Chapter Two #3
When she pushed back, she saw that Roarke had completed her board.
And the man did know how she liked to organize it.
Two domes sat on the table by the glass doors, along with a bottle of wine.
A fire simmered in her hearth. And since the cat sprawled on the sleep chair again, with a satisfied smirk, he’d definitely gotten his cat candy.
As she got up to walk to the board, Roarke stepped out of his adjoining office.
“Good timing then. I’ve started the financials on auto, and was just about to give you a nudge toward food.”
“I don’t need a nudge. Pretty damn hungry.” But she stood a minute more, scanning the board, before she walked to the table.
“Vic’s ’link was pretty busted up, add blood-soaked. Will EDD still be able to tell if it was hacked?”
“His account would’ve been hacked or compromised.” Roarke poured her wine. “So, yes, they’ll find the leak. The source of the leak’s a different matter, but they’ll be able to tell you if someone got the passcode by hacking.”
“Good. If hacked, they didn’t have easy access to his ’link like a family member, a close friend, even a coworker might. If not hacked, that’s more the area.”
She spooned up stew. “This is really good.”
She could tolerate the whole bunch of vegetables because nice chunks of potatoes and actual beef swam around in the hearty stew that warmed all the way down.
Plus, dumplings.
“You were running late before. What was that one?”
“Unattended. Wife’s out getting her hair done, and the guy, well into his eighties, decided to change some lightbulbs. Needs a ladder, which he gets out of the basement. The wife’s told him not to get on ladders, and Jesus, he’s wearing house skids that are about as old as he is. Slick bottoms.”
“So he slips off the ladder.”
“Yeah, he does. Cracks his head open on the island, staggers around, and because he didn’t close the basement door, ends up in a bloody heap at the base of the stairs.
“Christ, the blood.” She picked up her wine. “I’ve dealt with more than my share of blood today. How about you?”
“No blood at all until I joined my cop. Unless you count the metaphorical blood I wrung out of an acquisition where the sellers hoped to wring out some of mine.”
“Their mistake. What did you acquire?”
“A mixed commercial and residential building downtown, East Side, which includes the sellers’ Mexican restaurant.”
“Olé.”
He laughed at her. “More la negligencia. They neglected the building, and the business. Both need work, but the building has good bones, the restaurant needs a facelift and a new manager.”
“Got someone in mind?”
“I had a chat with most of the staff. There’s a woman who’s worked there six years as a server.
She was frank enough to tell me she kept working there because she lived on the third floor of the building, her husband works only two blocks away, their daughter’s school is nearby.
But it’s all gone downhill since this group bought the building three years ago, cut staff, hired relatives who didn’t pull their weight, and so on. ”
Roarke shrugged. “She’s bright, knows the business, the neighborhood. I’ll take a good look at her.”
Now he smiled at her. “Your color’s come back.”
“I’ve got a couple hours left in the tank.”
Roarke just studied her as he ate.
“Okay, ninety minutes or so. I want to run the family, the houseman. See what I can pull out about Banner-Wyst before I take on his lab tomorrow. Plus, maybe you’ll find blackmail payments and hey, case closed!”
“I’ll do my best.” He reached over for her hand. “Midnight then. We’ll call it at midnight.”
Back at her command center she switched to coffee, then looked up as Roarke set a dish with a cookie as big as her hand beside her.
She said, “Wow.”
He kissed the top of her head, then carried a cookie of his own to his office.
She started with the widow. Yes, Eve had believed her, but something might show.
What she found was a woman with no criminal. Who’d broken her left wrist in a spill on the track when she’d run in high school, who’d filed one civil suit—for sexual harassment when she’d been twenty-three—and won.
Though she doubted someone beat Chu to death over a nearly forty-year-old case, she noted down the defendant.
She’d worked for the same company for twenty-two years.
Had been married to the victim for closing in on four decades, had two sons—one a doctor, the other who ran his own urban landscaping company.
She had three grandchildren, two from the first son, one from the second.
And she volunteered at Restart, an organization that helped people—primarily women—reenter the workforce.
Since she’d leave the financials to Roarke, she moved on to the sons, found nothing of particular note.
She started on the houseman. Allen McKay, age thirty-nine, married to Devin Dix, age forty-one. One child, female, age six months. Dix currently taking the professional parent route.
McKay had a bump at twenty-one—public nudity—which she read as a college prank or dare. He’d worked as a butler in a resort hotel upstate for seven years, right out of college. Moved to New York, where he’d cohabbed with Dix for three years before taking the plunge into matrimony.
He’d taken the job with the Chus shortly after relocating to New York.
She did a quick run on the daughters-in-law, found no buzz on either.
So moved on to Banner-Wyst.