Page 35 of Framed in Death (In Death #61)

“Chablis liked flowers.” Traci gripped Marty’s hand. “Can you do that? Can you tell us?”

“Yeah, we can do that. We’re sorry for your loss.”

When they went out, Peabody glanced back. “Looks like Chablis had a kind of family here, too.”

“Why the hell aren’t they paying more attention to the media reports?”

“Work all night, sleep most of the day. But I get you. Word needs to spread.”

“I’m doing a departmental memo. Sergeants to brief patrol officers to inform street levels on the situation. Some will listen,” Eve said as she mastered into Chablis’s apartment. “Some won’t.”

A mirror image of Traci’s apartment space-wise. No cheerful clutter here, but a clean, ordered room with a pumpkin-colored sofa hugging a trio of flower-covered pillows. A chair covered in flowers hugging a pumpkin-colored pillow.

A series of candles ranged over a low table, and a floor lamp with tiny colored beads at the hem of the shade stood beside the chair.

Under a small wall screen she’d placed a small dresser and arranged framed photos on it. Family, Eve noted. Biological and found.

“She made it nice.” Peabody nodded at the vase of flowers on the table in the eating area. “Kept it nice.”

Eve opened the door to the bathroom and doubted Summerset could have kept it cleaner. She’d wedged a narrow floor-to-ceiling stand against a wall and lined it with skin care, hair care, makeup, and all the rest.

In the closet in the short hallway, clothes hung in careful order. Above them, head forms held wigs. Shoes ran up the side walls on shelves. Eve’s feet hurt just looking at them.

“Let’s get started.”

It didn’t take long. Eve found a tablet where the victim kept her calendar—family birthdays clearly marked—as well as her required health checks and screening appointments, The financial records on it proved as organized as the dresser drawers.

“She made a decent living,” Eve noted. “Built up some savings. She’d already booked an econ flight to Wichita for December twenty-third, return on Dec twenty-seventh.”

“I’ve got two hundred cash from this stand—she used it as another dresser. More conservative clothes and winter wear. Stuff I’d say she wore when she went home. Some jewelry, same deal, not like what she kept in the other dresser in the living area.”

“Separate lives. We’ll keep it that way for her if we can.” She checked the time. “Goddamn it, what time with the Earth’s stupid rotation is it in Kansas?”

“Unless they live on a farm, it’s probably too early yet.”

“Then let’s see if Harvo’s worked her magic.”

The lab hummed and buzzed. This time, Eve bypassed Berenski and made her way straight to Harvo.

The Queen of Hair and Fiber had gone with bibbed baggies today in a sunny yellow and high-top kicks as pink as Peabody’s boots. She stuck with the rainbow hair and added a number of studs to both ears, all connected with thin chains.

Eve imagined having those chains ripping through earlobes during a street fight, and nearly shuddered.

“You guys are quick.” Harvo took a long pull from a carry-around bottle filled with something green.

Eve suppressed another shudder.

“My beauties and I are, too.”

“You identified the fiber?”

Harvo fluffed her rainbow hair. “Was there any doubt?”

“Not even a smidge,” Peabody told her.

“ Smidge . Good word. You brought me less than a smidge, but enough. You’ve got premium wool—hundred percent—Wilton Wool, dyed in #15-B, which is basically dark gray.

Loomed this way, it’s used primarily in carpets and floor mats for ultra-luxury vehicles.

The vehicle make is going to have its own fancy name for the color. ”

“Can you give us the makes, the models?”

“You bet your fine, toned asses.” She swiveled, tickled some keys. “Sent. Just to add, you can also—with the ultras—option it if it’s not standard. FYI? Roarke uses this material in some of his ultra-luxury models.”

“I fail to be surprised.”

“It’s going to be plush, baby, lush and plush. Soft, dense. Nothing you’d want to spring for in a family ride with little critters munching cookies in the back.”

“What about vans?”

“Vans?”

“Or ATs with large cargo areas?”

“Don’t see why not. You got the moolah, you get what you want.

“The chief took the paint dabs. He’s a little backed up, but he’ll get that going inside an hour.”

Harvo paused, smiled. “Just a heads-up on that. Give him a little time and space, quicker and less bitchy results.”

“Noted.”

“I’m just starting on the costume, so also a little time and space, but I eyeballed it already. You’ve got silk—I’ll be getting specifics, but the dress is silk, and really fine material. Human hair for the wig. Paintbrushes—”

“You took the paintbrushes?”

“Hair, Dallas. They’re hog hair, and they’re attached to the handle with quills—natural feather quills. Struck me all kinds of weird, so I did a little poking. They didn’t use metal for the collar deal—ah, it’s called a ferrule—until into the nineteenth century.”

“He needed eighteenth. I bet you can’t pop into your average art supply and pick up seven of those—and seven that precisely match the ones in the painting.”

“No, you cannot.” Harvo grinned. “Frosty, huh?”

“It ranks frosty. Somebody made them for him, made them custom. This is excellent data, Harvo. It’s all ego, Peabody. We’re going to wrap him up in his own ego. Appreciation galore,” she said to Harvo. “Let’s move.”

“I can start on brush makers.” Peabody jogged to keep up with Eve’s long stride. “Or the vehicles.”

“Take the brushes. You’re more likely to speak that language. You’ve got brushes, pigments, fabrics. Pigments mean you tag Dickhead in another hour or so to see where he is on those.”

“There goes my yippee.”

“Cross-reference any purchases or shipments. If and when Roarke narrows or hits on the costumes, we have that. I’ll take the carpet. Head back now. I’m going to make a quick stop at the morgue.”

“Do you think Morris will have anything new?”

“It only takes one thing.”

“The crack’s getting wider and wider.”

Wrap him in his own ego, Eve thought again. Because that was his big mistake. His egotistical certainty that he could do what those famed artists had done, but better. Every freaking detail of their work, but better.

Morris stood over the dead with his protective cloak over a forest-green suit. The shirt reminded Eve of the gold jacket the first victim had died wearing. His tie carried minute checks of both colors, and cords of both wove through the braid rounded into a knot high on the top of his head.

The music, a woman singing in what Eve thought might be French, sounded both sad and defiant.

“The late, great édith Piaf,” Morris said. “She sings she regrets nothing. I hope our victim could say the same.”

“I bet she regrets going with the son of a bitch who put her on your table.”

“Up until then.” He walked over to wash his hands, got them both a cold tube. “She was in good health, no signs of alcohol or illegals abuse. She broke her left arm, about the age of twelve. It healed well. I have her street name as Chablis.”

“That’s right.”

“It may have been for his amusement to have served her Chablis. Six ounces at about eleven, another four at about two, along with some rosemary and sea salt flatbread crackers and Saint-Nectaire.”

“What the hell is that last thing?”

“Cheese. A soft French cheese.” He touched a hand to Chablis’s shoulder. “I hope she enjoyed it.”

“Is it common? The cheese? You know, like cheddar or mozzarella?”

“My computer tells me it’s a washed-rind cheese from the Auvergne region in France. Ah…”

He turned, called it up again. “Here we are. An uncooked, pressed cheese produced from Salers cow’s milk.

“I have no idea what sort of cow that might be,” he added, “but apparently they graze on the volcanic pastures of that region, which gives the cheese its flavor.”

“How many kinds of cows are there? Too many,” she decided instantly.

“Who decided in the first place to grab a cow by the tits and squeeze out milk? Then drink what they squeezed out of a cow’s tits.

Then hey, let’s make cheese from what we squeezed out of a cow’s tits. What kind of mind goes there?”

His smile filled with amused affection. “They do the same with goats.”

“I don’t want to think about it. I like cheese. How am I supposed to eat cheese if I think about it? Salers cows. French cows. You probably can’t pick up that kind of thing at your neighborhood twenty-four/seven.”

“Doubtful. More likely a fromagerie or high-end market.”

“Fromagerie,” she muttered.

“A cheese shop.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” French cheese, French wine, French painting. Yeah, they’d hit Paris again on the costume.

“When did he dose her?”

“Her last glass of wine he laced with the same barbiturate mix as your other two victims. It would have been around three this morning.”

He studied Eve as she studied the body. “You don’t need any of this at this point.”

“No. Well, the cheese gives me something else to look for. It’s a detail. It’s specific. We’re picking up solid details this morning.”

“You came for those, yes. But first, Dallas, you came for respect.”

Sighing, she rubbed at the back of her neck.

“We didn’t have enough, Morris. I hope we do now, but didn’t have enough to save her from this. She had friends. She had family.”

Now, Eve shoved at her hair. “Her family doesn’t know what she did for a living.

She told them she worked in retail. I don’t know if any of them will come—they live in Kansas—but they’ll want to bring her home.

She talked to them regularly. She went home every Christmas.

There’s a photo of her with her family in front of a big Christmas tree on her dresser. ”

“If they come, or simply contact me for arrangements, I won’t mention her work. I have her now, Dallas. Go, do your work, and I’ll see to her.”

“Thanks.” At the door, she paused. “I really hope we don’t have this conversation over another tomorrow.”

But when she walked back down the white tunnel, she saw Chablis on the slab under Morris’s compassionate hands.

And she saw her dressed in rosy pink silk, with a straw hat, standing in an ornate frame against a white wall.

She knew, if she couldn’t bring those details together, someone else would fill a fourth.