“And done.”
“Office?”
“It appears to be all business—her legitimate business. Work and work-related communications, work and work-related data—stories done or in progress, research—which could lead you somewhere, I suppose. Personal finances,” he continued, “which do not include a million in cash or purchases of this sort of jewelry. While she does well enough in her field, she couldn’t afford any of this, the art, the jewelry, the furnishings. Even the rent here’s a bit of a stretch.”
As she’d concluded the same, Eve nodded slowly. “Which says her side business pays a lot better.”
“I’d certainly say so.”
“Okay, let’s go through the rest to see if there are any hidey-holes or anything of interest. Then that’s it here until I have the safe and electronics picked up.”
They rose together.
“And I don’t have two months’ worth of underwear.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I think the wardrobe is a matter of being seen or photographed, doing an event in a certain outfit and not w
anting to be photographed in it again.”
“You were listening.”
“Always. As for why she keeps things she hasn’t worn in two or three years, I think we could speculate that, in some areas, she was a bit of a hoarder.”
“With clothes, jewelry, money, but not with, you know, stuff. Hoarders usually go for stuff.”
“A selective hoarder?”
Eve shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”
But she couldn’t say if it bothered her strictly because of her own sensibilities, or because of her cop instincts.
5
On the drive home, Eve juggled work on her PPC with communications to and from Peabody. She glanced up briefly when Roarke drove through the gates, struck by how the winterscape of trees and grounds and the blank, dark sky set off the fanciful rise of stone, the spears of turrets, and the spread of terraces in the house that had become her home.
Like a black-and-white photograph, she thought, of some otherworldly castle.
“Is it Irish?” she wondered.
“Is what?”
“The house. You know, the design. Like one of those preserved places tourists go to so they can see how people lived, or the ruins of what used to be that you see all over the place.”
He studied the house himself as he wound down the drive. “During my education—and that would be through Summerset—I learned considerable history, whether I wanted to or not. He’s one who believes your origins, who and what you come from, matter. Even if it’s a contrast to what you choose to make of yourself.”
He parked, sat a moment. “I already had a love of books by the time he took me in. That copy of Yeats I found in an alley in Dublin, and squirreled away so the old man wouldn’t take it, sell it. Or burn it just to spite me. The words—the sound of them once you’d figured them out, on the tongue or in the head—were just a marvel to me. So, being a canny sort, Summerset used books on me.”
“How?” she asked as they got out of opposite sides of the car.
“He had a collection of his own, and I was given access to them—on the provision I could discuss them after. Lessons, always, but I didn’t see them as such, but only conversations.”
The winter wind danced through his hair as he walked to her. “And novelties,” he added, “as conversations with adults hadn’t been part of my usual. He introduced me to the concept of libraries, and how I could borrow books. Now and again, he’d buy a book for me, a kind of reward, as I wasn’t allowed to steal them.”
They walked in on that, finding Summerset himself standing in the large foyer, a stick man in black, with the pudge of a cat at his feet.
“So it was fine with him if you stole cars, money, picked pockets, but books were on the forbidden list of loot?”