Page 69 of Passions in Death
“I think it’s a lot. I think it shows a focus on one artist, and one woman.”
“The last she purchased, again through the gallery, about two weeks ago, for a bit over five thousand.”
“She bought one of the paintings that paid for the Maui trip? Oh boy, that’s just got to piss you off, doesn’t it? You buy the painting, and she blows the money on somebody else’s dream? You’re partially paying for their honeymoon? And now she wants you not only to stand there and watch her big surprise, but help her with it? Fuck that.”
Eve smiled. “Oh, that’s a good one. That’s very close to ‘come into the box and let’s chat’ good.”
“Meanwhile I took a good look at the victim’s financials, and the fiancée’s. As clean as it gets, and I hate to say boring. They had a joint account, which they both contributed to, and split the household expenses. They each had their own account, for personal expenses. Clothes, gifts, I suppose, salons, and so on. They both lived carefully.
“The victim opened a separate account three weeks ago.”
“Yeah, the honeymoon fund,” Eve confirmed. “McNab found that.”
“And she used that fund to buy the tickets, for the deposit to book the room. There’s enough left to cover the rest of the lodging, plus all the food, entertainment, souvenirs, etc.”
He looked at the board, at the victim. “It was a lovely thing to do. To try to do.”
“Did they insure the art in the apartment?”
“They carry the bare minimum renter’s insurance.”
“All right. I need to think about all this. The victim would have trusted both Lopez and Barney. I can stretch a motive on either of them. Still need to talk to the gallery manager.”
“You’ll think better on a decent night’s sleep. You didn’t get one last night.”
“Give me another hour. I want to write this up, see if it makes any sense when I do. There was a meanness to this, Roarke, with the time and place. A meanness that says personal.”
She pointed to the board. “It’s going to be someone already on there, and so far, Lopez and Barney are who’s standing out. But I don’t want to miss someone else because I’m looking too hard at them.”
“An hour,” he said. “I’ll play with more of the financials. It’s not nearly as entertaining when it’s all aboveboard.”
“Yeah, the job’s just made of fun.”
“My part of it often is.” He kissed her, then tapped the dent in her chin. “An hour.”
She used every minute of it, but had to admit fatigue, both physical and mental, set in by the end.
So she didn’t argue when Roarke, on the dot of the sixty-minute mark, stepped back in.
She shut down, stood up.
“Find anything interesting?”
“Financials are rarely so boring,” he told her, and taking her hand, led her from the room. “Is Greg Barney still one of your top suspects?”
She shrugged. “He and Lopez are who I’ve got at this point.”
“Which gives you two in under twenty-four hours,” he reminded her. “In any case, financially, he’s clean. Pays his taxes, his bills. Other than rent, his major outlay is clothing, with the bulk from the shop he manages, and dining. No investments, which is shortsighted of him, but he saves a bit.
“No art purchases,” he added as they walked into the bedroom where the cat already claimed the bed. “No art insured. As he cohabs with Becca DiNuzio, I looked there.”
“She was onstage dancing her half-naked ass off at TOD. But a cynical cop could theorize she and Barney were in on it together.”
“I happen to know a cynical cop. Her financials, also clean and tidy, though she has some small investments—an also clean-and-tidy portfolio.”
“Younger brother’s a Wall Street guy.”
“Who advises her wisely. She does have a gallery purchase. One Erin Albright, valued at twenty-five hundred, purchased about six months ago, and has insured a second—no purchase—for twelve hundred. Insured since the first week in January.”
