength, she wrapped her legs around his waist to take more of him.

Steam billowed, thin mists. Water streamed, hot rain. He drove himself hard and deep, watching, always watching that shocked pleasure radiate over her face. He could see her rising to peak again, the way her eyes blurred, the gilded brown of them deepening an instant before they went blind, an instant before her body gathered, then shuddered.

She clamped around him, a hot, wet fist, and nearly dragged him over with her.

«Take more.» His voice was ragged, his lungs burning. «Take more, and more, until you come screaming for me.»

She could hear the sharp, rhythmic slap of flesh against flesh, of flesh against tile, and could taste when his mouth crushed down on hers again the outrageous need in him. And as he thrust into her, as pleasure and pain and madness merged into one searing mass inside her, she heard herself scream.

Limp as rags, still tangled together, they slid down to the floor of the shower.

«Christ Jesus,» he managed.

«Let's just stay here for an hour or two. We probably won't drown.» Her head dropped onto his shoulder like a stone.

«We might, as I think we're lying on the drains.» But he made no effort to move.

She turned her head so the spray beat down on her face. «But it feels good.»

He cupped her breast. «God knows.»

«Where the hell is everybody?»

«I think we're right here.» Her nipples were still hard, still hot, and inspired him to roll over enough to taste.

She blinked water out of her eyes. «You've got to be kidding.»

«I don't believe I will be if you give me a few minutes here. Less if the water wasn't so bloody hot.»

«Turn the temp down and face my wrath.» She put her hands on either side of his face, lifted his head. Grinned. «We'd better get the hell out of here. The water level's rising.»

Once they managed to pull themselves up, she headed for the drying tube. Roarke grabbed a towel.

«Really, where is everybody?»

«Last I checked, Phoebe was having a fine time playing in the greenhouse. Sam and Summerset had their heads together in the kitchen over some recipe. They've bonded like glue over herbs and sauces and whatever. I'm told they're going out with Peabody for the evening, so you don't have to worry about entertaining them.»

She stepped out of the tube, took the robe he offered, then watched him hook a towel loosely at his hips. «Feeney and I are flying to Chicago tomorrow, taking a shot at Dockport. And no,» she said before he could speak, «we're not taking one of your fancy transpos. We'll use the shuttle, like regular people.»

«Up to you. Any new leads?»

«Nothing that's firming up for us yet.» She followed him into the bedroom, hunted up a pair of jeans. «Found out that Pettibone's first wife and the commander's wife are tight. Makes it a little tricky, even though she's not high on my list. I've got to do a second-level search on the financials of the main players.»

He glanced up as he hooked fresh trousers, met her scowl. «I didn't say a thing.»

«I can hear you thinking, pal, and no. I've got authorization for second level, and that's as deep as I'm going right now. I don't need you using your unregistered equipment or dipping any deeper. We're moving along well enough playing this by the book.»

«Do you ever ask yourself who wrote that book?»

«The long arm of the law. If you've got any free time, I wouldn't mind your take on the financials. You see numbers differently than I do.»

«Lieutenant, I always have time for you.»

He gave her two hours, even settled for eating pizza in her office as they studied the financial affairs of Pettibone's family and the top execs and accounts in his business. Deposits, withdrawals, transfers, bills, and bonuses. «Nothing sends up any flags for me,» Roarke said at length. «You've got a couple of business associates who could use better advice on their portfolios, and that account in Tribeca should be doing a bit more per annum, so I wouldn't be surprised if a bit is going in someone's pocket here and there. Nothing major, but if it were mine, we'd be plugging the holes.»

«How much do you think is being skimmed?» «Eight, nine thousand maybe, and that's only this year. Petty ante. Not enough to kill for.»

«People kill for pocket change, Roarke.»

«Not enough, I should say, to hire a professional. You might want to chat with the manager there, but I'd say you'd be doing it more for form. He hasn't enough to afford a pro's fee, barely enough for an amateur, and he hasn't shifted any real money out of his personals, or the flower shop to manage it. He'll have a minor gambling problem, or a fancy piece on the side.»

«A fancy piece.»

He glanced over. «Well now, side pieces tend to be fancy as a rule, don't they? Still, I'd opt for the gambling as I don't see any purchases that indicate he's got a woman. No hotel bills or out-of-the-way restaurant charges for dinner for two, no out-of-town trips where a man might sneak off with a woman not his wife.»

«Seems to me you know an awful lot about how a man keeps that fancy sidepiece.»

«Does it really? I'd say no more than your average man, and of course in a purely intellectual, even academic sense.»

She picked up another slice of pizza. «Isn't it a good thing I agree with you, all around?»

«It's a great relief to me.»

«I'll have a talk with the guy with sticky fingers.» She rose, eating pizza as she paced. «It should be about money. It's the logical motive. But it doesn't feel like it's about money. Why does she come back to New York and target a man she's never met?»

«Maybe she had met him, or at least was planning to before she was interrupted nearly ten years ago.»

«He was married ten years ago,» Eve began, then paused to let it all sink in. «But maybe he was restless about the marriage even then. Maybe there are signs of that kind of dissatisfaction that a wife, a family, close friends don't see. But an outsider, one who looks for discord might spot it. He could have been on her list as a possible, someone she was researching with the idea of luring him away from his wife and into a relationship, then marriage. He'd have been a real challenge to her because he's basically a very decent, very honest man. Could she corrupt him?»

Considering, Eve turned back. «That would have appealed to her. We never pinned down how long she kept each of her targets in her sights. She may very well have been keeping Pettibone for a future mark, then she's caught, tried, imprisoned. While she's out of the picture, he divorces his wife, ends up with a fresh new wife. Maybe she killed him just because she never got the chance to play out her hand before.»

«If that theory holds, you'd have no link.»

«No, but I'd have a fucking motive. If she's not killing for money, then she's already got money, because she needs the lavish life. And maybe she killed just because she missed the rush. She had the money from the East Washington victim, but she hasn't touched it. I checked on that. So she's got other income and it's been sitting, waiting for a decade. I find it, I find her.»

«If I were stashing money away for a rainy day, it would be in numbered accounts, various institutions, various locations.» He washed down pizza with some excellent cabernet Sauvignon. «Both in and out of the country, both on and off planet. Not too much in any one pot,» he added when Eve frowned at him. «In that way, if you can't easily or safely get to that particular pot, there's always another.»

«It wouldn't just be money. She liked stocks, bonds, that kind of thing. If you earmarked goodly chunks for the market, you couldn't just sit back and let it ride for almost a decade. Could you?»

«Not if you had a brain cell still working. You'd need to keep an eye on things, shift funds, sell, buy, and so on. Or have someone you trusted to handle it.»

«She didn't trust anyone. That tells me she found a way from prison to deal with it personally. That means transmissions, to and from, and they're supposed to be monitored.»

«A bribe in the right hand would take care of that. Conservative investments, blue chip and so on, and she wouldn't need much time to supervise her accounts. A few hours a week at most.»

«Feeney and I will have to find the hand she greased.»

«Do you plan to come home again in this century?» He angled his head. «Looking for a prison guard or inmate who'd be open to bribes shouldn't take more than twenty, thirty years to pin down.»

«Have a little faith.» She licked pizza sauce from her thumb. «I'll be home by dinnertime.»

«Two nights running? I'm going to mark my calendar.» When she only continued to frown, he shook his head. «What?»

«Nothing. I was just thinking.» She wandered back, pushed at another slice of pizza, decided against it.

Because he knew his woman, Roarke said nothing and waited her out.

«When I was interviewing Shelly Pettibone today, she was talking about her marriage. It came off like she still had a lot of feelings for him, even though he dumped her and married someone half her age, and with big tits. But it was more as if she were talking about a brother than a husband at this point. She said… Anyway, do you think the passion, the sex, the way it is with us is just going to mellow out and fade off after a while?»

«Bite your tongue.»

«I mean, people don't end up on the floor of the shower all the time. And when that sort of thing stops happening, will you have anything left that keeps you together? Needing to be together, or do you end up being two people living in the same house?»

«Come here.»

«I don't need reassurances, Roarke.» And she was already wishing she'd kept her mouth shut. «It just struck me, that's all. It was sort of sad, but understandable.»

«Come here anyway.» He reached out a hand for hers, and when she took it, drew her into his lap. «I can't imagine not wanting you so that it puts an ache inside me. Seeing you, smelling you, touching you so everything in me needs. But, if when we're a hundred and twenty and that's more memory than reality, I'll still need you, Eve, a thousand ways.»

«Okay.» She brushed the hair away from his face.

«Wait. Do you remember when first I saw you. In the winter, with death between us?»

«Yeah, I remember.»

«I didn't make you for a cop. That disturbed me for some time later as I prided myself for spotting a cop at half a mile in the dark. But when I turned and looked at you, I didn't see cop. I saw a woman. I saw the woman, though I hadn't figured that out. I only knew that I looked, and I saw, and everything shifted. Nothing would be the same for me after that instant.»

She remembered how he had turned, looked back over the sea of mourners at a funeral, how his eyes had locked with hers as if they'd been the only ones there. And the power of that look had shaken her to her toes.

«You bothered me,» she murmured.

«I meant to. I looked, darling Eve, and saw the woman I would love, and trust, and need as I'd never expected to love or trust or need another living soul. The only woman I wanted to be with, to live with, to sleep and wake with. And aghra , to grow old with.»

«How do you do it?» She lowered her forehead to his. «How do you always manage to say what I need to hear?»

«There are people who live out their lives together, and not just from habit or convenience or a fear of change. But from love. Maybe love has cycles. We haven't been in it long enough to know, have we? But I know one thing utterly. I'll love you till I die.»

«I know.» Tears brushed her cheek. «I know it because it's the same for me. I felt sorry for that woman today because she'd lost that. She'd lost it, and didn't even know where or when. God.» She had to take two long breaths because her throat was tight. «I was thinking about it later, thinking about what she'd said, how she'd said it. It just seemed to me that things were too easy between them, too smooth.»

«Well then.» He gave her a quick, hard squeeze. «Easy and smooth? Those are marital problems we'll never have to worry about.»