Page 44 of Calculated in Death

“Since you make more in a week than most people make in a bunch of decades, we’ll stick with mine. Which circles back to why you’re so useful. If there’s something hinky with the books, the files, you’ll spot it.”

“Fortunately I like being useful,” and added, “I’m looking forward to the opportunity to poke about in someone else’s financials.” He smiled when she frowned at him. “Using the power for good, of course. Why don’t I get started on that? I’ll work in here. Easier, I think, if I have a question for you, or you for me.”

“Okay. I can use the auxiliary. I need to set up my board, but I’ll get you started first.”

“Are the files on your unit here, or at Central?”

“I told McNab to copy and send, yeah.”

“Then I can be a self-starter.”

Just as well, she thought. As he’d put the meal together, she was stuck with the clearing up. But fair was fair, and like the magic soup, the meal and the reprise had her energy back in tune.

A nap, sex, and a hot shower may have played into that. Either way, she calculated she had a few good hours in her.

She noted that Roarke dived right in, and that the cat watched her suspiciously when she came out of the kitchen to set up her board.

She decided her best tactic there was ignoring Galahad until he pretended nothing was wrong and never had been.

She studied the board as she worked, and went to her auxiliary unit to print out more ID photos. She pinned Candida and Aston to her board, and Alva Moonie’s housekeeper.

Connections, she thought, and began to make them. Candida to Alva—former friends, lovers. Both rolling it in. Candida to the vic through the audit. She added Candida’s money man, and a note to do a run on him.

She aligned the vic’s family on one side, her coworkers on the other. And took a good look at James Arnold and Chaz Parzarri, making another note to contact the hospital and get the rundown on injuries and prognoses.

Roarke, she saw, was in work mode. With his hair tied back, sleeves pushed up, he looked relaxed about it. Who knew why some people found numbers so damn fascinating.

She sat at her auxiliary unit, and dived into what she considered the much more interesting prospect of digging into people’s lives.

Arnold, James, age forty-six. On his second marriage, nine years in. The first gave him two children, one of each variety, and hefty child-support payments. He’d added another kid—female—with the second marriage.

He looked like an accountant, she decided. At least the clichéd image of one. Pale, a slightly worried expression on his thin face, faded blue eyes, thin sandy hair.

The sort who looked both harmless and boring. And, she knew, appearances were often deceiving.

He had an advanced degree, and had been a teacher’s assistant and a dorm monitor in college.

Nerd.

He’d worked for the IRS for six years, then had gone into the private sector with a brief and unsuccessful two years between trying to run his own business out of his home.

He’d been with Brewer for thirteen years.

Decent salary. She figured anyone who crunched numbers all damn day probably deserved one. Good thing, as his oldest kid’s college tuition took a greedy bite.

No criminal, but a shitload of traffic violations, she noted. And, hmmm, the second kid had some juvie knocks. Shoplifting, illegal possession, underage drinking, vandalism. A long stint in rehab. Private rehab. Pricy.

His wife had recently given up her professional parent stipend to go back to work as a paralegal.

While finances balanced, as far as she could tell, money had to be tight. How did it feel, poring over all those accounts loaded with cash, stocks, trusts, whatever, while you had to work and calculate just to make the mortgage?

Interesting.

Chaz Parzarri, age thirty-nine, single, no offspring. He had the kind of dark, sulky looks some women went for. Chiseled bone structure, a lot of wild curls. He didn’t, to her mind, look like an accountant. But he, too, had the advanced degree and the government experience—was all that required?

She glanced up, over to Roarke, wondered if he knew, but didn’t think it was important enough for the interruption.

His education advanced largely on scholarships—Chaz was a bright boy, she mused. Born in New Jersey to a waitress and a cab driver, with three siblings. Tight money again, at least in his background.