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“All right then?” Flabbergasted, she gaped at him. “All right? That’s it?”
“Those may be three of your qualities that land in the minus column for me,” he said with a hint of a smile. “I fell for you despite them.” He pulled out his money clip, and that finger came up, silencing her as effectively as it had Summerset. He set fifty on the table between them. “You’ll do me a favor and take that as a loan so you don’t walk out of here with nothing but your hard head and tight ass in the morning. That’ll make sixty you owe me come payday, counting the previous ten.”
“Okay.” She took the fifty, stuffed it in her pocket. “Did we just compromise?”
“I believe we did.”
“Good.” She took another sip of wine, looked around. “So. This is a nice room.”
“It is, yes. It’s just been redecorated. Came out well, I think.”
“Get out. Really? When?”
“Just after the holidays.” He smiled fully now. “I believe I mentioned something to you about it, in case you wanted any input on the colors and fabrics and so on.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess I remember something about that. You probably did better without me.”
“I never have, never will.”
She sighed, sunk into love with him. “Maybe we could have dinner in here tonight.”
“Is that another compromise?”
“I was thinking of it more like interest on the sixty.”
He laughed. “Well then, I charge high rates. You’ll have to get the meal to work that off.”
“No problem.” She stood up. “And in the spirit of compromise, it’s going to be pizza.” She looked around again. “Where the hell’s the AutoChef in here?”
They sat together on one of the curved settees, the mood mellow as they shared pizza and wine. And if the conversation turned to murder, it suited both of them.
“So Feeney’s got the pill dispenser thing. If I’d known he was going to dick around with it, I’d’ve brought it home and shoved it on you.”
“If it was played with, he’ll find out soon enough. In any case, even if it was, it wouldn’t prove she’d done it. He could have reprogrammed it himself. That wouldn’t work for you in court.”
“It’s another weight. Even small weights add up. It goes to opportunity. Conversely, she can’t prove he routinely took sleep aids, or ever took them, for that matter. There’s only her word he had sidepieces, brought them home. I spoke with three of his former romantic interests. Every one of them describes him as a shy sort of lover—sweet, not very adventurous. Gentle. Every one of them.”
“More weight, certainly, but Ava planted seeds that this was a relatively recent change.”
“A guy goes from sweet, shy, and gentle in bed to a raging perv who molests minors? She’s going to have a hard time convincing a jury there. And, her diddling with Charles is documented, while there isn’t any documentation Anders diddled. That’ll work against her instead of covering her ass like she planned. I’ve got Petrelli’s statement. It would’ve fit in nicely for me if Cassie Gordon’s had run parallel. I have to figure Ava saw she wasn’t going to be able to use Gordon, not that way. So there’s at least one more. The one she worked well enough to kill for her.”
“You have another candidate there?”
“Yeah, we’ll go into those possibilities tomorrow. But I need to spread it out. Maybe it’s not a repeater on the mommy breaks. Or somebody with some smears and smudges. She goes for clean, say—the way you liked it—and keeps her away from the group. Makes her more a personal pet.
“So many damn names,” she complained. “It’ll take weeks to get through them. Chasing my tail. Pisses me off.”
“I’ll give you a hand with it. You’d eliminate anyone with a husband or cohab, I’d assume. As she wouldn’t have wanted to risk her surrogate telling her mate. Single parents would be highest probability. Ones without any close family—but for the children—or friends, for that matter. Someone smart enough to follow directions, and also weak enough or frightened enough to follow them.”
“See, you should’ve been a cop.”
He only sighed. “Why would you want to start another fight when we’ve just made up?”
“We have to have sex to really make up.”
“Well then.”
“Not now, ace.” She gave him a light shove back. “Work first, makeup sex later.” Rising, she wondered if she’d regret scarfing down that last slice of pizza. “I need to take another hard look at the case file on the old man’s death. Her father-in-law. Pick it apart, find the chinks. People don’t commit perfect murders, and she sure as hell didn’t pull off every last detail twice. If I can find the cracks there, they could lead to the cracks here. Or vice versa.”
