He sampled a cookie. His wife, he thought as the chocolate exploded in his mouth, had an unerring sweet tooth. “I have any number of employees with a similar setup.”
“There was just something off, that’s all. Hard to pin. Then you add that this guy spends his day thinking about murder, reconstructing it with words, reading about it, imagining it.”
“Really?” He poured coffee for both of them. “Who would devote so much time and energy to murder?”
“I heard the sarcasm. The difference is a murder cop’s supposed to find murder abhorrent. This guy gets off on it. Not that big a leap between fascination and experimentation. He’s got the education, the flexible schedule, the knowledge, and a motive if you figure over and above the thrill, these murders, once it hits the media big, will juice up sales of his books. His wife’s a fashion exec, and I bet she knows the value of publicity, too.”
Studying the screen, she rocked back and forth on her heels. “He’s got the paper. Claims it was a gift from a fan, one he doesn’t remember. No way to prove or disprove. Yet. Be interesting if I find out he or his wife bought it though. That would be interesting.”
“I could smudge those privacy lines a bit, see what I can dig up on that.”
It was tempting, butEve shook her head. “It wasn’t charged to his or his wife’s account. Not that we’ve found. Pushing that angle would mean more than a little smudge. We’ll stick to the bio for now.”
“Spoilsport.”
“He has the paper, and that’s enough. He has it, and he let me see it. That’s interesting enough for now.”
“If he’s your man, wouldn’t the wife know?”
“Seems to me, unless she’s an idiot. Her bio doesn’t read idiot to me.JuliettaGates, same age, another NYU grad. Bet they met in college. Fashion and public relations, double major. She had her path mapped out, and she’s moved right along it. Minimal break for birthing, then back to work. Made double what he did up until two years ago, and still pulls in about the same annually, and more regularly. Wonder how their financials are set up?”
“What are you looking for?”
“Who runs the show? Money’s power, right? I bet she calls the shots in that household.”
“If that’s the criterion, I feel I’m not as fully in charge as I should be around here.”
“Too bad for you. I don’t give a damn about your money. I betTom cares about hers.” She brought him, the house, the child, the feeling of the home back into her mind. “Needs her share to run that nice house, raise the kid the way he wants, until he rises up another level in his own line. Good clothes, good toys, good child-care droid as backup, while he works at his own pace, so he can take time off to play horsey with his son, take him to the park.”
“And those marks of a good father make him a murder suspect. As I’m following you, I’m afraid that makes us a very cynical pair.”
She glanced over her shoulder just to look at him. Cynical or not, she reflected, they were a pair. “He never talked about her as a partner, or as one of the points of the family triangle. You saw his stuff and the boy’s lying around. Toys, shoes, and so on, but nothing of hers. Interesting, that’s all. Interesting that they’re not a unit. Bring up the parental data.”
She scanned it, filling in the blanks from the bare essentials she’d studied earlier. “See, the mother’s the alpha dog here, too. Important career, the main wage earner. Father retired from his job to take over as professional parent. And look here, Mom served as an officer, including president, of the International Women’s Coalition, and is a contributing editor to The Feminist Voice. An NYU alum, while Dad went toKentState. Yeah, that’s interesting.”
“Scenario being, Breen grew up in a female-dominant household, controlled by a woman with strong ideas and a political bent while his father changed the nappies and so forth. The mother pushed him to study at her alma mater, or he did so to gain her approval. And when choosing a mate, he selected another strong personality who would control his world while he took the more historically typical female role of nurturer.”
“Yeah, which doesn’t make him a whacked-out psychopath, but it’s something to consider. Copy and file the data here and to my unit at Central.”
He smiled as he did so. “It appears I’ve selected a strong personality as well. What does that say about me, I wonder?”
“Please,” she added, and remembering the cookies walked over to take one. “I’ll have a face-to-face withJuliettaGates tomorrow. Meanwhile, let’s move on to Fortney,Leo.”
Fortney was thirty-eight, and had two marriages, two divorces, no offspring. With Roarke’s quick work, and his understanding of what she wanted, she read that his first wife had been a minor vid star, in the porn category. The marriage had lasted just over a year. The second was a successful theatrical agent.
“There’s some buzz here,” Roarke added. “The juicy gossip sort from media reports. You want them up, or do you want the highlights?”
“Start with the highlights.”
“It appearsLeo was a very bad boy.” Roarke sipped coffee as he read from his own screen. “Got caught with his pants down, literally, in a hotel suite in New L.A., entertaining a pair of well-endowed starlets. Besides the two naked nubile starlets-that’s a quote, by the way-there were rumors that considerable chemical enhancements and appliances of a sexual nature were also involved. Obviously, suspecting something of the sort, his wife had a P.I. on him. He was skinned to the bone in the divorce, and endured considerable snickering publicity as several other women were happy to talk to the media about their experiences with the haplessLeo. One is quoted as saying: ‘He’s a walking hard-on, always coming on and usually petering out at the sticking point.’ Ouch.”
“Sexually promiscuous, unable to maintain, and embarrassed publicly by a woman. Got a sheet with a couple of sexual assaults and an indecent exposure. I like it. And look at his financials. No way he can maintain the lifestyle he wants on what he pulls in. He needs a woman-currently Pepper Franklin-to keep him.”
“I don’t like him,” Roarke muttered, continuing to read. “She deserves better.”
“He hit onPeabody.”
He looked up now, a dark gleam in his eye. “I really don’t like him. Did he move on you?”
“Nah. He’s scared of me.”
“At least he isn’t completely brainless then.”
“What he is, is an ego-soaked liar who likes to take bimbos to bed-Peabody played up the bimbo angle on him-and use stronger women to take care of him, then cheat on them. He’s educated, knows how to put on a polished front. Likes the good life, including high-dollar writing paper, is theatrical enough to enjoy the imitation route, and has the necessary freedom to troll and hunt. What have we got on his parents, family background?”
“On-screen. You can see his mother’s an actress. Largely supporting roles, character parts. I actually know some of her work. She’s good, stays busy.”
“HadLeo with husband number two out of five. I’ll say she stays busy. So he’s got a number of step- and half-sibs. Father’s a theatrical broker. Same asLeo. Somebody who puts projects together, right?”
“Mmm. There you go. There are snippets of gossip here, too.” He was scanning quickly on this first pass, looking for buzz words. “Our man would’ve been six when his parents divorced, both having very public affairs during the marriage, and afterward. His mother also claimed the father was physically abusive. Then again, he claimed the same about her. Reading bits and pieces here, it sounds as if the household was a war zone.”