Connections in Death (In Death, #48)- J. D. Robb Page 0,65
her in the least to learn he got a small percentage of Banger income.
The question was: How deep did it go? Just business? Did just business include accessory to murder?
Why put the woman’s name on the documents? She’d have asked Roarke, but he was already muttering to himself as he worked.
She had a theory. The properties all carried mortgages. Was she cover? Something goes south, he leaves her holding the bag?
Considering that, she called in, ordered surveillance on the residence. If Cohen left, she wanted to know where he went.
“His partnership with Jones extends to a company,” Roarke said as he continued to work. “CoJo Corp. They use it to bank rents, to pay for maintenance, taxes, insurance. All very standard, with each of them taking a percentage every month—of what they report in any case.”
“You’ve got more than that,” Eve said as she drove through the gates.
“I do. I’ve found two buried accounts already in the time it’s taken to get home, and that’s on a bleeding portable. Sort of a pity, as playing with the unregistered would be a bit of fun. He’s just not good enough at this to bother.”
“Or you’re too good to need to bother.”
When they got out of the car, he skirted the hood, took both her hands. “I wish I didn’t know, absolutely, you sign papers of ours without the reading of them.”
“I give them a scan.” Sometimes. “If you fucked me over, I’m a cop. I know how to make you pay without letting it show. Like, the one where I tranq your wine, dress you in a diaper and pasties, get you in your office and transmit the image globally.”
“You’ve given this some thought.”
“Just in my free time.” She gave his hands a squeeze before drawing hers away and laying them on his cheeks. “Bottom line? She wasn’t wrong to trust a man she loves—because it had to be love. He’s not rich or good-looking or powerful. She just loves the wrong man. I don’t.”
“Well now,” he murmured, then leaned in to take her mouth in a soft, slow, sweet kiss.
“There’s the one where I coat the inside of all your boxers with a biological that causes your works to develop festering boils.”
It made him wince. “Christ Jesus, you obviously have far too much free time.”
“I’ve got a whole list,” she said as he opened the front door. “For him, too,” she added, shooting a finger at Summerset.
Summerset merely cocked his eyebrows. “No visible injuries once again. We appear to be on a streak.”
“For him I have the stick up his ass surgically removed, and without it, his whole body collapses into a puddle of ghoul.”
She tossed her coat over the newel post. “You’ll be too busy with festering boils to have him reanimated.”
“Don’t ask,” Roarke told Summerset as Eve headed upstairs with the cat on her heels.
He went up after her.
“I want another thirty on this,” he told her. “And you’ll be wanting to set up your board.”
“Thirty’s good.”
She dealt with her board. Two murders, she thought, and she hadn’t had five minutes in her home office on either. That changed now.
Seated at her command center, she wrote up notes on the Cohen/Vinn interview. She circled a finger in the air when Roarke came in. “Need another five.”
“And a meal.”
He strolled into the kitchen, considered the options. By the time she’d finished he had the domed plates and a bottle of wine on the table.
“You know he never asked—like Vinn did—who died and how.”
“I noticed.” Roarke poured the wine, lifted the domes.
“Because he was part of it, heard about it, and/or Jones contacted him for some legal advice after our visit.” She sat, added—in his opinion—entirely too much salt and butter to her mashed potatoes.
“Again, it could be all of the above.”
“Could be.” She sampled the potatoes, deemed them good, cut a slice of a pork medallion. “The real question is: How much time he’ll do and where—not if.”
“I can give you tax evasion.”
“Already?”
Roarke studied his wine, sipped. “I regret calling for payment on this one. But what’s done is done. Shell companies—so thin I could’ve cracked them with a thought. He’ll have fraudulent identification to access some of his six accounts.”
“Six?”
“Not counting the legitimate ones, or the one with Jones. I’ll give him some credit for knowing enough to live within Eldena’s means, and to carefully file their taxes on what they report. What he doesn’t report is considerably more. More rent than either of them show—which means you