Page 12 of Framed in Death (In Death #61)

Since of the two baristas, only one was male, she got in his line.

Snippets of conversation swirled around her.

How Bart really needed to turn a report in. How someone else had a date to go salsa dancing. Someone else complained her kid dyed his hair purple, another expressed frustration with her mother.

She took the time to check Standish’s ID to make sure she had the right individual.

Though he’d cut his blond hair into sharp, diagonal lines on the sides, the same face popped on her screen.

Round features, pale green eyes, powder-white skin with a sprinkle of blond stubble.

He stood about six feet, had well-cut arms and shoulders under his snug black tee. She considered he wouldn’t have trouble carrying a dead woman of Leesa’s weight.

When she got to the counter, he beamed her a smile. “What can I get you, Slim?”

“Lieutenant Slim.” She palmed her badge, and the smile dropped away.

“Okay. Same question.”

“My partner and I would like to speak with you regarding an investigation.”

“I’m working.”

“I can speak with your supervisor.”

“Come on, man. I don’t want to lose this job.”

“When’s your break?”

“In about twenty.”

She looked behind her and to where Peabody grabbed a two-top.

“See the brunette, red streaks? Come there on your break. We’ll try to make it quick.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Then it’ll be even quicker.”

She walked to the table.

“Got your Pepsi. I’m trying their lemonade.” She tapped the order box. “Salad and san in about five minutes.”

Eve sat so she could keep an eye on Standish. “He’s got a break coming up in twenty. He makes a move toward the door or toward the back, we go after him.”

“Hope he doesn’t.” Peabody picked up her lemonade, sampled. “Hey, it’s pretty good. Mavis has us spoiled though, since she learned how to make it from lemons. We’re grilling tonight. McNab and Leonardo are getting good at it.”

“He’s nervous,” Eve observed. “Keeps glancing over here. Nervous, but I’m not reading guilt. It’s more… dejection maybe. Oh crap, cops.”

“A lot of people feel that way about cops.”

The box signaled the order up. Peabody pulled the salad, then the sandwich out of the opening.

“I went with whole wheat and a combo of Munster and American.”

“Sure, that works.”

“Oh, change.” Peabody handed Eve the change—which still meant a stop to replenish cash.

Eve stuffed it away, then pulled out her ’link when it signaled a text.

“Mira’s read the file. She can give me a window around sixteen hundred. That works, too. We should be able to fit this one in, and the other two.”

“Maybe one of them will be working on a portrait of Leesa as the Girl, and—case closed!”

“Yeah, that’ll happen.” Eve bit into the sandwich.

“But don’t you think that’s what he’s doing? Or did?”

“I think that’s the strongest probability, yeah. There’s no glory in dressing up a woman as an iconic image, then not painting her, since that’s what you do. Paint. Most probable.”

“Unless we’re following the wrong trail, and he doesn’t paint. Like: Why did these—that word Pecker used—peasants get the talent? I’d do so much more with it. I deserve it, but I can only sell art, or restore art, or buy art.”

“Can’t discount it.”

Eve watched Standish take off his apron. He came around the counter and walked to the table.

“I can take a few minutes. Listen, I told my manager you were cops, and there was some trouble in my building. I really want to keep this job.”

“Why don’t you grab a chair?”

When he had, and sat, what Eve read coming off him in waves was misery.

“I really didn’t do anything. I know I screwed up before, but if Harmann’s had any more trouble, I swear it wasn’t me.

I was a little drunk, and a lot jealous.

He rubbed my face in it some, and I just punched him.

Then I happened to see him a couple weeks ago, and I wanted to apologize.

Sincere, right? And he started screaming how he’d get a restraining order.

“I was with some people. They’ll back me up. I just walked away. I didn’t do anything.”

“All right. This is about another matter. Do you know this woman?” Eve held out her ’link.

Standish looked—didn’t skim, but looked. “No. She’s pretty. Too heavy on the eyes with the makeup, but under it, she’s got a nice face.

“I don’t understand.”

“She was murdered last night.”

If powder-white skin could lose color, his did. “Jesus, I’m sorry, okay. But I really don’t understand.”

Eve swiped, offered the ’link again. “How about this?”

“Sure, Girl with a Pearl Earring . It’s beautiful work. The way Vermeer captured light, used the contrast, the way she stands out against the dark background.”

“She was dressed like this.”

“Like… like an artist’s model?” Now both puzzlement and interest mixed together. “Usually if you’re going to try to use a previous image, to learn, you use the image itself. Her face isn’t really right for it.”

“Can you give us your whereabouts last night? Say midnight to four?”

“Oh God, oh my God.” Now his hands shook, so he put them under the table. “Look, I punched a guy, and that was stupid, but I wouldn’t kill anybody.”

“Why don’t you tell us where you were?” Peabody said gently.

“I was—God—I was working, in my apartment. I paint there, too. I was working, with a model. Caryn—ah, Jesus—Caryn Lloyd. We started about nine, and went to… I think about twelve-thirty or one. Then she got dressed—I’m working on a figure study—and we talked a little, then she left.

I’m not sure, I didn’t check the time, but it was after one because I know it was close to two when I called it a night.

I didn’t go anywhere. The building has door cams. You can check. ”

“All right. Why don’t you give us the model’s contact?”

“Sure, fine, but please don’t freak her, okay? She’s supposed to pose for me again tonight.”

He pulled out his ’link, looked up the contact, and gave it to them.

“Do you know anyone who does this? Uses models to replicate?”

“I don’t. I’m not saying nobody does, but I don’t know anybody who does. I’m just trying to straighten up, okay? Keep my day job, work on my art, stay out of trouble. My parents have really backed me, but punching Harmann? I’m like on parole here.”

He tried to smile.

“I’m working up my nerve to approach the gallery manager. It’s taken me too long to get there—but I need to do that to, well, get things right. My problem, my attitude, my fucking around, so I need to go see her.

“I’m hoping to finish this particular work, take it in to her, and show her I’m serious about doing the work and not blaming other people if it’s just not good enough. And it’s going to be good enough. Eventually.”

“All right. We appreciate your time.”

“Sure. Thanks. Wow.”

He replaced the chair, then headed back to work.

“No buzz,” Peabody said.

“Not even a little. But we verify. And we check the victim’s timeline. East Village, then Tribeca.”

“Kyle Drew,” Peabody said as they walked back to the car in air humid from the come-and-gone rain.

“Age thirty-eight, mixed race, one marriage, one divorce, no offspring. He actually had some early success, kudos and sales, married one of his models. About three years ago, the marriage went down the tubes and so did his kudos and sales. Basically, he’s riding the Has-Been Wagon. ”

Eve spotted the same trench coat, and he spotted her. Even with half a block between them, Eve swore she heard his resigned sigh as he turned around and kept walking.

“It could be worse to have gotten there, then dropped.” Eve watched trench coat join the flood of pedestrians at the crosswalk—and shoot a quick glance back at her. “It might piss you off enough to try a whole new technique, like murdering your model.”

Though tempted to follow the street thief and give him a really bad day, she stopped at the car.

She’d just have to find her fun elsewhere.

“Unless we hit your perfect scenario with one of these two, start looking at artists who work in restorations. There you are, always fixing up somebody else’s work. Isn’t it time you created your own? You replicate to show how much better you are than the original.”

It didn’t take long to eliminate Kyle C. Drew, as he answered the door of his impressive loft space with his right hand in a skin cast.

A big man, he wore his ink-black hair in long dreads loosely tied back in a tail. He covered his impressive build in a sleeveless white tee and black baggies, and gave both Peabody and Eve a long look out of sizzling blue eyes.

“Cops?” He had a voice like warm cream poured into rich coffee. “Too bad, unless you want to moonlight as artist’s models. Interesting faces.”

“No thanks.” Eve nodded at the cast. “How’d that happen?”

“I pissed myself off, and punched a hole in the wall. That’ll teach me.”

“When did you do that?”

He frowned a little. “Saturday afternoon. What’s this about?”

“Do you want to talk about it out here?”

“What do I care? But fine.”

He stepped back to let them into an impressive space of wide windows and color. He displayed art on the walls as a gallery might, with a style that drew the eye.

He had enough living space for a pair of sofas, both in coppery shades, and chairs done in turquoise.

The area opened into a dining area with a table that looked old and important, as did the half dozen chairs around it.

A curve of stairs, wood with a copper railing, led to the second level.

Eve pulled out her ’link. “Do you know this woman?”

He took the ’link, studied it. “No, but I just saw this photo on a media report. Somebody killed her last night. Not a lot of details on it, but they said she’d been strangled.”

He handed Eve back the ’link, lifted his cast. “I’d say that leaves me out of the running, but it doesn’t explain why you’re asking me about her in the first place. They said she was an LC. Are you just checking anyone who’s used one, for sex, or as a model?”

“You have?”

He smiled. “I don’t pay for sex—got no problem with it, but I haven’t needed to. But sure, I’ve hired a few now and then to pose. Not her. I’d remember.”

“How about this?” Eve brought up the Vermeer.

“Of course I do. Who doesn’t? What does that…” He stopped, then held out his good hand. “Let me see the dead girl again.”

When Eve obliged, his brows knitted. “It’s the eyes, isn’t it? Bone structure’s off, nose, that’s wrong. Mouth’s almost there, but the eyes…”

He looked up. “Somebody had her stand in for, what, a forgery of the most famous Vermeer, then killed her?”

“Can you tell us where you were Saturday between eleven P.M . and four A.M .?”

“Well, Christ.” A flicker of temper fired in his eyes. “Here, brooding. How the hell am I supposed to strangle a woman I don’t know with this?”

He shook his casted hand.

“When and where was it treated, and by whom?”

“Give me a second.” He shut his eyes, breathed deep in and out, then muttered something she couldn’t quite catch. “It just doesn’t work.”

“What doesn’t work?”

“Mindful breathing and a mantra. I’m still pissed off.

I don’t know the time, exactly. Three, maybe four on Saturday.

The urgent care on East Eighth. Dr. Salvari.

I have to go back to her in a few days so, please God, she can take this bastard off.

I can’t paint, can’t sketch. I can’t even tie my own goddamn shoes. ”

“Okay. How about you show us your studio, then we’ll get out of your hair?”

“You want to see my studio? What, in case I have a reproduction of a Vermeer in progress?” Gesturing with his good hand, he turned to the steps.

When they followed him up, Peabody caught her breath.

Another large space, it held canvases, a worktable, shelves holding paints and tools and palettes. It included a curvy green couch, numerous throws, a bed with rumpled white sheets, a rack of what Eve supposed he used to dress or drape models.

Peabody walked straight to the unfinished painting on an easel.

He’d used the bed, and the rumpled sheets swirled over and around the model, who reclined with golden red hair spiraling down over her left shoulder. She lay propped on her right elbow and wore a lazy, I’ve-just-been-laid smile.

“Oh, this is wonderful! The light, the moonlight, it’s luminous, and the way it streams through the window and hits her hair. The movement, the way her body’s curved. The wine bottle and two glasses on the table. The shadows in every crease of the sheets.

“And you can just feel they’re still warm, and she’s smiling at the one who warmed them with her. She’s about to say: ‘Come back to bed.’ It’s so sensual. It’s breathtaking.”

“Okay, this was worth a trip up the stairs. Are you an art collector?”

“I wish. You have some wonderful art in your living space, your work and others’, but this?”

“I was working on the background on Saturday. Just couldn’t hit the groove I’d been in. I needed the model back. When I tried to contact her, it went straight to her v-mail. Can’t reach her, can’t find that groove.”

He shook his head, pointed at the wall and the jagged, fist-sized hole in it.

“That’s how I handled that. I’m leaving it like that to remind me losing it cost me days, if not a week or more, on something that matters. And hell, the doctor said if I’d hit wrong, it could’ve cost me a lot more. It’s the best I’ve done in a long time, and I nearly fucked it up.”

He turned back to Eve. “I don’t do forgeries. I’ve got enough left from before Pilar screwed up our marriage, and I screwed up everything else, to keep me in paints and brushes. And I’m fixing what I screwed up.”

“We appreciate your time and cooperation.”

“Cooperating sucks, but I’m working on it.”

When they got back downstairs, Eve paused at the door. “When I try meditation, my mantra’s Fuck this . Sometimes it works for maybe a minute.”

“Yeah? I’ll try it. That beats my fifteen seconds.”

Peabody pulled out her ’link when they walked out to the car. “I’ll check with the clinic and the doctor, but they’re going to confirm.”

“Yeah, but we cross it off. He’s got strong hands, but the killer used both, and he sure as hell can’t. Plus, he just doesn’t fit. His temper, it flashes. The killer’s, it’s always there.”