In death 59 passions i.., p.17
In Death 59 - Passions in Death, page 17
“What did you talk about after you helped take the paintings down?”
He dug a hand through his mass of curls. “Jesus. I don’t know. It was a major sale, okay? I said like congratulations or something. She came back up to clean her brushes, and she said thanks or whatever, and how she had big plans for the money.”
“What plans?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Why would I care? Her money, her business.”
“How often did ChiChi Lopez come in to see her?”
His gaze drifted to the painting. “Off and on, that I know of. Erin worked evenings mostly, until about a year ago. Worked the sidewalk most days. ChiChi came in now and then when I was in the studio. They had a thing going.”
He slid his hands into the pockets of his sleep pants. “You don’t have to like people to see what’s going on with them. I don’t do portraits often, because people, but an artist has to observe, has to see.”
“You did ChiChi’s portrait.”
“Yeah. She’s got a body on her, and a damn good face.”
“You had a thing with her.”
“Way short of a thing, and after she wasn’t having one with Erin. You go bouncing on someone your studio mate’s bouncing on, it’s trouble. It’s a bunch of talking and shit. Who needs that?”
“When did you do the portrait?”
“After I bounced on her a time or two.”
“A time or two?”
“Three or four—who counts?”
“How did she feel about Erin and Shauna?”
“How the fuck would I—” He broke off, frowned. “Shauna’s the redhead, right? The one Erin was going to make it legal with?”
“That’s right.”
“Great hair. Catches the eye.”
“How did ChiChi feel about them, together, about to make it legal?”
“What do I care?”
“She never talked about it to you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Shit.”
He shoved at his hair again. “So she didn’t like the redhead, figured she’d just screw with Erin, then dump her ass. Wanted to know how often the redhead came into the studio. I couldn’t say, so I bounced on her to shut her up. Who needs the drama?”
Then he frowned. “You think ChiChi killed Erin?”
“Routine questions, Mr. Carver.”
“She’s got a mean streak in her. You can see it in her eyes, even the way she moves. Get her pissed enough, yeah, she could do it. But if she wanted the thing back with Erin, it makes more sense to do it to the redhead.”
Then he shook his head. “Shit. Now I’m awake all the damn way. I might as well go to the studio. Nobody’s going to be there. Is that it?”
“One more.” Eve pulled out her ’link, brought up Greg Barney’s photo. “Did he ever come to the studio?”
“I couldn’t say. Not when I was working. Everybody’s all-American. Good bone structure. Looks boring. Look, I’m sorry about Erin, right? She was okay. But none of this has anything to do with me.”
“I guess it doesn’t. Thanks for the time.”
“Don’t come looking for more of it.” He opened the door. “But if you see the redhead, you can tell her I wouldn’t mind painting her—from the back. The hair catches the eye.”
“Right.”
As they started down the steps, Peabody blew out a breath. “Challenging fits. He doesn’t give a baby rat’s ass about anybody.”
“Run his alibi again. He’s big, strong. Big and strong enough to have done it. I don’t see him caring enough to kill anybody, but run it again.”
“He liked her a little bit. As much as he seems capable.”
“Yeah, a little bit. And he liked bouncing on Lopez. And Lopez bounced on him to try to get what she could out of him on Shauna. He’s probably smart enough to know that, but liked the bounce. Was any of Erin’s work on his walls, since you have a good eye?”
“My good eye says it was all his. But yeah, he’d know the business of art, he has access and could pick his way through the paintings she has in the studio. When he says her work’s decent, that’s high praise from him.”
“Agreed. And if she told him she had plans for the money, maybe she—what he said—bubbled out the rest. Maybe she pissed him off about something. Maybe ChiChi talked him into helping her. It doesn’t click nice and tight, but he’s confirmed ChiChi didn’t like the idea of Erin and Shauna together. She has a mean streak—I saw that myself. So we’ll push some.”
At the lot she got back in the car. “And if he never saw Barney in the studio, it doesn’t mean Barney wasn’t there. During the day, or when Carver wasn’t there. Harder to believe he never went in at least once or twice in the last year.”
She pulled out of the lot. “We’ll head into Central. I want some thinking time.”
“Before thinking time, I need two minutes on the Great House Project. I’ve held it in,” Peabody continued before Eve could respond. “I’ve shown heroic restraint. Pin-a-medal-on-me restraint.”
Since Eve had expected that restraint to break long before now, and had mentally prepared herself for five minutes of house blathering, she shrugged.
“Two minutes. Mark.”
“Okay, all the bathrooms are done, and they’re all absolutely ult. I’m going to live in a space with three-and-a-half bathrooms. I can’t believe it. Most of the lighting’s in and just so mag. There’s still some painting, then touch-up, and the built-ins in the craft room, and punch-out work, but Roarke says next month. We can live there. In September we’ll be in. Mavis and Leonardo’s isn’t quite as far along, because it’s a bigger space. But Roarke still says September.”
“Security-wise, it wouldn’t hurt for you and McNab to move in first.”
“We thought about that, but decided we want to move in all together. Because it’s special, for all of us. We can start moving stuff in though. Like Mavis’s studio is set, and it’s wow, just wow. Same with Leonardo’s workspace, Bella’s playroom’s done, and the nursery is really coming along.
“I packed up and took over all my winter clothes. I have a place to keep off-season clothes!”
Peabody indulged in a quick passenger seat dance.
“And we all have stuff, you know, decor and stuff, stored in the garage just waiting. Plus, a lot of my fabrics, yarn, anything I don’t have a project going with.”
Peabody sighed as Eve pulled into the garage at Central. “Thanks for the two minutes. I just have one more thing.”
“Make it fast.” Eve got out of the car.
“It already feels like home. We don’t have furniture in or a lot of personal items and the pretty things, but it already feels like home. And still, whenever I walk in, I can’t believe it’s real. That it’s really happening. It’s going to be our place. We’ll live there and work there and sleep there and fight there, have sex there.”
“Pee in your three-and-a-half bathrooms.”
“Yes!” Throwing back her head, Peabody laughed. “It’s everything I could want, so it doesn’t seem really real. I’m going to take such good care of it.”
“From what I’ve seen, you already are.”
As the elevator door opened, Peabody’s eyes filled.
“Time’s up!” Eve stepped in. “Any blubbering, you take the stairs.”
“I won’t blubber.” With some visible effort, Peabody blinked the tears back. “But thanks for saying that.”
“Fact’s fact. And murder’s not only murder, but what we’re paid to investigate. Add the fact’s a fact that your paycheck’s why you have boxes of stuff you bought to put all around the house currently stored in the garage.”
“That’s fact. And it’s all perfect! Opening the boxes is going to be like Christmas squared.”
“If you want to keep drawing that paycheck, you’re going to sit your ass in your desk chair and see if Carver’s alibi is as solid as it looks.”
The doors opened; cops piled in.
“Metaphorically, my ass is already there,” Peabody said. “I really think the alibi’s going to hold.”
“Check anyway.” As the elevator continued up, Eve rocked back on her heels. “He’s the type who’d bash somebody’s head in if they pissed him off. In the moment, passion of the moment. It’s hard to see him planning out something that required all the time, thought, risk—cold-blooded. But check anyway.”
The elevator stopped again, and more cops pushed on. Eve started to push out for the glides when Mira stepped in.
“Hey, Dr. Mira.”
“Peabody, good morning. And Eve.”
She looked morning fresh among the uniforms in her white sheath with a short, elbow-length grass-green jacket. The sky-high pumps matched the jacket.
“Do you have any time free for a quick consult?” Eve asked. Mira time, she decided, might add more benefit than thinking time.
Mira glanced at her wrist unit. “As a matter of fact, I have some right now. I’ll ride up to your office with you. How’s the house coming, Peabody?”
“Oh, I was just telling Dallas.” And Peabody told Mira, in detail.
Since she’d asked Mira for the consult, Eve didn’t feel she could escape to the glides. So suffered the elevator’s stops and starts, Peabody’s house bubbling, and Mira’s enthusiasm for the bubbling until they reached her level.
“Push on the alibi,” Eve ordered.
She winced at Jenkinson’s tie with a big, bug-eyed mouse the color of a tropical sea nibbling on cheese the color of spring daffodils.
He called out, “Hey, Dr. Mira. Got a second, boss?”
She risked her retinas and stepped to his desk.
“We want to follow up on a lead, on the cold one. It’s warming up, but we need to talk to a possible source living in Boston. It’s delicate, since she was married to the vic, and later married and divorced his best friend. Since the best friend’s our prime suspect, we want to do it in person.”
Eve considered the time, the budget. “How warm?”
“Getting pretty warm. I talked to Feeney—not his case, but he was LT back in the day—and he thinks we’re on track. Running it through? Guy gets his head bashed in with a fireplace poker. Staged like a break-in, but that was bogus, sloppy. Only other person in the house, the wife. And she claims she had a headache, took some meds and a sleeping pill like nine o’clock. Found him dead downstairs in the morning. Before that, they’re out to dinner and have a fight, she tells him she could kill him for that, and sails out.
“We got her going into their place—nice place, Upper East—twenty-thirty. Then the security system goes off-line just after twenty-three hundred. Vic hadn’t come home by that time. Left the restaurant about fifteen after she did, and we can’t trace his whereabouts.”
“Why isn’t it the wife?”
“She never broke, LT. Stuck with the story. And the ME said how she’d’ve needed a stool to have bashed him from the angle he was bashed, and maybe some Zeus to bash with that amount of force. Last thing, the security system went down by remote, outside. And she was in.”
“Then why are you going to Boston? And why the best friend?”
“Three years later, she ends up married to the first husband’s best friend. No evidence they did the hanky previous to the murder. They divorced like nine years ago, and she moved to Boston—and he got a pretty sweet settlement.”
“So you’re thinking the vic goes bitching to his best friend after the fight, the best friend decides to kill his ass, jams the security?”
“The best friend installed the system, so he’d have a leg up there. Vic and best pal go to college together, roomies, he’s best man at the vic’s wedding when the vic marries money. And a looker with money. Vic was pretty liquored up at TOD, so say best pal’s ‘Hey, I’ll get you home,’ does the deed, stages the break-in, then he’s there to comfort the widow—who about a year after she got to be a widow, lent him money to start his own security business. He lived pretty high on her money. Still is.”
Jenkinson lifted his hands. “Nothing to hang on him back when, Dallas, but you look at the pattern since, and it starts to smell. She was married to the guy for six years before she booted him. She may know something she doesn’t know she knows. But it’s delicate.”
Since she trusted Jenkinson’s instincts as much as her own, she gave the nod. “Go to Boston.”
“Thanks.”
Mira joined her in the walk to her office. “By my math, he’s working a case that’s eighteen years old.”
“Guy got his head bashed in and nobody paid for it. That’s first. Then? There’s a different kind of satisfaction in taking someone down when they’re sure they’ve gotten away with it.”
“And you think they will, take the best friend down?”
“I think if Feeney says they’re on the right track, he probably caught a whiff of what Jenkinson smells now when the case was fresh, but the investigator couldn’t pin it. And what he just ran down for me? Yeah, it smells.”
Mira looked toward the board when they stepped into Eve’s office.
“Yours is fresh now.”
“Yeah, and I can’t pin it. Take the desk chair. I’ve got that tea stuff.”
“I wouldn’t mind some, along with your rundown.”
“The victim, Erin Albright, garroted with piano wire at her pre-wedding girl party. Inside a privacy room, one she’d booked, at the Down and Dirty.”
“At Crack’s. That’s difficult for him.” Mira crossed her legs, watched Eve with her quiet blue eyes. “And you, as you were attacked there on the eve of your wedding.”
“In the same privacy room. Adds to that.” Eve offered the tea, took coffee for herself. “Her fiancée, another female, was also in attendance.”
Eve gave the rundown.
“Someone she trusted, yes, almost certainly,” Mira concluded. “She’s young, in love, excited, and wants to give the woman she loves this gift in that time and place. In the company of friends who, she’d certainly believe, would share that joy in a dream fulfilled.”
“Somebody didn’t. Not a lot of time to plan if it came up when asked to deliver the case. I think wanting her dead preceded that.”
“And the request opened the door,” Mira finished. “There’s no indication the victim felt threatened previously? Had a problematic relationship with anyone who had access?”
“ChiChi Lopez pops there.” Eve tapped the photo on the board. “Sex, a few times, which by all appearances Lopez took more seriously than Albright, who cut off that aspect after she met Hunnicut. Lopez subsequently engaged in a sexual on-and-off relationship with Anton Carver, one of the victim’s studio mates. This gives her easy access to the studio, and the case once it was there. She was at the party, could possibly have slipped away, murdered Albright, slipped back. Albright may have asked her to bring the case, which would give her access to the privacy room.”
Eyes on the board, Eve drank some coffee. “She’s got a mean streak in there, and doesn’t much like Hunnicut.”
“Personality or jealousy?”
“I’m going to say both. Plus, she got kicked out of bed, replaced. More, they’re getting married, and she’s supposed to act happy about that. The timing on it’s tight but doable.
“Carver.” Eve shook her head. “Access to the case, but he’s so self-absorbed, why would he care? At the same time, he likes sex with Lopez, he strikes as almost permanently pissed off. His alibi seems solid, but Peabody’s checking to make sure it holds. The vic had just sold three paintings—a what’s it? Triptych. And another to Lopez—and though it’s verified he seemed good with that, maybe he wasn’t.”
“So back to jealousy.”
“Yeah. Jon Rierdon, one of Hunnicut’s exes. She broke it off, before Albright, and he wasn’t happy about it. No alibi, but no way he had access to the studio, or that she would have trusted him with the case and delivery. Physically strong enough to have done it, and mutual friends may have mentioned the party—time and place—to him. Motive—back to jealousy and rejection—but I don’t see the opportunity.”
Now she tapped Greg Barney’s ID shot. “Another ex, Hunnicut’s, but going back to high school. All indications are they mutually parted at college time. Reconnected later, back in New York, but as friends. And he’s cohabbing with Hunnicut’s best friend. Also attended the same high school.”
“You see trust there.”
“I do. Yeah, she’d have trusted him. So opportunity—as he doesn’t have a solid alibi. Means, he’s physically capable. Motive? Does he still have feelings there? Maybe using her best friend to keep the connection tight, keep his pride. Maybe he didn’t realize he had those feelings until she’s about to marry somebody else.
“He wanted to make her a sandwich.”
“A sandwich?”
“Make her a sandwich, get her tea.” After a shrug, Eve stuck her hands in her pockets.
“Taking care of her. But they all wanted to take care of her—of Hunnicut. It’s a tight group—Peabody says like a tribe. Everybody loves everybody. That’s where Lopez stands out for me, because she doesn’t. But Barney was the only male there at the follow-up when they’re all there to take care of her.”
“You’re looking at trust, misplaced in that tight group, and jealousy, a rejection of intimacy and sex.”
“That’s what I’ve got. And where these two stand out. Lopez and Barney. Neither fit nice and snug. She doesn’t bother to hide the resentment and a kind of disdain for Hunnicut. Previously, Hunnicut only dated men, so what the hell is this? Where did she come from, how does she rate? I’m sexier, got a better body. And she dumps me for her, then asks me for favors? I’m going to fuck it all up.”
Eve nodded. “She’s got that in her. Screw with me, I screw back harder. That’s in there.”
“And Greg Barney?”
“We were important in high school. The big-deal couple. Shaunbar. Now I’m hooked up with her best friend. It’s not the same, it’s not important. So I’m not important. Wants to get that back, and all of a sudden, she’s with another woman? What does that make me? The only way to get that back is to take out the obstacle.”
Frowning, she thought of Jenkinson’s cold case. “And be there to comfort the not-quite-a-widow.”
He dug a hand through his mass of curls. “Jesus. I don’t know. It was a major sale, okay? I said like congratulations or something. She came back up to clean her brushes, and she said thanks or whatever, and how she had big plans for the money.”
“What plans?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Why would I care? Her money, her business.”
“How often did ChiChi Lopez come in to see her?”
His gaze drifted to the painting. “Off and on, that I know of. Erin worked evenings mostly, until about a year ago. Worked the sidewalk most days. ChiChi came in now and then when I was in the studio. They had a thing going.”
He slid his hands into the pockets of his sleep pants. “You don’t have to like people to see what’s going on with them. I don’t do portraits often, because people, but an artist has to observe, has to see.”
“You did ChiChi’s portrait.”
“Yeah. She’s got a body on her, and a damn good face.”
“You had a thing with her.”
“Way short of a thing, and after she wasn’t having one with Erin. You go bouncing on someone your studio mate’s bouncing on, it’s trouble. It’s a bunch of talking and shit. Who needs that?”
“When did you do the portrait?”
“After I bounced on her a time or two.”
“A time or two?”
“Three or four—who counts?”
“How did she feel about Erin and Shauna?”
“How the fuck would I—” He broke off, frowned. “Shauna’s the redhead, right? The one Erin was going to make it legal with?”
“That’s right.”
“Great hair. Catches the eye.”
“How did ChiChi feel about them, together, about to make it legal?”
“What do I care?”
“She never talked about it to you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Shit.”
He shoved at his hair again. “So she didn’t like the redhead, figured she’d just screw with Erin, then dump her ass. Wanted to know how often the redhead came into the studio. I couldn’t say, so I bounced on her to shut her up. Who needs the drama?”
Then he frowned. “You think ChiChi killed Erin?”
“Routine questions, Mr. Carver.”
“She’s got a mean streak in her. You can see it in her eyes, even the way she moves. Get her pissed enough, yeah, she could do it. But if she wanted the thing back with Erin, it makes more sense to do it to the redhead.”
Then he shook his head. “Shit. Now I’m awake all the damn way. I might as well go to the studio. Nobody’s going to be there. Is that it?”
“One more.” Eve pulled out her ’link, brought up Greg Barney’s photo. “Did he ever come to the studio?”
“I couldn’t say. Not when I was working. Everybody’s all-American. Good bone structure. Looks boring. Look, I’m sorry about Erin, right? She was okay. But none of this has anything to do with me.”
“I guess it doesn’t. Thanks for the time.”
“Don’t come looking for more of it.” He opened the door. “But if you see the redhead, you can tell her I wouldn’t mind painting her—from the back. The hair catches the eye.”
“Right.”
As they started down the steps, Peabody blew out a breath. “Challenging fits. He doesn’t give a baby rat’s ass about anybody.”
“Run his alibi again. He’s big, strong. Big and strong enough to have done it. I don’t see him caring enough to kill anybody, but run it again.”
“He liked her a little bit. As much as he seems capable.”
“Yeah, a little bit. And he liked bouncing on Lopez. And Lopez bounced on him to try to get what she could out of him on Shauna. He’s probably smart enough to know that, but liked the bounce. Was any of Erin’s work on his walls, since you have a good eye?”
“My good eye says it was all his. But yeah, he’d know the business of art, he has access and could pick his way through the paintings she has in the studio. When he says her work’s decent, that’s high praise from him.”
“Agreed. And if she told him she had plans for the money, maybe she—what he said—bubbled out the rest. Maybe she pissed him off about something. Maybe ChiChi talked him into helping her. It doesn’t click nice and tight, but he’s confirmed ChiChi didn’t like the idea of Erin and Shauna together. She has a mean streak—I saw that myself. So we’ll push some.”
At the lot she got back in the car. “And if he never saw Barney in the studio, it doesn’t mean Barney wasn’t there. During the day, or when Carver wasn’t there. Harder to believe he never went in at least once or twice in the last year.”
She pulled out of the lot. “We’ll head into Central. I want some thinking time.”
“Before thinking time, I need two minutes on the Great House Project. I’ve held it in,” Peabody continued before Eve could respond. “I’ve shown heroic restraint. Pin-a-medal-on-me restraint.”
Since Eve had expected that restraint to break long before now, and had mentally prepared herself for five minutes of house blathering, she shrugged.
“Two minutes. Mark.”
“Okay, all the bathrooms are done, and they’re all absolutely ult. I’m going to live in a space with three-and-a-half bathrooms. I can’t believe it. Most of the lighting’s in and just so mag. There’s still some painting, then touch-up, and the built-ins in the craft room, and punch-out work, but Roarke says next month. We can live there. In September we’ll be in. Mavis and Leonardo’s isn’t quite as far along, because it’s a bigger space. But Roarke still says September.”
“Security-wise, it wouldn’t hurt for you and McNab to move in first.”
“We thought about that, but decided we want to move in all together. Because it’s special, for all of us. We can start moving stuff in though. Like Mavis’s studio is set, and it’s wow, just wow. Same with Leonardo’s workspace, Bella’s playroom’s done, and the nursery is really coming along.
“I packed up and took over all my winter clothes. I have a place to keep off-season clothes!”
Peabody indulged in a quick passenger seat dance.
“And we all have stuff, you know, decor and stuff, stored in the garage just waiting. Plus, a lot of my fabrics, yarn, anything I don’t have a project going with.”
Peabody sighed as Eve pulled into the garage at Central. “Thanks for the two minutes. I just have one more thing.”
“Make it fast.” Eve got out of the car.
“It already feels like home. We don’t have furniture in or a lot of personal items and the pretty things, but it already feels like home. And still, whenever I walk in, I can’t believe it’s real. That it’s really happening. It’s going to be our place. We’ll live there and work there and sleep there and fight there, have sex there.”
“Pee in your three-and-a-half bathrooms.”
“Yes!” Throwing back her head, Peabody laughed. “It’s everything I could want, so it doesn’t seem really real. I’m going to take such good care of it.”
“From what I’ve seen, you already are.”
As the elevator door opened, Peabody’s eyes filled.
“Time’s up!” Eve stepped in. “Any blubbering, you take the stairs.”
“I won’t blubber.” With some visible effort, Peabody blinked the tears back. “But thanks for saying that.”
“Fact’s fact. And murder’s not only murder, but what we’re paid to investigate. Add the fact’s a fact that your paycheck’s why you have boxes of stuff you bought to put all around the house currently stored in the garage.”
“That’s fact. And it’s all perfect! Opening the boxes is going to be like Christmas squared.”
“If you want to keep drawing that paycheck, you’re going to sit your ass in your desk chair and see if Carver’s alibi is as solid as it looks.”
The doors opened; cops piled in.
“Metaphorically, my ass is already there,” Peabody said. “I really think the alibi’s going to hold.”
“Check anyway.” As the elevator continued up, Eve rocked back on her heels. “He’s the type who’d bash somebody’s head in if they pissed him off. In the moment, passion of the moment. It’s hard to see him planning out something that required all the time, thought, risk—cold-blooded. But check anyway.”
The elevator stopped again, and more cops pushed on. Eve started to push out for the glides when Mira stepped in.
“Hey, Dr. Mira.”
“Peabody, good morning. And Eve.”
She looked morning fresh among the uniforms in her white sheath with a short, elbow-length grass-green jacket. The sky-high pumps matched the jacket.
“Do you have any time free for a quick consult?” Eve asked. Mira time, she decided, might add more benefit than thinking time.
Mira glanced at her wrist unit. “As a matter of fact, I have some right now. I’ll ride up to your office with you. How’s the house coming, Peabody?”
“Oh, I was just telling Dallas.” And Peabody told Mira, in detail.
Since she’d asked Mira for the consult, Eve didn’t feel she could escape to the glides. So suffered the elevator’s stops and starts, Peabody’s house bubbling, and Mira’s enthusiasm for the bubbling until they reached her level.
“Push on the alibi,” Eve ordered.
She winced at Jenkinson’s tie with a big, bug-eyed mouse the color of a tropical sea nibbling on cheese the color of spring daffodils.
He called out, “Hey, Dr. Mira. Got a second, boss?”
She risked her retinas and stepped to his desk.
“We want to follow up on a lead, on the cold one. It’s warming up, but we need to talk to a possible source living in Boston. It’s delicate, since she was married to the vic, and later married and divorced his best friend. Since the best friend’s our prime suspect, we want to do it in person.”
Eve considered the time, the budget. “How warm?”
“Getting pretty warm. I talked to Feeney—not his case, but he was LT back in the day—and he thinks we’re on track. Running it through? Guy gets his head bashed in with a fireplace poker. Staged like a break-in, but that was bogus, sloppy. Only other person in the house, the wife. And she claims she had a headache, took some meds and a sleeping pill like nine o’clock. Found him dead downstairs in the morning. Before that, they’re out to dinner and have a fight, she tells him she could kill him for that, and sails out.
“We got her going into their place—nice place, Upper East—twenty-thirty. Then the security system goes off-line just after twenty-three hundred. Vic hadn’t come home by that time. Left the restaurant about fifteen after she did, and we can’t trace his whereabouts.”
“Why isn’t it the wife?”
“She never broke, LT. Stuck with the story. And the ME said how she’d’ve needed a stool to have bashed him from the angle he was bashed, and maybe some Zeus to bash with that amount of force. Last thing, the security system went down by remote, outside. And she was in.”
“Then why are you going to Boston? And why the best friend?”
“Three years later, she ends up married to the first husband’s best friend. No evidence they did the hanky previous to the murder. They divorced like nine years ago, and she moved to Boston—and he got a pretty sweet settlement.”
“So you’re thinking the vic goes bitching to his best friend after the fight, the best friend decides to kill his ass, jams the security?”
“The best friend installed the system, so he’d have a leg up there. Vic and best pal go to college together, roomies, he’s best man at the vic’s wedding when the vic marries money. And a looker with money. Vic was pretty liquored up at TOD, so say best pal’s ‘Hey, I’ll get you home,’ does the deed, stages the break-in, then he’s there to comfort the widow—who about a year after she got to be a widow, lent him money to start his own security business. He lived pretty high on her money. Still is.”
Jenkinson lifted his hands. “Nothing to hang on him back when, Dallas, but you look at the pattern since, and it starts to smell. She was married to the guy for six years before she booted him. She may know something she doesn’t know she knows. But it’s delicate.”
Since she trusted Jenkinson’s instincts as much as her own, she gave the nod. “Go to Boston.”
“Thanks.”
Mira joined her in the walk to her office. “By my math, he’s working a case that’s eighteen years old.”
“Guy got his head bashed in and nobody paid for it. That’s first. Then? There’s a different kind of satisfaction in taking someone down when they’re sure they’ve gotten away with it.”
“And you think they will, take the best friend down?”
“I think if Feeney says they’re on the right track, he probably caught a whiff of what Jenkinson smells now when the case was fresh, but the investigator couldn’t pin it. And what he just ran down for me? Yeah, it smells.”
Mira looked toward the board when they stepped into Eve’s office.
“Yours is fresh now.”
“Yeah, and I can’t pin it. Take the desk chair. I’ve got that tea stuff.”
“I wouldn’t mind some, along with your rundown.”
“The victim, Erin Albright, garroted with piano wire at her pre-wedding girl party. Inside a privacy room, one she’d booked, at the Down and Dirty.”
“At Crack’s. That’s difficult for him.” Mira crossed her legs, watched Eve with her quiet blue eyes. “And you, as you were attacked there on the eve of your wedding.”
“In the same privacy room. Adds to that.” Eve offered the tea, took coffee for herself. “Her fiancée, another female, was also in attendance.”
Eve gave the rundown.
“Someone she trusted, yes, almost certainly,” Mira concluded. “She’s young, in love, excited, and wants to give the woman she loves this gift in that time and place. In the company of friends who, she’d certainly believe, would share that joy in a dream fulfilled.”
“Somebody didn’t. Not a lot of time to plan if it came up when asked to deliver the case. I think wanting her dead preceded that.”
“And the request opened the door,” Mira finished. “There’s no indication the victim felt threatened previously? Had a problematic relationship with anyone who had access?”
“ChiChi Lopez pops there.” Eve tapped the photo on the board. “Sex, a few times, which by all appearances Lopez took more seriously than Albright, who cut off that aspect after she met Hunnicut. Lopez subsequently engaged in a sexual on-and-off relationship with Anton Carver, one of the victim’s studio mates. This gives her easy access to the studio, and the case once it was there. She was at the party, could possibly have slipped away, murdered Albright, slipped back. Albright may have asked her to bring the case, which would give her access to the privacy room.”
Eyes on the board, Eve drank some coffee. “She’s got a mean streak in there, and doesn’t much like Hunnicut.”
“Personality or jealousy?”
“I’m going to say both. Plus, she got kicked out of bed, replaced. More, they’re getting married, and she’s supposed to act happy about that. The timing on it’s tight but doable.
“Carver.” Eve shook her head. “Access to the case, but he’s so self-absorbed, why would he care? At the same time, he likes sex with Lopez, he strikes as almost permanently pissed off. His alibi seems solid, but Peabody’s checking to make sure it holds. The vic had just sold three paintings—a what’s it? Triptych. And another to Lopez—and though it’s verified he seemed good with that, maybe he wasn’t.”
“So back to jealousy.”
“Yeah. Jon Rierdon, one of Hunnicut’s exes. She broke it off, before Albright, and he wasn’t happy about it. No alibi, but no way he had access to the studio, or that she would have trusted him with the case and delivery. Physically strong enough to have done it, and mutual friends may have mentioned the party—time and place—to him. Motive—back to jealousy and rejection—but I don’t see the opportunity.”
Now she tapped Greg Barney’s ID shot. “Another ex, Hunnicut’s, but going back to high school. All indications are they mutually parted at college time. Reconnected later, back in New York, but as friends. And he’s cohabbing with Hunnicut’s best friend. Also attended the same high school.”
“You see trust there.”
“I do. Yeah, she’d have trusted him. So opportunity—as he doesn’t have a solid alibi. Means, he’s physically capable. Motive? Does he still have feelings there? Maybe using her best friend to keep the connection tight, keep his pride. Maybe he didn’t realize he had those feelings until she’s about to marry somebody else.
“He wanted to make her a sandwich.”
“A sandwich?”
“Make her a sandwich, get her tea.” After a shrug, Eve stuck her hands in her pockets.
“Taking care of her. But they all wanted to take care of her—of Hunnicut. It’s a tight group—Peabody says like a tribe. Everybody loves everybody. That’s where Lopez stands out for me, because she doesn’t. But Barney was the only male there at the follow-up when they’re all there to take care of her.”
“You’re looking at trust, misplaced in that tight group, and jealousy, a rejection of intimacy and sex.”
“That’s what I’ve got. And where these two stand out. Lopez and Barney. Neither fit nice and snug. She doesn’t bother to hide the resentment and a kind of disdain for Hunnicut. Previously, Hunnicut only dated men, so what the hell is this? Where did she come from, how does she rate? I’m sexier, got a better body. And she dumps me for her, then asks me for favors? I’m going to fuck it all up.”
Eve nodded. “She’s got that in her. Screw with me, I screw back harder. That’s in there.”
“And Greg Barney?”
“We were important in high school. The big-deal couple. Shaunbar. Now I’m hooked up with her best friend. It’s not the same, it’s not important. So I’m not important. Wants to get that back, and all of a sudden, she’s with another woman? What does that make me? The only way to get that back is to take out the obstacle.”
Frowning, she thought of Jenkinson’s cold case. “And be there to comfort the not-quite-a-widow.”
