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“I’m going to have to take it in, prove it isn’t. And I’ve got a damn sex tape of one of the media’s cream as evidence on a murder case.” She stopped the play, ejected the disc, and sealed it in an evidence bag from her field kit.
“Damn it. Damn it.”
She began to pace, to struggle with herself. All this relationship stuff was so complicated and still so foreign to her. Nadine had told her what she’d told her as a friend. In confidence. The man currently, and patiently, watching her from across the room was her husband.
Love, honor, and all the rest of it.
If she told him about Nadine and Draco, was she breaching a confidence and the trust of a friend? Or was she just doing the marriage thing?
How the hell, she wondered, did people get through life juggling all this stuff?
“Darling Eve.” Sympathizing, Roarke waited until she’d stopped prowling the room and turned to face him. “You’re giving yourself a headache. I can make it easier on you. Don’t feel you have to tell me something that makes you uncomfortable.”
She frowned at him, narrowed her eyes. “I hear a but at the end of that sentence.”
“You have very sharp ears. But,” he continued, crossing to her, “I can deduce that Nadine and Draco were involved at one time, and given your current concern, that something happened between them a great deal more recently.”
“Oh hell.” In the end she went with the gut and told him everything.
He listened, then tucked Eve’s hair behind her ear. “You’re a good friend.”
“Don’t say that. It makes me nervous.”
“All right, I’ll say this: Nadine didn’t have anything to do with Draco’s murder.”
“I know that, and there’s no hard evidence indicating any different. But it’s going to be messy for her. Personally messy. Okay, what else is in this place?”
“Ah, if memory serves. Kitchen through there.” He gestured. “Office, bath, bedroom, dressing room, bath.”
“I’ll start in the office. I want to run his ‘links and see if he had any conversations that involved threats or arguments. Do me a favor.” She handed him her kit. “Bag the rest of the video discs.”
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant.”
She smirked but let it ride.
She worked systematically. He loved watching her at it: The focus, the concentration, the absolute logic of her method.
Not so long before in his life if anyone had suggested he could find a cop and her work sexy, he’d have been both appalled and insulted.
“Stop staring at me.”
He smiled. “Was I?”
She decided to let it pass. “Lots of communications in and out. If I were a shrink, I’d guess this was a guy who couldn’t stand being alone with himself. Needed contact on a constant basis. Nothing out of the ordinary though, unless you count some pretty heavy ‘link shopping—eight pairs of shoes, three snazzy suits, antique wrist unit.” She straightened. “But you wouldn’t count that.”
“On the contrary, I’d never buy snazzy suits via ‘link. Fit is everything.”
“Ha ha. He did have a short, pithy kind of conversation with his agent. Seems our boy discovered that his leading lady was pulling in the same salary for the run of the play. He was pretty pissed off about it, wanted his rep to renegotiate and get him more. One credit more per performance.”
“Yes, I knew about that. No deal.”
Puzzled, she turned away from the neat
little desk. “You wouldn’t give him a credit?”
“When dealing with a child,” Roarke said mildly, “you set boundaries. The contract was a boundary. The amount of the demand was inconsequential.”
“You’re tough.”
