In Death 26 - Strangers in Death

could’ve done it for twice that. But you know what happened? His father died. I gotta look at that.” She tucked it into a handy corner of her mind. “And I need to check with Charles, but I’ll lay you odds her first session with Charles was only weeks after the old man went under and Tommy inherited. Boy, the stakes just went way up. ‘Look at all this, and it could all be mine. How can I have it, and get out of this frigging suit.’ It’s gotta be itching some, and he’s only got a decade on her. He could live another fifty, sixty years. It’s just too much. Anyway, she’s earned it. God knows, she’s earned it. Divorce won’t do. She could work it, sure she could work it so it was all his fault, like she did the first husband.”
    “But as that’s already been done, it wouldn’t do to repeat herself.”
    “You got it,” she said, pleased. “And the payoff wouldn’t be enough in a divorce. Not anymore, not with all the years she’s put in. If he’d just die, she could be the shattered widow, the widow who picks up the pieces of her life and goes on. Why can’t he just die, why can’t he have a fatal accident, why…What if?”
    “She wouldn’t be the first to hook herself to wealthy then grow weary of the price,” Roarke commented. “Or the first to kill over it. But the method in this case seems particularly vindictive.”
    “Had to be. Terrible accident, but more, one brought on by his own weakness, his own disloyalty to her. The worse he looks, the brighter her halo. And, I think, once she saw a way out, that suit got tighter and tighter until it was cutting off her blood supply. Whose fault is that ?”
    “Why his, of course.”
    “Oh yeah. He had to pay for that, for all the years she wore it, all the years she played the game.” As she sat in the fragrant air of the limo, Eve could all but feel Ava’s rage. “She hated him at the end. Whatever she felt at the start, or during, at the end she hated him.”
    “And the killing itself was so intimate, and so ugly,” Roarke said, “because of the hate behind it.”
    “Bull’s-eye.”
    “If it played out the way you think, she still has an obstacle. There’s Ben.”
    “I bet she’s got plans for Ben. She can bide her time. Unless he gets in a serious relationship, starts thinking marriage. She’d have to move faster then. Or she might consider setting it up soon. An overdose would be best. Pills, too many pills. He couldn’t take the grief, couldn’t take the pressure of stepping into his uncle’s shoes. Opts out. There’s a risk there, but if I close this case with her in the clear, as she expects, she might take it.”
    “Do you intend to warn him?”
    “He’s clear for now. Case is open, and she needs more time.” Calculating it, Eve tapped her fingers on her thighs. “She needs time to lean on him, to turn to him. To present the image that he’s her support now, all she has left of Tommy now. She plans, and she considers contingencies. She needs public displays of their mutual grief and dependence to establish the foundation.”
    “I can’t say I knew Thomas Anders well, but I would have said he was a good judge of character.”
    “Love clouds things.”
    “It does, yes.” Roarke danced his fingers over the ends of her hair.
    She shifted to face him. “You never asked yourself, not even once, if I made a play for you because of the money?”
    “You didn’t make a play for me. I made the play.”
    “ That could’ve been my play.” She smiled at him. “And you fell heedlessly into my wiles.”
    “Where I landed very comfortably. The only suits you wear, darling Eve, are the ones in your closet. And then they’re worn reluctantly.” He laid his hand, palm down, between her breasts. “I know your heart, a ghrá. ” And drew the chain she wore under her shirt. On it winked a diamond and the metal of a saint, gifts from him. “Do you remember when I gave you this?”
    He swung the chain lightly so the diamond flashed and burned.
    “Sure.”
    “You weren’t just horrified and confused, you were terrified. Fearless Lieutenant Eve Dallas, terrified by a piece of compressed carbon and what it represented.”
    “Love wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in my what-if. Not then.”
    “Yet, when you finally came to me, you wore it.” The diamond sparked between them. “And you wear it still. Hidden most of the time to preserve your odd cop sensibilities, but worn just there, against your heart.”