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She sat down with coffee, her PPC, and got a jump on her workday.
“Now, here’s a lovely sight on a bitter winter’s day.”
She glanced over, decided he was a pretty good sight himself in his ruler-of-the-business-world suit. “Finished buying Europe already?”
“Not buying today—so far—just a bit of engineering and tech advancing through the R&D stage. And well advancing.”
He sat, poured coffee from the pot on the table, then uncovered the breakfast plates. “Waffles, is it?”
“It should almost always be. I’m having Peabody meet me at the Mira Institute at eight sharp. I want to get a sense of the place, what Edward Mira had going there. We should have time to grab an interview with a couple of his skirts before we have to head back. Trueheart’s getting his shield at oh-ten hundred.”
“I hate to miss that, particularly since you’ll be in uniform.” He watched her drown her waffles in butter and syrup.
So did Galahad, who began a stealthy inch-by-inch bellying forward until Roarke cocked an eyebrow at him. The cat rolled onto his back, batting busily at the air.
“I’ll be stripping off the uniform as soon as the ceremony’s over.”
“I really hate to miss that.”
“Ha ha. We’ll hit the rest of the skirts, then talk to his offspring. Maybe they’ll have more to say than his wife.”
“I assume you’ve already checked, and he hasn’t shown up. Alive or dead.”
“Not so far. I’ll check in again later with Missing Persons, and have Peabody keep up a running check with hospitals. Got a BOLO on him, and an alert.”
She stuffed in more waffles, and thought if every day started off with sex and waffles, people would maybe be less inclined to kill each other.
Or maybe not.
“If he shows up dead, I’ll get tagged,” she added. “Meanwhile, I’m having the locals check his other residences, just in case. I expect the lab to confirm the elephant this morning.”
“That’s not a phrase you hear often.”
“Heavy object used to whack Mr. Mira. Fancy elephant statue. I dreamed it came to life and started rampaging through that brownstone. It’s only about this big.” She stopped eating long enough to hold up her hands. “But still, elephant.”
“There are times I envy the creativity of your dream life.”
“I think I stunned it before it got out and tore up the neighborhood, but it’s vague, and it sort of rolled into another one.”
“The elephant rolled into another elephant?”
“No, the dream—well, sort of the elephant. I had it in Interview. You know like: You’re looking at attempted murder, Mr. Phant, but if you cooperate I can see about dealing that down to simple assault.”
He laughed hard enough to have Galahad making another try for waffles. Roarke just waved the cat away. “Is it a wonder I adore you? ‘Mr. Phant.’”
“Yeah, it seems funny now, but I was pretty serious. I think the damn elephant’s the only tangible thing I’ve got here, and it was nothing more than handy. It doesn’t apply.”
“It was used to hurt someone who matters a great deal to you.”
“Yeah, I guess. I’m going to try to swing by there sometime today, depending on how things go.” Since they were there, she plucked a fat blackberry out of the little bowl, frowned. “Am I supposed to take something? Like, I don’t know, flowers or something?”
“I wouldn’t think it’s necessary, but flowers or a small token? Never wrong.”
“Okay, well, we’ll see how it goes.” She polished off the waffles. “I’m going to review a couple things, check in with Mira, and get going.”
“Let me know if the senator shows up, one way or the other, would you?”
“Sure.”
