Might as well go with the flow. She crossed her booted ankles. “I spent the morning conducting interviews. So yeah, it’s been a chatty day.”

She ran it through for him, which never failed to organize her thoughts for herself. She paused only when the driver passed Roarke a bakery box, shiny white this time. She wrapped it up snacking on sugar and fat.

“It appears,” Roarke said, offering her a napkin, “that when people scrape the veneer away, as you’ve prompted them to do, Ava Anders doesn’t appear quite so smooth and glossy.”

“They don’t like her. What they liked, with the exception of Leopold who liked nothing about her, ever, was filtered through Anders. Tommy. With him not there as filter, the smudges are coming through. She doesn’t care about being liked. Or cares only because being liked is a stepping-stone to being admired. Being admired, now that’s important, and it’s a stepping-stone to being influential.”

“And Tommy. Another stepping-stone.”

“Yeah. People have been sleeping and/or marrying their way to the top since the first cavewoman said: ‘Ugh, that one’s the strongest and has the biggest club. I’ll shake my mastodon-skin-covered ass at him.’”

“Ugh?”

“Or whatever cave people said. And it’s not just women who do it. Cave guy goes: ‘Ugh, that one catches the most fish, I’ll be dragging her off to my cave now.’ Ava sees Tommy and—”

“Says ugh.”

“Or today’s equivalent thereof. There’s a rich guy, a guy people like, who has good press. A nice, easygoing sort. You can bet your ass she researched him inside out before she settled on him. Worked the transfer to New York, made sure to put herself in front of him as often as possible. Four-walls him, too. But subtly. Too aggressive, you could scare him off, too delicate he might not pick up on it. You put on the suit, the ‘what Tommy likes and how Tommy likes it’ suit, and you wear it like skin. And after you reel him in, you keep the suit on. Maybe a few adjustments here and there, but you keep it on. You get some power, you get the big houses, fancy life. You get some prominence, some position. And nudge him out of the house every chance you get so you can take the suit off and fucking breathe.”

“For nearly sixteen years?”

“She could’ve done it for twice that. But you know what happened? His father died. I gotta look at that.” She tucked it into a handy corner of her mind. “And I need to check with Charles, but I’ll lay you odds her first session with Charles was only weeks after the old man went under and Tommy inherited. Boy, the stakes just went way up. ‘Look at all this, and it could all be mine. How can I have it, and get out of this frigging suit.’ It’s gotta be itching some, and he’s only got a decade on her. He could live another fifty, sixty years. It’s just too much. Anyway, she’s earned it. God knows, she’s earned it. Divorce won’t do. She could work it, sure she could work it so it was all his fault, like she did the first husband.”

“But as that’s already been done, it wouldn’t do to repeat herself.”

“You got it,” she said, pleased. “And the payoff wouldn’t be enough in a divorce. Not anymore, not with all the years she’s put in. If he’d just die, she could be the shattered widow, the widow who picks up the pieces of her life and goes on. Why can’t he just die, why can’t he have a fatal accident, why…What if?”

“She wouldn’t be the first to hook herself to wealthy then grow weary of the price,” Roarke commented. “Or the first to kill over it. But the method in this case seems particularly vindictive.”

“Had to be. Terrible accident, but more, one brought on by his own weakness, his own disloyalty to her. The worse he looks, the brighter her halo. And, I think, once she saw a way out, that suit got tighter and tighter until it was cutting off her blood supply. Whose fault is that?”

“Why his, of course.”

“Oh yeah. He had to pay for that, for all the years she wore it, all the years she played the game.” As she sat in the fragrant air of the limo, Eve could all but feel Ava’s rage. “She hated him at the end. Whatever she felt at the start, or during, at the end she hated him.”

“And the killing itself was so intimate, and so ugly,” Roarke said, “because of the hate behind it.”

“Bull’s-eye.”

“If it played out the way you think, she still has an obstacle. There’s Ben.”

“I bet she’s got plans for Ben. She can bide her time. Unless he gets in a serious relationship, starts thinking marriage. She’d have to move faster then. Or she might consider setting it up soon. An overdose would be best. Pills, too many pills. He couldn’t take the grief, couldn’t take the pressure of stepping into his uncle’s shoes. Opts out. There’s a risk there, but if I close this case with her in the clear, as she expects, she might take it.”

“Do you intend to warn him?”

“He’s clear for now. Case is open, and she needs more time.” Calculating it, Eve tapped her fingers on her thighs. “She needs time to lean on him, to turn to him. To present the image that he’s her support now, all she has left of Tommy now. She plans, and she considers contingencies. She needs public displays of their mutual grief and dependence to establish the foundation.”

“I can’t say I knew Thomas Anders well, but I would have said he was a good judge of character.”

“Love clouds things.”

“It does, yes.” Roarke danced his fingers over the ends of her hair.

She shifted to face him. “You never asked yourself, not even once, if I made a play for you because of the money?”

“You didn’t make a play for me. I made the play.”

“That could’ve been my play.” She smiled at him. “And you fell heedlessly into my wiles.”

Tags: J.D. Robb In Death Mystery
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