In Death 21 - Origin in Death

post. "You really want to help, turn up the soft glow of memory light and look back hard. He was into something."
    "Must everyone you see carry stains?"
    She glanced back as she walked upstairs. "Yeah. If you want to fine out who killed him more than you want to canonize him, you'll look for them, too."
    She kept going up, and straight into her office. Roarke came through the adjoining door.
    "If I came home and a cop met me at the door," she began, "and told me you'd been murdered, what do you figure I'd do?"
    "Fall into a pit of despair from which you would drown for the rest of your sad, empty life."
    "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get serious."
    "I rather liked that one." He leaned on the doorjamb. "First, I imagine you would kick the unfortunate messenger-and anyone else stupid enough to get in your path-out of your way. To see for yourself. I would hope you'd weep an ocean of hot and bitter tears over my body Then you'd find out everything that could be found out and hunt my killer down like a rabid dog to the ends of the earth."
    "Okay." She sat on the edge of her desk and studied him. "What if I didn't love you anymore?"
    "Then my life would no longer be worth living, and I'd have probably self-terminated or simply died of a broken, battered heart."
    She had to grin at him, then sobered and shook her head. "She didn’t love him. The widow. She put on a dignified show, but she didn't have all the lines, and she didn't- What's it when actors . . ." She threw out her arms, put a horrified expression on her face, slapped her arm-crossways over her chest.
    "Miming? Please don't do that again. It's rather frightening."
    "Not miming. People should be allowed-no, they should be required to chase mimes down the street with bats. Emote, that's the word. Avril didn't emote believably. See there was a tone when she talked about him, and another when she talked about her kids. She loves the kids. She didn't love their father, or not anymore. Not through and through. Peabody figures she had some side action."
    "Seems reasonable. You don't?"
    "When do I have time for side action when you're nailing me every chance you get?"
    He reached out, gave her hair a quick tug. "Quick tonight, aren't you?"
    "Must be the buzz, because I've got one going on this. Maybe she had a side dish. And maybe she's that smart and that quick and calculating. Duplicating her father-in-law's murder to muddy the waters. But I'm thinking it is what it looks like. Connected murders by or on behalf of the same parties. And she's in it."
    "Why? Money, sex, fear, power, rage, jealousy, revenge. Aren't those the headliners?"
    "Power's in there. They were powerful men, killed with a tool of their own trade. If it's rage, it's ice cold. I don't see fear, and money doesn't give me the buzz. Jealousy's unlikely. Revenge-that's the unknown."
    "The money's plentiful, and well channeled. I haven't, as yet, found any that's questionable. Their accounts are ordered, extremely well organized and maintained."
    "There's more somewhere."
    "Then I'll find it."
    "Here's the gist."
    Eve ran it through for him quickly. As she spoke, he came in, opened a recessed door, and took out brandy. He poured a snifter for himself, and knowing his wife, ordered her a cup of black coffee. He hoped it would be her last of a long day.
    She didn't like them, her victims, he thought. It wouldn't stop her from pursuing whoever was responsible for their deaths, but it wasn't punishing her as murder often did.
    It was the puzzle that gave her the buzz she'd spoken of, the buzz she'd use and burn through until she found the answers.
    But the dead, this time, didn't haunt her. The girls she believed they'd used would. And for them, he knew, she'd burn through until she found those answers and exhausted herself.
    "It's not impossible the system was compromised," he said when she'd finished. "Depends on the skill of your B-and-E man." He passed her the coffee. "But in that neighborhood, at that time of the evening you'd have to have extreme skill. Particularly extreme if when EDI examines the system they still find no sign of tampering."
    "It's more likely she had the codes, and a voice box or clearance We've taken in the droids, too, and EDD will take them apart, see if any were compromised. If Icove's orders were countermanded by the wife at some point earlier today, one of the droids could have opened the door for the killer, then had its memory washed."
    "It would show. Unless, again, you're extremely