no criminal record. She’d worked for the same employer for eight years, lived in the same apartment for the same amount of time.
Moved over from Brooklyn, Eve thought. Got yourself a job and a place of your own. New York girl, beginning to end. Since she had next of kin’s permission to go into the victim’s financials, she coded in, brought up the data.
She’d lived close, Eve noted, but no closer than any young, single woman who liked fancy shoes and nights at the club might live. Rent was paid. Saks bill was overdue, as was someplace called Clones. A quick check informed her Clones was a designer knockoff shop downtown.
With the data still up, she switched to her notes and began to order them into a report. It helped her think to take the facts, observations and statements and link them together into a whole.
She glanced over as Roarke came to the doorway.
“There’s quite a bit of information about the diamonds, including detailed descriptions, photographs. A great deal more on each of the men allegedly responsible for the theft. It’s still compiling. I’m having it sent to your unit simultaneously.”
“Thanks. You need to oversee the run?”
“Not really, no.”
“Want to go for a ride?”
“With you, Lieutenant? Always.”
Chapter 3
She went back to the scene. It was dark, she thought. Not as late as it had been on the night of the murder, but near enough. She uncoded the police seal.
“How long would it take to deactivate the alarm, uncode the locks? Average?”
“But, darling, I’m not average in such matters.”
She rolled her eyes. “Is it a good system? Would you need experience to get through, or just the right tools?”
“First, it’s a good neighborhood. Safe and upscale. There’s considerable foot and street traffic. You wouldn’t want to bungle about, have anyone wondering, Now what’s that guy doing over there? Even in the middle of the night. What time was the murder, by the way?”
“Time of death’s estimated due to the condition of the body. But between twelve and one A.M.”
“Not so very late then, particularly if we believe he was inside already. Shank of the evening, really. So you’d want to get in without too much time. If it were me—and it hasn’t been for many the year—I’d have studied the system before the event. Either gotten a good firsthand look at it or done my research and found what sort was installed and studied it at the supplier’s, or online. I’d’ve known what I had to do before I got here.”
Sensible, she thought, in a larcenous way. “And if you’d done all that?”
He made a low, considering sound and studied the locks. “With any sort of skill, you’d have the locks lifted inside four minutes. Three if you had good hands.”
“Three to four minutes,” she repeated.
“A longer space of time than you’d think when you’re standing somewhere you shouldn’t be, doing something you’ve got no business doing.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“If you’re an amateur, it would take considerably longer. The alarm, well, you see our resident has graciously put this little warning plaque here, telling those with an interest that she’s protected by First Alarm Group.”
Eve hissed out a breath in disgust. “Hey, Mr. Burglar Man, let me give you a hand with this break-in. Her grandfather was a cop, then went private,” Eve added. “Wouldn’t he have told her how stupid it is to advertise your security system?”
“Likely. So it could be a blind. For argument’s sake, we’ll assume, or assume our killer assumed, she’s giving the honest data. Their bestselling residential package is wired into the lock itself. You’d need to take it out while you were at the lock, and that takes steady fingers. Then you’d need to reset it on the panel she’s likely to have just inside the door. So that might take your man another minute, even two, providing he knew what he was about. He’d have done better if he’d purchased the system himself, then practiced on it. Did you bring me here so I could have a go at it?”
“I wanted to see—” She broke off as a man hailed them from the sidewalk.
“What’re you doing there?”
He was mid-thirties, with the look of a regular health-club goer. Solid muscle over a lean frame. Behind him, across the street, a woman stood in the light spilling from an open front door. She had a pocket ’link in her hand.
“Problem?” Eve asked.
“That’s what I’m asking you.” The man rolled his shoulders, rocked up on the balls