“I did. I thought . . . I really thought we had a future together. More fool me.”
“We need to be able to share with our partners,” Peabody continued. “To talk to them, to have them listen. It’s natural and human.”
“I hope I feel that way again someday—when I find someone worthy of trust. But now—I said I despised him, and I don’t say that lightly. But I can’t believe he’d have had any part in what happened. In terrorizing that family, in killing people. I might’ve died, too. We slept together for months, all but lived together.”
“Why did you break it off?” Eve asked her.
She sighed now. “He’d started to ask for money. Just a loan. The first time I didn’t think much of it. Just a few thousand—cash. The second time, those few weeks ago, it bothered me. He’d never paid back the first, and obviously didn’t intend to. I balked, he let it go. But then I found out he’d been cheating. Another woman—wealthy, of course, and married in this case. When I confronted him with it, he shrugged it off. Literally shrugged,” she added, her eyes glittery with temper.
“He’d needed the money I hadn’t been willing to give him, so he’d tapped another source. Really, it was my fault—or so he said.”
“Ballsy,” Eve replied.
“I wish I’d kicked him in them. Still, I did kick him out, then and there. It didn’t seem to bother him a bit. In fact, he said he’d finished with me in any case.”
“Despised seems kind of a wussy word.”
Karson smiled a little at Eve. “It does, doesn’t it? Regardless, he’s not a violent man. A user, an opportunist, a lazy, worthless son of a bitch, but not a man who’d kill.”
“He might have been a man who’d know others who would.”
“Oh, Christ, I don’t know. What time is it? Early.” She answered her own question as she glanced at her wrist unit. “Too early to tag up Juliette. My friend,” she added. “Someone to lean on.”
“Tell me about his friends, his associates.”
“I don’t know many of them well. I liked some of them. Fun, witty, interesting. Others? Well, fun for the short bursts, more biting than witty, and interested more in the next party or adventure. A lot of illegals—and after I made a point about that to Jordan, we didn’t go to many parties. I have a business, a reputation. I wasn’t going to get caught up and have my name and my company splashed over the media by being photographed at some party where Erotica and Buzz are offered like canapés.”
“Gambling?”
“Of course. Legal and, I’d assume, not. Most of these could afford to gamble.”
“Did any of them show an interest in your business, in the merger?”
“Lieutenant, these types—or the ones Jordan liked particularly—don’t worry overmuch about business or working. They party, they travel. I might have had a few casual conversations about Econo, but I honestly don’t remember any particular questions or interest.”
“Did you know Jordan was laundering money through his art gallery?”
Karson let out a long breath. “Was he? Of course he was. It makes perfect sense. How stupid could I possibly be? He wanted me to pay for the art I bought with cash—I wouldn’t. I bought some for the company, through the company—and there are rules. And I bought some for myself, but I wanted the paper trail.
“I told him too much,” she said dully. “I trusted him too much, and he broke that trust in so many ways. He broke it by telling someone what I’d shared in confidence. For his ego or for money, both are the same to him, really. And because of that, people are dead. Because I wanted someone to lean on, and thought I’d found him.”
“You’re not responsible.” Eve spoke briskly. “If Banks was, he paid a price for it, a high one. But you’re not responsible. And you’re very likely not the only one who shared details with someone they trusted. The men responsible found ways to exploit that.”
They left her staring through a forest of flowers to the window and the gray sky beyond.
* * *
Pearson’s Upper East Side redbrick mansion rose four stories. It stood dignified, its tall windows blank eyes as the sleet turned to rain.
“We’re a little early,” Peabody noted as Eve stepped under the portico over the grand double entrance doors.
“They’ll deal.” She noted the security, discreet but thorough as she pressed the bell.
Good morning. The computer-generated voice carried a pleasant, neutral tone. Due to a death in the family, the Pearson family is not currently receiving visitors.
“Lieutenant Dallas,” Eve began as she held up her badge for scanning, “Detective Peabody, NYPSD. We’re expected.”
One moment please.
The thin red line of the scanner swept over Eve’s badge, turned green.
Your credentials are verified, Lieutenant. The family is being notified of your arrival. Please wait.
It took under a minute for a woman in black to open the door on the right. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, please come in.”
She stepped back, a woman of about fifty with a smooth bob of dark hair. Dark eyes, red rimmed from weeping, held steady.
“May I take your coats?”
“We’re good.”
“If you’ll follow me.” She led the way, in sensible shoes, over floors of burnished gold, across a thick rug patterned in faded reds and blues. Centered on it stood a large round table, and centered on that a towering red vase of white flowers rose toward the lofty ceiling.
The woman turned to a deep arch off the wide foyer and into a room large enough to hold three conversation areas. She chose one near the fireplace where flames simmered inside a frame of black-and-gray-threaded white marble.
“If you’d care to sit, the family will join you shortly.”
“How long have your worked for the Pearsons, Ms. . . .”
“Mrs. Stuben. Thirty-three years. If you’ll excuse me, I need to check on the coffee and tea service.”
She started out, reaching the archway as a man stepped to it. Fully a foot taller, he put his hands on her shoulders, folded himself down to kiss the top of her head. He whispered something to her that had her lifting a hand to squeeze his before hurrying away.
He entered on wide strides. The black sweater and trousers added to the look of a walking stovepipe. His face, as gawky as the rest of him, carried the drawn, exhausted look of a man who hadn’t slept.
“Lieutenant, Detective. I’m Drew Pearson. The rest of the family will be just a few minutes. Please sit.”
“We’re sorry for you loss, Mr. Pearson, and know this is a difficult time for you and your family.”
“We’re shattered. People say that—like they’re glass, I used to think. Now I know what it means.”
He sat, a kind of folding again, in a chair done in an elegant blue with a print of scattered roses.
“More than anything, we need to know who, and why. We have to get through today, tomorrow, and the rest, but how do we do that without knowing who or why? My father . . . It won’t change that, but how do we get through unless we know?”
“The NYPSD will use all of its resources to find out. You were in London.”
“Yes. I’m based there. Or was.”
“But the negotiations, the presentation yesterday and the actual deal took place in New York.”
“Yes. I did a lot of shuttling back and forth the last several months, but we also worked by ’link and holo.”
“You were in favor of the merger.”
“I brought the idea to the table, and put out the initial feelers. And I’ve been asking myself for the last twenty-four horrible hours if bringing this to my father, helping to make the deal a reality, cost him his life.”
“No. The people who made the bomb and forced Paul Rogan to detonate it cost your father and eleven others their lives.”
“Are you absolutely sure Paul didn’t—wasn’t involved?”
“Yes. You knew him?”
“Very well. I couldn’t believe . . . then didn’t want to believe.” He pinched the bridge of his nose before gripping his hands tight together in his lap. “Cecily and Melly—his wife and daughter—are they all right?”
“They will be.”
“We haven’t—just haven’t been able to reach out to them. My mother—”
He broke off, rose as three women in black came into the room arms or hands linked, so they presented a solid wall.
“Mom.” He walked to the women, took the woman in the center by the hand, then slid an arm around her and led her over. “This is Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody. My mother, Rozilyn Pearson.”
“Mrs. Pearson, thank you for seeing us. We’re very sorry for your loss.”
Her eyes, glazed from tranqs and red from weeping, slipped over Eve, brushed over Peabody before she sat. “My husband’s dead,” she said in a voice as dull as the day.
The other two women moved in, sat on either side of her. The one on the right took her hand. The daughter, Eve thought. They shared the same delicate bone structure, the same deep brown eyes. Though the daughter’s were shadowed, they weren’t glazed but hard with anger.
“My sister, Liana, my wife, Sybil.” Drew looked at his sister. “Brad?”
“As soon as he can. My husband,” Liana told Eve and Peabody. “He’s upstairs with our son, and Drew and Sybil’s children. Noah’s only six, and Drew’s children are so young. Noah and my father were especially close. He’s upset.”
“We’ll try not to take much of your time,” Eve began.
Stuben wheeled in a large tray holding the coffee and tea service.
Sybil rose quickly. “Let me help you, Bessie. You’ll have some tea, Rozilyn.” The educated British accent suited her roses-and-cream looks, the long fall of chestnut hair she’d pulled back in a tail. “Lieutenant?”