She lowered her glass and passion leapt into her eyes. "I believed him. I believed in him. And he betrayed me in the most insulting, the most intolerable of ways. Had he come to me and told me he wanted to end our arrangement, I would have been unhappy. I would have been angry, but I would have accepted it."
"Just like that?" Eve lifted her eyebrows. "No more payments, no more fancy trips and expensive gifts, no more boinking the boss?"
"How dare you! How dare you lower what we had to such crude terms. You know nothing, nothing about what was between J. C. and me." Her breath began to heave, her hands to clench. "All you see is the surface because you don't have the capability to see beneath it. And you, you're boinking Roarke; you wangled marriage out of him. How many fancy trips and expensive gifts are you raking in, Lieutenant? How many million a year goes in your pockets?"
With an effort, Eve kept her seat. Temper had washed ugly color into Lisbeth's face, turned her eyes into hot green glass. For the first time she looked fully capable of punching a drill through a man's heart.
"I haven't killed him," Eve said coolly. "And now that you mention it, Lisbeth, why didn't you wangle marriage out of J. C.?"
"I didn't want it," she snapped. "I don't believe in marriage. It was something we disagreed on, but he respected my feelings. I will have respect!" She'd taken three long strides toward Eve, fists clenched, when a movement from Peabody stopped her.
She seemed to tremble, and her knuckles went white with strain. The lips she'd peeled back in a snarl relaxed slowly and the wild color began to fade from her cheeks.
"That's some trigger you've got there, Lisbeth," Eve said mildly.
"Yes. Part of my plea bargain is to enter anger control therapy. I begin sessions next week."
"Sometimes it's not better late than never. You claim you went off when you learned J. C. was cheating on you. Yet no one knows of another woman in his life. His personal assistant swears there was no one but you."
"He's mistaken. J. C. deceived him even as he deceived me. Or he's lying," she said with a shrug. "Chris would have cut off his hand for J. C., so lying would be nothing."
"Why lie? Why cheat if, as you just told me, all he had to do was come to you and end the arrangement?"
"I don't know." She pushed an agitated hand through her hair, disturbing its perfect order. "I don't know," she repeated. "Perhaps he was like other men after all and found it more exciting to cheat."
"Don't like men much, do you?"
"As a whole, no."
"So, how'd you find out about this other woman? Who is she? Where is she? How is it no one else knows about it?"
"Someone does," Lisbeth said evenly. "Someone sent me photos of them together, discs of conversations. Conversations where they talked about me. Laughed at me. God, I could kill him all over again."
She whirled around, yanked open a cabinet, and pulled out a large pouch. "Here. These are copies. We gave the PA the originals. Look at him, with his hands all over her."
Eve tapped out the contents, frowned. They were decent shots. The man was very clearly J. Clarence Branson. In one, he sat on what looked like a park bench with a young blonde in a short skirt. His hand was resting high on her thigh. In the next, they were kissing with apparent passion, and the hand was under her skirt.
The others looked to be taken in a privacy room at a club. They were grainy, which fit if they'd been duped from disc. A club could lose its sex license if the management was caught running video of privacy rooms.
But grainy or not, they clearly showed J. C. and the blonde in various and energetic sexual acts.
"When did you receive these?"
"I've given all that information to the PA's office."
"Give it to me," Eve said shortly. And she was damn well going to find out why the PA hadn't bothered to pass these tidbits on to the primary investigator.
"They were in my mail slot when I got home from work. I opened them, I looked at them. I went directly to J. C. to confront him. He denied it. He actually stood there and denied it, told me he didn't know what I was talking about. It was infuriating, insulting. I lost my temper. I was blind with rage. I grabbed the drill and…"
She trailed off, remembering herself and her lawyer's instructions. "I must have lost my mind, I can't remember what I was thinking, what I was doing. Then I called the police."
"Do you know this woman?"
"I've never seen her before. Young, isn't she?" Lisbeth's lips trembled before she firmed them. "Very young and very… agile."
Eve slid the photos and discs back in the pouch. "Why are you keeping these?"
"To remind me that everything we had together was a lie." Lisbeth took the bag back, placed it in the cabinet again. "And to remind me to enjoy every cent of the money he left me."
She picked up her water glass again, lifted it as if in a toast. "Every goddamn cent."
Eve got back in her car, slammed the door. And brooded. "It might have happened just the way she said. Hell." She rapped a fist on the wheel. "I hate that."
"We can run the photo of the woman, try to get an ID. Something may pop."
"Yeah, shuffle it in when you have time. And when we have the goddamn photos." Disgusted, Eve pulled away from the curb. "No way to prove she knew about the will or that was her motive. And damn it, after seeing her in action up there, I tend to believe her story."
"I thought she was going to try to rip your face off."
"She wanted to." Then Eve sighed. "Anger control therapy," she muttered. "What next?"
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Snag on system," Eve muttered as she pushed away from her desk-link. "The PA's office said we didn't get the photos and discs on the Branson case because there was an SOS. My ass." She rose to pace. "SOS also stands for sack of shit."
She heard the snicker, turned to glare at Peabody. "What are you grinning at?"
"It's your way with words, sir. I do so admire your way with words."
Eve dropped into her chair again, leaned back. "Peabody, we've been working together long enough for me to know when you're gassing me."
"Oh. Is that also long enough for you to appreciate our personal rapport?"
"No."
To help put the Branson matter out of her mind for the moment, Eve squeezed the heels of her hands on either side of her head. "Okay, back to priorities. Run the vans while I see how much McNab's shaken loose on Fixer's military record. And why don't I have any coffee?"
"I was just wondering the same thing." To avoid another snarl, Peabody hurried into the kitchen.
"McNab," Eve said the minute she had him onscreen. "Gimme."
"Just got the basic front stuff for now. I'm weaving through." He recognized the view out the window behind her and pouted. "Hey, you working at home today? How come I'm not there, too?"
"Because, thank God, you don't live here. Now, let's have it."
"I'll shoot it to your home unit, but the quick rundown is as follows. Bassi, Colonel Howard. Retired. Enlisted in 1997, enrolled officer's training. Top scores. As a first lieutenant, he worked with STF – Special Training Forces. Elite, real hush-hush stuff. I'm working on that, but at this point, I'm just getting commendations – he had a hat full – and remarks about his expertise with electronics and explosives. He made captain in 2006, then worked his way right up the ranks until he was given a field promotion to full colonel during the Urban Wars."
"Where was he stationed? New York?"
"Yeah, then he was transferred to East Washington in… wait, I've got it. 2021. Had to put in for a special family transfer package because most military weren't allowed to take their families along during that period."
"Family?" She held up a hand. "What family?"
"Ah… military records have him down for a wife Nancy, civilian, and two kids, one of each. He got the transfer because his spouse was a civilian liaison between army and media. Like, you know, public relations."