Calculated in Death

Roarke.
    “Thanks.” He leaned back to look up at her. “What’s the cost?”
    “A couple of answers and/or opinions.”
    “I can afford that.”
    “Are you getting anywhere?”
    “Of course.” He smiled, picked up the coffee. “Let me tell you up front, this is unlikely to be a snap. Two of these are big companies with subsidiaries, charitable foundations, payrolls, expenses, depreciations, and so on. I’ll need a basic overview on all of them. Don’t expect I’ll find a handy column marked Monies I’ve Embezzled or Misappropriated or That Were Never There in the First Place.”
    “What does that last one mean?”
    “That sometimes companies or people within them fudge in the opposite direction to mollify stockholders, potential clients, or investors and their BODs—and hope to make up those numbers. It’s . . . optimistic cheating,” he decided. “And usually flawed.”
    “Okay.”
    “I’ve one audit here due to a potential merger, another due to bylaws, another by court order. It appears your victim had done the same as I’m doing here. She got a feel for them first. She has some questions noted, on all three of these. Nothing major, but she hadn’t worked on them very long.”
    “Is your opinion she didn’t—at least at the time of her death—know anything particularly damaging?”
    “I can’t say absolutely, but I think that’s probably accurate.”
    “Okay. I’ve got a handful of suspects. Let me run one by you. This guy owns his own company, a generational deal. About a dozen years ago, things got very, very thin. He held out, but barely. Had to take out loans, sell off some assets. He took a lot of smaller jobs, and sometimes lost money on them.”
    “Keeping his hand in. Employees?”
    “Yeah. They’d built up to about fifty, and in the thin went down to about twenty. I’m no business expert, but it looks like he’d have been smarter cutting that by half. He wouldn’t have had payroll eating up the profit so he lost money on some of those jobs.”
    “He kept as many of his people as he could working. It may not be sound business in the short-term, but it is in the long. You know who’s working for you, they know they can count on you.”
    “All right, I can get that. He’s got thirty-two employees now, and some of them are from before the thin, ones he had to let go.”
    “Loyalty? He’d done well for them while he could, brought them back in when work picked up.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Is the company private or public? Are there stockholders?” he asked.
    “No, it’s his deal. His family’s deal. The construction guy.”
    “Ah. About a dozen years ago things were thin in that area. In real estate, in housing. The bubble burst.”
    “What bubble?”
    “The housing bubble. And not the first time. People lost their homes, and when that happens people who service homes and buildings, who rehab them, repair them, build them don’t have the work. It’s a hard time for many, and for those willing to take the risk, an opportunity.”
    “For what?”
    “For taking some risks and reaping rewards—long-term. I acquired a lot of real estate during the thin. You don’t think this man killed your victim.”
    “No, at least I’m not sold on the idea. But like you said he or one of the crew could’ve been paid to pass on the code.”
    “You don’t like that one either, less now that you’ve looked into this man more thoroughly.”
    “No, I don’t like it. Not enough time, as far as I can see, to find the right person, offer the right incentive. Unless they were already involved, and I can’t see that connection.”
    She edged her hip on the corner of the desk as she sampled her own coffee. “I get the same, basically, from the interior designer. Good rep, up front with the cops I set on her, what appears to be a good relationship with the construction guy, and with the clients—the partners.”
    “Then even if you don’t—or can’t—absolutely eliminate them, they’re well down the list.”
    “Yeah, unless inadvertently they passed the codes.” She shifted around to look at her board. “That leaves me, so far, with the three partners and the accountants whose work the vic took over. Or one of the others in the accounting firm, but from what you just told me, that doesn’t hit the mark.”
    “They’d have known she had nothing to speak of, and there was no reason to kill her. Arrange to mug her and take the briefcase, the handbag in case she