“Several times.” He pulled his fingers apart, linked them again. “As I said, we considered ourselves partners. We had the children, and there were a few business interests.”
“Including Mercury.”
“Yes.” His lips curved ever so slightly. “You are an . . . acquaintance of Roarke’s.”
“That’s right. Did you and your former wife disagree on any of your partnerships, personally or professionally?”
“Naturally we did, on both. But we’d learned, as we had been unable to learn during our marriage, the value of compromise.”
“Mr. Angelini, who inherits Prosecutor Towers’s interest in Mercury after her death?”
His brow lifted. “I do, Lieutenant, according to the terms of our business contract. There are also a few holdings in some real estate that will revert to me. This was an arrangement of our divorce settlement. I would guide the interests, advise her on investments. Upon the death of one of us, the interests and profits or losses would revert to the other. We both agreed, you see, and trusted that in the end, all either of us had of value would go to our children.”
“And the rest of her estate. Her apartment, her jewelry, whatever possessions that weren’t part of your agreement?”
“Would, I assume, be left to our children. I imagine there would be a few bequests to personal friends or charities.”
Eve was going to dig quickly to learn just how much Towers had tucked away. “Mr. Angelini, you were aware that your ex-wife was intimately involved with George Hammett.”
“Naturally.”
“And this was . . . not a problem?”
“A problem? Do you mean, Lieutenant, did I, after nearly twelve years of divorce, harbor homicidal jealousy for my ex-wife? And did I slice the throat of the mother of my children and leave her dead on the street?”
“In words to that effect, Mr. Angelini.”
He said something in Italian under his breath. Something, Eve suspected, uncomplimentary. “No, I did not kill Cicely.”
“Can you tell me your whereabouts on the night of her death?”
She could see his jaw tense and noticed the control it took for him to relax it again, but his eyes never flickered. She imagined he could stare a hole through steel.
“I was at home in my townhouse from eight o’clock on.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see or speak with anyone who can verify that?”
“No. I have two domestics, and both were out on their night off, which was why I was home. I wanted quiet and privacy for an evening.”
“You made no calls, received none during the evening?”
“I received a call at about three A.M. from Commander Whitney informing me of my wife’s death. I was in bed, alone, when the call came in.”
“Mr. Angelini, your ex-wife was in a West End dive at one o’clock in the morning. Why?”
“I haven’t any idea. No idea at all.”
Later, when Eve stepped into the glass tube to descend, she beeped Feeney. “I want to know if Marco Angelini was in any kind of financial squeeze, and how much that squeeze would have loosened at his ex-wife’s sudden death.”
“You smell something, Dallas?”
“Something,” she muttered. “I just don’t know what.”
chapter five