In Death 10 - Witness in Death

glance on face value. You think Feeney didn't slap me upside the head with that a few times when he was my trainer?"
    "I imagine he did and had plenty of bruises of his own when he hit the rock of it."
    "If that's a fancy way of saying I'm hardheaded, it doesn't insult me. She'll learn, and she'll think more carefully next time. She hates screwing up."
    He reached up idly to brush his knuckles over her cheek. "I thought the same myself. Now, why don't you think this is self-termination?"
    "I didn't say I didn't. There are a number of tests to be run. The ME will make the call."
    "I wasn't asking for the medical examiner's opinion but yours."
    She started to speak, then set her teeth and jammed her hands in her pockets. "You know what that was down there? That was a fucking insult. That was a stage carefully set for my benefit. Somebody thinks I'm stupid."
    Now he did smile. "No. Someone knows you're smart -- very smart -- and took great care, right down to the bottle of what will undoubtedly turn out to be Quim's own home brew."
    "I've checked his locker. You can still smell the stuff. He kept a bottle in there, all right. What did he know?" she muttered. "Head stagehand? That means he'd have to know where everything needs to be and when. People, props, the works."
    "Yes, I'd assume so."
    "What did he know?" she said again. "What did he see, what did he think? What did he die for? He wrote down stuff in this little notebook. The handwriting on the death note looks like a match. If the ME doesn't find something off, he's likely to rule it self-termination."
    Roarke rose. "You'll be working late."
    "Yeah. Looks like."
    "See that you eat something other than a candy bar."
    Her mouth went grim. "Somebody stole my candy bars again."
    "The bastard." He leaned down, kissed her lightly. "I'll see you at home."
    If Eve's preconception that theater people led richly bohemian lives had taken a dent after a look at Michael Proctor's living quarters, it suffered a major blow when she reached Linus Quim's excuse for an apartment.
    "One step up from street-sleeping." She shook her head as she took her first scan of the single, street-level room. The anti-burglar bars covering the two grimy, arrow-slot windows were coated with muck and caged out whatever pitiful sunlight might have struggled to fight its way into the gloom.
    But bars and muck weren't enough to keep out the constant clamor of street traffic or the uneasy vibrations from the subway that ran directly under the ugly room.
    "Lights on," she ordered and was rewarded with a flickering, hopeless yellow glow from the dusty ceiling unit.
    Absently, she stuck her hands in her jacket pockets. It was colder inside than it was out in the frisky, late-winter wind. The entire place, such as it was, smelled of old sweat, older dust, and what she assumed was last night's dinner of hash and beans.
    "What did you say this guy pulled down a year?" she asked Peabody.
    Peabody pulled out her PPC, scanned. "Union scale for his position is eight hundred and fifty a show, with ascending hourly wage for put-ups, tear-downs, turnaround, and overtime pay. Union takes a twenty-five percent bite for dues, retirement, health plans, and blah-blah, but our guy still raked in about three hundred thousand annually."
    "And chose to live like this. Well, he was either spending it or stashing it somewhere." She strode across the bare floor to the computer unit. "This piece of crap's older than the piece of crap I just got rid of. Computer on."
    It coughed, wheezed, snorted, then emitted a sickly blue light. "Display financial records for Quim, Linus."
    Password required for data display...
    "I'll give you a password." Halfheartedly, she rapped the unit with her fist and recited her rank and badge number.
    Privacy Act protects requested data. Password required...
    "Peabody, deal with this thing." Eve turned her back on it and began riffling through the drawers in a cabinet that had the consistency of cardboard. "Arena ball programs," she announced while Peabody tried to reason with the computer. "And more notebooks. Our boy liked to bet on the games, which might explain where his salary went. He's got it all written down here, wins and losses. Mostly losses. Petty-ante stuff, though. Doesn't look like he was spine-cracker material."
    She moved on to the next drawer. "Well, well, look at this. Brochures of tropical islands. Forget the financials, Peabody. See if he went searching for data on Tahiti."
    She