In Death 05 - Ceremony in Death

using the 'link," Roarke suggested. "It's all right, Summerset, I'll deal with this."
    "As you wish." Summerset shot Jamie one last withering look, then stalked, stiff-backed, out of the room.
    "Where'd you find Count Boredom?" Jamie asked and slumped into a chair. "The morgue?"
    Roarke sat on the arm of a sofa, took out a cigarette. "Summerset can eat runts like you for breakfast," he said mildly and flicked on his lighter. "I've seen him."
    "Right." Still Jamie sent a cautious look toward the doorway. Nothing in this house was what he'd expected, so he wouldn't underestimate the butler. "Speaking of breakfast, you got anything to eat around here? It's been like hours since I had anything."
    Roarke blew out smoke. "You want me to feed you now?"
    "Well, you know. We got to hang anyway. Might as well eat."
    Cheeky little bastard, Roarke thought, not without admiration. Only youth, he supposed, could have an appetite after seeing what was outside the wall. "And what did you have in mind? Crepes, an omelette, perhaps a few bowls of sugar-soaked cereal?"
    "I was thinking more of pizza, maybe a burger." He fixed on a winning smile. "My mom's a real nutrition fanatic. We only get health shit at home."
    "It's five in the morning, and you want pizza?"
    "Pizza goes down smooth anytime."
    "You may be right." And he thought he could use something, himself, after all. "Let's go then."
    "It's like a museum in here," Jamie said as he followed Roarke into the hall with its luminous paintings and gleaming antiques. "I mean, in a good way. You must be rolling in it."
    "I must be."
    "People say you just touch something and the credits fly out."
    "Do they?"
    "Yeah, and you didn't make all of it exactly on the upside, you know? But being hooked up with a cop like Dallas, you'd have to be straight."
    "One would think," Roarke murmured and swung through a door into a huge kitchen.
    "Wow. Ultimate. You got people who, like, cook things -- by hand and stuff?"
    "It's been known to happen." Roarke watched the boy prowl, toy with controls on the compu-range, the subzero refrigerator. "It's not going to happen this morning." He walked to a large AutoChef. "What is it then, pizza or burger?''
    Jamie grinned. "Both? I could probably drink a gallon of Pepsi."
    "We'll start with a tube." Roarke programmed the AutoChef, then went to the refrigerator himself. "Sit down, Jamie."
    "Frigid." But he kept his eye on Roarke as he slid onto the padded bench of a breakfast nook.
    After a short debate, Roarke punched in for two tubes, slipped them out of the door slot when they slid down. "You'll want to contact your mother," he said. "You can use the 'link there."
    "No." Jamie put his hands under the table, rubbed them on his jeans. "She's zoned. She can't handle it. Alice. She's tranqued out. We -- the viewing's tonight."
    "I see." And because he did, Roarke let it drop. He handed the drink to Jamie, then took a large bubbling pizza from the AutoChef. He set it, then the burger that followed, on the table.
    "Rocking A." With the appetite of the young, Jamie grabbed the burger and bit in. "Man! Man, it's meat," he said with his mouth full. "It's meat."
    It took a master not to let his mouth twitch. "You'd prefer soy?" Roarke asked politely. "Veggie?"
    "No way." Jamie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, grinned. "Really decent. Thanks."
    Roarke got two plates and a slicer. He went to work on the pizza. "I suppose breaking and entering stimulates the appetite."
    "I'm always hungry." Without shame, Jamie transferred the first slice to his plate. "Mom says it's growing pains, but I just like to eat. She's real worried about junk intake, so I've got to sneak real food in. You know how moms are."
    "No, actually, I don't. I'll take your word." And because he'd never been quite as young as Jamie. or quite as innocent, he took a slice for himself and prepared to enjoy watching the boy devour the rest.
    "Parents are okay." Jamie shrugged, alternating between the pizza and the burger. "I don't see my father -- not in a few years. He's got a life over in Europe, the Morningside Community outside London."
    "Structured, programmed residential," Roarke put in. "Very tidy."
    "Yeah, and very boring. Even the grass is programmed. He digs on it, though, him and his foxy new wife -- his third already." He jerked a shoulder, sucked on the Pepsi. "He isn't much on the father game. It bothered Alice a lot. Me, I can take it or leave it."
    No, Roarke thought, he didn't think