Page 17 of Fury In Death

“I can hold a slice in one hand and work. Multitask.”

“Darling Eve, you’re pale, which tells me if you had anything after breakfast this morning, it was many hours ago. You need meat, and I’m told we have a very nice beef stew with dumplings.”

“I like dumplings, but where do they get that name? Dumplings? They’re sort of soft biscuits that go inside the stew. Or on top of it. Dumplings sound like some little thing you dump . . . Okay, that one makes weird sense now.”

“Thank God, as I’d have pondered over the question for hours.”

They walked into her office, where the cat sprawled on her sleep chair. Galahad shifted, stretched his pudgy body, yawned fiercely. Then he hopped down, strolled over to greet the humans.

Eve leaned down, gave him one long stroke. “Summerset fed you, no question, so don’t think you’re getting another dinner out of us.”

He gave her a long study out of one amber eye, one green eye, then wound around Roarke’s legs.

“He knows you’ll cave and give him some of that cat candy.”

“Well now, he did wait up for us, more or less. I’m going to have some wine.”

“I need to work first. I could go for a glass with the stew deal.”

“Write it up, and I’ll start on your board. You can fiddle with it after if need be.”

She turned to him, took his face in her hands. “You make a solid Peabody, a really good McNab. But you’re an even better Roarke.”

She kissed him, intending to make it quick and casual. But he drew her in, took it long and deep.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “An even better Roarke.”

“Since I played my alternate parts so well, I hope my reward includes looking into finances.”

“They need looking at. The vic, the widow, the sons.”

“After dinner then.”

She sat at her command center, opened operations. Roarke poured himself a glass of wine before taking her auxiliary to generate what she needed for her board.

She finished with a memo to Peabody.

Caught this on the way home. Get up to speed on the investigation, and meet me at the morgue at eight-thirty.

When she pushed back, she saw that Roarke had completed her board. And the man did know how she liked to organize it. Two domes sat on the table by the glass doors, along with a bottle of wine. A fire simmered in her hearth. And since the cat sprawled on the sleep chair again, with a satisfied smirk, he’d definitely gotten his cat candy.

As she got up to walk to the board, Roarke stepped out of his adjoining office.

“Good timing then. I’ve started the financials on auto, and was just about to give you a nudge toward food.”

“I don’t need a nudge. Pretty damn hungry.” But she stood a minute more, scanning the board, before she walked to the table.

“Vic’s ’link was pretty busted up, add blood-soaked. Will EDD still be able to tell if it was hacked?”

“His account would’ve been hacked or compromised.” Roarke poured her wine. “So, yes, they’ll find the leak. The source of the leak’s a different matter, but they’ll be able to tell you if someone got the passcode by hacking.”

“Good. If hacked, they didn’t have easy access to his ’link like a family member, a close friend, even a coworker might. If not hacked, that’s more the area.”

She spooned up stew. “This is really good.”

She could tolerate the whole bunch of vegetables because nice chunks of potatoes and actual beef swam around in the hearty stew that warmed all the way down.

Plus, dumplings.