“So let’s try this again. Where have you been this evening?”
Moore clearly wanted to turn on his heel and storm out of the room. The big, dramatic exit for the put-upon hero of his own story.
The bruising and swelling was coming out in his wife’s face. She was beginning to look like something that might live under a bridge in a horror movie. One eye was nearly swollen shut. The lump on her forehead looked like a horrible deformity. Her lower lip was twice its normal size. The stitches had pulled, and the split was beginning to bleed again.
David Moore hadn’t so much as offered her a reassuring touch. He’d asked for no details of her attack, had made no comment on Kovac’s suggestion it might have been an attempt on her life. He hadn’t even inquired if she might have been raped.
“I had a business dinner,” Moore said.
“Where?”
“That new place in the IDS Tower next to the Marquette Hotel, Buffalo Grill.”
“What time was your reservation?”
“Seven-thirty, but we met for drinks first.”
“When was that, and where?”
Moore looked away. “Why don’t I just give the name of the business associate I was meeting? You’ll want that anyway, won’t you?”
Kovac gave him the flat cop eyes. “Why don’t you just answer the question I asked you?”
“Gentlemen?” the judge said abruptly. “I’m not feeling well. I’d really like to go lie down now. Feel free to continue without me.”
She started to get off the love seat under her own steam. The husband finally moved to help her, taking hold of one elbow to steady her.
“I’ll help you upstairs.”
She didn’t thank him.
Kovac watched them go, trying to read their body language. The judge was stiff and limping, but forcing her back as straight as she could. She kept her chin up, and she didn’t lean on her husband, even though he was now trying to appear as solicitous as possible.
Kovac would have loved to hear the conversation between them as they went up the stairs, but they kept their voices to themselves. Instead, he took the opportunity to prowl around the den, looking for hints of who these people were, but there were more signs of who their decorator was than what made the Moore family tick.
The room seemed to belong predominantly to the husband. A lot of electronic toys-big plasma screen TV on the wall above the fireplace, stereo equipment, satellite radio setup. A couple of framed award certificates with Moore ’s name on them.
Kovac found the lack of family photographs and incidental personal touches telling. No one was in the middle of reading a novel or knitting a sweater. There were no toys or storybooks that would have belonged to Princess Lucy. A pricey, large flat-screen computer monitor sat in the middle of an immaculate desk. The bookcase behind the desk held books about the film industry, biographies of people Kovac had heard of and more he had not. A lot of videotape cases.
“They should have kept her in the hospital,” David Moore complained as he came back into the room.
“She wouldn’t stay,” Kovac said, pulling a videotape off a shelf and pretending to study its title. “She wanted to come home, be with her family, except for you, of course.”
“What the hell-?”
“She knew you weren’t here,” Kovac went on. “And she didn’t want us tracking you down. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t think I told her where the dinner was,” Moore said. “We’re both very busy people. The details sometimes get lost.”
“What are you so busy with, Mr. Moore? These business associates you were with-what kind of business are they in?”
“I’m a documentary filmmaker. The people I was with are potential financial backers for a film I want to make juxtaposing the gangsters of the thirties with street gangs of today.”
“And why didn’t you want to talk about these people in front of your wife?” Kovac asked, ambling closer to Carey Moore’s husband. “Why didn’t she want to stick around for the rest of this conversation?”
Moore tried to look confused. “I don’t know what you mean, Detective. I was just trying to be helpful. I knew you would want their names-”
“But you didn’t want to say where you met them for drinks?”
“I never said that.”
“Uh-huh.”
Flustered, Moore huffed a sigh. “We met in the lobby bar of the Marquette. Nothing suspicious about that, is there?”
Kovac shrugged. “Depends. Who are these cohorts of yours?”
“Edmund Ivors,” Moore said without hesitation. “He’s a businessman. He made his fortune in multiplex theaters and likes to give back to the industry by helping talented filmmakers.”
“Like yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Should I have heard of you?” Kovac asked, deliberately rude.
A muscle flexed in David Moore’s jaw. “I’d be surprised if you had,” he said tightly. “You don’t strike me as the intellectual type.”
Kovac raised his brows, amused. “Whoa. Go easy there, Sport. I’m not as dumb as I look. You really don’t want to poke a stick at me, Dave,” he said, smiling like a crocodile. “I’ll feed it to you the hard way. But hey, points for showing some balls. Who else was at your little soiree?”
Moore sulked. “An associate of Mr. Ivors. Ms. Bird, uh, Ginnie Bird.”
“Associate?” Kovac arched a brow. “Is that anything like being his niece?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Moore said impatiently.
“You don’t know what a euphemism is?” Kovac said. “I’ll be blunt, then: Is Ms. Bird about work, or is Ms. Bird about fucking somebody?”
Moore glared at him. “Who the hell do you think you are, speaking that way-”
Kovac got in his face and backed him off a step. “I’m the homicide dick who’s half-past sick of your attitude, pal. I think you didn’t want to say in front of your wife that one of the people you spent the last six hours with, having the longest business dinner in recorded history, was a woman. And I think the reason that is, is that your wife doesn’t trust you, and you know it.”
Moore breathed heavily in and out of his nose, furious. Kovac figured the guy wanted to lay him out flat right there and then but didn’t have the guts or the muscle to do the job.
“This conversation is over, Detective,” Moore said, his jaw set tight. “I won’t be treated like a criminal in my own home. You’ll leave now. And in the morning, I’ll be making phone calls to people who will make your life unpleasant.”
A nasty smile curved Kovac’s mouth. “Is that a threat, Mr. Moore?” he questioned softly. “Are you threatening me? You know people who’ll do that kind of job for you? That would send you straight to the head of my shit list of suspects.”
“My wife is a very well-connected woman,” Moore said. “Connected to people who have the power to pull your strings.”
Kovac chuckled like a predator with one paw already holding down his next live snack. “And you think she’d really do that for you? That’s funny. I’d tag her for one of those ladies who wants her man to get out from behind her and fight his own battles.”
“Get out of my house.” The hate in David Moore’s eyes was electric.
Kovac knew he was pushing a line, but he was enjoying himself too much to back off. He leaned against the side of an armchair the size of a small rhinoceros and crossed his arms.
“You know, you haven’t asked one single question about what happened in that parking ramp. Is that because you don’t need to or because you don’t give a shit?”
“Of course I care!” David Moore rubbed his hands over his face and looked up at the ceiling as he moved away. “Carey insists it was a mugging. Do you really think someone tried to… meant to… harm her?”