“I do, yes. So we’ll sit, have some pasta, some wine, and you’ll tell me about this link, and what it means.”
“I’ll get the food, you get the wine.”
So they sat and ate while she took him through her day.
“There’s a calculated cruelty, isn’t there, to murdering the spouse of someone you have a grudge against.” He broke some bread, handed her a share. “How does that apply to you telling Summerset not to open deliveries?”
“I not only spent time at the school, asking questions, having EDD access records, I made it clear to anyone paying attention—and if he’s not, he’s an idiot—we’ve made the connection. What better way to take a slap at the primary than to try for her spouse?”
She rolled some pasta. “It’s low odds, but why risk it?”
“Understood. So you’ll look hard at Grange, and the transition period, the change of headmasters.”
“If the school’s the connection, and it is, she’s the strongest link. From everything I’ve looked at, she didn’t give a rat’s ass about the students or the instructors. It was all about prestige, about the big donations.” She forked up a bite of meatball, gestured with it. “So two for you. What do you know about Grange’s ex, Reginald Greenwald of All Fresh?”
“Ah. I believe I’ve met him a time or two. Considering that, I may have met Grange as well. The business is more than solid, and the family has a reputation for running it well. I don’t recall hearing anything particular or peculiar. Do you think he’s involved?”
“They have a lot of labs, a lot of chemists and chemicals. He’s not only CEO, but the grandson of the founder, so who’d question him if he spent time in the labs?” She shrugged, ate some more. “But I don’t see it, at least not with what I have. No love lost between him and Grange. They had an arrangement.”
“Did they?”
“So he says. They married mostly for sex and because they suited each other’s ambitions and images. If either of them wanted sex outside the marriage, all good, as long as they kept it private. She didn’t. Not only did somebody send him photos of her, with her sex buddy’s face obscured, but she dipped into the staff pool, and got caught.”
“Careless of her.”
“There’s speculation she diddled a student.”
“More than careless there. But … She and Greenwald are, as I recall, contemporaries. Wouldn’t that make her roughly a half century older than the students?”
“Greenwald had a twenty-four-year-old live-in Ukrainian tootsie pretending to be his personal assistant. And you want to be careful there, ace, as the age difference falls in the same range.”
“But she would be an adult, not a student,” Roarke pointed out, “and there the difference widens a great deal.”
“Won’t argue with true.”
“You ran her?”
“I did. He sponsored her, brought her over three years ago, so well after the divorce. I gave her an out, told her I could help her. She said she was very content—and she meant it. That he was kind to her, didn’t hurt her. And she knew what it was like to be hurt by someone in power. So … their business.”
“An unsavory gray area, but—not a minor, not a student. If Grange did indeed go there, she’d not only lose her position, and any remote chance of landing another, but face criminal charges.”
“Yeah, she would. I’m thinking of mentioning that to her when I take a trip down to East Washington.”
“You’d go to her?”
“I could start the process of having her come here for interview, but she could stall, and the first two kills were within two days. I’d rather not risk it.”
“I’ll arrange a shuttle. And if that’s something you get used to,” he said before she spoke, “it’s to save time and frustration—potentially lives—in the work. So it’s all to the good.”
“The public shuttle’s not that bad,” she began, and tolerated his bland stare. “But yeah, it would save time. I’m figuring to go down after Kent Abner’s memorial in the morning.
“Second question. What do you know about Miguel Rodriges?”
“I’m not entirely sure I know anything. Who is he?”
“I’ll make it easier, since you basically employ the population of Uruguay. It happens he’s an old pal of Callendar’s, so she gave me the first tip. When I got the second from a teacher at Gold, I got his name from her to take a look.
“He went to Gold on scholarship,” she continued as she wound more pasta around her fork, “got a full ride to MIT, and now works as a game programmer in one of your R&D departments.”