The In Death Collection Books 26-29 - J.D. Robb [208]
“There you are.”
“Let’s hope that’s the right track, or we’re going to be looking at some rabbi or monk or whatever in the morgue before much longer. Here comes Peabody, and she’s brought McNab.”
“You’ve got ears like a cat.”
Eve glanced at her sleep chair where Galahad sprawled for his post-breakfast, pre-lunch nap. “Depends on the cat. Reports,” Eve said the minute Peabody and McNab came in.
“Right here.” Her dark eyes still blurry with sleep, Peabody held up discs. “Please, can there be coffee, and food, and maybe a direct transfusion of massive vitamins?”
Eve jerked a thumb toward the kitchen as she crossed over to plug the discs into her machine. She sent copies to Mira and Whitney unread. She’d have to catch up.
“While your associates are scavenging, I have some work of my own.” Roarke tipped her head up with a finger under her chin, touched his lips to hers. “Good hunting, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks. Hey, you’ve got a lot of businesses to protect.”
He turned in his doorway. “One or two.”
“Zillion,” she finished. “The point being, you’ve got fail-safes and contingencies and whatever. Various people who’d do various things when in the dim, distant future, you die at two hundred and six after we have hot shower sex.”
“I’d hoped for two hundred and twelve, but yes.”
“And my guess is that you’d have Summerset in charge—coordinating. The one person you know you can trust to juggle all the balls, keep them in the air.”
“You realize that would mean he’d have to live to be about two hundred and forty, but yes. While I could trust you, I wouldn’t expect you to set aside your own . . . balls to juggle mine. Especially when you’re comatose with grief and contemplating the bleakness of your remaining years without me.”
“Right.”
“You’re still liking the manager.”
“We’ll see.”
She went back to her desk, ordered a full run on Billy Crocker. Both Peabody and McNab stepped back in with plates of waffles.
“Carbs,” Peabody said between forkfuls. “Energy.”
“Yeah, it’s a big day for energy. Billy Crocker’s a widower. His wife—only marriage—died in a vehicular accident six years ago. He has two grown offspring. One’s a professional mother, living in Alabama with her husband and two minor daughters. The other is on the EL payroll, and is married to a woman employed as a publicist for EL. He’s sitting more than reasonably pretty financially, even while pumping a full twenty percent of his income back into the EL coffers annually. His home back in Mississippi is virtually next door to Jenkins, while he maintains a smaller second home near the married daughter.”
Eve sat back. “He’s in charge of booking appearances, clearing the venues, scheduling all Jenkins’s appointments, securing his transportation—or working with the transportation head. To get to Jimmy Jay, you’ve got to go through Billy.”
“Second in command,” Peabody offered.
“Absolutely. Schedules his appointments,” Eve repeated. “I can all but guarantee that both Caro and Summerset know where Roarke is pretty much any given time of the day or night. If not precisely, they know how to reach him, anywhere, anytime. If he was ever stupid enough to cheat on me—”
“I heard that,” Roarke called out.
“They’d know. One or both would know.”
“So Billy knew Jenkins was . . . preaching to the choir?” McNab suggested.
“According to Ulla, the side dish, she and Jenkins had been saying hallelujah for nearly five months. Regularly. I’m betting Billy knew, just as I’m betting Ulla wasn’t Jenkins’s first conversion.”
“So we pin Billy on how much he knew and see what else we get,” Peabody added. “And we see if we can find previous converts.”
“Meanwhile, we’re running the Flores investigation on parallel but potentially intersecting lines. I’ve got the results of a run I started last night before the second homicide. I’ve got about a half-dozen Linos baptized at St. Cristóbal’s during the