by J. D. Robb
14
“‘Yachting through the spring.’” Eve just shook her head as they rode the elevator down to the garage.
“Does Roarke have a yacht?” Peabody wondered. “Not that either of you would yacht through the spring or whatever.”
“No to both. He’s not big on boats.”
“A yacht’s kind of a super boat. Anyway, Hugo’s kind of a shit.”
“He’s a complete shit. And he still checks off a lot of boxes. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anybody but Hugo, enjoyed putting his wife in an awkward position with the cops during a murder investigation. Let’s check out his travel over the weekend. Convenient he got back in time for the party, one Jordan went to. I never like convenient. It brushes close to coincidence.”
“I think she was being straight when she said he is too lazy to kill somebody.”
“As she sees it,” Eve said. “Which doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be an accessory. He didn’t snap anybody’s neck, but I bet he wouldn’t mind watching it done. I bet he wouldn’t mind setting some family up, using somebody to blow up a bunch of people, if he got some juice out of it. Pleasure and greed—I think he lives by both.”
“And he’s a shit,” Peabody said as they crossed to the car.
“Exactly. We’re going to track down the couple yachting till spring. Maybe both killers partied first. I don’t think so, but maybe.”
She drove out. Then, as it was on the way, stopped at Banks’s art gallery.
“Let’s see if we have anything here.”
She double-parked, ignored the outrage of horns and shouted expletives as she flipped up the On Duty sign.
“Shouldn’t be long.”
The Banks Gallery was a glossy little place tucked amid glossy little boutiques and glossy little cafés.
A sign on the door said Ferme, but the lights shined. Eve gave the glass door a few good raps.
Trueheart strode into view, spotted them, came straight to the door. He unlocked it, pulled it open.
“Lieutenant. We weren’t expecting you.”
“In the neighborhood. What have you got?”
“Maisie’s—ah, Ms. Kelsi’s still stuck on three possibles. In fact, she’s leaning toward a fourth now that she’s looking at her notes and checking artists’ web pages.”
“Let me talk to her.”
He guided them through—a lot of movable walls covered with art. Some of it incomprehensible to her, some she thought nice enough. Banks had definitely favored naked people, but he’d displayed landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, still lifes.
She didn’t get the still-life tag. Weren’t all paintings still?
Trueheart led the way into an office. It hit glossy, too. Obviously Banks had liked his fancy comforts. The big sofa, the big chair, the big desk. Lots of naked people on the walls here, and a full-size AutoChef.
Baxter sat on a rolling chair hip to hip with the iced artist chick.
At the length of bare leg showing under the desk, Eve judged her as tall, and clearly thin as a whip. Her hair had that just-out-of-bed tousle in cool, cool blond, and her eyes held an emerald pop of green.
She spoke in a breathy, I’m-so-aroused voice Eve imagined had Baxter’s blood simmering.
“I really think . . . maybe.”
She looked up, blinked those emerald eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry. We’re closed.”
“Maisie, this is Lieutenant Dallas. And Detective Peabody.”
“I see.” She rose—and yes, a lot of long leg in a short, tight black skirt. “I’m really sorry I can’t be sure about the artwork. Jordan . . .”
“It’s not speaking ill of the dead, Maisie,” Baxter said gently. “It’s helping find out who made him dead.”
“You’re right. He just took artwork when he felt like it. He usually brought them back every few weeks. A rotation. He should have recorded it all—he excused it by calling it marketing. Having guests over, potential clients, showing off the work in his home. But that wasn’t the reason, and he didn’t care about excusing it.”
Maybe she spoke in a breathy baby-doll voice, Eve thought, but she wasn’t anyone’s idiot.
“Your work?”
“Mine, too. I could’ve objected, but I needed the job here, and wanted the exposure. Most of the artists displayed here feel—felt—the same. He took a steeper commission than the standard, but he also took a lot of new artists who couldn’t get into other galleries. It was a trade-off.”
“He piss anyone off?”
“Routinely.” She smiled a little. “Not enough to kill him. With him gone, the gallery’s going to close. That doesn’t do any of us any good.”
“Okay. Can you show me the art you think might be the one?”
“What I did was dig up some old files—mine,” she added. “I minored in office management, which is how I got the job here as gallery manager. Anyway, sorry. I tried keeping my own files, and I’ve been trying to coordinate them with what I can pull from the web pages of artists we’ve featured.”
“That’s good,” Eve told her.
“It’s been nagging at me. I just couldn’t let it go, so I remembered the files I’d stored at home. I was just about to tag David when he tagged me because I thought, maybe . . .”
She lifted her hands. “I can’t get it below these three—and now there’s another I think . . . maybe. Not all artists are good at the business and marketing sides, so their web pages aren’t well organized and updated, so there’s that issue. The other problem is, I haven’t been in Jordan’s place for months, and I know he switched things out since. A few times since. But these . . .”
She brought one up on the wall screen from her tablet. “This is Selma’s. Selma Witt. It’s her Woman at Rest. Selma’s very good. She works primarily in acrylics, but does some excellent charcoals and pastels. I know Jordan took this one out, but that was last fall—maybe even the end of last summer. There’s no record of him bringing it back, or of it being sold. It’s not in the gallery. The thing is, he didn’t usually keep anything as long as that.”
Eve studied the work—the drawing of a woman in bed, reclining against a mound of pillows and on tangled sheets.
Eve closed her eyes, put herself back in Banks’s apartment, tried to bring back the black-and-white art on his walls.
Should’ve paid more attention, she thought. They all looked so much the same.
“Give me another.”
“This is Simon Fent’s work. He’s . . . Well, he’s not as good as Selma, but he does show promise. There’s still a student’s hesitancy in his work, a failure to commit to the vision, but Jordan liked it. It’s the only one of Simon’s we took on.”
“Keep going.”
She brought another up, and Eve lifted a hand. “This one. Wait.”
She turned away for a minute, tried to bring those damn walls back, the black frames, the black-and-white figures in them.
Turned back.
“This one. Third from the entrance door.”
“This is Angelo Richie, one of his early sketches. He actually gave this one to Jordan—or Jordan said he did. As a thank-you for giving him his first gallery sale. Even this earlier work? You can see the talent. His people move, they breathe. These are lovers, and you see the joy. Reunited, it’s called. They’ve come together again after being separated, and—”
“Fine. I want his contact info. This artist.”
“He and Jordan had a falling out, a couple of years ago. Angelo pulled all his work from the gallery. I heard he went to Italy to paint. I don’t have his contact, but he’s back in New York. He’s right on the edge of breaking out as a major artist. Actually just over the edge, and getting a lot of attention. He’s having an opening at the Salon—and that’s big in our world—tonight.”
“You sure about the piece, LT?”
“As sure as I can be,” she told Baxter.
“Angelo Richie. SoHo address,” Peabody announced. “The Salon’s in Greenwich.”
&
nbsp; “They’d be loading in,” Maisie told her. “The art, for tonight. I didn’t know Angelo all that well, but I know he’d be at the gallery during load in.”
“Thanks, you’ve been a big help. Wrap it up, Baxter.”
“I liked the painting. Well, it’s really a sketch,” Peabody said as they went back to the car. “It’s romantic and a little heartbreaking.”
“I doubt the killers took it because it appealed to the romantic inside them. Let’s see if the artist has any idea why.”
She flicked on her in-dash when it signaled. “Dallas.”
“Hey, Lieutenant,” Santiago said. “I know the next DB’s ours, but we really think, considering, these are yours.”
“These.”
“Five. Including the guy in the suicide vest.”
“Where?”
“It’s a high-class kind of art place called—”
“The Salon.”
His eyes narrowed. “You going sensitive on us?”
“Secure the scene. We’re on our way.” She hit the sirens, shoved into traffic. “Have you ID’d the DB in the vest?”
“Wayne Denby. One of the three owners, and the gallery director.”
As Peabody tightened her seat belt, Eve two-wheeled it at the corner, snaking her way west. “Get uniforms over to his residence. Now. Probability high there are hostages in distress inside. Tell them to break down the door, my authority. Relay the home address to Baxter. I want him and Trueheart there. Now, Santiago.”
She punched vertical over an all-terrain whose driver considered lights and sirens someone else’s problem, screamed around the next turn to barrel south.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Eve cursed while Peabody used a run on Denby to keep her mind off the potential of a bloody, bone-breaking crash inside a vehicle doing ninety through arrogant traffic.
“Wayne Denby, age thirty-eight, owns the Salon with two partners. Married to Zelda Este Denby, thirty-four. Eight years in. One son, Evan, age five.”
“Same pattern.” Eve threaded between a couple of Rapid Cabs, caught a glimpse of the passengers in the back. One grinned wildly while he took a vid of her car screaming by.
“Solid married guy,” Eve continued, adding a horn blast to the sirens as a couple of I’m-in-a-fucking-hurry pedestrians tried to dash across the intersections as she sped toward them.
Both scrambled back—and one shot up both middle fingers.
“He’ll have been a devoted husband and father,” she said, blood hot, mind cold as she crossed into the Village. “Family centered. Single-family home, good security.”
She slammed the brakes, fishtailed to a stop an inch from the barricade and the line of people ranged behind it.
“I’ll get the field kits,” Peabody said as they jumped out either side of the car.
Eve elbowed her way through the lookie-loos, around the barrier, badged past the beat droids on crowd control.
The Salon, housed in a classy corner brownstone displayed a painting of a woman, dark hair flowing, sheer, ankle-length red dress swirling as the artist caught her in a spin, her arms lifted.
A jagged crack shot across the sun-filtering glass. The painting had fallen off its easel hard enough to snap the corner of the frame. Eve read the artist’s signature in the opposite corner.
Angelo Richie
A uniform opened the door. “Lieutenant. They’re back through that archway to the left.”
She could smell the smoke, the blood, the acrid stink of burning—plaster, wood, flesh.
The archway had been white. Gray smeared it now, under blood splattered like red rain. She stepped up, studied the carnage. What was left of four people scattered over the floor. What had been flesh, blood, bone, muscle, lay in pieces, charred and black. Paintings, some nearly obliterated, others in scorched tatters scattered with them.
Fire damage crisped sections of the walls, the floors, the ceiling. Fire-suppressant foam still dripped. Ash had filtered into piles, some soggy with foam.
A piece of what she identified as a metal ladder impaled one of the victims.
Sealed up, faces cop-blank, her detectives recorded the scene, marked body parts.
Careful of her steps, Detective Carmichael crossed to Eve. “Has to be your guys.”
“Yeah.” She took her field kit as Peabody stepped up beside her, began to seal up. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
“Art opening tonight for Angelo Richie. They were loading in this area. The other owners were here—one, Joe Kotler was in the back office working, the other was in the front area with one of the assistants. We have them all in the back, but according to the two out front, Denby came in. He told them to stay where they were. His partner—that’s Ilene Aceti—says she was so stunned by his tone, how he looked, she just stood there for a minute. Then she told the assistant—Noelle Daub—to hold on, started to go see what the hell. And boom. Just like that. She was close enough it lifted her off her feet, tossed her in the air. She’s got a broken arm—already treated by the MTs. The assistant fell—just bumps and bruises there.”
She paused to take a water bottle out of her pocket, drink. “Aceti, broken arm and all, got up, rushed toward this area. Active fire at that point. She yelled for the assistant to get out, tag nine-one-one, and ran toward the back as Kotler came rushing out. The sprinkler didn’t engage, or the alarm. He grabbed a tank of suppressant, managed to put out the fire before it spread beyond this area.”
“No sprinkler, no alarm?”
“Nope.” Santiago walked over. “We haven’t checked that yet. We’d just finished another call, about six blocks from here. Unattended death, looks like natural causes,” he added. “So we responded to this one. Smoke hadn’t cleared when we got here. Pretty good bet this was yours.”
“We contacted Salazar—since she had the other, too. She and a team are on the way.”
“Good.”
“Since the fire was out, we asked the smoke-eaters to hold off until we finished. You know what they can do to a scene.”
“Yeah. Do we have the names of the other DBs?”
“The artist, Angelo Richie, two assistants, Trenton Bean and Loden Modele, and an intern, the nephew of Kotler, Dustin Greggor. Kid was nineteen, and Kotler’s pretty messed up over it.”
“Five people,” Eve stated. “And two injuries.”
“I’d say lucky if I believed in luck,” Carmichael commented. “Aceti’s assistant said they expected a couple hundred at the opening tonight. If these fuckers wanted to screw with the gallery for whatever motive, that would have screwed a lot harder.”
Eve scanned what remained of the paintings. “I think they got what they aimed for. Peabody, contact EDD. I need some geek to—Never mind,” she said as Roarke came in. “We’ve got an on-site geek.”
She walked to him, might have objected when he gripped her hands but for the fierce look in his eyes.
“What? And what are you doing here?”
“I had business downtown, was heading this way when the alert sounded. It wasn’t hard to deduce, and you add the missing painting. I saw your car out front just minutes after the alert.”
He let out a quiet breath. “I didn’t know if you’d been here when the bomb went off.”
He released her hands to skim one of his over her hair, then flicked a finger down the dent in her chin. “You might have been here,” he murmured.
“I wasn’t.” Understanding, she gave his hands a firm squeeze. “Five people were—including the guy in the vest. Family man, one of the owners.”
“And his family?”
“I’ve got uniforms, Baxter and Trueheart, on that.”
He looked through the archway, said nothing for several seconds. “There’s no water damage. The sprinkler didn’t engage?”
“It didn’t. Neither did the fire alarm.”
“As I’m here, would you like me to check on that for you?”
“That’d be handy. They had an art opening scheduled for tonight—a p
retty big one. Artist—the same one who did the missing figure study—was Angelo Richie.”
“Richie? That’s a pity. He had talent.” Roarke brushed a hand down her arm as if just needing the contact. “We have one of his paintings—Woman in Moonlight—in a guest room.”
“We do?”
“We do, yes. I spotted it on a trip to Italy a year or so ago.”
“He and what was probably a bunch of his paintings, or what’s left of him and them, were in there.”
“I see.”
“I bet you do. What’s the point of blowing up an artist and a bunch of his paintings? A artist I’m told was about to hit it big?”
Roarke shifted his gaze back, met her eyes. “You’re a quick study, Lieutenant. What would you name as motive?”
“Leverage.”
“Exactly. A young, very promising artist dies violently and tragically before his first major American opening. And much of his work dies with him.”
“His surviving work shoots up in value,” she finished.
“It certainly will. Anyone who bought—or stole—any of his previous work would see a substantial return on the investment.”
“The one they stole? That’s a bonus point. This was planned well before they killed Banks.”
“No doubt of that.” He took her hand again. “I’ll check on that system for you.”
He started to step away, but her comm signaled. “Dallas. When?” She listened, eyes narrowing. “How bad is the wife? Yeah, got it. Have EDD check every damn thing. Have Child Services hang with the kid until. Stick with them, Baxter.”
She shoved the comm back in her pocket. “Kid was sedated, lightly.” She turned to include the detectives in the update. “Unharmed, a little dehydrated, scared shitless. Wife took a beating—face mostly. They broke two of her fingers. She’s about twelve and a half weeks pregnant.”
“Ah, fuck that,” Santiago said and kicked the bottom of the arch.
“MTs say she’s stable, but they’re taking her in for tests, more fluids, whatever they do. Kid was restrained to the bed in his room. The wife in a utility area. Home invasion happened early Tuesday morning. The wife thinks about four, four-thirty.”
“That’s fast work,” Roarke added.