The In Death Collection Books 26-29 - J.D. Robb [271]
She sniffed at the soup. She’d bet a month’s pay there were vegetables lurking around under the surface, but it smelled good. “Okay. Thanks. You don’t have to stick.”
“You couldn’t peel me off with dermalaser.” He sat across from her, sampled his own soup. “Do you think Lino opened himself to all this by making Penny his legal partner and heir?”
Eve ate. She’d been right about the vegetables. “Do you?”
“You said he loved her. Love blinds and binds and often makes bloody gits out of us. So, yes. She likely nudged him along that route, using sex or withholding it—as sex makes bloody gits of us even more often than love. He’d have told her all of it, every detail. A bit at a time maybe, but over these five years? He’d have laid it all out for her. How smart is she?”
“Not very, I’d say. More hotheaded. But he was, yeah, I think Lino was pretty smart. And all she had to do was springboard off the game he’d already laid out. He’d have gotten away with it,” she added. “Another few months, the properties and trust transfer to Aldo—all legalschmegal. Aldo sells out to Martinez. Martinez gets his face back, and comes home rich and important. Yeah, he was smart enough, but Penny Soto was his athlete’s heel.”
“Achilles’.” Roarke paused, studied her face. “Do you do that on purpose? The misnomers?”
“Maybe. Sometimes. Anyway, she’ll know what happened to Flores.”
Roarke smiled at her. “How much will you bargain with her for the information?”
“I won’t. Can’t. But I’ll get it.” She scooped up soup. The vegetables weren’t such a bad deal when they were disguised in noodles and a thick, zingy broth. “Yeah, he told her all of it. Pillow talk, bragging, puffing himself up. And she has to figure, what does she need him for? She can have it all if she works it right. She’s waited almost as long as he has, right? Why does she have to share it with this loser?”
“Left her once, didn’t he?” Roarke pointed out. “What’s to stop him from tossing her aside once he’s riding the money train. So she tosses him first. Permanently.”
“Plays the right tune for me. She gets him to hook her up first. If you loved me, you’d respect me. If you loved me, we’d be partners. If you loved me, you’d make sure I had security. Don’t you trust me, Lino, don’t you love me—all while probably giving him a blow job.” Eve wagged her spoon at Roarke. “Men are dicks so often because they have one.”
“I can use mine without thinking with it.”
Eve grinned over another spoonful of soup. “If I went down on you right now, you’d give me anything I asked for.”
“Try me.”
Now she laughed. “You’re just trying for a bj, and I’m working.”
Saying nothing, he took out his memo book, keyed something in. Then smiled when she cocked her head in question. “I’m just making a note that you owe me a blow job to prove your theory.”
Amused, she finished off the soup. “Okay then, if you’re going to stick, the next step is to check out the families and close ties to the fatalities and injured at the two bombings back in ’43. I’m working on the theory that Lino was behind both. I’m starting with the second, because of the eye-for-an-eye thing.”
“Because most, if not all, would have no reason to think Martinez set the boomer, on his own turf.”
“But the second,” Eve agreed. “People knew, or strongly suspected he had something to do with it. He made sure that buzz got around. Plus, the single fatality in the school bombing has no close friends or relatives left in the area. Her family moved to Barcelona three years after her death.”
“So you study the fatalities on the second, as death has more weight.”
“Your kid, brother, father, best pal, whatever, gets hurt seventeen years ago and you have a chance for payback, you find a way to hurt them back. Exposure, a good ass-whooping. But death? It’s final. Payback needs to be final, too.”
“Yes. And the law is often transitory.”
She knew he thought of Marlena again, what had been done, what he had done. His eyes came to hers.
“If I’d stepped away, if I’d never exacted