“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.”
