Part 25 (1/2)
”Not bad, but no cheers from the crowd.” She studied the remaining names on screen one. ”Only five. Okay, computer, run a full background on the individuals on screen one, highlight military service.”
While it worked, she rose to update her board, to circle it, to consider it until the computer announced her secondary task complete.
She studied the composites Feeney had sent her from the partial image on the amus.e.m.e.nt security.
Could be Dudley, she mused, sporting a fake goatee and long brown hair. Could be Urich. Could be an army of other men. Which is just what the defense team would point out.
The shoe was a better bet. But she'd have the composites as weight, she'd have them to help tip those scales if she needed them, and when she was ready.
She ordered the names on screen two saved and removed, and replaced with the new data.
One ex-wife each, she noted, and each from prestigious, wealthy families. Same circle again. Barely two years for Dudley, shy of three for Moriarity. Just over two years prior to his marriage to one Annaleigh Babbington, Dudley's engagement to a Felicity VanWitt had been announced and its dissolution announcement had come some seven months later.
”I thought that was my job.”
”Huh?” She glanced back, mind elsewhere, as Roarke came in.
”The relations.”
”This is something else. What?”
”Felicity VanWitt, engaged to Dudley for slightly more than half a year, is first cousin to Patrice Delaughter.” He nodded toward the screen.
”Moriarity's ex-wife.”
”f.u.c.ker.”
”When I can, and only with you, darling.”
”Not you.” But she laughed. ”Delaughter married Moriarity right after Dudley and the cousin broke it off. Moriarity would've been twenty-six, Dudley twenty-five. They met through the women. I want to talk to the women. Hold on,” she snapped when the computer interrupted with another completed task.
She took a breath, cleared her head again. ”On-screen.”
Pacing, she read the data on each name. ”See this one? Joseph Dudley, good old Joe. Great-uncle to our current Dudley. Joe gets tossed out of Harvard, drops out of Princeton, gets a couple knocks for drunk and disorderly. Then he joins the regular Army as a grunt. He's the only private, regular Army of the bunch, and he's the closest relation. Not a cousin six times removed or whatever it is. But the great-granddaddy's brother.”
”He served during the Korean War,” Roarke added. ”Earned a Purple Heart.”
”I bet he had a bayonet. I bet you my a.s.s he did.”
”I already have your a.s.s, or intend to.”
”Cute. I raise that bet with Joe bringing that bayonet home as a memento, where it ended up being pa.s.sed down to Winnie.”
”Difficult to prove.”
”We'll see about that, but even if I can't, it's another strong probable. We're loaded with them.”
”By the way, they didn't attend the same schools. But the fiancee and the ex-wife-the cousins-both attended Smith-as did a female cousin of Dudley's at the same time.”
”Okay, so they go back. They go back, ran in the same pack, at least in their twenties. And they're still running in the same pack. Both had marriages that failed. Neither had offspring, and both remain unmarried and unpartnered. Lots of common ground. Like minds? Compet.i.tive.”
She blew out a breath. ”Murderous, that's a different matter. Look at the fiancee. She's married now, married for eleven years, two kids. Lives in Greenwich, that makes it easy. Worked as a psychologist until the first kid. Professional mother status until last year.”
”The youngest would have started school.”
”She's the one I want to talk to first. Tomorrow. They're not going to hold off the next round too long. Not too long.”
She sat, went back to work.
CHAPTER 13
EVE WOKE IN THE QUIET , IN THE STILLNESS, and for an instant thought the waking a dream. But she knew the arms around her, the legs tangled with hers. She knew the scent of him, and drifted into it as her mind waded through the thinning fog of sleep.
She barely remembered going to bed. He'd carried her, as he often did when she conked out over her work. Reams of data, she thought, and nothing solid in that fluid stream to push the investigation beyond theory.
She'd run it all again, picked at it and through it, re-angled it. Connections to connections always meant something, so they'd conduct more interviews.
Swim in the stream long enough, she told herself, you'd rap up against something solid.
”You're thinking too loud.”
She opened her eyes, looked at Roarke. I t was rare to wake with him on a workday as he habitually rose well before she did. She often thought he conducted more business in the hours just before and after dawn than most did in a full day.
Did they live their work or work their lives? And boy, her brain wasn't ready to tackle that kind of question at this hour. Better just to know whichever it was-or maybe it was both-they did okay with it.
In the normal course of things, by the time she got up he'd be checking the stock and other financial reports on-screen, drinking coffee, fully dressed in one of his six million perfectly fitted suits.
And why did men wear suits? she wondered. How and why had it worked out so men wore suits and women wore dresses, unless you were talking about trannies? Who decided these things? And how come everybody just went along so guys said, ”Sure, I 'll wear suits and tie a colorful noose around my neck,” and women said, ”No problem, I 'll wear this thing that leaves my legs bare, then stick these shoes with stilts on the back on my feet”?
That was something to think about, she decided. But some other time because right now it was nice to wake this way, all warm and soft and naked together, as they had on vacation.
”Still too loud,” he murmured. ”Mute your brain.”
I t made her smile, the slurry voice, the before-coffee irritability. That was usually her job. She tried to judge the time by the soft gray light sliding through the sky window, tried to calculate how much sleep they'd managed to catch.
He opened his eyes. Like a blue bolt of lightning, she thought, in the soft gray.
”Not going to shut up, are you then?”
The h.e.l.l with the time, she decided. I f he was still in bed, it was pretty d.a.m.n early.
”I guess I could think about something else.” She stroked a hand down his flank. Watching his eyes as she glided it up again between their tangled legs. ”Since you're up anyway. I t's funny, isn't it, how a guy's d.i.c.k wakes up before he does. Why is that?”