Calculated in Death

thought he was just messing around to cheer me up. I said it sounded good if you didn’t mind cheating people, or going to jail for a couple decades. I even added a couple of ideas to it, Jesus. Jesus, Rob, I refined a couple of angles. He wrote them down. I thought it was joking, but he wrote them down. And I said something about it being too bad we were honest, too bad we’d worked all those years to get our license, build our business and our rep, things we didn’t want to lose. And he said . . .”
    “What did he say?” Eve prompted.
    “Big money buys big rep. I just laughed at him, and said something like big talk buys shit, and it was his turn to get the next round.”
    “It was just talk,” Newton insisted. “He wouldn’t commit fraud or cheat a client. We built this business together, Brad. The three of us. Look at this place. We’ve done this. We’ve done this together.”
    “It’s more than fraud,” Eve told him. “It’s murder. We believe Marta Dickenson was killed out of fear she’d discovered the fraud when she audited the accounts she’d taken over after the accident that put Parzarri out of commission and out of contact for several days.”
    “You can’t think Jake had
anything
to do with that woman’s death,” Newton interrupted.
    “I know he did. No sign of break-in? Because he gave the killer the codes. Maybe he thought they’d just take her in, rough her up, scare her, take the files. We’ll never know for certain. But
he
knew, after the fact. He knew who killed her, why, and that he was complicit.”
    “I’m not going to believe that.” Newton turned away, but Eve saw doubt and horror blooming on his face.
    “But it’s our building,” Whitestone objected. “Why would Jake let anybody use our place for this? Bring this down on us?”
    “She was supposed to be found in the morning. He didn’t know, none of them did, that you’d stop by, bring a potential client. They didn’t count on the police investigation inside the apartment, or finding anything if we did. If it had worked out the way they thought, it’s just an address, just the sad story of a woman, a bad mugging, and the city.”
    “I can’t believe he could do this,” Newton mumbled. “Any of it. To himself. To us.”
    “Both Parzarri and your partner are now dead, within an hour of each other. Do you really believe that’s a coincidence? Can you give me one viable explanation why Ingersol is dead in the apartment downstairs?”
    “We built this place together,” Newton repeated. “If you can’t believe in, can’t trust your partner . . .”
    “I understand, but at this time the evidence puts your partner right in the center. It could have put you there,” she said to Whitestone. “It could have put you in the ground.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “If you’d brought Alva Moonie by earlier, say before you went to the bar? If you’d walked in on the killer and Dickenson. What do you think would have happened to you, to Alva?”
    Color drained from his face again before he dropped his head in his hands.
    “We’ll be confiscating all his electronics,” she told them both. “Whatever he has here, at your other offices, at his home. Believe me when I say if you know anything, absolutely anything, it’s imperative you talk now. Their method of tying up loose ends is murder.”
    “You think they could try to kill us?” Whitestone shot a panicked look at his partner. “Why? We’re not part of this, we’re not involved in any fraud. We’re sure as hell not involved in murder. You can look through every file I have.”
    “Brad, we can’t just turn over confidential client information,” Newton began.
    “They’ll get a warrant, and I’m not willing to risk my life over this, Rob. You can’t be either.”
    “Nobody’s got any reason to kill us.”
    “Rob.” Eve used his first name, hoping to draw him into trust. “If I’m wondering what Jake might have told you, or let slip, I can promise the people responsible for his death will wonder. They killed Marta Dickenson hours after she came into possession of the files. You’ve been partners with Jake for years.”
    “Let me think. Please.” Newton paced the lobby. “I can’t get my head around any of this. This is my partner, my friend. God, Jake introduced me to Lissa. We’ve . . . Lissa.” He stopped dead. “My fiancée. Is she in danger? Could they try to hurt her?”
    “I can have her protected. I