“Wife? Oh, of course, of course. I heard. One does. I’m delighted to meet you. And you,” she said to the Derricks. “You’ll have to excuse me for breaking into your meal. All I saw was Roarke.” She smiled down at Eve, that glitter in her eyes. “You understand.”
“Oh, yeah.”
With another full-wattage smile, Magdelana dismissed Eve, then all but melted into Roarke. “I’ve only been in town a few days. I was going to contact you, see if we could make a date to catch up. It’s been, my goodness, ten years?”
“Nearer to twelve, I’d think.”
“Twelve!” She rolled her exquisite eyes. “Oh, Franklin, forgive me! My escort, Franklin James. This is Roarke, his wife, and the Derricks.”
“We know each other.” Roarke held out a hand. “Hello, Frank.”
He was thirty years her senior, by Eve’s gauge, looked prosperous and hale. And, she thought, slightly besotted.
“We’ll let you get back to your dinner.” Magdelana ran a hand down Roarke’s arm-a light, somehow intimate gesture. “I’m just thrilled to see you again.” And this time she brushed her lips against Roarke’s cheek. “We’ll have lunch, won’t we, and take a walk down Memory Lane. You won’t mind, will you, Eve?”
“The lunch or the walk?”
Magdelana laughed, a frothy gurgle. “We’ll have to have lunch ourselves, us girls. And tell secrets about Roarke. I’ll be in touch. So nice to meet you.”
Conversation picked up again, over food, and fishing. Though Roarke’s face betrayed nothing but interest in his companions, Eve knew him. So she knew while he ate, he drank, he spoke, his mind was across the elegant room where the stunning Magdelana sipped wine in her bold red dress.
When the evening was done, they put the Derricks in one of Roarke’s limos for the drive back to their hotel, then got into Eve’s vehicle.
“There have probably been a dozen murders committed due to the way you parked this thing.”
“Who is she?”
“I told you, she and Sam own not only a very large portion of Montana, but one of the most successful resorts in the state.”
“Don’t play me that way. Lover.”
“An old friend.” He shifted, his eyes meeting Eve’s. “And yes, we were lovers. It was a long time ago.”
“That much I already know.”
He sighed. “She was in the game. We…competed for a while, then we worked together on a couple of jobs. Then we parted ways.”
“She’s a thief.”
“She was.” He said it with a shrug. “I wouldn’t know if she continues in that profession.” He reached out, and since Eve had gotten behind the wheel, flicked at her hair as she drove. “What does it matter to you?”
I saw something in your eyes, she wanted to say. “Curiosity,” she said instead. “She’s a looker.”
“She certainly is. Do you know what I thought when you walked into the restaurant?”
“Thank God she doesn’t have blood all over her shoes?”
“No, but good point. I thought, there is the most compelling woman in the room. And she belongs to me.” He laid a hand briefly over hers. “Thanks for tonight.”
“I was late.”
“I noticed. New case?”
“Yeah. Caught it this afternoon.”
“Tell me about it.”
She ordered herself to put old lovers out of her head, and gave him the basics.
4
SHE GRABBED A SHOWER TO WASH AWAY THE LONG day, and tried not to obsess when Roarke didn’t make his usual play to join her under the hot jets. A woman who got herself twisted up because her man-who’d led a very full and…adventurous life before they’d met-ran into a former lover was just asking for stomach spasms.
And she didn’t get herself twisted up, Eve reminded herself as she stepped out of the shower and into the drying tube. Or she never had before this.
She was making too much of a…of a glint, she decided. Of a fraction of a second. Whoever Roarke had bounced on more than a freaking decade before had nothing to do with now.
Nothing at all.
He wasn’t in the bedroom when she went back in. But that meant nothing either. She dragged on some sweats, hunted up some socks that turned out to be cashmere, then headed toward her home office.
Roarke’s adjoined hers. The door was open, the lights on. No reason not to step over and see what was going on.
He was at his desk, the suit jacket and shirt replaced by a black sweater. The furry pudge that was their cat was curled on the corner of the workstation. Galahad blinked his dual-colored eyes, then lowered them to lazy slits.
“Working?” Eve said, and felt stupid, awkward.
“A bit. You?”
“Yeah.” She couldn’t quite figure out what to do with her hands, so she hooked her thumbs in her front pockets. “I figured I’d put some time in.”
He gave her his attention. He had a way of doing that even when he had a zillion things going on. “Want some help?”
“No. No, I got it. It’s just routine stuff.”
And his attention shifted away from her, back to his comp screen. “All right, then. Let me know if you change your mind.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Lieutenant,” he said as she turned away. “Try not to drink more than a gallon of coffee.”
For some reason it made her feel better that he’d poked at her. She moved into the kitchen of her work space, and programmed her AutoChef for a half pot instead of the full one she’d have ordered up otherwise.
It was good he had some work to do, she thought. They’d both just do what they did for a few hours. She carried her coffee to her desk, and started to call up Peabody ’s report on Craig Foster.
Cursed.
“Might as well just do it,” she muttered. “Get it off my brain.” She started the run on Percell, Magdelana, manually, ordering text only on her comp screen. It took some time to find her particular quarry, but she narrowed the search by approximate age, physical description-and unless she’d been way off on the accent-nationality. And scored.
Percell, Magdelana. DOB: March 12, 2029. Born: St. Paul, Minnesota. Parents: Percell, James and Karen. Hair: blond. Eyes: green. Weight: 115 pounds. Height: five feet, five inches.
Eve skimmed over her education, but noted that Magdelana had graduated from high school early-at fifteen. Had attended Princeton and graduated in just under three years on an accelerated program. Cum laude.
“So she’s smart.”
Married: Dupont, Andre, June 22, 2048. No offspring. Divorced: March 2051. Married: Fayette, Georges, April 5, 2055. No offspring. Divorced: October 2059.
Approximate net worth: thirteen point five million U.S. dollars.
Residences: Paris, France; Cannes, France.
No criminal.
Eve sat back.
The official data was slim, and the no criminal doubtful as Roarke had said they’d worked together. Even if she hadn’t been convicted, even if she hadn’t been arrested, there should have been some note in her file about being questioned at some point or other.
He’d cleared it for her, Eve thought, and felt something tighten in her belly. He’d hacked in and tidied up her data, the same way he’d taken care of his own once upon a time.
He’d protected her.
Because it was harder to accept than she’d imagined, Eve ended the search. She already knew more than she wanted to know.
She dove into work, reading Peabody ’s report, the case notes. She started runs on staff members as she set up a murder board. And was foolishly pleased when Galahad padded in to leap up and stretch out on her sleep chair.
“What we have here,” she told him, and picked up her coffee, “is your Average Joe. No big highs, no deep lows. Cruising along with his average life without, apparently, getting in anyone’s way. Then one day he gulps down his homemade hot chocolate during his working lunch and dies a very nasty death.
“So who was that pissed off at Average Joe? What was there to gain by his death? Look at his financials. Living within his means, such as they were. Death insurance, sure, but not major. No holdings, no real estate, no fancy artwork. Financial gain is way down on our list here.”