“In bed. Sleeping. It was around one in the morning, I think.”
“You’re living here?”
“No. I’m having some updating done on my condo. I’m staying here while that’s going on.” She lifted her fingers to her eyes, inhaled long and slow. “I apologize for being rude. This is… this doesn’t seem real.”
Eve saw Peabody coming. “No apology necessary. Excuse me one minute.”
“Max-ex dress,” Peabody said, and spoke again quickly to avoid the snarl. “Roarke filled us in. McNab’s with me, and now with Roarke. I can tell you right off, the security jammed from zero hours, seventeen, blipped for a few seconds at zero hours, forty-two, then fully off again until zero hours, fifty-nine.”
Eve’s brows drew together at the timeline. “Okay, that’s tight. I’ve got TOD at zero hundred, fifty-five hours, nine-one-one logged at zero-one-oh-two hundred. That’s damn tight. Nook there. Butler, housekeeper, cook. All live-in. Start with them while I finish with the wife and the sister. Get us as accurate a timeline as possible.”
Peabody, her red-streaked black hair in a high, bouncy tail, and wearing what looked like comfortable and professional brown trousers anda navy jacket Eve currently envied, walked to the nook and introduced herself.
Eve went back to the lounge. “I’m sorry. I needed to update my partner. Ms. Carville, are you aware there’s a vault in your husband’s office?”
“Henry’s vault? Nate’s father. Yes. We—Nate—the painters—stumbled over it during some remodeling.”
“Stumbled over it?”
Aileen looked helplessly at her sister-in-law.
“Nate had the office painted,” Joy said. “During the process, as Nate told me, the painters tripped a mechanism, and the panel over the vault slid open.”
“You were unaware it existed?”
“Henry never told us.” Aileen spoke again. “I don’t know if we’d have ever found it ourselves. When we decided, after Nate inherited the house, to live here… We considered selling at first. It’s such a big house, and our girls are already in college, but it’s where Nate and Joy grew up, and such an historic building.
“Once we decided to stay, we wanted to make it more ours. It’s a big job. We started back here, where we all spend so much time. The kitchen, lounge, dining room, the powder room. The staff wing needed some updating, too. Then we did our suite, and a couple of guest rooms. Nate wanted to make the office more his. He works very hard. We had my office done at the same time.”
“So you found the vault when?”
“Last month. No, no, I’m sorry. It was in July. The girls were back for the summer.”
“And you opened the vault.”
“Not right away—we didn’t know how. We thought we’d have to hire someone to open it, but Nate finally found the combination in his father’s files.”
“I don’t know why you’re wasting time over something like this whenmy brother’s been murdered in his own home. Anyone with eyes could see he didn’t suffer that terrible injury from a stumble or fall, so…”
Joy trailed off. Her mouth opened slowly; her eyes, a deep blue, widened. She set down the teacup she’d lifted with a rattle.
“The vault,” she murmured. “Oh my God.”
Chapter Three
“Did you leave the vault unlocked?”
Even as Joy shook her head, Aileen answered. Between the shock and the sedative, she’d gone into a dreamy state.
“Oh, no. Never. When we opened it, we were just stunned. It’s like Aladdin’s cave. Nate said none of what was in there was on the estate inventory. He was sure of it. We were going to call the lawyer about it all, then I told him to let me do a little research first. It’s what I do. I’m a freelance researcher. Honestly, all I did to start was take a picture of the Renoir. Neither Nate nor I believed it was real, but as it turned out, it was! And it had been stolen…”
She rubbed a hand on her temple again. “I can’t remember where or when now. It’s in the file—actually, there’s a tablet in the vault that has everything listed. It took some time for us to get through the passcode. Anya finally did. Our youngest.”
“Everything in there was stolen goods,” Joy continued, then pressed her lips together. “My father kept excellent records on the tablet in thevault. When and where acquired, how much he paid, the worth of the piece—obviously he updated that regularly. It was shocking, and mortifying.”
“And yet those stolen items remain in the vault.”
“I know it’s taken more time than it should,” Aileen admitted. “We were so dumbfounded and, well, horrified. We weren’t sure whether to go to the lawyer. We didn’t want to involve the police.”
