Page 78 of Passions in Death
At the street door, Eve started to press the button for A. CARVER, then decided to master in.
“Second floor. Yay.”
They trooped up the stairs.
“Even outside the tribe, they’re an incestuous group. Shauna’s high school guy hooked with her best friend—also from the same school. Lopez having sex with Erin, then with Carver. Barney having drinks with one of the other member’s cohabs. The gallery manager’s sister buying Erin’s art for a client, commissioning the other artist—Lutz—to paint murals.”
“Frost doesn’t have that river of dead artists behind her, but she did have a couple of shows at the gallery for Anton Carver, four years ago, another two years ago. And Lutz’s girlfriend sculpts. Frost carries some of her work.”
“Incestuous,” Eve repeated, and buzzed at the apartment door on the second floor.
It took a second buzz before Eve heard a very irritated male voice from behind the door.
“The fuck you want?”
“To speak with you, Mr. Carver. Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody, NYPSD.”
“You want to talk to me, come back when I’ve had more than three hours’ sleep.”
“We’re here now. How about you open the door?”
“Unless you’ve got a warrant, I’m going back to bed. Knock off the buzzing.”
“Would you like us to get one? Then have this conversation down at Central? Or would you like to open the door and get it over with quickly?”
“Fuck’s sake. Cops are a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, that’s why we make the crappy bucks. A woman’s dead, Mr. Carver, a woman you knew, one you shared studio space with for more than three years. If you don’t open the door, being a pain-in-the-ass cop, I’m going to start wondering why.”
Chains rattled, bolts slid, locks thumped.
Chapter Twelve
The man had shoulders as wide as Park Avenue, and stood at about six-five, a tattooed cobra coiled, ready to strike, on his bare chest. Black sleep pants drooped at his hips.
The shoulders, bare chest, and all the rest were damn impressive.
He had brown hair falling in wild and disordered curls to those impressive shoulders. Big hands with a smear of bright yellow paint running down the side of his right index finger.
Hard, angry green eyes snarled out of a striking face that carried a couple days’ worth of stubble.
He smelled like a man who needed a shower.
“I already talked to this one right here.” He pointed the paint-smeared finger at Peabody. “I got dozens of people who’ll tell you I wasn’t anywhere near that damn sex club when somebody killed Erin.”
“Then you shouldn’t have any problem having a quick conversation. Want to have it out here?”
Carver gave a fulminating look at the door across the hall. “Biddy over there’s probably got her eye to the Judas hole right now. That’s right, you old bat!”
He stepped back, jerked a thumb. “Make it quick. I need my frigging beauty sleep.”
He slammed the door behind them.
The apartment looked as though he’d had a weeklong party. Glasses, dishes, take-out bags, a pizza box, clothes all crowded tables, chairs, a lump of a sofa.
And art crowded the walls. Framed, unframed, some as big as the artist, others barely wider than his hand, hung everywhere in a riot of color and shape and texture.
Among them, Eve spotted one of Lopez. She sat on a backward chair wearing only a black top hat and sky-high red heels.
