“Yeah. Look, when I get the investigators’ reports, I’m going to copy you.”
“On the data from the thefts?” Sitting back again, he sipped from his tube of water. “Well, that, at least, will be fun.”
“Yeah, Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds. All my fun comes tomorrow when I have to do another damn media conference on this whole mess.”
“You’ll get through it. Eve, I’ve started with the first thefts, and have a couple names in mind. But, well, one’s dead, one retired to Barbados adecade ago, and the last, he’s into his eighties, and I can’t see any of the three would apply here.”
“Flip it around,” she suggested. “Start at the other end. Somebody who stole for him forty, fifty years ago is less likely to have waited so long to take this job, if he knew about the vault in the first place. Five, ten years ago? Barrister could’ve started slipping—more likely at that age. And his death opens more of an opportunity.”
“Ah.” He gave her a nod and a smile. “Well now, that’s why you’re the cop.”
“You don’t really want to do this. That blocks some thinking angles.”
“I have some qualms, yes. But a man’s dead. You’ve the right of that. I’ll work from the other end.”
“How about we put in a few hours here, and if nothing breaks, we take a walk out to the pond and hang awhile, watch a vid later.”
“I’d like that.”
“Me, too. I’m hitting the next ex. When Abernathy comes through, I’ll copy you.”
Chapter Eleven
Eve reached Tina Glenn Barrister Carlyle Nance, wife number three and the mother of the victim, while she lounged on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
Plenty of work here, too, Eve deduced. That, and the perfectly applied makeup, helped the seventy-four-year-old pass for closer to fifty.
Her blond hair fell in long, luxurious waves to her shoulders. She wore enormous sunshades over eyes her ID termed violet-blue. She’d dyed her lips—full and pouty after their last treatment—a bright poppy pink.
Eve led with: “I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Nance.”
“Oh!” She pressed a hand, where diamonds flashed on fingers with nails of the same pink, to her heart. It beat under breasts as full as her lips and as perky as a teenager’s.
“I can’t comprehend it,” she said in a voice that hadn’t quite lost its roots in the Bronx. “My sweet little boy! I’m devastated.”
“Of course.”
“Have you found the person who did this terrible thing, who’s left my life shattered?”
“We’re working on it. If I could ask you some questions—”
“What could I tell you? My husband and I are spending the month on Corfu. He has business here. And I was on a short spiritual retreat when Joy contacted me.”
She covered her mouth with her hand a moment, as if overcome.
“I wasn’t there when Nathan needed me most. I’m going, of course, cutting off the last two days of my retreat.”
“That must be difficult and inconvenient.”
The sarcasm sailed over Tina’s head. “Yes, very, but what else can be done? My maid’s packing for me even as we speak so I can return home and prepare for the trip to New York. I’m going to say my final goodbye to my baby boy.”
Reaching under the enormous sunshades, she flicked a tear away with a pink-tipped finger.
“This should never be! But I need to be strong, to offer what comfort I can to…”
“Aileen? Nathan’s wife.”
“Yes, yes. I haven’t been able to think straight since Joy called to tell me the awful news. I have to do what I can for her and her children.”
