Festive in Death (In Death 39) - Page 60

“Your vic was an asshole.”

“Completely,” she agreed, walking straight to her AutoChef to program two coffees, strong and black. “Lead suspect, as of now, is this guy.”

She brought up Copley’s ID shot after passing Feeney coffee. “One of the vic’s regular clients. Turns out the vic was banging his wife twice a week for the last few weeks—for a side fee. She claims the husband didn’t know.”

Feeney gave the coffee a surface blow, drank. “It’s hard to hide regular banging.”

“Damn right.” Pleased to have him to bounce around the speculations, she eased a hip onto the corner of her desk. “Rough patch, the wife claims. Separate bedrooms for a while.”

“No sex for a while’s a rough patch. Separate bedrooms is a crater.”

“Yeah?”

He eyed her. “How long you been married now?”

“Couple years.”

“Take my word. You can climb out of a crater, but it’s harder than riding out a rough patch.”

“She claims they climbed out, mostly, and are working on the rest of the way. But if he finds out she got naked with their mutual trainer, it’s off the cliff for the marriage.”

“You didn’t tell him.”

“Not yet. We ran the basics with him, and he was nervous. And he was lying. Something more there, something with the vic he’s hiding. So he’s top of my list right now.”

“Smashed his head in, hauled the body onto the bed, then put a knife in the chest. With a ho, ho, ho.”

Like Feeney, she studied the crime scene shot, drank coffee.

“The last’s a kind of rage, isn’t it?” she said. “A cold one. The smash, bash, that strikes me as hot. But the flourish? It takes cold blood. Copley could fit.”

“A liar’s one thing. A nervous one’s another. You could shake it out.”

“Yeah, but he’s already brought up the L word. I’m going to do some digging on him, let him settle. His business is a boys’ club.”

Feeney’s shaggy eyebrows rose. “He works with kids?”

“No—big public relations firm, but he runs it like a boys’ club—on the exec level, at least. One woman in the meeting I broke up today, and she didn’t look real happy with him. I think he’s an asshole, but I have to ask myself if I’d just like to find an asshole killer for my asshole vic.”

She shrugged, sipped coffee, studied her board. “He had a lot of clients, used a lot of women. The killing field’s a big one.”

“Somebody who needed to put a sticker in a dead guy’s going to break at some point.”

“That’s what I think, too. I need to be there when it happens.”

He nodded, and for a moment or two they drank their coffee, studied death in companionable silence.

“The wife’s all over me to wear a monkey suit tomorrow.”

Eve frowned, shifted her thought process. “Why?”

“How the hell do I know? You’re female. Why do women like men dressed up in monkey suits?”

“I don’t, especially.”

“Tell me this.” He pointed at her. “Is Roarke putting on a monkey suit for this shindig tomorrow?”

“No. I don’t know.” For unexplained reasons, she had a moment of panic. “How would I know?”

Tags: J.D. Robb In Death Mystery
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