Page 18 of Fury In Death

“You were running late before. What was that one?”

“Unattended. Wife’s out getting her hair done, and the guy, well into his eighties, decided to change some lightbulbs. Needs a ladder, which he gets out of the basement. The wife’s told him not to get on ladders, and Jesus, he’s wearing house skids that are about as old as he is. Slick bottoms.”

“So he slips off the ladder.”

“Yeah, he does. Cracks his head open on the island, staggers around, and because he didn’t close the basement door, ends up in a bloody heap at the base of the stairs.

“Christ, the blood.” She picked up her wine. “I’ve dealt with more than my share of blood today. How about you?”

“No blood at all until I joined my cop. Unless you count the metaphorical blood I wrung out of an acquisition where the sellers hoped to wring out some of mine.”

“Their mistake. What did you acquire?”

“A mixed commercial and residential building downtown, East Side, which includes the sellers’ Mexican restaurant.”

“Olé.”

He laughed at her. “More la negligencia. They neglected the building, and the business. Both need work, but the building has good bones, the restaurant needs a facelift and a new manager.”

“Got someone in mind?”

“I had a chat with most of the staff. There’s a woman who’s worked there six years as a server. She was frank enough to tell me she kept working there because she lived on the third floor of the building, her husband works only two blocks away, their daughter’s school is nearby. But it’s all gone downhill since this group bought the building three years ago, cut staff, hired relatives who didn’t pull their weight, and so on.”

Roarke shrugged. “She’s bright, knows the business, the neighborhood. I’ll take a good look at her.”

Now he smiled at her. “Your color’s come back.”

“I’ve got a couple hours left in the tank.”

Roarke just studied her as he ate.

“Okay, ninety minutes or so. I want to run the family, the houseman. See what I can pull out about Banner-Wyst before I take on his lab tomorrow. Plus, maybe you’ll find blackmail payments and hey, case closed!”

“I’ll do my best.” He reached over for her hand. “Midnight then. We’ll call it at midnight.”

Back at her command center she switched to coffee, then looked up as Roarke set a dish with a cookie as big as her hand beside her.

She said, “Wow.”

He kissed the top of her head, then carried a cookie of his own to his office.

She started with the widow. Yes, Eve had believed her, but something might show.

What she found was a woman with no criminal. Who’d broken her left wrist in a spill on the track when she’d run in high school, who’d filed one civil suit—for sexual harassment when she’d been twenty-three—and won.

Though she doubted someone beat Chu to death over a nearly forty-year-old case, she noted down the defendant. She’d worked for the same company for twenty-two years. Had been married to the victim for closing in on four decades, had two sons—one a doctor, the other who ran his own urban landscaping company.

She had three grandchildren, two from the first son, one from the second.

And she volunteered at Restart, an organization that helped people—primarily women—reenter the workforce.

Since she’d leave the financials to Roarke, she moved on to the sons, found nothing of particular note.

She started on the houseman. Allen McKay, age thirty-nine, married to Devin Dix, age forty-one. One child, female, age six months. Dix currently taking the professional parent route.

McKay had a bump at twenty-one—public nudity—which she read as a college prank or dare. He’d worked as a butler in a resort hotel upstate for seven years, right out of college. Moved to New York, where he’d cohabbed with Dix for three years before taking the plunge into matrimony.

He’d taken the job with the Chus shortly after relocating to New York.