“I never buy shampoo by the case for personal use, and you’d have looked there in any event. You don’t miss details. Still, I know more about high-end products than you, which is why I’m an expert consultant.”
“Civilian,” she added. “And you’re not, until tomorrow after Whitney’s approval.”
“In anticipation of that, I need to see the security disc run from Jonah’s murder.”
“No.”
“I need to see what Yost was wearing, how he wore it. I’ve reviewed the hotel disc. In that he prefers British designers.”
“How the hell do you recognize a designer from looking at somebody’s suit jacket on a disc run?”
“Darling Eve.” With a faint smile he skimmed a finger over the shoulder of her ancient and faded NYPSD T-shirt. “Fashion is more a priority for some of us than it is for others.”
“You think that’s a dig, but it doesn’t hit the mark with me, ace. Anyway, I should’ve figured one clothes snob would recognize another.” She pulled the disc out of her file bag. “You get a good look at him as he’s coming to the door. That should do it for you.”
And that, she thought as she loaded it into her desk unit, was as much as she intended to show Roarke. “Computer, run current disc file, point mark zero to point mark fifteen. On wall screen.”
WORKING . . . BEGIN SEGMENT RUN.
They both looked on-screen, both watched Yost stroll casually up the steps to Jonah Talbot’s door. And there the image froze.
“Definitely British,” Roarke confirmed. “As are the shoes. I need a closer look at the briefcase.”
“Okay. Computer, enhance segment twelve through twenty-two, ten power.”
WORKING . . .
The image shifted with the hand and the briefcase it held separating and magnifying.
“So he sticks with the Brits. That’s a Whitford bag, made exclusively in London. I own the bloody factory.”
“This is good. We concentrate on sales in London. British designers.”
“The conservative ones,” Roarke added.
Her forehead knitted. “I thought it was more the arty type of look.”
“He’s added the wig and scarf for that, but under it, it’s straight arrow. The suit looks like a Marley, but Smythe and Wexville make that same sharply angular style. The shoes are Canterbury’s, almost certainly.”
She frowned at them. They looked like shoes to her, simple black slip-onto-the-feet shoes. “Okay, we’ll follow it up. Eject disc.”
“Computer, disregard. I’ll see the rest.”
“No. There’s no point in it.”
“I’ll see the rest,” he said. “Would you prefer I access it and view at another time and place?”
“I’m telling you there’s no point in putting yourself through that.”
“I spoke to his mother. I listened to her weep. Computer, continue run.”
Eve cursed under her breath and stalked away. She did her best to get her temper under control, and poured out two glasses of wine. He hadn’t touched the brandy earlier.
She didn’t need to watch the tape to live it again. She could close her eyes and see every movement, every horror. And she feared when she closed her eyes that night to sleep, she would see it again. Or worse, see herself, as a child, bleeding and broken in a filthy room where a red light blinked over and over and over again.
She bore down, and with Mozart soaring, walked back to finish the nasty job of watching it again beside her husband.
“Freeze image,” Roarke ordered and his voice cut like sharpened ice. He stared at the screen, where Jonah Talbot lay unconscious and the man who would kill him stood in the act of unbuttoning his shirt.