Page 29 of Passions in Death
As they started out, Peabody stopped, turned back. “I just wanted to say, I really like what you’re working on. The man on the bench with the dog. It’s restful. The man and the dog love each other. It just shows.”
“Thank you.” Donna’s eyes filled again. “Thanks for that.”
Eve started down the stairs. “She could’ve had somebody take that trip to and from Baltimore. She didn’t,” Eve added as Peabody started to speak. “But check her alibi—the birthing center, the shuttle station security feed. Let’s cross her all the way off.”
“Yeah, you’re right. We need to check, but she didn’t. She loved Albright. Like the man and the dog, it showed.”
“Agreed. We’ll do runs on the other two artists, confirm where they were from twenty-three hundred until midnight. But I think she knew Albright through and through. When she says Albright wouldn’t have asked either of them, I lean that way.”
“But we cross them all the way off.”
“We do.”
On the street, she considered the distance to the Down and Dirty. “Ten-minute walk from here to Crack’s place. Plenty of time from when Fleschner tagged Albright from Baltimore for Albright to tag her backup if she hadn’t already. They get here, swipe in—the swipes for this building and the studio were in Albright’s purse, not the apartment. Killer goes to the club—probably back door again. She gives him the swipes—and thanks so much—he walks here, gets the case, walks back.”
“She doesn’t meet him at the back door the second time,” Peabody began.
“Doesn’t need to.” Eve walked to the car. “Killer slips in the back, goes straight to the privacy room—she’d already given him that pass. Set down the case, and wait. When it’s done, put the swipes back in her purse.
“Why leave the case? Leaving the case is stupid.”
Drumming her fingers on the wheel, she waited for a break in traffic.
“Not much time to plan a murder, though, or come up with the weapon.”
“I’m going to say they didn’t need it. Maybe just waiting for an opening. Then a baby decides it’s time to come out. Add storms along the East Coast, shuttle delays, and you’ve got one.”
She swung into traffic. “This wasn’t impulse. Maybe the time and place were. But somebody wanted Erin Albright dead.”
Chapter Five
“Alibi checks.” As Eve drove, Peabody viewed the security feed sent by the Baltimore station. “She’s half-asleep in a chair in the terminal at twenty-three hundred, and I’ve got her boarding the shuttle a few minutes later. Considering the time she landed, and the distance from the station here to the studio, to her apartment, she couldn’t have made it before midnight.”
“Thoroughly crossed off. Cross-check the moonlighting gigs with the partygoers.”
“I remember one had a catering business. Let me check my notes.”
“Do that, and see if you can find her connection to the other two venues. Shauna would know, but I don’t want to follow up with her yet.”
“We should’ve asked Fleschner.”
“Didn’t want to do that until the thoroughly crossed-off. You can start on that angle while we check in with Morris.”
“How many mornings do you figure we visit the morgue?”
“Too many.”
After pushing through a tangled knot of traffic, Eve parked.
And with Peabody, started down the long white tunnel of the city’s dead.
“I’ve got Tricia Pilly—the caterer. Maura Lang, bartender, the grill. And a Chassie Gordon, daughter of Blondina Gordon—owner of the maid service.”
“Good. Find a seat, have conversations.”
Eve continued on, then pushed open the doors of Morris’s work home. Music played, something soft and bluesy, as he stood beside the body, his hands in the chest cavity.
Under his protective cape, he wore an oatmeal-colored suit with a pale blue shirt and a tie of a deeper shade of blue. He had his black hair in a long braid, starting high on his head and threaded with cord in the deep blue.
