“Good morning, Lieutenant.”
“I had a bad feeling when I walked in here. It’s just your kind of place, isn’t it? Why do you have to own every damn thing?”
“It was a boyhood dream.” His voice cruised over Ireland, picked up the music of it. He glanced past her to the police seal. “It appears we’ve both been inconvenienced.”
“Did you have to tell the sweeper I was your wife?”
“You are my wife,” he said easily and shifted his gaze back to her face. “A fact which pleases me daily.” He took her hand, rubbing his thumb over her wedding ring before she could tug it free again.
“No touching,” she hissed at him, which made him smile.
“That’s not what you said a few hours ago. In fact—”
“Shut up, Roarke.” She glanced around, though none of the cops working the scene was outside or close enough to hear. “This is a police investigation.”
“So I’m told.”
“And who told you?”
“The head of the maintenance team who found the body. He did call the police first,” he pointed out. “But it’s natural he’d report the incident to me. What happened?”
There was no point in griping because his business had tangled around hers. Again. She tried to console herself that he could and would help her cut through some of the muck of paperwork.
“Do you have a bartender by the name of Kohli? Taj Kohli?”
“I have no idea. But I can find out.” He took a slim memo book out of his breast pocket, keyed in a request for data. “Is he dead?”
“As dead gets.”
“Yes, he was mine,” Roarke confirmed, and the Irish in his voice had taken on a cold note. “For the past three months. Part time. Four nights a week. He had a family.”
“Yes, I know.” Such things mattered to him, and it always touched her heart. “He was a cop,” Eve said. This time his brows lifted. “Didn’t have that data in your little scan, did you?”
“No. It seems my personnel director was careless. That will be fixed. Am I allowed inside?”
“Yeah, in a minute. How long have you owned the place?”
“Four years, more or less.”
“How many employees, full- and part-time?”
“I’ll get you all the data, Lieutenant, and answer all pertinent questions.” Annoyance gleamed in his eyes as he reached for the door himself. “But now, I’d like to see my place.”
He pushed inside, scanned the destruction, then focused in on the thick black bag being loaded on what the death attendants called a stroller.
“How was he killed?”
“Thoroughly,” Eve said, then sighed when Roarke simply turned and stared at her. “It was ugly, okay? Metal bat.” She watched Roarke look toward the bar and the spray of blood sparkling on glass like an incomprehensible painting. “After the first few hits, he wouldn’t have felt anything.”
“Ever had a bat laid into you? I have,” he said before she could answer. “It’s not pleasant. It seems far-fetched to think it’s robbery, even one that got well out of hand.”
“Why?”
“There’d have been enough prime liquor, easily fenced, to keep anyone cozily fixed for some time. Why break the bottles when you could sell them? If you hit a place like this, it’s not f
or the bit of cash that might be copped, but for the inventory and perhaps some of the equipment.”
“Is that the voice of experience?”