“It doesn’t have the same… flair, I guess, for light, shadow,” Peabody added, “but it’s the same background.”
“Yeah, I see it. Exact, precise. This takes time, and still he kills two in two days. Pulls them in, dresses them up. Takes—at least took a couple hours with Culver. Facts not in evidence, but I’m saying he starts painting them, or takes photos. He needed this one standing, so needed theboard. Can’t just have a board. It needs to represent the background in the original.”
“He’d have had that ready.”
“Yeah. Still took time. Have the officers seal up. Let’s turn this board. We’ll get the back on record. And I want measurements on the record.”
When they’d turned it, Peabody measured.
“It’s seventy inches high, twenty-two-and-a-half inches wide. And I can tell you this board is man-made. Lightweight composite.”
“What’s the painting? Measurements.”
“Oh, good one.” Peabody did the search. “Seventy inches tall, forty-four-point-one wide. So he went for the full height, but cut the width in half.”
“Needed the height, not the full width. Harder to carry something that wide. And the background? Afterthought for him. It’s the portrait, the person. Let’s call for the morgue, tag for Morris, and get the sweepers.”
While Peabody did that, Eve looked up the owner of the gallery.
She found a trust in the name of Harriet Beecham, enacted four years prior at her death—at a hundred and eighteen.
“On their way,” Peabody told Eve.
“The gallery was the home of a Harriet Beecham, big patron of the arts. In her will, she decreed the town house be opened as a gallery. Her great-granddaughter operates the place, and she lives close enough. We’ll go inform her, then take the victim’s place.
“Officers, hold the scene.”
“Two days running,” Peabody said as they got into Eve’s car. “We deserve coffee.”
“The victim deserves wide-awake investigators, so coffee.”
“One of these days when I’m on the roll, I’m going to wake up and have breakfast with McNab in our mag kitchen. Or maybe on our sweet patio. But for now.”
She handed Eve coffee.
“You were probably up and dressed again.”
“I was.” And paperwork would, again, have to wait. “Nine-one-one caller was walking his dog.”
“Early for that. I’m guessing puppy or senior dog.”
“He said puppy. It’s the second time on this we got lucky with a witness and an early nine-one-one. Before oh-six hundred for both.”
“Tell me,” Peabody said, and yawned.
“But he got luckier placing the body earlier than that. Did you read the report from my interviews with Culver’s coworkers?”
“I scanned it on the subway. This victim wasn’t one of those.”
“No. We’ll find out what area he worked after we talk to the gallery operator. This widens the killer’s territory. He’s got his own transportation, and a vehicle big enough to carry a seventy-inch board.”
She found Iona Beecham’s address—half of a three-story duplex, a well-secured brownstone six spotless steps above street level. Flowerpots flanked the door painted in what Eve thought of now as Dreamy Peabody Blue.
Eve pressed the buzzer.
The computer-generated system answered promptly.
Barring emergency, the resident is currently unavailable to guests. Please leave your name, contact, and a brief summary of your business.
