from what I know, the Caines are both respected and liked well enough. Then again, from what I recall, the daughter’s quite beautiful.”
“Yeah, she’s got the looks. And she’s a manipulator, a bone-deep liar.”
He glanced over. “A murderer?”
“She’s involved, one way or the other.”
“In that case, I expect the Caines will take a big step back from her, and this.”
“Including the fiancé?”
Roarke braked at a light. “I have to go by my impression of him.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
On the green, he drove on. “If Merit was unaware she was having an affair—male or female doesn’t matter, it’s the affair at the bottom—he doesn’t strike me as the type to say bygones.”
“Don’t know why he would.”
“Added to it, she pulled him right into it, didn’t she, by calling him in as her legal rep, and lying to him.”
Eve shifted to face him. “So you agree she lied to him, spun the same story she spun, initially, to me.”
“Ah well, my impression again. No one knows, precisely, what goes on inside a relationship except those inside it, but my take is yes, she lied to him, has been lying to him. Using him, basically, as her beard. He wouldn’t take kindly.”
“Agreed. But there’s more.”
Roarke nodded along as she outlined the terms of the trust.
“Ah, well then, now you have it. She needs to marry to get the money, and with the Natural Order angle, she has to marry a man, a white male. Better yet if she conceives a child with him in wedlock. That sews it closed for her.”
“Right? She does that, she can walk away with everything she believes she’s entitled to. Caine would have served his purpose. I’d like you to look into the trust, make sure of the details—and what kind of money we’re talking about.”
“An entertaining way for me to spend the evening. Will you spend yours trying to suss out how the lovely lying Gwen managed to be in two places at once?”
“I’ve backed off from her doing the dirty work personally. But she admits tossing her ’link, buying a new one. She could have contacted someone who’d do it for her. Meet up, give said unknown subject the key card, then gone into her apartment.”
“The hard edges of the order believe they’re doing the righteous by harming or eliminating those who fall outside their lines.”
“So she’s …” Eve worked up a teary voice. “ ‘I thought she was my friend! Then she assaulted me, tried to … I can’t even say! When I refused her, when I fought her off, she said she’d tell Merit, tell everyone we’d been together. We’ve been intimate. Please help me. Please don’t let her do this.’ ”
Roarke glanced at Eve as he turned and drove through the gates. “Well done, Lieutenant. Just the right amount of horror and desperation.”
“She’s a stone-cold bitch. Normally, I admire that. But she’s the kind of stone-cold bitch who uses people, then discards them.”
“Like the young, yet-to-be-Officer Shelby.”
“Yeah, like Shelby. And there will be others between her and my victim. I’ll find them.”
“I’ve no doubt.”
The last burst of the spring day struck the stone and glass of the house with a fiery flash of light. It flamed in the windows, struck the towers and turrets like torches.
“It hits me, six years ago—just a handy number—Mavis was doing some gigs at the Blue Squirrel and waiting tables there to pay the rent on an efficiency apartment about the size of the master closet in that place downtown. I was sleeping in a bigger apartment, sure, but not really living there. I mostly lived at Central.
“Now I’m living in a freaking castle, and she’s going to be living in a big-ass brick house.”
“Life can have some happy turns.”
“Yeah, for some of us. Not for Ariel Byrd.”
They got out of either side, met around the hood. “Think of this,” he suggested. “Gwen Huffman isn’t having a happy turn, either.”
“Good thought.”
They went in together where Summerset waited in the grand foyer with the fat cat at his feet.
“As you’re both late, but unbloodied, I assume you toured Mavis’s new home.”
“He gets to know?” Eve jabbed a finger as the cat trotted over to rub her legs. “Bag of bones gets to know, but I don’t?”
“No one’s approval matters as yours does,” Summerset said. “I assume you didn’t disappoint her.”
“Not only didn’t Eve disappoint Mavis, she found exactly the right tone and right words to convince Peabody and McNab to take the rental.”
“That’s a fine thing for all