Secrets in Death (In Death 45)

“Of course.”

“Round it up,” she said, circling a finger.

“All in all, you’ve somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred and sixty. You might hit four hundred.”

As McNab would say, Eve thought, some vicinity.

“How about the building? All of it, both units.”

At this Roarke looked a little pained. “Well, I haven’t seen the second unit at all, have I? And haven’t done more than walk straight up here in this one.”

“Just basically.”

“The location, the space, not factoring how well or how poorly maintained, what might be needed to put it on the market? A very rough fifty, and it could be as much as twice that. And don’t be asking me about the contents, as I couldn’t begin.”

Close enough, she thought. Plenty close enough.

“What I’m seeing with what’s here, what was at her apartment, what’s in her accounts? She hit the billion mark. But instead of buying herself a damn country and spending her days sipping mai tais, she kept working, kept blackmailing, and kept hoarding. That tells me she couldn’t stop. It would never have been enough. It might be her killer figured out the same.”

She stepped out as Peabody came in. “Get Jenkinson and Reineke up here.”

“Okay, but…” Peabody looked in the vault. Her jaw dropped; her eyes went wide and dazed. She said, “Ooooh, shiny.”

“Never mind.” Eve pushed by to get her detectives herself. As she strode out, she heard McNab.

“He opened it in like eighteen minutes.”

She just shook her head and kept going.

Roarke wandered down with his coat and kit while she called in for additions to the search team, an armored vehicle, guards.

“The commander’s taking over the transfer details, thank God,” she told Roarke. “Thanks for the assist.”

“My very genuine pleasure.” He smiled at the steady look she aimed at him. “Should I turn out my pockets?”

“You’re too good to get caught that easy.” She shoved a hand through her hair as she looked around the cluttered foyer. “Plus, you stopped. Could stop. She couldn’t. Not the digging, the knowing, the taking, the using, and the acquiring. Not evil, but sick. Seriously sick. And still…”

“You’re pissed,” he said, shrugging into his coat.

“Yeah. She has books up there. Record books of marks and potentials. You and I are in there. I need to talk to you about that, but not here. Mavis and Leonardo and the baby, them, too.”

“You’re right to be pissed. They’re family.”

She nodded. “And Nadine. I talked to Mavis, just to check if she’d gotten pushed any.”

“She’d have told you if she had.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m circling. I’m pissed and I’m circling. And some stupid part of me feels sorry for Mars because it’s like she had a disease.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“It’s useless. The same as being pissed is useless. The useful is to stand for her, do the job.”

“You are.”

Since there was no one to see, she didn’t resist when he pressed his lips to her forehead.

“To keep doing it I need to get to DeWinter, see if there’s any progress on that facial reconstruction. Finding out who she was before she was Larinda Mars may help.”