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“Shit. Could the St. Lucia transmission have been by remote?”
“It’s not reading that way. I ran it through several types of filters. As your expert consultant, civilian, I have to tell you Ava Anders received that transmission while in the room registered to her in St. Lucia.”
“She couldn’t have made it back there from New York in the time frame.”
“No. It’s a bit too tight for that.”
“Maybe the time frame’s off. Anders was still alive—unconscious, dying, but still alive when the security was booted back, the doors locked again. Maybe it didn’t take her as long as I calculated for the setup, and if she reactivated it all by remote, she might have been on her way back to St. Lucia earlier. It’d be tight, but maybe not too tight.”
“Ground time from the crime scene to a shuttle hangar, and the same from shuttle to hotel on the island have to be added in. You’re reaching, Eve.”
“Damn right I’m reaching.” Irritated, she scooped up some spaghetti. “I know she’s in it. Okay, the vic liked electronics. Could he have a security setup that could be turned off and on by long-distance remote?”
“Not impossible. What do your e-men say?”
“Cloning remote—good shit—short-range. But they weren’t looking for long. And Feeney’s dog sick with a cold.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I had to practically carry him down to transpo, send him off to a health center, call his wife.”
Roarke didn’t bother to hide his grin. “Haven’t you been the busy little scout today.”
“Bite me.”
“I rarely think of anything else but. I can take a look at the system. As for financials, I haven’t found anything off there. No suspicious withdrawals or transfers, no accounts tucked away. Not yet.”
Clean, covered, Eve thought. But her gut kept adding “calculated” to that. “If she didn’t do it herself and had it done, maybe she didn’t use money. There are other incentives. Sex, position, blackmail. Friendship. Isn’t there some saying about a real friend’s the one who helps you hide the body? She’s got a couple of women who strike me as real friends.”
“What is it about her, Eve?”
“Things.” She stabbed at a meatball. “Her clothes.”
“You don’t care for her fashion sense?”
“How would I know if she has any? You do.” She jabbed the fork with its bite of meatball at him. “Fashion king.”
“We do our best.”
“So, you’re dead asleep, and you get a call. Something terrible’s happened, and I’m dead. What do you do?”
It took him a moment to quell the terror, to ignore the small, dark place inside him that feared getting that call every day. “Before or after I fall prostrate with grief?”
“Before, during, and after. Do you peruse your wardrobe and select a coordinating outfit—down to the footwear? Do you deal with your hair so it’s perfectly groomed?”
“With my considerable skills and innate instincts that would take no time at all.”
“Keep it up and I’ll dump red sauce all over your fashionable smarty-pants.”
“That statement is one of the countless reasons why, under the circumstances you described, I’d be lucky to remember to dress at all. But then not everyone loves the same way, Eve, or to the same levels. Or reacts the same way to hard news.”
“The call for transpo went out from her hotel room six minutes after she ended the transmission with Greta. But, there’s nearly a fifty-minute lag between then and her leaving the hotel. She ordered coffee, juice, fresh berries, and a croissant from her in-room AutoChef—I had the hotel look up her record. She ordered her little continental breakfast before she called for transpo arrangements.”
“Ah. There’s cold blood.”
“Yeah. A little thing maybe—not evidence, but it’s a thing. A lawyer would argue it’s nothing. She was in shock. But it’s bullshit. She was wearing perfume when she got to the house, and earrings, and a bracelet that matched her wrist unit. She didn’t contact Forrest, not for hours after getting the news.
“Little things,” Eve repeated. “I believe she planned it out, studied every detail, covered every track. But she can’t cover who she is. She can’t quite cover up her self-interest, her vanity, or the calculation I see in her eyes every time I look at her.”
