The last thing she saw was the flash of his grin.
“What have you got, Feeney?”
“Maybe something, maybe nothing.”
It was early, just eight o’clock on the morning after Roarke left for FreeStar One, but Feeney already looked haggard. Eve punched two coffees, double strength, from her AutoChef.
“You’re in here at this hour, looking like you’ve been up all night, and in that suit, I have to deduce it’s something. And I’m a gold-star detective.”
“Yeah. I’ve been noodling the computer, going down another level on the families and personal relations of the victims like you wanted.”
“And?”
Stalling, he drank his coffee, dug out his bag of candied nuts, scratched his ear. “Saw you on the news last night. The wife did, actually. Said you looked flash. That’s one of the kid’s expressions. We try to keep up.”
“In that case, you’re rocking me, Feeney. That’s one of the kid’s expressions, too. Translation, you’re not coming clear.”
“I know what it means. Shit. This one cuts close to home, Dallas. Too close.”
“Which is why you’re here instead of trasmitting what you’ve got over a channel. So let’s have it.”
“Okay.” He puffed out a breath. “I was dicking around with David Angelini’s records. Financial stuff mostly. We knew he was into some spine twisters for gambling debts. He’s been holding them off, giving them a little trickle here and there. Could be he’s dipped into the company till, but I can’t get a lock on that. He’s covered his ass.”
“So, we’ll uncover it. I can get the name of the spine twisters,” she mused, thinking of Roarke. “Let’s see if he made them any promises—like he’d be coming into an inheritance.” Her brows knit. “If it wasn’t for Metcalf, I’d think hard about somebody he owed hurrying up on the IOUs by taking out Towers.”
“Might be that simple, even with Metcalf. She had a nice nest egg set aside. I haven’t found anybody among the beneficiaries who needed quick money, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.”
“Okay, you keep working that angle. But that isn’t why you’re here playing with your nuts.”
He nearly managed a laugh. “Cute. Okay, here it is. I turned up the commander’s wife.”
“Run that by slow, Feeney. Real slow.”
He couldn’t sit, so he sprang up to pace the small space. “David Angelini made some healthy deposits into his personal credit account. Four deposits of fifty K over the last four months. The final one was keyed in two weeks before his mother got terminated.”
“All right, he got his hands on two hundred K in four months, and banked it like a good boy. Where’d he get it? Fuck.” She already knew.
“Yeah. I accessed the E-transactions. Backtracked. She transferred it to his New York bank, and he flipped it over into his personal account in Milan. Then he withdraws it, in cash, hard bills, at an AutoTell on Vegas II.”
“Jesus Christ, why didn’t she tell me?” Eve pressed her balled fists to her temples. “Why the hell did she make us look for it?”
“It wasn’t like she tried to hide it,” Feeney said quickly. “When I clicked over to her records, it was all out front. She has an account of her own, just like the commander.” He cleared his throat at Eve’s level stare. “I had to look, Dallas. He hasn’t made any unusual transactions out of his, or out of their joint. But she’s cut her principal in half doling out to Angelini. Christ, he was bleeding her.”
“Blackmail,” Eve speculated, struggling to think coolly. “Maybe they had an affair. Maybe she was stuck on the bastard.”
“Oh man, oh Jesus.” Feeney’s stomach did a long sickening roll. “The commander.”
“I know. We have to go to him with this.”
“I knew you were going to say that.” Mournfully, Feeney took a disc out of his pocket. “I got it all. How do you want to play it?”
“What I want to do is go out to White Plains and knock Mrs. Whitney on her perfect ass. Barring that, we go to the commander’s office and lay it out for him.”
“They’ve still got some of that old body armor down in storage,” Feeney suggested as Eve rose.
“Good thinking.”
They could have used it. Whitney didn’t climb over his desk and body slam them, nor did he pull out his stunner. He did all the damage necessary with the lethal glare of his eyes.