Page 33 of Passions in Death
She’d heard that kind of bullshit plenty in school, in the Academy, and even on the job.
She sat, put her feet up, studied the board.
And in that big a group, wouldn’t you have some overlap in relationships? Somebody slept with somebody else, who slept with another somebody.
She got up to pace, to consider the next step.
Peabody’s pink boots clomped toward her office.
“The two other artists—both clear. Anton Carver was uptown at a swank dinner party. Lilibeth Warsaw, art patron, arranged it, and it checks out he was there until right about midnight. She had him taken home, her car, her driver. It all checks.”
“All right.”
“Roy Lutz was at a bar, Lower East. Its friends and family sort of opening. He’d painted the wall murals. About thirty people there, and I checked with several already, will swear he was there until nearly one this morning. And he had a date—the serious girlfriend—who swears they went to his place after. He was still sleeping when she left for work this morning about eight-thirty.”
Eve just nodded, then stopped to study the board from a new angle.
“McNab’s got nothing. Nothing deleted or hidden on any of the e’s—except what he already found re the vic ordering the tickets, booking the hotel in Maui.”
“Okay, as expected. Let’s go talk to Hunnicut’s exes. And we’ll check, see when’s the best time for a follow-up with her. Give me ten. I’m going to talk to the victim’s family, make sure everything jibes there and nothing jumps out.”
Eve spoke with the grieving parents. They hadn’t known about the trip, the surprise. Knew no one who would harm their daughter—no enemies, no resentful exes. They added little to the investigation but the weight of their grief.
Eve carried it with her to the bullpen.
“With me, Peabody. In the field, Jenkinson. Albright’s parents didn’t know about the trip,” Eve continued as she strode to the elevators. “Said they would have contributed to the cost of the tickets if they had. But she told them how she was going to reveal a big surprise, and would send them pictures.”
“She wanted Shauna to know first,” Peabody concluded. “It was Shauna’s big dream, so Shauna first.”
“That’s my read.”
Eve took one look at the packed elevator when the doors opened, turned on her heel, and headed for the glides.
“The father insists it had to be a mugging, a robbery, because no one who knew his daughter would kill her.”
“It has to be easier believing that. If it can be easier.”
“I’d say, right now, nothing makes it easier. Marcus Stillwater first,” Eve said as they continued down. “Fordam Publishing’s closest. His apartment’s only a block or two from there.”
“Stillwater—bootie buddy, right?”
“I guess that’s one way of putting it.”
“I never really had one of those. Did you?”
As they angled down the steps to the garage level, Eve glanced back. “Why would I want one of those?”
“Well, you know, for the easy, no-strings, no-worries sex with someone you know and like.”
“And how often do you figure that really works out?”
Frowning, Peabody got in the car. “I don’t know, since I never had a bootie buddy.”
“I’d guess one in, oh, a hundred—at best. Sex gets complicated if it’s more than a one-off.” Eve swung out of the garage. “What do you do when your BB shows up at the door and you’re naked with someone else? Or your BB decides they want more after all, or they want no more from you? Or you’re the one who wants more than the buddy system and they don’t? Maybe you get involved with somebody else, and your BB thinks, that’s messing up my easy sex, and finds ways to screw with you?”
Peabody considered. “You know, I used to think it was too bad I never had a bootie buddy. Now I’m thinking I was lucky I didn’t.”
“Bounce naked on somebody, be ready for complications.”
