Shadows in Death (In Death #51) - J.D. Robb Page 0,83
lounge.”
16
As they walked down, Roarke could all but hear the wheels turning in her head. How to handle this—or more specifically, the inspector. How to skim the line between cop and colleague, wife and shield.
He could have told her she had no need to worry. He’d dealt with Abernathys before. But he supposed it was, indeed, all different now.
And that meant he had a line to skim himself. He would do nothing, absolutely nothing, that would put his lieutenant in a squeeze.
Abernathy smiled, continuing the thoroughly pleasant demeanor—and Roarke imagined Eve saw, as clearly as he did, the cop calculation behind the facade.
Jamming him up, as Eve had put it, might not have been Abernathy’s priority. But what cop could resist the attempt?
“I don’t want to take too much of your time,” Abernathy began. “I certainly don’t want to take you away from your work, especially at this point, Lieutenant.”
“This is my work,” Eve said flatly as she turned into the lounge. “The coffee sucks in here.” She took a table, sat. “If you want something, I suggest you go with water or soft drink tubes.”
“No need.” The inspector sat, folded his hands on the table and looked at Roarke. “First, I want to express my sincere gratitude for all your help in this matter. The personal and detailed information you’ve offered regarding Cobbe is and will be extremely helpful in finally bringing him to justice.”
“Our goals are the same,” Roarke said.
“Of course. If I could, just to clarify …” He took out his notebook. “Working back from your sighting of Cobbe in Washington Square Park on the night of Ms. Modesto’s death. You spoke of an encounter with Cobbe in a bar in the South of France. I wonder if you could be more specific on the time and place. Perhaps if you tell us what you were doing there it would help pinpoint that date and location.”
Under the table, Roarke squeezed Eve’s knee before she could object.
“It was some time ago,” Roarke said easily. “As best I can recall, I think I was looking to acquire a small resort on the Côte D’Azur. It may have been the spring, perhaps the summer of 2046 or ’47. But that’s best guess.”
“Of course,” Abernathy replied. “ ’46, ’46. There was a bit of a scandal in May of that year—you may have been there then, heard the local reports. A jewel heist. Quite a famous one.”
He looked at Roarke, smiling, smiling, with his rosy tie and pocket square and upper-class accent.
“An American socialite, an heiress famed for her jewels and her parties, and some ten and a quarter million—USD—in diamonds, emeralds—a particular necklace known as the Green Flash—stolen from the vault on her estate in Cannes. The Green Flash itself was—is—worth nearly half that amount. It was never recovered.”
“Is that so?” Roarke smiled back, just as pleasantly. “I’m afraid I was focused on brokering this deal—an important one to me at the time. At that point in my life, I didn’t have much to do with rich American socialites. Or more accurately, they didn’t have much to do with me. What I recall of the incident with Cobbe’s in the file.”
“Do you think Cobbe took time out of murdering targets to steal necklaces?” Eve asked Abernathy.
“Oh no, he lacks the skill for such endeavors. Since he did, he worked as what you’d call an enforcer for Patrick Roarke back in his early days. You on the other hand,” he began, turning to Roarke again.
“Then it doesn’t apply,” Eve interrupted. “And the exact date he tried to kill Roarke in a bar in the fricking South of France doesn’t matter a damn, either.”
Abernathy nodded, nodded. Pleasantly. “I simply try to pin down exact data, when possible.”
“If you’re screwing around with crap like this, it hasn’t helped you nail Cobbe.”
Abernathy’s eyes hardened; his face tightened. And Eve pushed again.
“Don’t fuck with me, Inspector. And don’t fuck with him. Try it, and I’ll find a way to have you booted back to London.”
Roarke took Eve’s hand with his right, held up his left. “A moment. She worries for me,” he said to Abernathy even as Eve tried to jerk her hand free. “Before we go on, before I say anything else, before we waste time here with you hoping to score some points on the back end on matters far less important than Cobbe, let me ask you your opinion of the lieutenant’s integrity and dedication to her badge.”