“You’ll be busy enough without that. I’ll contact Garrett, and get back to the financials.”
She took his hand before he turned away.
“It lifts the burden a little. The excellent sex, and the coffee. They lighten the load some. The fact you not only get the job but are willing to put in time? It does a lot to counteract the whole money thing.”
“Whatever I can do to ease your pain, darling Eve.”
“I don’t even mind you being a smart-ass.”
“Well now, in that area I can’t begin to compete with you.”
“You’re competitive, but yeah, I win.”
Fueled with some load-lightening coffee, she updated her board, wrote up her reports. She killed a few brain cells doing the calculations on reasonable times to contact Henry Barrister’s ex-wives.
Then she dug into thieves.
It shouldn’t have surprised her how clean their data was. When she’d first run Roarke, she’d found only the bare minimum in his official record. No arrests.
She imagined he’d had more than a few knocks when he’d run the streets of Dublin as a kid, but he’d wiped the slate clean.
She suspected the group she’d studied had done the same, or paid someone to do so. Maybe not quite as clean, but nearly.
She focused in on the arrests—charges dropped—for assault by one Ignatious Clapp. Two arrests, one in Killarney, Ireland, one in a hotel in Spain, where he now lived.
She dug down to the police reports, hit the translator for Spanish. Then after reading, sat back and frowned.
In Ireland, Clapp had gone after some man when he learned that said individual had smacked a kid around—age eleven. In Spain, a second individual had gotten physical with a woman server in the hotel bar.
In both cases Clapp had pummeled said individuals, then had surrendered to the authorities without incident. Witnesses corroborated, charges dropped.
But, Eve thought, it showed he had a capacity for violence—and she suspected there may have been other altercations that hadn’t involved local cops.
So Clapp went to the top of her list.
When Roarke came in, she looked over.
“I’ve finished the sister and the housekeeper,” he told her. “I’ve started on the butler.”
“Hold that a minute. Ignatious Clapp.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve heard of him. Definitely experienced. I believe he focuses on jewelry, and lives now in semiretirement in… I’m not sure.”
“Barcelona. He’s got some assaults—charges dropped—on his record. Went after a guy who smacked a kid around one night on the street in Killarney. Then took on another who’d harassed and gotten physical with a waitress in, as it happens, Barcelona.”
“Well now.”
“Yeah, well now. But it shows he’ll use violence. He busted up the first guy’s hand, in addition to knocking out a couple teeth, realigning his nose. He broke the second guy’s jaw, among other things.”
“I’ll wager the hand he broke’s the one that smacked the child, and the jaw? Likely used to insult the woman.”
“You’d win the bet, and still. I’m going to pass his name along.”
“You’ll do what you must, as it’s murder. Clapp would be past seventy, wouldn’t he?”
“Seventy-seven.”
“I think, when you find who you’re after, he’ll be younger, less seasoned.”
