Secrets in Death (In Death 45)

“About three years ago, shortly before our wedding.”

She just gaped at him. “And you’re just telling me?”

“Darling Eve, if I told you about everyone who tried, in various ways, to shake me down, milk me, exploit some dubious connection, or issue threats—veiled or overt—we’d talk of little else.”

He sent her an easy smile. “Do you tell me about everyone who threatens to make you pay, in one way or the other, for doing your job?”

She started to claim that was different, but realized it really wasn’t.

Still.

“She’s dead, murdered. I’m primary. And you’ve been consulting on this almost from the jump. Now you tell me she targeted you?”

“Well, her aim was poor so she missed entirely, and it was years ago. I honestly didn’t think anything of it until you widened that pool.”

“I need the details.” She dropped down to sit on the side of the bed. “I need to see if this compromises anything.”

“I don’t see how it would, but…” He sat next to her. “She’d been wrangling for an interview, had pushed for one a few times before, but ran into Caro. I can tell you I wasn’t even aware of the wrangling or pushing, as Caro wouldn’t bother me with that sort of thing.”

Eve thought of his sharp and efficient admin. “No, she wouldn’t. I may have to verify that, just to cover the bases.”

“I expect Caro has a file on it, somewhere. In any case, Mars finally got around Caro and approached me directly when we both attended … Christ if I remember, some event or other. You weren’t with me, but I needed to put in an appearance. Ah, the library,” he remembered. “The New York City Library, a fund-raiser.”

“Okay, that’s the when and the where. I need the what.”

“I’m pulling it back—I haven’t thought of it since, after all. As I recall, she came up to me, very charming, asked if she could have a word. She said she needed an exclusive on our wedding, pitched it as the event of the year or some such thing, how her viewers counted on her to give them a window into glamour. She nattered on quite a bit as I recall about her various plans, a couples interview, individual ones, a tease of your dress, and so on— Honestly, Eve, I don’t remember all of it, as I had no intention of giving her what she wanted, and said just that.”

“Okay, I get that. But give me what you can.”

“Well, she dropped the charm when I said no, changed tactics, and that I remember clearly enough. She said she could make it the event of the year, all glamour and swoon—or she could make things uncomfortable.”

He picked up Eve’s hand, ran a thumb around her wedding ring. “She didn’t worry me, but I heard her out, on her certainty that a man in my position would have a lot he’d rather those viewers of hers weren’t privy to, and that my bride-to-be’s reputation and standing with the NYPSD could be damaged with the wrong word in the right ear. I should understand her power to sway public opinion.”

“Nothing specific?” Eve prodded.

“Not at all. She had nothing, and I know a bluff when I hear one. And that’s well beside the fact that I don’t leave traces or footprints for some gossipmonger to follow. She didn’t worry me. She did annoy the bloody hell out of me. And while I didn’t care for her intimating she’d try to muck things up for you, I had no concerns there, either. You know how to handle a git.”

Eve relaxed. “You went Scary Roarke on her.”

He tapped Eve lightly between the eyes. “I was remarkably pleasant.”

“Scary Roarke,” Eve repeated.

“I asked if she enjoyed her work, to which she—rather smugly—assured me she did, adding that she was very good at it. So I simply outlined a hypothetical. What did she think might happen to her own career if I were to have a whim and buy Channel Seventy-Five?”

Eve let out a half laugh. “Perfect.”

“It’d be an interesting acquisition. How easy it would be, should I be interested enough to do so, to break her current contract and plant seeds that would root in such a way that she’d be fortunate to find a job as a gofer in broadcasting at some third-rate station in Bumfuck?”

“You said ‘Bumfuck’?”

“To the best of my recollection. I explained my interest would definitely pique if the right person—and I knew so many people—whispered in my ear that she was scratching about in my business or my bride-to-be’s.”

She could hear him say it all, in the brutally cold and pleasant tone he could whip out like a deadly weapon.

“Did she piss herself?”

“I couldn’t say, but she did leave rather abruptly. I kept a few ears out for a space of time, and she opted not to scratch about. So that was the end of it. A single and brief conversation nearly three years ago.”