Imitation in Death

“I prefer that to an empty one. So do you.”

“Good thing for us. I need to look into my list of suspects. I need to find this female authority figure, because when I do, I find him. I could use a hand.”

He took hers, squeezed it. “I happen to have one available.”

– -«»--«»--«»--

The most practical way to begin, she thought, was alphabetically. And, though it still scraped the pride a bit, to let Roarke man the computer.

He may have gotten spanked by a barbecue grill, but on a desk unit, he was king.

“We’ll start with Breen,” she told him. “I want everything I can get onThomasA.Breen and his wife, without trampling on privacy laws.”

He sent her a pained look as he sat at her desk. “Now, what fun is that?”

“Keep it clean, ace.”

“Well then, I want coffee. And a cookie.”

“A cookie?”

“Yes.” The cat leaped on the desk to bump his head against Roarke’s hand. “You have a cookie cache in here. I want one.”

She stuck her hands on her hips, tapped her fingers. “How do you know I have a cache?”

He stroked the cat and smiled at her. “Unsupervised, you forget to eat half the time, and when you remember, you go for the sugar.”

She took some exception to the “unsupervised” remark, but had another priority. Eyes slit, she came closer, watched his face as keenly as she would a prime suspect. “You haven’t been sneaking into my office at Central and riffling my candy stash?”

“Certainly not. I can get my own candy.”

“You could be lying,” she said after a moment. “You’re pretty slippery.”

“And so you said in the shower.”

“Har-har. But I don’t see you skulking around Central lifting my chocolate just to drive me buggy.”

“Not when I can easily find more convenient ways to do so. Where’s my coffee?”

“Okay, okay.ThomasA.Breen.”

She went into the kitchen off her home office, felt the cat ribbon around her legs despite the fact he’d had a slice of pizza. She programmed a pot of coffee, got down mugs, then-sending a cautious glance toward the office-went to the small utility closet and dug into the space behind the cat food for the bag of triple chocolate chunk cookies.

She started to take one out for Roarke, decided she could go for one herself. Then thought, what the hell, he was helping her out. They’d blow what was left in the bag.

Sensing dessert, Galahad went into serious purr-and-rub mode. She poured a handful of cat treats into his bowl, watched him pounce on them like a lion on a gazelle as she loaded the coffee and cookies on a tray.

“Initial data’s up, though I assume you already have the basics,” Roarke said. “More’s coming. Why are you looking at Breen?”

“First, it’s standard to run anybody I interview during an investigation.” She set down the tray. “I’m going deeper because he flicked my switch. Don’t know why, exactly.”

She walked toward the wall screen where Roarke had already brought up the standard data. “ThomasAquinasBreen, age thirty-three, married, one child, male, age two. Writer and professional father. Decent reported income. He makes a solid living, and appears to be on the track to making more. One bust for illegals-Zoner-age twenty-one. College smoke, nothing surprising. Native New Yorker, NYU grad: fine arts with post-grad work in criminology-I like that one-and creative writing. Earns his living writing magazine articles, short stories, and the two published nonfiction books to date, both substantial bestsellers. Married five years, both parents living and inFlorida.”

“Sounds normal.”

“Yeah.” But it wasn’t,Eve thought. It wasn’t quite the pretty picture it presented. “Got a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Couldn’t afford it on what he made prior to the second hit book, but the wife has a high-powered job, so you assume they combined incomes as they’ve lived there since their second year of marriage. He deals with the kid, she makes the more regular bucks.”

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 a

“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 sca

“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.”