Page 31 of Devoted in Death

“Because it often works. Kuper comes along, sees her struggling, steps over to offer a hand.”

Just as she’d seen it, Eve thought. It had been the most logical because it was the most true.

“It all works, including the timing. Let’s hit the club since we’re here.”

•••

After Midnight was a moody little place with a scatter of patrons, and an ancient piano player noodling the keys as a woman with the face and body of a siren swayed and sang about love gone the wrong way around.

She could see Morris here, clearly see him adding the mournful song of his sax. And with the picture formed in the last hours, she could see Dorian Kuper, adding those down-low notes of the cello.

An intimate place, she thought, with tables crowded together and huddled close to the stage. A single bar and the man who tended it, and the lighting dim and faintly blue.

She talked to the bartender, the lone waitress, the old man and the young siren. She got fresh grief and shock, but no new information.

“They really liked him,” Peabody commented when they walked from the blue warmth to the gray cold.

“He seemed to have that effect on most people. What did we learn?”

“Well, that he went there at least three or four times a month, and they liked him.”

“That, and his killers never went in there. It’s small, it’s intimate, and while they get people who just go in, a tourist who’s heard of it, they mostly have regulars. A couple who’d been in there around the time the vic went missing, they’d be noticed. And that leads more weight to random. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“Okay, yeah. Yeah, I see that. Everybody remembered Earnestina—in detail.”

“And speaking of.” Eve checked the time. “I’m going to drop you back at Central. Any progress Baxter and Trueheart have made, I want to know. Check in with EDD in case they found something on the vic’s electronics we missed. Unless something else pops, go home after that. I’ll go by and talk to Earnestina on my way home—both her work and residence are on the way. She doesn’t play in, but we’ll cross her off anyway.”

“She should be home. I checked her schedule.” Peabody climbed in the car. “Her last class should have ended about a half hour ago. Even if she hangs around the school for whatever, she should be home by the time you get uptown. You might want to check there first. Traffic’s going to be a bitch.”

Traffic was a bitch, but, then again, Eve thought, so was she. She shoved, bullied and smashed her way uptown. In her own way, she enjoyed snarling at a lumbering maxibus or thinking bitter thoughts about the driver of a single-passenger Mini who wove through the narrow spaces between vehicles like a needle and thread.

She could sneer at the ad blimps cheerfully blasting out news about NEW SPRING LINES! at the fricking SkyMall when the temperature hovered at twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

In the time it took her to travel north, she updated her notes, reviewed Trueheart’s on three interviews conducted and contacted Juilliard.

Tina R. Denton had indeed left for the day.

She found the building easily enough—a whitewashed row house she could see had been converted into four units.

Finding parking was another matter. She considered double-parking, but recalling her own traffic fight couldn’t justify it. Some of the drivers and passengers out there were innocents.

But when she spotted a space on the other side of the street, she had no compunction against hitting the sirens, boosting into vertical and crossing over above car roofs to drop into the opening.

The blast of horns didn’t bother her in the least.

She walked down to the corner, crossed over, walked up, and with a glance at the numbers on the doors, pushed the buzzer on Earnestina’s apartment.

“What do you want?”

At the impatient voice, Eve held up her badge for scanning. “Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD. I need to speak with Tina R. Denton.”

“This isn’t a convenient time. I’m working.”

“Hey, me too. If this isn’t convenient we’ll arrange to have you brought down to Central in the morning for questioning.”

“You can’t make me do that!”

Eve just smiled. “Watch me.”