by J. D. Robb
“Bad luck happens,” Eve said flatly. “Could you tell me where you were last night, between midnight and three?”
“Are we suspects?” Maeve’s eyes rounded. “Oh my God.”
“It’s just information. The more I have, the more I have.”
“I was out—a date—until about eleven.”
“Eleven-fifteen,” Buchanan said. “I heard you come in.”
“Daddy . . .” Maeve rolled her eyes. “He waits up. I’m twenty-four and he still waits up.”
“I was reading in bed.” But her father smiled, a little sheepishly. “Maeve came in, and I . . . well . . .” He sent another look toward his daughter. “I went down about midnight and checked security. I know, I know,” he said before Maeve could speak. “You always set it if you come in after I’m in bed, but I feel better doing that last round. I went to bed after that. Maeve was already in her room. We had breakfast together about eight this morning, then we were here at nine-thirty. We open at ten.”
“Thanks. Is it all right if we take a look around?”
“Absolutely. Please. If you have any questions—if there’s anything we can do . . .” Buchanan lifted his hands. “I’ve never dealt with anything like this, so I’m not sure what we can or should do.”
“Just stay available,” Eve told him. “And contact me at Central if anything comes to mind. For now, maybe you can point me toward what you’ve got on Bobbie Bray.”
“Oh, we have quite a collection. Actually, one of my favorites is a portrait we bought from Rad a few months ago. This way.” Buchanan turned to lead them through the main showroom. “It was done from the photograph taken for her first album cover. Hop—the first Hopkins—had it painted, and it hung in the apartment he kept over Number Twelve. Rumor is he held long conversations with it after she disappeared. Of course, he ingested all manner of hallucinogens. Here she is. Stunning, isn’t it?”
The portrait was perhaps eighteen by twenty inches, in a horizontal pose. Bobbie reclined over a bed spread with vivid pink and mounded with white pillows.
Eve saw a woman with wild yards of curling blond hair. There were two sparkling diamond clips glinting in the masses of it. Her eyes were the green of new spring leaves, and a single tear—bright as the diamonds, spilled down her cheek. It was the face of a doomed angel—lovely rather than beautiful, full of tragedy and pathos.
She wore thin, filmy white, and between the breasts was deep red stain in the blurred shape of a heart.
“The album was Bleeding Heart, for the title track. She won three Grammys for it.”
“She was twenty-two,” Maeve put in. “Two years younger than me. Less than two years later, she vanished without a trace.”
There was a trace, Eve thought. There always was, even if it was nearly a century coming to light.
Outside, Eve dug her hands into her pockets. The sky had stopped spitting out nasty stuff, but the wind had picked up. She was pretty sure she’d left her watch cap in her office.
“Everybody’s got an alibi, nobody’s got a motive. Yet. I think I’m going to go back to the scene, take another look around.”
“Then you can fill me in with what must be a multitude of missing details on the way. I had my car taken home,” Roarke continued when she frowned at him. “So I could get a lift with my lovely wife.”
“You were just hoping to get a look at Number Twelve.”
“And hope springs. Want me to drive?”
When she slid behind the wheel, she tapped her fingers on it. “What’s something like that painting going to go for on the open market?”
“To the right collector? Sky would be the limit. But I’d say a million wouldn’t be out of the park.”
“A million? For a painting of a dead woman. What’s wrong with people? Top transaction in the vic’s account from Bygones was a quarter of that. Why’d Hopkins sell so cheap?”
“Scrambling for capital. Bird in the hand’s worth a great deal more than a painting on the wall.”
“Yeah, there’s that. Buchanan had to know he was getting bargain basement there.”
“So why kill the golden goose?”
“Exactly. But it’s weird to me neither of them had heard by this time that Hopkins bought it at Number Twelve. They eat breakfast at eight? No media reports while you’re scoping out the pickings on the AutoChef or pulling on your pants?”
“Not everyone turns on the news.”
“Maybe not. And nobody pops in today, mentions it? Nobody say, ‘Hey! Did you hear about that Hopkins guy? Number Twelve got another one.’ Just doesn’t sit level for me.” Then she shrugged, pulled away from the curb.
“Hit the lab before this. The same gun that killed Hopkins killed the as yet unidentified female whose remains were found behind the wall at Number Twelve.”
“Fascinating.”
“Weapon was bricked up with her. Killer must have found her, and it. Cleaned the weapon. You see those, the hair jewelry, she had on in the picture? Recovered at the scene, also clean and shiny. One by the window which the killer likely used to escape, one left with the bones.”
“Someone wants to make sure the remains are identified. Do you doubt it’s her?”
“No, I don’t doubt it’s her. I don’t doubt Hop Hopkins put a bullet in her brain, then got handy with brick and mortar. I don’t know why. I don’t know why someone used that same gun on Hop’s grandson eighty-five years later.”
“But you think there’s a connection. A personal one.”
“Had to reload to put the bullet in the brain. That’s extremely cold. Guy’s dead, or next to it. But you reload, roll the body over, press the barrel down hard enough to scorch the skin and leave an imprint of the barrel, and give him one last hit. Fucking cold.”
Five
Eve gave him details on the drive. She could, with Roarke, run them through like a checklist, and it always lined them up in her mind. In addition, he always seemed to know something or someone that might fill in a few of the gaps.
“So, did you ever do business with Hopkins?”
“No. He had a reputation for being generous with the bullshit, and often short on results.”
“Big plans, small action,” Eve concluded.
“That would be it. Harmless, by all accounts. Not the sort to con the widow and orphans out of the rent money, but not above talking them out of a portion of it with a view to getting rich quick.”
“He cheated on his wives, and recently squeezed five hundred out of the son he abandoned.”
“Harmless doesn’t always mean moral or admirable. I made a few calls—curiosity,” he explained. “To people who like to buy and sell real estate.”
“Which includes yourself.”
“Most definitely. From what I’m told the bottom dropped out of Twelve for Hopkins only a couple of weeks after he’d signed the papers on it. He was in fairly deep—purchase price, legal fees, architects and designers, construction crew, and so on. He’d done a lot of tap dancing to get as far as he did, and was running out of steam. He’d done some probing around—more legal fees—to see if he could wrangle having the property condemned, and get back some of his investment. Tried to wrangle some money from various federal agencies, historic societies. He played all the angles and had some success. A couple of small grants. Not nearly enough, not for his rather ambitious vision.”
“What kind of money we talking, for the building and the vision?”
“Oh, easily a hundred and fifty million. He’d barely scratched the surface when he must have realized he couldn’t make it without more capital. Then, word is, a few days ago, he pushed the green light again. Claimed Number Twelve was moving forward.”
“I’m waiting on the lab to see if they can pinpoint when that wall was taken down. Could be talking days.” Her fingers tapped out a rhythm on the wheel as she considered. “Hopkins finds the body. You get a wealth of publicity out of something like that. Maybe a vid deal, book deals. A guy with an entrepreneurial mindset, he could think o
f all kinds of ways to rake it in over those bones.”
“He could,” Roarke agreed. “But wouldn’t the first question be how he knew where to look?”
“Or how his killer knew.”
“Hop killed her,” she began as she hunted for parking. “Argument, drug-induced, whatever. Bricks up the body, which takes some doing. Guy liked cocaine. That’ll keep you revved for a few hours. Has to cover up the brick, put things back into reasonable shape. I’m trying to access the police reports from back then. It hasn’t been easy so far. But anyway, no possible way the cops just missed a brand new section of wall, so he paid them off or blackmailed them.”
“Corrupt cops? I’m stunned. I’m shocked.”
“Shut up. Hop goes over the edge—guilt, drugs, fear of discovery. Goes hermit. Guy locks himself up with a body on the other side of the wall, he’s going to go pretty buggy. Wouldn’t surprise me if he wrote something down, told someone about it. If cops were involved, they knew or suspected something. The killer, or Hopkins does some homework, pokes around. Gets lucky, or unlucky as the case may be.”
“It takes eight and a half decades to get lucky?”
“Place gets a rep,” Eve said as they walked from the car toward Number Twelve. “Bray gets legend status. People report seeing her, talking to her. A lot of those people, and others, figure she just took off ’cause she couldn’t handle the pressure of her own success. Hop has enough juice to keep people out of the apartment during his lifetime. By then, there’re murmurs of curses and hauntings, and that just grows as time passes. A couple of people have some bad luck, and nobody much wants to play in Number Twelve anymore.”
“More than a couple.” Roarke frowned at the door as Eve uncoded the police seal. “The building just squats here, and everyone who’s tried to disturb it, for whatever reason, ends up paying a price.”
“It’s brick and wood and glass.”
“Brick and wood and glass form structure, not spirit.”
She raised her brows at him. “Want to wait in the car, Sally?”
“Now you shut up.” He nudged her aside to walk in first.
She turned on the lights, took out her flashlight for good measure. “Hopkins was between those iron stairs and the bar.” She moved across the room, positioned herself by the stairs. “From the angles, the killer was here. I’m seeing he got here first, comes down when Hopkins walks in. Hopkins still had his coat on, his gloves, a muffler. Cold in here, sure, but a man’s going to probably pull off his gloves, unwrap his scarf, maybe unbutton his coat when he’s inside. You just do.”
Understanding his wife, Roarke moved into what he thought had been Hopkins’s standing position. “Unless you don’t have the chance.”
“Killer comes down. He’d told Hopkins to bring something, and Hopkins walks in empty-handed. Could have been small—pocket-sized—but why would the killer shoot him so quickly, and with such rage, if he’d cooperated?”
“The man liked to spin the wheels. If he came empty, he may have thought he could work a deal.”
“So when he starts the whole Let’s talk about this, the killer snaps. Shoots him. Chest, leg. Four shots from the front. Vic goes down, tries to crawl, killer keeps firing, moving toward the target. Leg, back, shoulder. Eight shots. Full clip for that model. Reloads, shoves the body over, leans down. Looks Hopkins right in the eyes. Eyes are dead, but he looks into them when he pulls the trigger the last time. He wants to see his face—as much as he needs to echo the head shot on Bray, he needs to see the face, the eyes, when he puts that last bullet in.”
She crossed over, following what she thought was the killer’s route as she’d spoken. “Could have gone out the front. But he chooses to go back upstairs.”
Now she turned, started up. “Could have taken the weapon, thrown it in the river. We’d never have found it. Wants us to find it. Wants us to know. Cops didn’t put Hop in the system. Why should we do anything about his grandson? Took care of that himself. Payment made. But he wants us to know, everyone to know, that Bobbie’s been avenged at last.”
She stopped in front of the open section of wall. “ ‘Look what he did to her. Put a bullet in that young, tragic face, silenced that voice. Ended her life when it was just getting started. Then he put a wall up, locked her away from the world. She’s free now. I set her free.’ ”
“She’ll be more famous, more infamous, than ever. Her fans will make a shrine out of this place. Heap flowers and tokens outside, stand in the cold with candles for vigils. And, to add a cynical note, there’ll be Bobbie Bray merchandising through the roof. Fortunes will be made out of this.”
Eve turned back to Roarke. “Damn right, they will. Hopkins would have known that. He’d have had visions of money falling on him from the sky. Number Twelve wouldn’t just be a club, it would be a freaking cathedral. And he’s got the main attraction. Fame and fortune off her bones. You bet your ass. Killer’s not going to tolerate that. ‘You think you can use her? You think I’d let you?’ ”
“Most who’d have known her personally, had a relationship with her, would be dead now. Or elderly.”
“Don’t have to be young to pull a trigger.” But she frowned at the cut in the wall. “But you’d have to be pretty spry to handle the tools to do this. I just don’t think this part was Hopkins’s doing. Nothing in his financials to indicate he’d bought or rented the tools that could handle this. And he doesn’t strike me as the type who’d be able to do this tidy a job with them. Not on his own. And the killer had the gun, the hair clips. The killer opened this grave.”
The cold was sudden and intense, as if a door had been flung open to an ice floe, and through that frigid air drifted a raw and haunting voice.
In my dark there is no dawn, there is no light in my world since you’ve been gone. I thought my love would stand the test, but now my heart bleeds from my breast.
Even as Eve drew her weapon, the voice rose, with a hard, throbbing pump of bass and drums behind it. She rushed out to the level overlooking the main club.
The voice continued to rise, seemed to fill the building. Under it, over it, were voices, cheers and whistles. For an instant, she thought she could smell a heavy mix of perfume, sweat, smoke.
“Somebody’s messing with us,” she murmured.
Before she could swing toward the stairs to investigate, there was a shout from the nearly gutted apartment above. A woman’s voice called out:
“No. Jesus, Hop. Don’t!”
There was the explosion of a shot and a distinct thud.
Keeping her weapon out, she vaulted up the stairs again with Roarke. At the doorway, his hand clamped over her shoulder.
“Holy Mother of God. Do you see?”
She told herself it was a shadow—a trick of the poor light, the dust. But for an instant there seemed to be a woman, her mass of curling blond hair falling over her shoulders, standing in front of the open section of wall. And for an instant, it seemed her eyes looked straight into Eve’s.
Then there was nothing but a cold, empty room.
“You saw her,” Roarke insisted as Eve crawled around behind the wall.
“I saw shadows. Maybe an image. If I saw an image, it was because someone put it there. Just like someone flipped some switch to put on that music. Got some electronics set up somewhere. Triggered by remote, most likely.”
He crouched down. Eve’s hair, face, hands were all coated with dust and debris. “You felt that cold.”
“So, he dropped the temp in here. He’s putting on a show, that’s what he’s doing. Circus time. So the cop goes back and reports spooky happenings, apparitions. Bull- shit!”
She swiped at her filthy face as she crawled out. “Hopkins left debts. His son is beneficiary of basically nada. Building’s no-man’s-land until it goes up to public auction. Keep the curse crap going, keep the price down. Snap it up cheaper than dirt.”
“With what’s happened here, discovering the body here, that could go exactly the opposite way. I
t could drive the price up.”
“That happens, you bet your ass someone’s going to have some document claiming they were partners with Hopkins. Maybe I was wrong about it being personal. Maybe it’s been profit all along.”
“You weren’t wrong. You know you weren’t. But you’re sitting there, in a fairly disgusting state, I might add, trying to turn it around so you don’t have to admit you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I saw what some mope wants me to believe is a ghost and he apparently pulled one over on you, ace.”
“I know electronic imagery when I see it.” The faintest edge of irritation flickered into his eyes at her tone. “I know what I saw, what I heard, what I felt. Murder was done here, then adding to it, the insult, the callousness of what was done after.”
He glanced back into the narrow opening, toward the former location of the long-imprisoned bones. And now there was a hint of pity in his eyes as well. “All while claiming to be so concerned, so upset, offering rewards for her safe return, or for substantiated proof she was alive and well. All that while she was moldering behind the wall he’d built to hide her.
“If her body never left here, why should her spirit?”
“Because—” With a shake of her head, Eve scattered dust. “Her body’s not here now. So shouldn’t she be haunting the morgue?”
“This place has been home to her for a long time, hasn’t it?” Pragmatism, he thought, thy name is Eve. Then he took out a handkerchief, used it to rub the worst of the dust and grime from her face.
“Homemade crypts aren’t what I’d call home, sweet home,” she retorted. “And you know what? Ghosts don’t clean guns or shoot them. I’ve got a DB in the morgue. And I’m ordering the sweepers, with a contingent from EDD in here tomorrow. They’re going to take this place apart.”
She brushed some of the dirt from her shirt and pants before picking up her coat. “I want a shower.”
“I want you to have a shower, too.”
As they went downstairs, she called in the order for two units to search Number Twelve for electronic devices. If she thought she heard a woman’s husky laugh just before she closed and secured the door, Eve ignored it.