Calculated in Death

a look at Alexander’s mistress.
    The first thing she noted regarding Larrina Chambers was her age. At fifty-seven the woman didn’t qualify as a young, gold-digger bimbo. Next, she noted Chambers and her dead husband had opened an eatery in New Jersey twenty-two years before that had blossomed into a national chain over the following decade, and took the woman out of gold-digger status. As she’d copped a scholarship to MIT at the age of eighteen, and had earned her master’s in business at twenty-five, bimbo didn’t likely apply.
    Eve’s suspicious mind nudged her to research how the husband met his demise, then had to set the idea of foul play aside. Neal Chambers died during a sudden squall off the coast of Australia when his sailboat was swamped. At the time, the widow was in New York, helping her mother recover from minor surgery. The investigation into the drowning—Chambers and four others, crew and passengers—had been thorough. She couldn’t find any holes, or indeed any motive.
    As she poked, prodded, dug, she found no evidence Larrina Chambers was, as the term went, being kept. She had very deep pockets of her own. But she found considerable that indicated Larrina and Alexander were connected, and over the just shy of nine years since the husband’s death, had very likely rekindled the spark that had flickered during their early twenties.
    Might be worth a conversation, Eve mused, and wrote up some notes.
    Alexander, Ingersol, and Parzarri, she thought again, and began to slowly, methodically dig deeper into each man’s life.

HE WAS ONTO SOMETHING. ROARKE FELT IT shift and slide, very much like a lock under the pick.
    He’d already found three off-shore or off-planet accounts for Alexander—two of them absolutely legal if not wholly, technically, ethical.
    He wouldn’t quibble with wholly, technically ethical as Eve might. They had a different threshold there. Even the one—technically again—illegal wouldn’t equal serious damage or problems. Fines, a naughty-boy finger wag and a bit of hot water for his money manager.
    And the manager could, very likely, lure more clients with the incident.
    But those accounts had been playfully easy to find, especially for someone who knew where and how to look for such things.
    Which caused him to believe there would be more, not so playfully easy to find, and not at all legal.
    He’d find them, Roarke thought. People had patterns and tells, habits and rhythms. It was simply a matter of finding them, using them.
    But there was more, he felt that, too.
    He remembered the sensation, from ago as he thought of it, of popping a lock and finding more than expected. That frisson of heat and energy in the fingertips.
    Exciting, he recalled, in an almost mystical way no one but another thief would recognize or truly understand.
    But ago was then, and this was now. He found nearly the same heat and excitement from tapping into the vault of secrets and misdeeds, to work with his cop.
    Thinking of her, he glanced over. Ah well, he thought, she was done. She didn’t know it yet, but he knew the signs. Her body had begun its droop, her eyes were going a little glassy. Left to her own devices she’d have worked until her head just dropped down on her desk.
    When he checked the time, he noted it was nearly half-one. No wonder.
    Even as he watched her sliding, the cat butted its head against his shin.
    “All right, I see, don’t I? It’s off to bed for all of us.”
    Considering her injuries, she needed that bed, a reasonable night’s sleep in it. So he programmed what he could of his work in progress to auto, copied and saved the rest before he rose to go to her.
    “I’m calling time.”
    “Huh? I’m . . . just taking a harder look at Ingersol.” She scratched her fingers in her hair as if to wake up her brain. “Nothing works with Newton in this, with him crossing into Ingersol’s client base. I mean, it would be pretty clever, but that’s predisposing you’d get caught and have the patsy waiting.”
    “And people like these rarely if ever believe they’ll be caught.”
    “They just don’t. So, anyway. You said once to look at insurance. Ingersol’s got heavy coverage, mostly on art. Way over the listed value.”
    “Which could mean he fudged the value initially so as not to raise flags on where he got the money to buy it. Or he’ll make a claim and skin the insurance company.”
    “I didn’t see any claims here, but—”
    “You can