Thankless in Death (13 page)

She rubbed fatigue from her eyes. “Look, I’m going to go ahead and review the discs back at Central, catch a couple hours in the crib.”

“I have a better idea. I had them hold us a room at The Manor, it’s close enough. You can review the discs there and we can both catch a couple of hours in a room that doesn’t include Peabody, McNab, and potentially other cops.”

It was the room without other cops that decided her. “Sold.”

THE ROOM AT THE MANOR SOOTHED WITH
warm, deep colors, soft fabrics and thick, age-faded rugs over the gleam of hardwood.

Over a small stone fireplace a wide-framed mirror reflected the style and dignity of the parlor. And at the touch of a button inside a wall niche, the mirror wavered away into the dark surface of a screen.

“Well, that’s … pretty frosty,” Eve decided.

“Manor guests prefer the look of Old World, with the convenience of the new. We’ve blended them wherever we can.”

She needed the screen to view the security discs, but there were other priorities. “Does that include an AutoChef with decent coffee?”

“It does, but we’ve both caffeinated enough at this point. I’ll make a deal,” he said before she could argue. “If you find something you can move on tonight, I’ll load us both up.”

It was probably fair. She didn’t like it, but it was probably fair.

While she sulked over that, he went through a doorway, came back a few moments later with two tall glasses of water with a slice of lemon in each.

“Really?”

“Yes.” He kissed her nose. “Really.”

She was thirsty enough to settle for it, and tired enough to sit on the arm of the big, plushy sofa while he set up the disc.

“He didn’t want to settle for a business hotel,” Eve calculated. “Good enough while he ran around the city, but not where he wanted to bunk. And he was smart enough to use Golde’s old ID. He’d need his own to cash the checks, but smart enough, or nervous enough to use a ploy to register at the hotel. Maybe he’ll try using it again for his bedtime place.”

“Wiser to spend some of that running-around-the-city time getting a new ID, a fake one.”

“You need to know how. And yeah, he could’ve found out how. Run it,” she told him.

Roarke sat on the opposite arm of the sofa, watching with her.

Less than twenty minutes after check-in, they spotted him again. Roarke slowed the feed.

“Same outfit as check-in. Just the briefcase. Bank time, get the cash before the bodies are discovered. He pulled that off,” she muttered.

She watched him come back through the lobby, a fat, smug smile on his face—time stamp 9:38.

“He hit the luck again,” she said. “Just frigging breezed through the banking, and now the briefcase is full of money and cashier’s checks.”

He all but strutted into the elevator, and was back again, strolling out—one suitcase—eleven minutes later.

“Just one suitcase. Gotta get rid of everything he can, maybe not the big tickets. He didn’t have a suitcase when he went into Ursa’s, but the smaller ones. Cash those checks before the bodies are discovered and his face and name hit the media. He’s still ahead of the game, by just enough. Speed it up again.”

He came back without the suitcase, but wearing a suit, and carrying a garment bag.

“Mission accomplished, and a little shopping, too. Can you—”

“I am,” Roarke said and anticipating her zoomed and magnified.

“On The Rack, for men,” she read on the side of the bag. “Do you know it?”

“No, but give us a moment and I will.”

“He’s moving fast,” Eve noted, “and look at his body language, his expression. He’s digging on the suit, likes how he feels in it.

“They have a location a block from the hotel, good location for the business crowd who needs a change quickly. Alterations done on site, and within the hour for an additional fee. They run from suits to casual wear, shoes, accessories, and so on.”

“We’ll pay them a visit.”

She watched, waited for the next appearance. “There. Timing wise, he must be heading out with the watches. Suit and briefcase, and Ursa looks and thinks, ‘A nice young man.’ Busy, busy. We’ll check with the day man on the door. Probably got a cab. Why not? He’s pretty damn flush.”

She got up to pace, eyes on the screen as Roarke ran it forward. “There again, out nearly three and a half hours this time. Lots to do. What are those bags?”

“Village Paint and Hardware, In Style, Running Man—that’s one of mine. Specializes in athletic shoes, clothing, accessories, for men again. The duffel might have come from there.”

“It fits. He’s a man now, he likes shopping in male-specific stores. Hardware. He could’ve bought the cord and tape there. We’ll check it out. What’s In Style?”

“Trendy clothing and accessories.”

“Okay.”

She sat again. He went out again, with the second suitcase. On his return, eighteen minutes later, he carried the duffel and wore the stylish new sunshades he had when exiting the cab near Nuccio’s.

“Got rid of the other suitcase. And I’m betting the bat’s in the new duffel. That and anything else he thought of on this trip. Productive day. And there,” she said when Roarke paused a final time. “Leaving with the duffel, done with the place. Catch a cab out front and it’s off to kill.”

She rose again and paced. “He had an agenda in place, a schedule, a to-do list. Maybe he varied it some—impulse buys, or he might’ve had to try a couple places before selling off the goods, but he stuck close to it. He had all that time with his dead parents and when he stayed at The Manor to work it out. Day hole, banks, cash checks, sell, shop, sell, shop—grab lunch somewhere maybe, sell, shop, pack up his new stuff. He stays with the suit for the kill. Wants her to see him all duded up. The suit makes him feel important, successful, rich. All the things he didn’t feel when she kicked him out.”

She pressed her fingers to her eyes again. “Hung out, had some fancy coffee, saw his chance, and took it. But where did he go after the kill? He had to have another hole dug. Did he buy hair and face
crap to try to make himself look more like Golde in the expired ID? Is he going to chance using that again?”

“It would be foolish,” Roarke speculated. “He has enough money to make an ID, or, for now, to pay cash for lodging.”

“Yeah. Used the Golde idea at the second hotel because, most likely, he blew through the cash he’d dug up at his parents’. But he’s got plenty more now. Still … we’ll add Golde’s name to the alert, and EDD will check out the unit in the hotel, see if he used it after Nuccio. You need equipment, specific material to make an ID, and some skill to wiggle fake data into the system so it passes. Unless he got it on that last trip and stuffed it in the duffel, there’s no sign he has anything like that.”

“He has a schedule, an agenda,” Roarke repeated. “And he had the time to plan it. Any plan should include the ID. He could obtain a reasonably good one with the money he has, but a good one would cut into that considerably.”

“I’m with you. So we have to figure out where he’d go, and how he’d get one.”

“You won’t be doing that tonight. You need sleep.”

“He’s tucked in somewhere.”

“Undoubtedly.” Roarke rose to eject the disc, and the screen rippled back to mirror glass. “And so should we be.”

“I can go straight to Central from here, early. I’ve got a change in my locker.”

“You have one here as well,” he told her, as he steered her toward the bedroom. “I had Summerset send down what we’d both need for the night, and tomorrow. And you needn’t look quite so appalled. Not only does it save time and trouble, but I told him specifically what to send, so he didn’t actually select your wardrobe.”

“I guess that’s something.”

And the big bed with its fluffy duvet and mound of pillows looked a lot better than a cot in the crib at Central. By the time she crawled into it, she was ready to give it up for the night.

Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow Reinhold was going to have her right on his ass.

She curled in as Roarke’s arm came around her. And let it go.

In dreams, she sat with Lori Nuccio on the padded crates in the tiny apartment. Lori’s hair swept down to her shoulders, sleek, a glossy reddish brown. Blue eyes reflected sadness out of her unmarred face.

“I didn’t want to look like how he left me.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“I thought he just needed motivation, and—you know—inspiration. He was cute, and he could be funny. He wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t mean. Not at first. He treated me okay, and I wanted to help him. I was the stupid one.”

“I don’t think so. You cared about him. You thought you could help him grow up some.”

“Yeah, I guess. I liked having a steady boyfriend. Having somebody, and he’d had some bad luck. He said he had. A lot of bad luck. People were jealous of him, and screwing with him. But that’s not really the way it was. He had such nice parents, and I thought he’d come around.”

She knuckled a tear away. “But he just got worse instead of better. He wouldn’t work, and he complained all the time, and he never helped clean up the apartment. Then he took the money,
my
money, and when I got mad, he hit me. I had to kick him out. It was what I had to do.”

“It was. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But he killed me for it and now I’ll never get married or have kids or go shopping with my friends. And he hurt me, really bad. He cut my hair off, and it was so pretty. Now I look like this.”

Her hair fell away, hank by hank, her eyes swelled, blackened, her lip split.

“I’m sorry for what he did to you. I should’ve stopped him.”

“I just wanted a fresh start. But he wouldn’t let me. I don’t want my parents to see me like this. Can you fix it? Can you fix me?”

“I’ll do what I can. I’m going to find him, Lori. I’m going to make sure he’s held accountable for what he did to you.”

“I’d rather not be dead.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to argue with that.”

“He would,” Lori said solemnly. “He wants a lot of people dead.”

“It’s my job to make sure he doesn’t get what he wants.”

“I hope you do your job, because so far, he’s getting it.”

Hard to argue with that, too, Eve thought, and slid into the more comforting dark.

W
hile Eve talked to the dead in dreams, Reinhold gloated over his latest luck.

He’d known the old hag had some money, but he hadn’t known she had
money
. By the time he emptied her accounts, he’d have three million, nine hundred and eighty-four thousand in his brand-new name—or the name to come once they generated that new ID.

When he added it to what he’d,
ha-ha
, inherited from his parents, and gotten from his former bitch girlfriend, he’d be rolling in more than four fucking million dollars.

Jesus, he thought the hundred seventy-five thousand he’d had—minus what he’d spent—was a big deal. It was nothing compared to this.

He could have anything he wanted now. Any
one
he wanted now.

He’d never have to work a day in his life to live like a king. Except for the killing, that is. But what was that old bullshit his father always tossed around?

If you love your work you’re never working
. Something like that.

Who knew the stupid bastard would actually be right about anything?

And now he had a droid—a pretty classy one—reprogrammed to follow his orders, and only his.

He’d really enjoyed that when he’d ordered up a midnight snack.

“Ms. Farnsworth, you sneaky bitch. You’ve been sitting on all this money with that fat ass of yours. Why the hell did you waste all that time dragging it around the classroom?”

She only stared at him with dead-tired eyes, rimmed with red from fatigue and tears, and from the occasional backhand he delivered to keep her sharp.

She’d loved teaching, she thought. He’d never understand the satisfaction and fulfillment of honest work. He was rotten down to the core. And she knew now he’d kill her before he was done.

He’d make her suffer first; he’d hurt her in every way he could devise. Then he’d kill her.

“We’ve still got work to do, but some of it’s going to have to wait. I’ve got to get some shut-eye.” He rose, stretched luxuriously. “You oughta get some, too. You look like hell.”

He laughed, cracking himself up so much he bent over from the
waist. “Tomorrow, we’re going to finish routing all that money. And the big new assignment? We’re going to work on that ID. I need your best work now, remember that? Remember how you said that a million times? ‘I need your best work, Jerry.’ Stupid bitch.”

He gave her a last backhand, in case she forgot.

“See you in the morning.” He gave her chair a good shove so it slammed against the wall, then strolled out, calling for lights off on the way.

She sat quivering in the dark. Then steeling herself began to squirm, rock, twist her aching limbs in the faint hope she could loosen her bonds.

E
ve woke to the familiar and the not. The life-affirming scent of coffee hit first, to her eternal gratitude. The
sense
of an empty bed with Roarke close by. Those were every-morning things.

But the bed wasn’t her bed, and no sky window above it showed her the filtered roof of the world.

Hotel, she thought. Downtown, near work. And a dead body waiting for her at the morgue.

She sat up, glanced blearily around at the muted gold of the walls, the single white orchid (she thought it was an orchid) arching out of a deep blue pot on a dresser.

And caught the muted mumble from the parlor beyond. Media reports, stock reports, she concluded. Roarke usually kept the sound off as he reviewed all that from the bedroom sitting area.

She rolled out, snagged the robe draped at the foot of the bed where the cat would often be, and shrugging into it, went out to join him.

Already showered and dressed for business-world domination in a dark suit. Some blonde in hot red sat at a glass counter on screen talking about the market holding its breath in anticipation of the potential acquisition of EuroCom by Roarke Industries.

Eve wandered over to pick up his coffee cup, down the contents.

“You can have your own, you know.”

“I’m going to. What’s EuroCom, why are you potentially acquiring it, and how come it makes everybody hold their breath?”

“It’s been the major player in Europe’s joint communication development over the last decade or so. Because I can, and it will slide nicely into other holdings in that region. And because it’s been badly mismanaged the last few years, resulting in lost jobs and revenue, and the acquisition should right that ship as well as add to it.”