Page 24 of Framed in Death (In Death #61)

“Reo. I’m in court, Dallas, but on recess.”

“I’ll make it quick. I need some international warrants.”

“Some?” Reo’s eyebrows lifted up under her fluff of blond hair. “International?”

“They’re pertaining to the back-to-back murders, street LCs, dressed up like people in famous old paintings.”

“Yes, I know about that, but—”

“Let me just get it out. Harvo’s ID’d the fancy fabrics, the fancy dyes, even the yardage used on both costumes. I’ve got venues that make this sort of thing, high quality, high cost, and a lot of them are outside the U.S. I’m getting nowhere, due to client confidentiality.”

“All right, I see the issue. But these are—here’s the pun—really loose threads on international.”

“He had to have them made somewhere. Goddamn it, Reo, it’s…” Eve caught herself, scrubbed at her face. “I’m not swiping at you. It’s the snooty snot fuckers I’ve been trying to deal with.”

“I get it. And I’m tucking away snooty snot fuckers for my own use at the appropriate time.”

“The costumes, they’re minutely detailed, accurate down to frigging shoe ribbons. Peabody says the work, like the stitching, is expert.”

Lips pursed, Reo nodded. “She’d know.”

“Leonardo concurs, and estimates, if he’d done them, he’d have charged about half a damn million.”

“Are you serious?”

“As serious as the two dead bodies in the morgue. This guy has money to spend on his kills. He’s organized, rich, precise.

It’s possible he’s a sewing guy and made them himself.

Even so, he’d need the fabrics. But that’s down on my probability list, since he left the bodies—the first at the residence of an art gallery owner, the second at a gallery.

“He’s two for two, Reo. He’ll go for three.”

“I hear you.” Reo sighed, and like Eve, paced as she talked. “Send me the data, and I’ll push on it. But, Dallas, we’re not talking hours to get something like this through, if we do. It’s days.”

“All I need to know is yes or no. Did they take the orders or not? We get that, we can push harder, or I can find a way to use it.”

“Send me the data. I’ll start the wheels turning.”

“Thanks. And, ah, good luck in court.”

“I don’t need luck.” Smile smug, Reo brushed at her hair. “I’ve got the evidence.”

And I don’t, Eve thought as she stuffed the ’link back in her pocket and continued to pace.

She tried the New York venue again, and got an actual human.

She worked her way up the company chain until she managed to snag the person actually in charge of custom costume orders.

“Lieutenant.” One Rodney Triston had an ink-black bush of a mustache, an eyebrow ring, and a thin veneer of disdain.

“I certainly understand your dilemma, but we’re bound by client confidentiality.

Our clients insist on and expect absolute secrecy when they commission a costume.

The element of surprise when attending a fancy dress event is essential. ”

“I’ve got a couple bodies in the morgue that were pretty surprised. And on their behalf, I can get a warrant.”

“Please do so.” He waved a hand so loaded with rings they’d serve as brass knuckles. “But until you do, I’m unable to give you client information.”

“Try this. Check your records for any orders for custom costumes of the two figures I gave you. If you have said orders, you say yes. If you don’t, you say no.

That’s not client information. It’s yes or no, which if I approached you for one of these costumes, asked if you’d created them before, you’d answer. ”

He took a deep inhale, let out a deep exhale that had the bush over his lip shivering. “Yes, I suppose I could have my assistant look into that. For what period of time?”

“How long would it take to make them, with the level of detail I described?”

“That would be a question for the head of design.”

“Never mind that. Go back a year.”

He gave her a long look that edged toward outright dislike. “It will take some time.”

“Assuming your records are in order, not that much. I’ll wait.”

He slapped her into holding blue.

“You’ll make it take longer than it needs to because you don’t want to do it, you asshole.”

Resigned to that, she programmed more coffee, drank some looking out her skinny window. New York rolled right along.

She wondered what the killer was doing now. Painting? Out scouting for another victim? He already had the third model selected, she was sure of it. Just as he had the third costume waiting.

How many in all? How many had he planned?

She sat, put her boots up, and studied her board as her desk ’link held blue and some sort of creepy fluty music drifted out of it.

What was it about these two portraits that pulled at him? Not the people in them, no, she didn’t believe that. People were simply vehicles to him. And the two original models, dead for hundreds of years?

So the current models had to die, too, and by his hands—literally. Because… they couldn’t outlive the art.

His art lived; they died.

That rang for her.

What the originals represented, long gone. But the art lived on. It had to be the same for his work because…

“He’s a great artist, as yet undiscovered. Okay, okay.”

She pushed up, paced again.

“That’s who he is. They die, his art rises up and lives on. But why these two portraits?”

She stepped over to the board, studied them again.

“The light, the details. Details matter, and the light’s part of it. The confidence of the Boy, the quiet seduction of the Girl. Girl and Boy, does that matter?”

Before she could think that through, the assistant came on the ’link.

“Lieutenant Dallas?”

“Yes.”

Mid-twenties, Eve judged, a very pretty woman with ebony skin and quiet brown eyes. “I’m Mr. Triston’s assistant, Riley. I checked our records. I’m permitted to tell you, yes, three Blue Boy s and one Girl with a Pearl Earring in the last year.”

“Can you tell me when ordered, when delivered?”

She glanced to the side, then lowering her voice, leaned in.

“My dad’s a cop in Columbus. I can’t give you names.

I’d lose my job. But I can tell you one of the Blue Boy s is a regular customer—along with his wife of a few decades.

They ordered Pinkie and Blue Boy costumes nearly a year ago for their annual costume ball in June. ”

“ Pinkie ?”

“It’s another full-length portrait. Not the same artist and decades apart. But a youth in blue, a girl in pink.”

“Got it.”

“And the second one was for an actual boy. About thirteen. And the last one was shipped to Chicago last spring, for an art show.”

“Okay. How about the girl one?”

She glanced behind her again. “It didn’t have the matching skirt. This one was brown, and the scarves were a silk blend, not pure silk. But I was supposed to say yes anyway. I hope this helps.”

“It helps a lot. I appreciate it, Riley.”

“You’re welcome. Just don’t—”

“Not a word to your boss. Thanks again.”

Eve crossed the first New York venue off her list as she heard Peabody coming.

“Wanted to give you a quick update. That French place you talked to got orders of material on both portraits. More than the yardage for each. The person I talked to said that wasn’t unusual.

And since I also found orders on those fabrics to one of the venues in Italy, another in London, and more, I have to say, not unusual.

“They’re beautiful fabrics, Dallas. Pricey extreme, but beautiful. And not just used in costumes.”

“Keep hacking away. I’ve got one New York venue off the list. I’m going to see if I have luck with the others. Who’s out there?”

“Bullpen? Baxter and Trueheart caught one. Jenkinson and Reineke figured they had good luck with the last cold one they pulled, so they pulled another. They’re in the field chasing a lead.”

“So brief Carmichael and Santiago. Once I push my way through these two, we’ll try some galleries, and they can try hacking away.”

She didn’t find a helpful cop’s kid at any other New York venue, and hit the same client privacy walls.

She stuck long enough to try one in Chicago, then another in Boston with the same results. So decided it was time to get the hell out of the office.

She went out to the bullpen to find Carmichael and Santiago both at their screens, and Peabody on the ’link rhapsodizing about fabrics.

Peabody held up a finger out of ’link range, circled it to signal winding up.

“We’re both looking at cold ones,” Carmichael told her. “Maybe we’ll shake something out.”

“Did you bet on it?”

Santiago only hunched his shoulders.

“My esteemed partner proposed one, but I nixed it. Bad bet. We’ll take Peabody’s list.”

“Sending it now.” Peabody pushed back from her desk. “No luck on that one. Not enough yardage on the blue satin, and none of the gold fabric in the last year.”

“If you catch one,” Eve said to her detectives, “tag me or Jenkinson. Let’s go, Peabody.”

“Here’s a snag.” Since Eve ignored the elevators, Peabody joined her on the glides.

“The lace—handmade in Ireland. Not all the fabric venues on the list carry that. Some use French lace, for instance. And it’s a specific pattern, too.

One of the contacts said they commission tatters in Ireland if they have a specific order. ”

“Tatters?”

“Tatting. It’s a weaving method to make lace. I brought up the painting and the replication, compared. They’re exact, so either the client—our killer—the fabric venue, or whoever made the costume could’ve ordered the lace from a craftsman in Ireland.”

“More digging, more contacts. But… that may not be a snag. It could be an answer. Handmade lace, specific pattern, specific size, shape, from one country. That’s not calling all over hell and back. It’s focusing in.”

“Well… yeah, I guess it is. Change snag to possible break. On the other hand—”

“How many tatter-type people are there in Ireland? Who the hell knows, but this guy isn’t going to want somebody who makes lace for the village shops. He wants someone with an important rep.”

They clattered down the steps to Eve’s parking level.