by J. D. Robb
Peabody settled in with her PPC. “Merit Andrew Caine, age thirty-six. Single, no marriages, no official cohabs. Only dings a handful of traffic violations. Harvard Law—like his father, mother, paternal grandfather. And give him a zing, graduated top of his class, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Uma Hagger.”
She glanced at Eve. “That’s not shabby. Parents married—first and only for both—forty-two years. Nice run. Two sibs, one of each, also lawyers, but not in the firm. He’s a junior partner at Caine, Boswell, Caine—grandfather’s the first Caine, dad’s the second, and mom’s Boswell. He’s worth sixty-three mil, resides Upper East Side, about five blocks north of his intended bride, and has a second home in Aruba.”
Eve pulled into the garage at Central, angled into her slot.
“Why aren’t the sibs in the family business?”
“Looking at that,” Peabody said, working as she climbed out. “The sister—thirty-four—is currently on maternal leave from her position as in-house counsel for Atomic Publishing—offices Lower East—and the brother—thirty—is in East Washington, clerking for—hah, Uma Hagger.”
“Okay, a lawyerly family.” They crossed the garage to the elevator. “Rich, connected. Oldest son hooks up with the daughter of a rich, doctorly family.”
“The American dream.”
“Maybe.” With some relief, Eve noted the elevator was empty. It wouldn’t last, but it was a nice start. “The doctorly daughter is a dozen years younger than the lawyerly son—not enough of a spread to make him a cradle robber, but a spread. He’ll make full partner in a three-generation law firm within a couple years. She socializes, puts in a few hours here and there at her family’s charitable foundation, so no apparent career ambitions.”
“When did you run her?”
“When I was going up to talk to DeWinter, just a quick one.” And here it came, Eve thought, as the doors opened, as cops shuffled in. “She put in three semesters at NYU, and has never worked an actual job. She has an annual income from trust funds that should cover her rent, but probably not much else.”
At the third stop Eve muscled off the elevator.
“I’m guessing her parents supplement her income.” Peabody followed Eve to the glides. “Their son’s off in Vegas, but she’s right here.”
“And engaged to the oldest son of a wealthy, prominent New York family.” Absently, Eve jiggled the loose credits in her pocket as they rode up. “At the tail end of planning what’s bound to be a big, splashy society wedding. She sure as hell doesn’t want it to come out she’s cheating with a moderately successful West Village artist.”
“If it does, it all blows up on her. Still … she’s got the trust fund, and her parents are going to be embarrassed, maybe pretty pissed, but would they cut her off for cheating on her fiancé? Is she going to murder her lover over a possible threat to maybe rat her out?”
“You’re a homicide detective, Peabody, so you know as well as I do people kill people over a shoulder-bump on the sidewalk.”
“Yeah, and I could see her doing it in a fit of passion, in a moment of heat. But the timelines don’t gel.”
“Let’s check that first, go from there. Right now, she’s the one with motive, and she’s the one lying to the cops.”
They turned into the bullpen. Jenkinson, his tie du jour, and his partner, Reineke, weren’t at their desks. Santiago and Detective Carmichael huddled together at hers. Baxter, in one of his slick suits, had his expensive shoes on his desk as he worked his ’link. And True-heart, the young and earnest, worked his comp.
Since nobody jumped up or hailed her, Eve went straight to her office.
“Coffee,” she said as she opened the packet from House Royale and took out the disc.
“Any way I can program something edible to go with that? My stomach says lunch. I can hit up Vending, but—”
Eve just waved a hand as she sat, plugged in the disc.
Peabody perused the offerings on the AutoChef menu. “You got everything in here. How about we split a ham and provolone sub? Because it’s going to be actual pig meat, actual cheese if it’s in here.”
“Whatever.”
Eve increased the speed of the vid feed until she saw Gwen step out of her apartment into the hall-cam range at eleven-sixteen. A pale pink dress, a short, three-quarter-sleeved white jacket, high, skinny heels in pink-and-white stripes, and an enormous pink purse—Eve judged it as meeting-with-wedding-planner attire. She’d done her hair in a loose bun at the nape, wore subtle but impressive jewelry in the diamond studs, a necklace with a pink stone heart outlined in diamonds, a wrist unit with a glittery pink band, a heart-shaped pink stone ring on her right hand, and, of course, her fat diamond engagement ring on her left.
“Classic, sophisticated, rich,” Peabody said as she set half the sandwich on the desk for Eve—with half a side of fries (real ones!).
Eve toggled to the elevator feed.
They followed her progress down in the elevator, where Gwen smoothed her hair in the mirrored wall, checked her lip dye.
A woman with a baby in a stroller got on at twelve. Since the woman wore a gray uniform, Eve concluded nanny.
Gwen didn’t spare either one a glance, then strolled out ahead of them. On the lobby feed, she went straight out the doors.
“She didn’t even smile at the baby, and it’s a really cute baby.”
“Now you don’t like her,” Eve noted.
“I’m just saying. And I’m also saying this ham is the ult.”
Which reminded Eve to pick up her half, take a bite.
She couldn’t disagree.
She stuck with the lobby feed, watched the nanny and baby come out, pause by the desk as Felicity spoke to them, obviously prattled something at the kid, who grinned and waved the rattly thing in his hand.
Eve increased the speed until Gwen walked into the lobby from outside at fifteen-twelve. “She’s got a shopping bag.” Eve enhanced to home in on the shop’s name. “Intimate Occasions. Probably sexy underwear. She didn’t say anything about shopping, did she?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“We’re going to check when she left the wedding planner, check when she hit the shop, what she bought.”
“I’ll add it to the list. These fries make the ham even more the ult.”
Which reminded Eve to eat one.
They followed Gwen up the elevator, where she leaned back against the wall of the elevator, smiling smugly. Then down the hallway to her apartment.
At seventeen-fifty-five, she came out again.
“Freeze it. Yeah, she changed, but those aren’t urban-strolling-and-into-the-park clothes.”
“They wouldn’t be mine,” Peabody agreed.
Another dress, Eve thought, but this one in hot red with skinny bow straps that showed off the shoulders and a short, swingy skirt that showed off the legs. Heels, high again, but these were red like the dress and strappy to show off the pedicure—more hot red.
Bold, dangly earrings, thick gold cuffs on the wrists, and a gold handbag big enough to hold a toddler. The sophisticated bun had given way to long, shiny waves. The subtle makeup now smoked and smoldered.
“Would you call that date-night wear, Peabody?”
“Yeah, I would. And I bet she’s got sexy underwear on under that dress.”
“Count on it. She’s bouncing. She’s got that I’m-gonna-get-laid bounce to her step.”
With a nod, Peabody nibbled on another fry. “McNab gets sort of a bounce-swagger. It’s hard to pull off a swagger with his skinny ass, but he does it.”
Rather than respond, Eve filled her mouth with ham and cheese.
“Here she comes—not between eight and nine. Time stamp, twenty-two-eleven. And moving fast this time, looking pissed.”
“Definitely pissed,” Peabody agreed. “Now it’s a fuck-this-shit stride. Her hair’s all I-just-rolled-out-of-the-sexy-bed. She didn’t brush it out, and her lip dye’s worn off. She’d buy a good one, so that says—”
“Her mouth did some work.”
In the elevator she crossed her arms over her chest, glared straight ahead. At one point her eyes went glossy with tears, but she tossed her head, pulled them back.
She marched to her apartment. Eve didn’t need audio to tell her Gwen slammed the door.
She ran the feed, kept running it to nearly midnight. But the door didn’t open again.
“That’s well past TOD, Dallas.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Eve pushed back. “There’s always another way out if you want it bad enough, but I don’t see her rappelling down the building. Still, I want EDD to look at the feed, see if there are any glitches. Alternately, she could have had it done. I want to see her ’links.”
She ate another fry as she started on the morning feed. “Here she comes. Zero-six-forty-one. Bright and early, and she doesn’t have excited face on.”
“I’d call that determined. You were right about the clothes, the makeup.”
“Yeah, jeans, spring sweater, hair pinned back at the sides, but loose, another enormous bag, low boots, and plenty of careful makeup.”
In the elevator she pulled enormous sunshades out of the enormous bag. She checked her wrist unit, tapped her foot.
Again, she strode across the lobby without a word or glance.
At zero-seven-forty-three, she came into the lobby again. Eve slowed speed.
She didn’t stride, bounce, strut, but walked very deliberately toward the elevator. “Freeze it,” Eve ordered, then enhanced.
“That’s not the face of a woman in shock. Shaken maybe, a little pale and shaken, but thinking. Calculating. She figured out what to do on the ride back uptown.”
In the elevator, Gwen pulled off the sunshades, rubbed a hand over her heart. Eve froze and enhanced again.
“Pupils aren’t dilated. No zoned-out look in them, no trembling. Not fucking shock. She’s upset, but the rest is bullshit.”
In the hallway, she quickened her pace, hurried to her apartment and inside.
“That’s a lot of lies,” Peabody commented.
“Yeah, a whole basket of lies. We’ll be bringing her in, but let’s get it all lined up first. Start on that list, I’ll copy and send the feed to Feeney, and put the board and book together.”
“On it. She didn’t come out again on the night of the murder,” Peabody added. “But what are the odds somebody walked in that apartment and bashed Byrd’s head in an hour or so after she and Huffman had a fight?”
“They improve if Huffman asked somebody to take care of it for her. She strikes me as the type who gets people to take care of things.”
4
Eve set up the board first. She wanted the visual.
She read the initial reports—sweepers, lab, ME—added them and the reports from the uniforms into her notes, into her murder book.
She wrote her report, then opted to copy Mira. The expert profiler might give her more insight into a person like Gwendolyn Huffman if and when she needed it.
She’d just begun a deeper dive into Gwen’s background when she heard the clip coming down her hall. Not Peabody’s clomp—uniform shoes.
She glanced around as Officer Shelby started to rap her knuckles on the doorjamb. “Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant. Detective Peabody’s holding on her ’link and asked me to relay the officers in the field located the flower vendor and the wineshop regarding your current investigation.”
“Great.”
She saw Shelby’s eyes track to her board—not surprising. What surprised her was the way Shelby’s eyes widened.
“Problem, Shelby?”
“I—no, sir, Lieutenant. It’s just … I know her.”
“You knew my victim?”
“No, sir, I don’t believe so. I know—knew—Gwen. Gwendolyn Huffman. You have her boarded as prime suspect.”
“How do you know her?”
“I …”
Eve had picked Shelby for Homicide because she’d judged her as solid. Nothing until now had changed that opinion. Before Eve could speak again, she watched Shelby square herself.
“Knew her is more accurate than know, sir. I haven’t had any contact with her since we were, um, fifteen. I was fifteen. I think she was, or maybe sixteen. I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I’m sorry, sir, I’m a little thrown off.”
Clearly, Eve decided, and gestured Shelby inside.
“How did you know her?”
“My uncle has a beach house in the Hamptons. He won the lottery.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No, sir, Lieutenant.” A smile came and went. “Sixty-five million. Back when I was about eleven or twelve. He opened a restaurant there, too, and still works as chef. That’s what he did—does—he’s a chef, but he has his own place now. He has us up every summer, the whole family. For two weeks, or as long as we can manage. Gwen’s family has a house there, too, and spent most of the summer there. So we met when I was about thirteen, I guess.”
Shelby cleared her throat, looked back at the board. “Our brothers hung out. My brother was a couple years younger than hers, but they both played guitar, so they hung out, tried writing songs together. I know her brother plays clubs and sessions in Vegas because he’s still in touch with mine.”
“But you’re no longer in touch with the sister.”
“No, sir.”
“Because?”
Shelby blew out a breath. “The summer I was fifteen, Gwen and I got to be more than friendly.”
“Okay.” Eve rose, moved around Shelby to close the door. “Have a seat. Watch your ass, that chair bites. How do you take your coffee?”
“Black is fine. Black is good. I appreciate it, sir.”
Eve programmed coffee, considered her officer.
Shelby sat very straight. She’d done something with her hair—dashed blond through the brown. People were always doing things like that. She wore it short, shorter than Eve’s own, and it suited her young, pretty face. Not a face so earnest and green as Trueheart’s had been when Eve had brought him into Homicide.
No, Shelby had more edge to her.
Eve handed her the coffee, took her own back to her desk. Sat.
“Your private life is your own, Shelby. But any insight you can give me into Gwendolyn Huffman will aid our investigation. The victim, an artist, a sculptor, had the back of her head caved in with one of her own mallets. This occurred shortly after, evidence shows, she and Gwen had sex in the victim’s bed. Further evidence leads us to believe they had an argument.”
“I never knew Gwen to be violent, sir, not like that. Bitchy, demanding, um, manipulative, yeah.”
“She called nine-one-one from her apartment on the Upper East Side. We have her statement, and the evidence supports that she traveled down to the victim’s apartment-slash-studio this morning, very early. She claims she had an eight o’clock sitting for a statue, for her future husband. She arrived considerably before eight, claimed the victim’s door was unsecured, and she went inside, found the body, then, due to shock, left, went back uptown before she gathered herself to call it in. More than an hour after she found the body.”
Shelby took a moment, sipped at her coffee. “I think her statement is probably inaccurate on several points.”
“Hey, me, too.”
“Her brother’s estranged from her and his parents, but he still gets bits now and then, and tells my brother, who tells me. I knew she was engaged. A lawyer, wealthy family. Unless she’s dramatically changed, money and social status are very important to her. She wouldn’t want her other relationship to come out. Her parents are very strict and conservative. It’s more than that.”
Shelby paused, drank more coffee. “Unless that’s changed, too, they belong to a group called Natural Order.”
Now Eve sat up straight. “Those people are crazy.”
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant. I completely agree. It’s not what you’d call a church, though they managed to get that status, but they sure do preach. No mixed or same-sex mar
riages—or relationships. Outlaw licensed companions, take women’s reproductive rights back a couple centuries. No method of birth control but abstinence, and absolutely no premarital sex.”
“Didn’t they buy their own country or something?”
“Sort of. An island. People, rich ones like the Huffmans, helped finance that. Gwen’s parents? If they knew she was seeing another woman?”
Shelby shook her head, drank more coffee.
“When I was fifteen, sir, I knew my orientation. My parents, my brother, my sister, my family, they all knew. It was just who I was, no issue. Gwen’s, on the other hand, were of a different mindset.”
“A different century.”
“Yeah, you could say. Gwen and I got involved that summer. She made the moves, only because I was too shy. We’d sneak out at night—that my parents wouldn’t have approved of—and were together. I was just crazy about her. She’s beautiful, and smart, and, well, adventurous, at least back then. So into the second week of my stay, somebody told her parents. At least that’s what I think, what her brother thought.”
“What did they do?”
“They left. Just left. I got a text from her saying we were done. Like: Bitch, we’re over.”
“Nice. Nothing else?”
“No, sir. I tried texting her back, but they didn’t go through. I knew where she lived in the city, where she hung out. I haunted those places for the rest of the summer just to talk to her, to figure out why she dumped me that hard. But I didn’t see her again until right after school started. She went to private school uptown, and I saw her coming out of the building. When she saw me, she, well, basically, she told me to fuck off, stay the hell away from her. I’d ruined her whole summer, but I wasn’t going to ruin her life.
“Broke my heart.”
“How’s it doing now?”
“Oh, it healed up a long time ago. But you don’t forget your first. And you don’t forget when that person turns on you that way. She meant what she said. I’d ruined her summer. That’s all it was to her. All I was. I got over it.”
She blew out another breath. “The thing is, Lieutenant, I know you can look through heart eyes at fifteen, but we had feelings for each other. It wasn’t just sex. But she cut those feelings off. She did the same with her brother. Appearances, in her world—her parents’ world—they’re priority.”