Calculated in Death

start on my clothes.”
    “I can’t compliment your outfit? Strict.”
    “You’re wearing pink cowboy boots. What do you know about fashion?”
    “You gave me the boots,” Peabody reminded her, “and I get compliments on them all the time. So there.”
    They went downstairs, and Eve hunted up McNab.
    As fashion statements went, Ian McNab occupied a world of his own. Eve imagined the many pockets of his bright purple baggies came in handy, but for the life of her couldn’t figure out why he’d matched it with a pullover made up of eye-aching, multicolored swirls. Over it he’d tossed a long, sleeveless purple vest, presumably to discreetly cover his weapon. But the neon hearts dancing over the back of the vest over-balanced discretion.
    And Roarke said she didn’t pay attention to clothes.
    He lifted his head from his work, the silver rings in his ear jiggling. Like Roarke he wore his hair—straight and blond—pulled back in work mode. But McNab’s trailed halfway down his back of pulsing hearts.
    “Somebody knew what they were doing,” he told Eve, and pushed back a bit from the main comp. “Jigged it up to look like a hiccup, and that can happen on these older systems.”
    “But it didn’t.”
    “Nope. He left fingerprints.”
    She all but leaped at the word. “You ran prints?”
    “Not that kind of print. E-prints. If you’d just done a standard check run of the system, you’d go, yeah, damn hiccup. You push through a couple levels, and you find a shutdown code blended in with the rest. It’s a little hide-and-seek, and pretty damn good. I need to run a few more checks, but I think they did it by remote, and that’s excellent equipment and a mega excel tech.”
    “Okay. When you’re done here, see what you can tell me about the vic’s office unit.”
    “Gotcha.” His deep green eyes narrowed in his thin, pretty face. “Mega excel tech,” he repeated. “Shut down the cams, the locks, the alarms, one, two, three. It’s an older system, but it’s not crap.”
    “It didn’t do its job.” The man who walked in looked like someone’s kindly grandfather in a three-piece suit. “It’s crap. What system would you recommend?”
    “Well, ah . . .” McNab looked at Eve.
    “I’m sorry. I’m Stuart Brewer, senior partner of Brewer, Kyle, and Martini. You’re Lieutenant Dallas.”
    “Mr. Brewer.” He’d saved her time tracking him down, she thought. “I understand Mr. Gibbons contacted you early this morning.”
    “Yes. Twice. First about the files, Marta’s files. Neither of us, neither of my partners thought of it yesterday. We were all reeling, and we let that slip between the cracks. It’s unconscionable, and we’re paying for that now. When Sly called back to tell me of the break-in, I realized we’d opened ourselves for it. And this system, as the young man said, is old. I’m also a member of the conglomeration that owns this building. We’ve updated the system regularly, attached the patches—that’s the correct term?”
    “Yes, sir,” McNab told him.
    “We did that to save money rather than invest in a new, more efficient system. And now . . . do you know if any other offices were compromised?”
    “I have a forensic unit on the way, and we’ll have uniforms canvass the building. But I think it’s clear your audit offices were the targets, and Mrs. Dickenson’s files the primary goal.”
    “Marta was killed for them, this is what you think. She was young, her life and her children’s lives all ahead of her. And she was killed for information? Information is power and money, a weapon, a defense. I understand that. But I don’t understand murder. You do.”
    “The new files she was given the day of her death. Are you personally acquainted with the individuals in those files?”
    “No, but I intend to be by the end of today. I started this business sixty years ago with Jacob. Jacob Kyle. Twenty-eight years ago, we brought Sonny on as a full partner. I intended to retire in about six months. I think now I’ll need to put that off. I started this firm, and I won’t leave it until I know I leave it clean.”
    •   •   •
    I feel sorry for him,” Peabody said when they walked outside. “For Brewer. I know he’s a suspect, technically, but he looked so tired.”
    “Here’s why he’s not a suspect, at this point. He has access to the information that was taken. He’s top dog, and if he wanted the files, he could just take the files.