“Mr. Mira?”
“He’s right enough,” Roarke said, shrugging out of his coat. “Eve’s just spoken with Dr. Mira.”
“I’m glad to hear it. If there’s anything I can do, you’ve only to let me know.”
He drifted away in that nearly silent way of his, leaving Eve frowning after him.
“After a day like this, I don’t even get to take a shot at him?”
“You told a former senator’s wife to kiss your ass.” He slipped off Eve’s coat. “Be satisfied with that.”
“That was a professional kiss my ass.”
Roarke gave Galahad a quick rub before starting up the steps. “There’s always tomorrow.”
Since that would have to be good enough, Eve went up with him, and the cat thumped up the steps behind them.
“Dinner first,” he insisted. “We’ll have it in the bedroom with the fire, and the wine.”
She could live with that. After, she’d set up a board in her office, do some runs, harangue the detective in Missing Persons she’d alerted. Roarke could check finances, which would entertain him. She could—
“I’ll deal with the fire and the wine,” Roarke said. “You deal with the pasta.”
“Right. Okay. I’m going to contact his two kids, just see if they have any information. I can hit this brain trust of his in the morning if nothing’s turned up.”
“You mean a body. You think like a murder cop, don’t you?”
“I am a murder cop. A body, because if this was kidnapping, a straight deal, there’d have been a demand for ransom. If someone just hauled him off to get something out of him, maybe they let him go after.”
“But why?”
She programmed the spaghetti, added the herbed breadsticks they both liked. “Yeah, why? Unless it’s some deal where he’d have to keep it zipped or be in worse. I don’t know enough about him yet to get a solid handle. Instinct says we’ll find the body, but that’s maybe knee-jerk.”
“His wife doesn’t love him.”
The cop she’d been would have reached that conclusion, but the cop she’d become, the one who knew love, was certain of it. “Not even in the general vicinity of love. But she’s territorial, protective of their status. I don’t see her setting this up. Maybe I find something that swings it that way. Mira said he played around, but the wife didn’t care. Maybe she started to care for some reason—threat of divorce and loss of status.”
She brought plates with generous portions to the table in the sitting area of the bedroom. Now the fire crackled, and Roarke poured deep red wine into glasses.
And the cat watched avidly.
“Summerset would’ve fed him, right?” Eve said.
“Oh, of course.”
“Crap.” She went back to the AutoChef, programmed a small dish of salmon. “He’ll give us the beady eye while we eat otherwise,” she claimed when Roarke lifted an eyebrow.
When Galahad pounced like a starving thing on the fish, she went back to sit, picked up the wine.
“This was supposed to happen hours ago.” She took a deep drink.
“And still, here we are. It’s a nice thing, however delayed, to share a meal in front of the fire on an ugly winter’s night.”
She twirled spaghetti around her fork, sampled. “It seriously doesn’t suck. The Realtor.” She twirled up another bite. “I need the Realtor. Either he—or she—is in on it, or got called off. In on it is most probable.”
She forked off a bite of meatball. “It’s not about selling the house.” She shook her head. “Mr. Mira’s the wedge there. Maybe it’s politics, maybe it’s personal. Maybe he owes somebody a bunch of money. But they got him into that house—meaning they knew about that house—where they assumed they’d have plenty of time and privacy. Mr. Mira screwed that up.”
“So while Dennis is unconscious, they spirit Edward Mira away. And that requires a vehicle.”
“Yeah, so it’s most likely, having that handy, he/she/they planned to haul him off all along. Tune him up some first. Goes back to why it sounds personal. Or it’s about money, which is pretty personal to a lot of people. Still . . .”
“If it were money, he’s pushing to sell a valuable property, which would cover all but the most insane of debts.”
“Exactly. So again, if it’s money, the sensible thing is to go after the obstacle, and that’s Mr. Mira. But they don’t. Odds are on personal.”
“Someone he judged, sentenced,” Roarke suggested. “A relation or loved one of someone he sentenced. Someone he twisted the wrong way while in Congress, or someone he passed over for a position.” Roarke lifted a shoulder. “A man who’s had those careers makes enemies.”
“A man who cats around makes them, too. A woman he dumped, the husband or lover of someone he had an affair with. A lot of ground on personal.”
Nodding, Roarke twirled some pasta of his own. “Why not just finish him where he sat?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She continued to eat while it stewed around in her brain. “That’s why I figured kidnapping at first. But it’s been hours, and no ransom demand. So . . . Wanted more time to play with him—which again leans toward getting information or just making him suffer more.”
“The attack came at Dennis from behind.”
She nodded, sampled the wine again. “Took some care he didn’t see the attacker. Now, cold-blooded? Why not give him another whack or two, take him out, and use the violence to scare the piss out of Edward. But, no. He wasn’t on the agenda.”
“Which tells you there is an agenda.”
“Take a look at this.” She shifted in her chair. “The attacker walks in the house with him. That says to me, he doesn’t know this person, not as a threat. Or does, again, not as a threat. The Realtor ploy—or the attacker is a Realtor, and that helped set the trap. Without the vic around to tell us, or his body to tell us, we don’t know if the attacker stunned him, lured him, forced him into the study. And we don’t know why they chose that spot—whether it’s significant—for the tuning up. Mr. Mira doesn’t think his cousin was restrained in the chair, and I didn’t see any signs of it on scene. So I think at least two people. One to hold a weapon on the vic, the other to smack him around.”
“If he owed money, which I hope to find out, they might have been a couple of spine-crackers. But the ploy to get him to that location seems a bit sophisticated and unnecessary.”
“Exactly. And why then take him instead of just breaking his legs? Maybe there will be a ransom demand, but without one, I don’t think this is about money. Not in the usual sense. We need to cross it off, but I don’t feel that.”
“Sex follows next.”
“Yeah. Sex makes people crazy. Mean, vindictive, violent.”
“Promise?” he said and made her choke on her wine.
“Such a pervert.”
“Card-carrying. But you’re talking the nonentertaining and nonconsensual crazy. And I agree. But . . .” He tore a breadstick in half, offered her a share. “If beating him to death over an affair, or a thwarted affair, why take him?”
“Mr. Mira.”
Roarke nodded. “The unexpected, perhaps some panic. But not enough to rush the beating. Take him elsewhere.”
“That’s the one I like. Shit, what do we do now? Let’s get out of here—take him with us.” She gestured with the breadstick, bit in. “Five gets you ten we find the body within the next twenty-four.”
“I feel, even for us, such a bet would be in poor taste.”
“Yeah.” As she ate, she wondered who’d come up with the concept of a ball of meat, and if they’d been properly compensated. “Anyway, I’m going to approach it as a murder—let Missing Persons handle it as a missing. But if a body turns up, I’ll have a jump on it. It’ll be hard on Mr. Mira, even though he and his cousin weren’t what you’d call friendly.”
“Family’s often a different kettle, isn’t it?”