by J. D. Robb
When Peabody nodded, Eve took the ’link. “Lieutenant Dallas. You should be able to answer a couple of questions that came up.”
The eyes came across no less reptilian over a ’link screen. “I’ll be happy to help if I can, of course.”
“Do any of Bardov’s people have access to the Hudson Yards site?”
“Bardov Construction is an investment partner, and representatives from same had input on the design and scope. They are not part of the actual build and would have no off-hour access.”
“Okay, who brought them into the deal?”
“I … I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t privy to the negotiations.”
“Do you know an Alexei Tovinski?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“You make and keep Mr. Singer’s appointments, field his calls, correct?”
“I do.”
“And that name doesn’t ring a bell? It’s not a common one.”
“I don’t recognize the name.”
“Okay. You said Mr. Singer’s in a meeting?”
“He is. I’m not going to interrupt unless it’s of vital importance.”
“Not yet.” He had to go home sometime, Eve thought, and home might be a better place to pin him down. “Thanks for the information.”
“Mr. Singer’s orders are to cooperate as much as possible. He spoke to me about hoping you find the poor woman’s family so he could speak with them personally. He feels a responsibility.”
“Me, too. We’ll be in touch.”
Eve clicked off, handed the ’link back to Peabody. “I think I’ll take a pass at him at home later. Out of the power center. We’re going to set up interviews with his father, his grandmother. Let’s find out how much they had to do with bringing in the partners.”
“They may be able to tell us more about the second site,” Peabody put in. “It’s most likely they were in charge then.”
“Most likely isn’t definitely. We need DeWinter to nail down the TOD, as close as she can. Right now she should be working on Alva Quirk, analyzing how long ago she got the shit kicked out of her.”
Eve shoved a hand through her hair. “Roarke’s going to work on finding out when she washed her ID—he said that’s what it was. He needs some time on that.”
“I had a ten-second conversation with McNab about an hour ago. He said Roarke was up there helping them out.”
“Yeah, he’ll look into Alva tonight. And it won’t hurt to have him with me when I drop by Singer’s home. They aren’t pals or anything, but murders, even decades apart, make a connection.”
“Maybe you can take him with you and track down the plumber. I’m still waiting for him and one other to get back to me so I can set up interviews. The other’s the second IT—the one installing the building systems. But her place is like a block from my apartment, so I was going to try her there after shift.”
“You take her, I’ll take the plumber, and we’ll wrap up that part of it. I need a name and address.”
“I’ll send you both.”
“I’ve got a couple more things I need to do here, then I’m going up to see how much longer Roarke figures he’ll be. If it’s awhile I’ll take the plumber and come back for him. And I’ll tell McNab you’re in the field if they’re still wrapped up in it.”
“Works.” After draining the coffee, Peabody set the mug aside. “I’ll give both these people another push. I’ve gotten the unavailable on both all damn day, but it’s got to be close to knock-off time for them. Or after it.”
“Let me know. I can still take one of them at home, then hit Singer.”
Eve sat again, and decided to start with the oldest living generation. She used the ’link number she had on Elinor Bolton Singer.
A woman of about forty with poreless skin the color of a chocolate malt and sea-green eyes came on-screen. “Mrs. Bolton Singer’s residence.”
“This is Lieutenant Dallas with the New York City Police and Security Department. I’d like to speak with Mrs. Singer regarding an investigation.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. Mrs. Bolton Singer has spoken with her son and grandson and has been apprised of the situation. Unfortunately, she’s resting and can’t be disturbed at the moment.”
At a hundred and five, Eve decided the woman was entitled to a nap. “I’d like to make arrangements to speak with Mrs. Singer, at her convenience. My partner and I can come to her.”
“Of course. I’ll check with Mrs. Bolton Singer’s assistant on her schedule and availability. If I can have a contact number, I’ll let you know as soon as possible.”
Eve relayed the number. “And your name?”
“I’m Sheridon Fitzwalter, Mrs. Bolton Singer’s head housekeeper.”
“Given her age, is there anything I should know about your employer’s health before the interview?”
“Mrs. Bolton Singer is quite well, thank you. She is very mindful of maintaining a healthy mind, body, and spirit. I believe if she tires, she won’t hesitate to inform you.”
“Okay then. I’ll wait to hear from you.”
Maiden and married name, every time, Eve thought. Very formal, very fussy. Curious, she did a quick run on the assistant.
Mixed race, unmarried, age forty-three, with the Hudson Valley mansion as her official address. She also had a certification as a nurse practitioner. Five years under her current employment.
Live-ins knew things, heard things, intuited things.
She might want a separate conversation with Sheridon Fitzwalter.
She tried J. Bolton Singer next—same address, different contact number—and got a recording stating he was currently unavailable. She left her name, number, and the request he contact her as soon as possible.
She sat back and considered.
The three generations had talked. Normal, she decided, for family, especially with the business interest. It also gave them an opportunity to coordinate stories, details.
She’d judge that when she talked to all of them.
She got up, gathered what she needed. She walked out to the bullpen as McNab pranced in.
Like a ringmaster, he brought the EDD circus with him. His baggies, the color of lemons infused with plutonium, glowed. The shirt over his skinny torso exploded with polka dots.
He pumped a fist in the air. “Score!”
Jenkinson shot out a finger. “And you rag on my ties, boss.”
Eve could only shake her head.
“Where’s Roarke?”
“Just putting some finishing touches on Feeney’s deal. Mine is…” He spread his hands, turned his thumbs up while he executed a strange little dance in his rainbow airboots.
Eve felt her eyes shake in their sockets.
“Stop. I beg you.”
“The cap said you can have me as needed since me and my team have scored.”
“I’ll let you know. Take him out of here,” she told Peabody. “Hit the IT interview, write it up at home. We’re going to take on Elinor Bolton Singer tomorrow, and J. B. Singer if I can get through. Read my notes on both of them. And we’ll track down Tovinski, bring him here—in our house—for interview. With his background, he’s used to being in the box. Yuri Bardov’s on tomorrow’s list, and a swing by the lab to give DeWinter a push. I’ll send you the timing when I work it out.”
“I’m all in.” Peabody gathered her things. “McNab can speak IT to the IT.” She smiled at him. “We can pick up a couple of brews, take them to the house, and see today’s progress. We need to settle on tiles, and the cabinet doors, and—”
“Take Insane House Project with you,” Eve ordered. “Get gone.”
“We’re out.”
At least, Eve noted, they waited until they hit the doorway to link hands and swing arms.
“It’s one crazy house,” Baxter said from his desk. “Trueheart and I dropped by the other day. A crazy, big-ass house. I liked it.”
“It’s nice they’re moving into the attachment with Mavis and Leonardo.” The fre
sh-faced Trueheart kept writing up a report while he spoke. “With the kid and another coming, it’s good they’ll have cops right there, and friends.”
“Yeah, it’s a good deal all around. What’s your status?” she asked Baxter.
“Funny you should ask. I was about to come to you to approve a little OT for me and my boy. We’ve got a hot angle, and we want to have ourselves a stakeout tonight.”
“On the floater? Who, what, why?”
Once he ran it through, she signed off, and started out herself.
She’d just reached for her ’link to tag Roarke when she saw him stepping off the elevator.
“Did you score?”
“I had an entertaining couple of hours.” He took her hand before she could evade, and drew her into the elevator with a load of change-of-shift cops. “And you?”
“I’ve got two stops to make, so if you want to hitch a ride, you’re making them, too.”
“I don’t suppose one of them is at a fine dining establishment and includes a good bottle of red.”
“No. The first’s an elusive plumber—head guy on Singer’s site. And the next is a follow-up with Singer—Bolton Singer. I want to drop in on him at home, see what shakes.”
Not nearly enough cops got off at the next stop; far too many got on. It was, to Eve, like being hedged into a can with an overload of sardines carrying badges and weapons.
“Well then, I’m with you, Lieutenant. We could make three stops and go by to see how things are progressing at Mavis’s.”
It surprised her to realize part of her actually wanted to.
“Too much work to do, and not enough brain left for more construction.” She did an inner scan to see if she felt any guilt over that, found just the slightest twinge. “How is it going? You’d know.”
“Both kitchens and all the loos are gutted, several walls are down, and a landscape crew has started clearing out the overgrowth and so on. There’s considerable fretting over choices—finishes, appliances, colors, fixtures—but time yet for firm decisions. McNab and I, and Feeney’s in it now, are designing the security system, the communication systems, and the rest of the IT. More entertainment for me.”
“I bet.”
“I will say Mavis and Leonardo are both very decisive about what they want and need in their work areas. McNab and Peabody are coming to terms with what they want and need in theirs. It’s the rest of the space that seems to fluster them.”
“Did you call in Redheaded Big Tits to work with them?”
Roarke gave her the slow side-eye. “I assume you mean our very qualified and creative interior designer. And she’s consulting, yes.”
“She does good work,” Eve said, and all but exploded out of the elevator on her garage level.
She waited until she was behind the wheel. “Did you ID the thief?”
“I believe Feeney’s, as we speak, giving the investigators all they need.”
“How’d he get in?”
“She was already in. In fact, both were at different times. Two women, identical twin sisters. And very, very clever.”
“Really? Let’s hear it—what I’d understand, I don’t need all the tech and geek stuff.”
“A shame, as it’s nearly brilliant.”
He settled in as Eve drove.
“Two sisters, using one official ID. They’d wiped the second—and quite well—so when Irina Hobbs was vetted and hired by the museum as a curator several months ago, no twin—Iona—existed on record. Irina had all the qualifications, the résumé, and recommendations. A very, very attractive young woman as well, with an encyclopedic knowledge of art. Apparently both of them had that knowledge.”
“Do you know them? Had you heard of them in your … circles?”
“Not a whiff, no, which tells me this was their first major job. They likely pulled off a few others, smaller, less impactful, for practice. In any case it’s clear they both knew their way around security systems—which was not in their official records. But even if they had no more than rudimentary, they could have pulled this one.”
“Why?”
“Irina Hobbs left the museum—it’s clear on the logs and the security feed—at eighteen-oh-five on the night the Monet went missing. She met several friends for drinks and dinner. Her apartment building’s security shows her entering at just before midnight, and not exiting again until zero-eight-sixteen the next morning. In a rush, obviously upset, as she’d just gotten the notification about the Monet. She rushed to the museum, and has cooperated in the investigation fully.”
“Easy to be two places at once if there’s two of you.”
“Exactly so. One of the twins entered the museum an hour before closing. Disguised—wig, face putty, body padding. Well done again. Very well done. She didn’t leave. The investigators missed that initially, as there was a slight glitch in the feed at closing.”
“Which you found they generated?”
“They did indeed. Just a couple of blips as patrons left or were escorted out. By then, she would have been hidden, out of the disguise. They would both have known the building, its crannies, inside out.”
“Plenty of time to study the place, from the inside. Taking turns.”
“Yes, indeed. And no doubt had studied every angle of it beforehand as well. Very good work,” he said in a tone that had her casting her eyes upward.
“And so,” he continued, “one leaves as usual, along with colleagues. The security is set for night duty, locks engaged. But the sister’s inside, and from her location shuts down the system—the whole lot. It must have taken them considerable time to craft the device or devices that so cleanly cut through.”
“You admire that,” she muttered.
“Skill is skill, after all, Lieutenant. And in four minutes, thirty-three seconds, the system rebooted. She’d already taken the painting, rolled the canvas into her bag, and walked out. Rebooted the system from a safe distance, and very likely went directly to the client.”
“Client.” This time Eve’s breath hissed out. “That’s a name for it.”
“It’s unlikely they took the Monet to hang it in their own parlor, now, isn’t it? So client works well enough.”
“Have they picked the twins up?”
“That’s where more clever comes into it. Irina Hobbs put in for her two-weeks vacation months ago. Beginning two days after the heist. Not enough time for the long arm of the law to work it all out, and just enough for her to be cleared, as she was.”
“They’re in the wind.” She gave him a hard look. “You’re glad they got away with it.”
“It’s difficult for such as me not to admire their ingenuity, taste, and teamwork. And they’re but twenty-four. Young for all this, and long gone by now.”
“So’s a painting worth millions of millions.”
“I think not, as the client wasn’t half so clever as they. He took a vid of it hanging in his private room in his country home upstate. We ran a search for it, as sometimes people are just that stupid and vain. I imagine the investigators are knocking on—or more likely knocking down—his door right now.”
“Good, and maybe he’ll lead them to the twins.”
Roarke just patted her hand. “You can dream, darling.”
She hit vertical, did an airborne one-eighty, and dropped into a barely adequate parking spot.
Roarke didn’t blink.
Eve shifted. “They’ll do it again.”
“Possibly. Probably,” he conceded. “Though they’ll have more than enough to live on, quite handsomely, for a very long time. Still, with that talent … they’ll come to miss the rush of it.”
“Like you.”
“I get my rush in different ways these days.” He leaned over, kissed her.
Since she couldn’t argue with that, she got out of the car. “Plumber’s half a block down. Carmine Delgato,” she continued as he joined her on the sidewalk. “Age fifty-eight, employed by Singer for twenty-two years, moved up to head guy eight
years ago. Married, twenty-six years, Angelina Delgato. Three offspring, twenty-five, twenty-three, twenty.”
She paused in front of a white-brick townhome with a three-step stoop, flowers in pots, a solid security system.
“Unclogging sinks pays,” she observed.
“It’s a bit more than that, but it does, yes.”
“When he stayed unavailable all day, I looked a little deeper. He likes to gamble, and he doesn’t hit often. He likes the horses, but they don’t seem to like him. Oldest kid’s in law school—that costs. Middle one’s in grad school, looking for an MBA—that costs. Youngest is in college.”
“So some financial squeezes. The spouse?”
“Manages an upscale home decor place. She’s got twenty in—and it looked to me like she opened her own account about five years ago. She’s got herself a nice nest egg.”
“I assume you’ll be taking a hard look here.”
“Hard enough. He has access, he gambles, he’s got a lot of bills to pay. So you order more than you need, or fake an invoice, and the order’s for cheaper material and you pocket the change. Or you just slip some material or equipment off-site when no one’s there.”
She shrugged. “Or he’s just a hardworking guy who likes to bet on the horses.”
She walked up to the door, pushed the buzzer. Glanced at Roarke. “We can have some fine-ish dining and a good bottle of red when we get home.”
“That we can.”
“And you could, after that, try to find Alva Quirk.”
“I can—and I did take a couple more steps there after lunch. I haven’t yet…”
He trailed off as the door opened.
The woman who answered wore a trim black suit. Her hair, the color of cranberries, swept back in wings from a face dominated by lips the same color as the hair.
As her feet were bare, Eve judged she’d just gotten home from work—suit, full makeup—and kicked shoes off feet she’d likely been on most of the day.
“Mrs. Delgato.” Eve held up her badge. “Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD, and my consultant. Is your husband at home?”
Angelina Delgato slapped one hand on her hip. “What’s that son of a bitch done?”
“Ah—”
“Cops coming to my door now, and after I put in eight hours on my feet? Doesn’t surprise me one damn bit.”