Page 80 of Treachery in Death

“Not formally, no.”

“I’ll have to introduce you sometime. I’m sure you’d enjoy each other.” Renee took a pretzel from the bowl, broke it in half, nibbled. “We should have dinner. You, your husband, my father and I. Roarke’s certainly a man I’d like to meet.”

“Why?”

“Like my father, he has a strong reputation, and it would seem, a gift for command. He’d have to, to have reached his level of success. It must be fascinating, being married to a man who commands that much power, with so many varied . . . interests. I heard you vacationed in Europe this summer.”

“You want to talk about my summer vacation?”

“I don’t see any reason you and I can’t be friendly, do you?”

“Do you want a list?”

Renee sighed, sat back, and continued to nibble on the tiny piece of pretzel. “We really did get off on the wrong foot, and I’m willing to take responsibility for a great deal of that. I was upset about Keener, and I admit, territorial. So we butted heads when it would’ve been more efficient, and certainly more productive, to work in tandem.”

She paused again when the waitress returned with their drinks. “Anything else I can get you for now?”

“We’re good,” Eve told her. “Thanks.”

Renee lifted her glass. “Why don’t we drink to a fresh start?”

Eve left her glass where it was. “Why don’t you define fresh start?”

In the snug, Webster watched the exchange. “She’s chapping Renee’s ass.”

“She’s good at it,” Roarke agreed. “She’ll wind her up. The more Eve rejects the overtures, the more Renee will push.”

“It’s a good play. Garnet’s hammering her on one side, Dallas is blocking her on the other. You know Dallas is trying to get Renee to come at her—to set Bix on her.”

“I know my wife very well.”

The faint emphasis on my wife had Webster shoving his hands in his pockets. “I thought you and I were settled.”

“It’s hard to resist giving you the needle now and again. See the body language there,” Roarke pointed out. “Eve, slouched, kicked back. Disinterested. Renee tipped forward a bit. Working hard to engage. But her foot taps under the table—hard rhythm. She’s angry.”

Roarke glanced over, smiled at Webster. “Fancy a beer?”

“Yeah, but until this is done, I’m on. You go ahead.”

“Ah well, we’ll wait on it.”

At the table, Renee sipped her martini. “I’m apologizing for not giving you my full cooperation over Keener. He’d been my CI for a long time, and though I didn’t use him often in the last few years, we had a history. I felt, right from the start, you were shutting me out. I reacted to that. You and I have different styles, Dallas, obviously. And they’ve clashed. I’d like to put that behind us.”

Eve shrugged, and at last picked up her glass. “My investigation of Keener’s murder may require more information from you, may require me to question members of your squad who knew him, had dealings with him.”

“Understood. But I can tell you neither I nor anyone in the squad used Keener much. He’d occasionally feed me some small change, and I’d see he got a twenty. But I kept him as a CI mostly out of sentiment. He used more than he should have, and his information had become less and less reliable. He didn’t have solid contacts anymore.”

“Then why did somebody kill him, and go to so much trouble to stage it as an OD?”

“I can’t answer that. Hopefully your own CI has some information that will give you some lines there. I’m asking that we cooperate with each other on this. I’ll give you whatever I can to aid your investigation. I want to be in the loop. I want to know what you’ve got.”

“I’ll copy you on all data I deem appropriate.”

“That’s a start.” Obviously pleased with that, Renee put on the earnest. “Now, about my detective. Dallas, I want you to understand when Bix and Garnet went into that flop ... it was just bad timing. If they’d known he was dead, you were investigating, I promise you, they’d have come to you with full disclosure.”

“I’m curious. If Keener didn’t have solid contacts, only fed you small change and so on, why did your detective feel he had some connection to or information on the Giraldi matter? And feel so strongly enough to illegally enter his residence? I never got an answer to that.”

“They followed a tip, and frankly, I think it was a blind. I agree they acted hastily, and I’ve spoken with both of them about it. If they’d informed me before following the tip, I could have told them Keener was dead. We’d have avoided all this. I promise you it won’t happen again.

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