Read Vendetta in Death for Free Online Page B

second to process.”
    “You’re processing pretty well,” Eve commented.
    “It’s what I do. What happened? When? Why? Though the why’s not hard for me to process—unless it was an accident or a mugging.”
    “Tell me why,” Eve suggested.
    “Nigel, a man with a lovely, intelligent wife and two beautiful children, a successful business that afforded him the opportunity to live well, travel well, couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. If a husband, boyfriend, brother, father didn’t eventually bash his head in, one of thewomen he used and abused would—and so I told him not fully a year ago.”
    “And you, Ms. Brant? Did he use and abuse you?”
    Sylvia let out a barking laugh. “Take a closer look.” She spread her arms—strong and muscled like the rest of her. “I’m sixty-three, tough, not curvy. I’m a handsome woman, some might say. Sexy, young, naive—no one would say.”
    “I think you’re beautiful,” Schupp told her, and made her smile.
    “And didn’t I tell Lance to snap you up for good reason? No, Lieutenant, Nigel wasn’t interested in me in that way. Plus, I’m far too valuable to the company. He hunted the younger, curvier, and often the powerless. Not quite a year ago when it became clear he’d been bobbing in the office pool, I threatened him with lawsuits, my resignation, and a conversation with his wife, someone I like quite a lot.”
    “You didn’t follow through.”
    She showed the first sign of tension by rubbing two fingers between her eyebrows. “No, I didn’t, because he stopped hunting in this particular forest, agreed to pay the two women I’d learned of a generous private settlement. He could have fired me—it wouldn’t have been easy, as he had no cause—but I’m valuable to the bottom line here, and I’d have made one hell of a stink. He knew it.”
    She paused, sighed, rose. “I’m breaking into the VIP coffee. I need it, and I expect so do we all.”
    She walked to an alcove, programmed an AutoChef. “Before I answer the questions I expect, I’m giving you full disclosure. I respected Nigel’s business sense, tremendously. He was a driving part in building a damn good company, with skill, determination, creativity, foresight. I admired that part of him, and the part who had a seer’s sense of placing the right person in the right position.”
    She passed around coffee, brought over a tray of creamers and sugarsubstitutes. “He was an excellent father from what I could tell, and his children adored him—clearly and genuinely. Geena, his wife … It’s hard for me to believe a woman as generous and intelligent as Geena didn’t know what he was doing, but then I didn’t know until a year ago, and I’m no idiot. I believe she genuinely loves—loved—him. I admire a man who can generate that kind of love.
    “As for the rest of him, I found him despicable. Both women who finally came to me claimed he pressured them, used his position, and one of them believed he’d given her something, roofied her. He denied all this, of course, when I went at him, but he was lying. I could see it. And he agreed to the terms I gave him.”
    “I appreciate your candor. Can you give me your whereabouts last night, particularly between the hours of nine P.M . and four A.M .?”
    “Oh, but, Lieutenant, you can’t—”
    “Shh.” Sylvia shook a finger at Po. “She needs to know. I left here shortly after Nigel, met my husband, our older son, and his fianc é e for dinner at Opa. We had seven o’clock reservations. I think we left about ten. Ray and I took a cab home. I’d say we were both in bed and asleep before midnight, and I left this morning about six-forty-five to hit the gym, and was in the office by eight-forty.
    “We do have security on our building,” she added. “You would see Ray and me get in last night, and you’d see me leave this morning. I found Nigel despicable in many ways,” she said again, “but my heart breaks for his children.