by Nora Roberts
“We are now pursuing this as a double homicide.”
“Someone killed him.”
“I’m so sorry.” Going with instinct, Lila leaned over, laid a hand on his. “I know it’s what you believed all along, but it’s . . . I’m so sorry, Ashton.”
“Wrong place, wrong time?” he said slowly. “Is that what it was? They put him out, but they smack her around, scare her, hurt her, push her. They finish him off so it looks like he killed himself in regret or despair. But she was the one they hurt, so she was the one.”
“You state you didn’t know her, so we’ll stick with your brother for now. Did he owe anyone money?”
“He always paid back his debts. He’d tap the trust, or our father, his mother, me—but he always paid back his debts.”
“Where did he get his drugs?”
“I have no idea.”
“He traveled to Italy last month, went through London for several days, then into Paris before coming back to New York. Do you know anything about that travel?”
“No. For work, maybe? His mother lives in London. He would’ve gone to see her. I think our half sister Giselle’s in Paris.”
“You have their contact information?”
“Yes. I’ll get it to you. He was unconscious?”
For a moment Fine softened. “Yes. The medical examiner’s findings state he was unconscious when he died. Just a few more questions.”
Lila kept her silence while they asked questions, while Ash struggled to answer. She walked them out when they were done—for now, she supposed. Then she went back, sat.
“Do you want another glass of wine, or some water? Maybe that coffee?”
“No, thanks, no. I . . . No, I need to go. I need to make some calls. And . . . thank you.” He got to his feet. “I’m sorry this . . . landed on you. Thank you.”
She shook her head, then went with her gut again and moved in, wrapping her arms around him for a hug. She felt his hands come lightly, carefully, to her back before she stepped away. “If there’s something I can do, call. I mean it.”
“Yeah, I can see you do.” He took her hand a moment, held it a moment, then released it and walked to the door.
She stood alone, grieving for him, and certain she’d never see him again.
Five
Ash stood in front of the apartment building with his hands in his pockets. Until that moment he hadn’t realized just how much he didn’t want to go in. Some part of him had known it, he decided—and that part had called a friend.
Beside him, Luke Talbot mimicked his pose.
“You could wait for his mother to get in.”
“I don’t want her to have to deal with it. She’s a fucking wreck. Let’s just get it done. Cops are waiting.”
“A sentence nobody likes to hear.”
Ash approached the doorman, stated his business, showed his ID to keep it smooth and simple.
“Very sorry about your brother, sir.”
“Appreciate that.” And was already weary of hearing it. For the past two days he’d made countless calls to countless people, heard every possible variation of condolence.
“We’ll go have a beer when this is done,” Luke suggested as they rode up to the fourteenth floor.
“I hear that. Look, I know Olympia’s going to want to go through all of his things. I figured maybe I’d cull it all down some. She wouldn’t know the difference, and it might not be as hard on her.”
“Let her decide, Ash. You’re taking on enough—and how the hell would you know if you cull out the sweater she gave him for Christmas?”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Luke stepped off the elevator with Ash, a man with broad shoulders, strong arms, big hands. He stretched to six feet, four inches, had a curling mass of brown hair streaked from the sun and falling over the collar of a plain white T-shirt. He hooked his sunglasses in the waistband of his jeans, took a quick scan of the hallway with eyes of arctic blue.
“Quiet,” he commented.
“Yeah, I bet they have a noise ordinance in this place. They probably have an ordinance for everything.”
“Rules and more. Not everybody can afford to buy a whole damn building so he doesn’t have rules or neighbors.”
“It’s a small building.” Ash hesitated at the door, one still marked with police tape, though he could see where it had been cut for entry. He thought, Shit, and pressed the buzzer.
It threw him off stride when Detective Waterstone opened the door.
“I figured you’d have a regular cop sitting on the place.”
“Just doing some follow-up.”
“Luke Talbot.” Luke held out a hand.
“Okay. You don’t look like a lawyer,” Waterstone commented.
“Because I’m not.”
“Luke’s going to help me pack up what I can. Other than Oliver’s clothes, I’m not sure what . . .” He trailed off as he glanced over, around, and saw the pale gray sofa with its ugly splash of dried blood, the deeper gray wall behind it with its horrible pattern of blood and gore.
“Jesus, you couldn’t have covered that up?” Luke demanded.
“Sorry, no. You might want to talk to Kendall’s next of kin, work out the cleanup. We can give you the name of a couple of companies that specialize.”
Fine walked in from another area. “Mr. Archer. You’re prompt.” Her eyes narrowed on Luke a moment, then she pointed at him. “Baker’s Dozen—the bakery on West Sixteenth.”
“That’s right, that’s my place.”
“I’ve seen you in there. I owe you an extra five hours a week in the gym.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s the chunky brownies. They’re deadly. Friend of yours?” she said to Ash.
“Yeah. He’s going to give me a hand. Oliver’s mother gave me a list—a few things. Heirlooms she’d passed to him. I don’t know if he still has them, if they’re here.”
“You can give it to me. I can check.”
“It’s on my phone.” He pulled it out, brought it up.
“I’ve seen these cuff links, the pocket watch. They’re in the bedroom. Antique silver cigarette case, no, haven’t seen that or any mantel clock. No, just the cuff links and watch are here. I don’t think we’d have missed these other things.”
“He probably sold them.”
“You might ask his boss—his uncle at the antique place.”
“Yeah.” Ash took the phone back, looked around again. And saw his painting on the wall across from the ruined sofa.
“Nice painting,” Fine commented.
“It makes sense.” Waterstone shrugged at Ash’s blank look. “A lot of them don’t.”
The model’s name was Leona, he remembered. She’d been soft and curvaceous with a dreamy, barefoot look about her. So he’d seen her in a meadow, flowing hair and skirts with the violin poised to play.
And painted that way, she’d watched his brother die.
No, it really didn’t make sense at all.
“I’d like to get this done. I was told we still can’t claim his body.”
“It shouldn’t be much longer. I’ll check on it myself and get back to you.”
“All right. I’ll get his clothes, and what’s here on the list. That’s what matters to his mother. I don’t know about the rest.”
“If you see something you recognize, just check with us.”
“He must have had some files, paperwork, a computer.”
“We have his laptop. We’re still processing that. There’s a box of documents. Insurance papers, trust documents, legal correspondence. It’s been processed, and it’s in the bedroom. You can take it. There’s some photographs, too. Would you know if he kept a safe-deposit box?”
“Not that I know of.”
“There was six thousand, four hundred and fifty dollars, cash, in his dresser. You can take that. When you’re done, we’ll need you to sign off. We’ll also have a list of anything that was
removed from the premises for evidence or forensics. You’ll need to check on when any of it’s cleared for pickup.”
He only shook his head, walked back the way she’d come, and into the bedroom.
The deep, dark plum of the walls against stark white trim gave the room a stylish, faintly regal feel that worked well with the glossy wood of the massive four-poster.
The cops, he assumed, had stripped the bed down to the mattress. Forensics, he supposed. The painted chest at the foot had been left open, its contents jumbled. Everything seemed to hold a fine layer of dust.
The art was good, probably the woman’s choices of the misty forest scene, the rolling, star-struck hills. They suited the baronial feel of the space—and gave him a little insight into his brother’s doomed lover.
She’d been a romantic under the gloss.
“He’d have slid right into this,” Ash commented. “This place, just lofty enough, stylish but with an edge of old class. That’s what he’d have wanted. He got what he wanted.”
Luke put together the first of the banker’s boxes they’d brought. “You said he sounded happy when you talked to him last. Happy, excited.”
“Yeah, happy, excited. Buzzed.” Ash rubbed his hands over his face. “That’s why I put him off. I could hear some scheme or deal or big idea in his voice. I just didn’t want to deal with it, or him.”
Luke glanced over, and because he knew his friend, kept his voice easy. “If you’re going to beat yourself up, again, at least let me hold your coat.”
“No, pretty much done with that.”
But he walked to the window, looked out. Picked out Lila’s windows immediately, imagined her standing there that night, entertaining herself with glimpses of other lives.
If she’d looked out ten minutes sooner, ten minutes later, she wouldn’t have seen the fall.
Would their paths have crossed?
When he caught himself wondering what she might be doing as he looked out at her window, he turned away. He walked over to the chest of drawers, opened a drawer, looked down at the jumble of socks.
The cops, he thought. Oliver would have arranged them—folded, never rolled—in tidy rows. Seeing the disorder added another thin layer of grief, like the dust over the wood.
“I was with him once, can’t remember why, and it took him twenty minutes to buy a pair of goddamn socks—ones that coordinated to his specifications with his tie. Who does that?”
“Not us.”
“Some homeless guy’s going to be wearing cashmere socks.” So saying, Ash took out the entire drawer, dumped the contents into a box.
At the end of two hours, he had forty-two suits, three leather jackets, twenty-eight pairs of shoes, countless shirts, ties, a box of designer sportswear, ski gear, golf gear, a Rolex and a Cartier tank watch, which made three including the watch Oliver had been wearing.
“And I said you wouldn’t need so many boxes.” Luke studied the stack on the floor. “You’re going to need a couple more.”
“The rest can wait, or just fuck it. I got what he had left that his mother wanted.”
“Fine with me. Even with this, we’re going to need a couple cabs.” Luke frowned at the boxes again. “Or a moving van.”
“No. I’m going to have it all picked up, sent back to my place.” He pulled out his phone to make arrangements. “And we’re going to go have that beer.”
“Even finer with me.”
Ash managed to shake off most of the mood just by leaving the building. The busy, noisy bar took care of the rest. All the dark wood, the yeasty smells, the clatter of glasses and voices.
Just what he needed to erase the terrible quiet of that empty apartment.
He lifted his beer, studied the umber tones under the lights. “Who drinks some fussy craft beer called Bessie’s Wild Hog?”
“Looks like you are.”
“Only because I want to know.” He took a sip. “It’s not bad. You ought to serve beer at your place.”
“It’s a bakery, Ash.”
“What’s your point?”
With a laugh, Luke sampled his own beer—something called Hops On Down. “I could rename it Brioche and Brew.”
“Never an empty table. I appreciate today, Luke. I know you’re busy frosting those cupcakes.”
“Need a day away from the ovens now and again. I’m thinking about opening a second place.”
“Glutton for punishment.”
“Maybe, but we’ve been kicking ass the last eighteen months, solid, so I’m looking around some, mostly in SoHo.”
“If you need any backing—”
“Not this time. And I couldn’t say that, or think about expanding, if you hadn’t backed me the first time. So if I start up a second place and work myself to an early grave, it’s on you.”
“We’ll serve your cherry pie at your funeral.” Because that made him think of Oliver, he drank more beer. “His mom wants bagpipes.”
“Oh, man.”
“I don’t know where she gets that, but she wants them. I’m setting it up because I figure if she gets them she won’t think about a twenty-one gun salute or a funeral pyre. And she could, because she’s all over the map.”
“You’ll make it work.”
And that was practically the family motto, Ash thought. Ash will make it work.
“Everything’s in limbo until they release the body. Even then, even when the funeral’s done and over, it’s not over. Not until we find out who killed him, and why.”
“The cops might have a good line on that. They wouldn’t tell you if they did.”
“I don’t think so. Waterstone’s wondering, at least in some little corner, if I did it. He doesn’t like the serendipity of me and Lila connecting.”
“Only because he doesn’t know you well enough to understand you need the answers—because everyone else asks you the questions. I’ve got one. What’s she like, the Peeping Tammy?”
“She doesn’t think about it that way, and you get it when she talks. She likes people.”
“Imagine that.”
“It takes all kinds. She likes watching them and talking to them and being with them, which is odd because she’s a writer and that has to mean a lot of solo hours. But it goes with the house-sitting thing. Spending her time being in someone else’s space, taking care of that space. She’s a tender.”
“A tender what?”
“No, she tends. Tends to people’s things, their place, their pets. Hell, she tended to me and she doesn’t even know me. She’s . . . open. Anyone that open has to have gotten screwed over a few times.”
“You’ve got a little thing,” Luke observed, circling a finger in the air. “She must be a looker.”
“I don’t have a thing. She’s interesting, and she’s been more than decent. I want to paint her.”