“She didn’t plan out everything. She didn’t plan on you.”
“I’m going to the memorial tomorrow. I’m going to talk to her again, to her friends again, to Forrest, track down this ex-husband of hers. To the housekeeper, to Charles, back to her. I’m going to annoy the living hell out of her, even if she is a friend of the chief’s wife.”
Idly, Roarke wound pasta on his fork. “She knows Tibble’s wife? Sticky.”
“Yeah.” Eve blew out a breath. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d sought out that connection as part of her outline. Get chummy with a high police official’s wife. Check.”
At Eve’s questioning glance, Roarke nodded. “I’d agree, yes. It would be very good planning on her part. How did she make the connection?”
“Committees, charities, the usual. Next financials in line are the charitable trusts and scholarships. Maybe she siphoned off some of the money, the vic found out. She comes out better a widow than in a divorce, especially if she had any part of siphoning funds meant for the less fortunate kiddies.”
“Ben would know. I should say I’d be very surprised if Ben wouldn’t know about any mishandling of funds. Possibly they could have been misappropriated and replaced quickly, books cooked in a way he would miss it. But, with his uncle dead, he’s majority stock holder, and acting chairman of the board. I’d imagine he’s having an internal audit done to make certain the house is in order, on every level.”
“She’s got him snowed. That’s how it looks to me. And she smears the victim with this sex dirt, automatically makes people look sideways. Could be if she played with funds, she’s thought of a way to twist it so it looks like the victim did the playing.”
“I can take a look.”
She twirled more spaghetti onto her fork, smirked. “Aren’t you going to be the busy little scout?”
“Cute. Should we go for a drive after dinner? Back to the scene of the crime?”
She studied him over a mouthful of pasta. “Here’s what I like about you. Almost everything.”
So,” Eve said as they stood in Anders’s bedroom, “the guy’s lying there, dead as Judas, and his wake-up system goes off. Good morning, Mr. Anders. Gives him the time, turns on the fireplace, starts the coffee, the shower, reminds him what he ordered for breakfast, and details his first appointment of the day.”
“Who needs a wife?”
Her response was a bland stare. “Anyway, it was kind of creepy. How come you don’t have a system like that, ace?”
“We do, I just don’t use it. It’s kind of creepy. Plus I rarely need an alarm, and why would I want to order breakfast the night before or have the shower going before I was ready to take one?”
“You have habits and routines, but you’re not a creature of habit and routine. He was. That was part of the weapon used against him. He was predictable. You could count on him being in bed at three in the morning, count on him programming his wake-up system, putting on his sensible pajamas. Door closed, drapes drawn. Night-night. He’d have been sleeping facing toward the door. From the angle and position of the pressure syringe mark, he’d have been sleeping on his side, facing the door. I bet he always did. She’d have known that. Checklist. Just another checklist.”
She shook her head. “Go ahead and take a look at the system. We’re going to have to clear the scene. I can’t keep her out of the house much longer. I want another look around while I’m here.”
She went through the room, this time focusing more narrowly on Ava’s things. The clothes, the shoes, the lingerie. Expensive, fashionable, but on the sedate side, Eve supposed. As fit the proper woman, of a conservative bent, of her social and financial level. Nothing too flashy, everything high-end.
Eve circled the bedroom with its surplus of gilt and shine. Maybe not exactly flashy, she mused, but certainly ornate. Ava’s Palace. Which was the truer reflection of the woman?
The dressing area held a salon’s worth of cosmetic enhancers. Creams, lotions, rejuvenators, skin boosters lived behind shining silver doors in the bath area. Bath salts and oils filled tall clear jars arranged like art on various shelves.
Liked to pamper herself, liked to sink into the deep jet tub or stand under the sprays of the silver-walled shower and luxuriate—in an area separate from her husband’s.
This is yours, this is mine.
Yet they shared a bed. Still, with a bed that size, if sex or companionship wasn’t on the menu, they might as well have been sleeping in separate counties. Walking back, Eve touched one of the gold rungs on the footboard.
“This was her room,” she said aloud. “Hers. He just happened to be in it. She tolerated that. Tolerated his presence, his fussy morning routine because it was hers. She allowed him here as long as he was useful.”
Stepping out, she sealed the door again, then went down to find Roarke.
He’d pulled his hair back with a twist of leather and sat at the controls in the security area. Besides the extensive equipment built in, Roarke had one of his own handheld devices on the counter.
“It’s an excellent system. One of mine,” he said with a casual glance over his shoulder. “So I know it quite well. It’s been extensively customized for this site. Every available option’s in here. I won’t say it’s absolutely impossible to breach or operate by long-distance remote, but I will say if the client had ordered such a thing, he would’ve been advised it could compromise his system. And, if he still wanted that ability, it would’ve been custom-made. We’d have a paper trail. I’ll check on that, but I sincerely doubt he authorized something like that.”
“And the short range?”
“Every security system can be breached, and I’ve breached most of them myself. In my misspent youth.”