“They keep the money, which she doesn’t need, it lets her remove her brother and stand as head of the company—more shares or not. It takes a slap at her father, exposes what he did, and puts her and the rest in the light of trying to make it right.”
“It plays a tune for me. Financially, yeah, the wife, the daughters, but in every other way, the sister benefits most.”
“What a mind you have.”
Scooping up eggs, Eve corrected him. “It’s her mind. She has to lurehim downstairs. It only helps that he wasn’t feeling well, but she had a way around that. Tells him he had to come down, no, don’t wake Aileen. He goes down, sees the vault open, sees the emeralds gone.
“Shock, worry. Move to contact the police. He hears his wife, probably, and before he can answer, bash. Aileen walks in. All she sees is him. Joy just has to ease out, wait a couple minutes, then rush in, take over.”
Eve crunched into bacon. “It’s a pretty solid plan. You’ve got to go with the bungled burglary because it’s all laid out nice and neat.”
“I’ll wager that bothered you all along. The nice and neat.”
“Some, but you have to go with the evidence. As we got more, it bothered me more. And there’s the timing of the hire for the hit on me. Morning, after I went to Barrister House and got the Fancy Blonde information, arranged for Yancy, and before the media conference. Still, if Joy Barrister arranged for the hit, she got the hit man’s name from somewhere. And fast.”
“Magdelana.”
“She’d know people in low places.”
“She would, yes.”
“And somebody hungry enough to take on a cop, and basically right away. So that’s how I see it right now. That could change, depending.”
“I don’t think it will,” he considered as he topped off her coffee. “As I sit here with my very clever cop, it all fits very well. How will you handle it?”
“We need the auction location, the time. If we take Barrister before that, they’ll delay. Go under and delay. If I’m right and Joy Barrister and Magdelana started turning this wheel, she knew Barrister was going to take out her brother. Maybe the broker knew, maybe not. But that doesn’t let him off the hook. The thief, either, or anyone else connected. It’s murder during the commission of a crime, and they’re all in the soup.”
Nodding at the screen, she drank more coffee. “How much longer, do you think?”
“It’s painstaking, but I’d say under an hour now. Well under.”
“If she’s working with Barrister, Magdelana knows we’ve ID’d her. She’d like that. She wants us to know it’s her because she thinks she can get clear.”
“She would, yes.”
“She’ll be sorry for it. I need to get going. I need to run this by Whitney, update Peabody, Feeney. I’m going to brief my detectives and officers to prepare for an op. We’ll get that location, and we need to be ready to go.”
He rose with her. “I’ll stick with this, then I’ll come into Central, work in EDD on the rest.”
“In case we go sooner than later. I won’t leave you out.”
“And I won’t hold you up. If it’s in New York as we think, if it’s that important for her to shove my face in it, I can help with blueprints and security. If it’s not, I can help with transportation.”
“She didn’t know you. I wonder if you understand that.”
“You didn’t know me then.”
“People change, sure, but their underlayment doesn’t. It just doesn’t. She never knew you.” She kissed him. “I do.”
He pulled her in, held on. “Take good care of my cop.”
“I was distracted yesterday, but you took care of me. I won’t be distracted today.”
As she stepped back, her ’link signaled.
“Robert J. Wenn. I know that name.”
“As you should. Very successful criminal defense attorney.”
