Cher Reo had a rep for being hungry. Eve earmarked her because if the brownies didn't turn the tide, the prospect of having part in a scandal that would generate days of screen time should.
Despite the sunny sweep of silky hair, the baby-doll blue eyes and curvy pink lips, Cher was known to be a piranha. She was wearing a stone-gray skirt—demurely to her knees—and a simple white shirt. The matching jacket was draped neatly over the back of her chair.
Her desk was covered with files, discs, notes. She drank coffee out of a super-sized to-go cup.
Eve waltzed in, dropped the candy-pink box on the desk. And watched Cher's nostrils flare.
«What?» She had a little Southern in her voice, like a dusting of sugar. Eve had yet to decide if it was genuine.
«Brownies.»
Cher leaned a little closer to the box, sniffed. Shut her eyes. «I'm on a diet.»
«Triple chocolate.»
«Whore.» Lifting the box a fraction, Cher peeked, groaned. «Filthy whore. What do I have to do for them?»
«I'm still waiting for the warrant on Icove Jr.'s residence.»
«You'll be lucky if you get it at all. You're poking pointy sticks in the eye of a saint, Dallas.» Cher sat back, swiveled. Eve saw she had airskids on her feet. And dignified gray heels tucked into the corner of the room. «My boss doesn't want to give you the go to jam it in. He's going to want more.»
Eve leaned a hip on the edge of the desk. «Convince him otherwise. The surviving son knows something, Reo. While your boss is playing politics instead of throwing his weight with mine—and Mira's—to a judge, data may very well be lost. Does the PA's office want to hinder the investigation into the murder of a man of Icove's stature?»
«Nope. And it sure doesn't want to toss shit into his grave either.»
«Push for the warrant, Reo. If I get what I'm after, it's going to be big. And I'll remember who helped me get it.»
«If you turn up nothing? Nobody's going to forget who helped you screw this up either.»
«I'll turn up something.» She pushed off the desk. «If you can't trust me, Reo, trust the brownies.»
Reo blew out a breath. «It'll take a while. Even saying I can convince my boss—and that's going to take some doing—we've got to convince a judge to sign off.»
«Then why don't you get started?»
This time when she got home, Summerset was where she expected him to be. Lurking in the foyer like some prune-faced gargoyle. She decided to let him take the first shot. She preferred retaliation, because it usually gave her the last word.
She stripped off her coat while they eyed each other. And decided it made even more of a statement draped over the newel post than her usual jacket did.
«Lieutenant. I need a moment of your time.»
Her brow knit. He wasn't supposed to say that, and in a polite, inoffensive tone. «What for?»
«It regards Wilfred Icove.»
«What about him?»
Summerset, a brittle stick of a man in a stiff black suit, kept his dark eyes on hers. His face, usually grim in Eve's mind, seemed even more strained than usual. «I'd like to offer any assistance I can in the matter of your investigation.»
«Well, that'll be the day,» she began, then narrowed her eyes. «You knew him. How's that?»
«I knew him, slightly. I served as a medic—somewhat unofficially—during the Urban Wars.»
She glanced up as Roarke came down the steps. «Did you already know this?»
«Just shortly ago. Why don't we go sit down?» Before she could protest, Roarke took her arm, led her into the parlor. «Summerset tells me he met Icove in London, and worked with him at one of the clinics there during the wars.»
«For him is more accurate,» Summerset corrected. «He came to London to help establish more clinics, and the mobile medical units that eventually transformed into Unilab. He had been a part of the team that had established them here in New York, where the out-breaks started before they bled into Europe. Some forty years ago now,» he added. «Before either of you were born. Before my daughter was born.»
«How long was he in London?» Eve asked.
«Two months. Perhaps three.» Summerset spread his bony hands. «It blurs. He saved countless lives during that period, worked tirelessly. Risked his own life more than once. He implemented some of his innovations in reconstructive surgery on that battlefield. That's what the cities were then. Battlefields. You've seen images from that period, but it was nothing compared to being there, living through it. Victims who would have lost limbs, or gone through their lives scarred, were spared that due to his work.»
«Would you say he experimented?»
«He innovated. He created. The media reports that this might have been a professional assassination. I have contacts still, in certain circles.»
«If you want to use them, fine. Poke around. Carefully. How well did you know him, personally?»
«Not well. People who come together in war often bond quickly, even intimately. But when they have nothing else in common that bond fades. And he was… aloof.»
«Superior.»
Disapproval covered Summerset's face, but he nodded. «That term wouldn't be inaccurate. We worked together, ate and drank together, but he maintained distance from those who worked under him.»
«Give me a personality rundown, deleting the sainthood level.»
«It's difficult to say with any accuracy. It was war. Personalities cope, or shine, or shatter during war.»
«You had an opinion of him, as a man.»
«He was brilliant.» Summerset glanced over, with some surprise, as Roarke offered him a short glass of whiskey. «Thank you.»
«Brilliant's on record,» Eve said. «I'm not looking for brilliant.»
«You want flaws.» Summerset sipped the whiskey. «I don't consider them flaws when a young, brilliant doctor is impatient and frustrated with the circumstances, with the equipment and the poor facilities where we worked. He demanded a great deal, and because he gave a great deal, accomplished a great deal, he usually got it.»
«You said aloof. Just to other doctors, medics, volunteers, or to patients, too?»
«Initially, he made a point of learning the names of every patient he tended, and I would say he suffered at each loss. And losses were .. horrendous. He then implemented a system assigning numbers rather than names.»
«Numbers,» Eve murmured.
«Essential objectivity, I believe he called it. They were bodies that needed tending, or reconstruction. Bodies that needed to be kept breathing, or terminated. He was hard, but circumstances demanded it. Those who couldn't step back from the horror were useless to those who suffered from that horror.»
«His wife was killed during that period.»
«I was working in another part of the city at that time. As I remember, he left London immediately upon being notified of her death, and went to his son, who was being kept safe in the country.»
«No contact since.»
«No. I can't imagine he would have remembered me. I've followed his work, and was pleased that so much of what he'd hoped to do came to be.»
«He talked about that? What he hoped to do.»
«To me? No.» What might have been a smile passed over Summerset's face. «But I heard him speak to other doctors. He wanted to heal, to help, to improve the quality of life.»
«He was a perfectionist.»
«There's no perfection during war.»
«That must have frustrated him.»
«It frustrated us all. People were dying all around us. No matter how many we saved, there were more we couldn't reach, couldn't help. A man might be shot down in the street because he had decent shoes. Another might have his throat cut because he had none at all. Frustration is a small word.»
Eve chased through her mind. «So his kid's tucked away in the countryside, and his wife's working beside him.»
«Not beside, no. She volunteered in a hospital that had been set up to treat injured children, and to house those lost or orphaned.»