Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(88)

She ran up against close of business when she reached the third, and pushed hard against the unfortunate clerk.

And got nothing for the effort.

“I appreciate your time. You have my contact. If you find or remember anything, please contact me.”

She clicked off as Roarke walked into her office.

“Are you supposed to be here? Do we have a thing?”

“We have many things.” He crossed to her, tipped up her chin, kissed her. “And there’s one. But I had a meeting in the area, chanced my luck on catching a ride home with you. But I see from this, and Peabody at her desk, you’re not done.”

“Pretty much am. We thought we caught a major break with fingernails. Fake fingernails. But we’re crapping out.”

“There’s considerably more on your board for crapping out.” He looked closer. “You found her.”

“Yeah, Lisa McKinney, who became Violet Blank—ha ha—who became Violet Fletcher when she married a rich doctor. She spent the last sixty years as Violet, living in a big old house outside New Orleans, raising a family—one of her sons is Senator Edward Fletcher of Louisiana. I’ll fill you in on the rest, but she died—swallowed pills—last fall, six months after her husband died in a car wreck. Her other son—got a doctor daughter, too—is some writer dude, and he’s living in the big old house with his family now.”

“Chasen Q. Fletcher? He’s excellent.”

“Yeah, fine.” Frustrated, she swiveled back and forth in the chair. “She had to contact her firstborn, had to. I’m thinking maybe she blocked her former life—something happened, big trauma, blocked it, forgot about the first kid. I’ve got reasons, and I’ll go into them later. But she had to. And now I’m just thinking, big old house. You live in the same place for over half a century. That’s a lot to go through, a lot of stuff. Maybe there’s something there that connects. She wrote notes to her three kids—with the doctor. Maybe she wrote one to her first kid from before. Maybe there’s a copy. Or she talked to him. Maybe they still have her ’link.”

She hissed, pushed up, paced. “I don’t want to take the time—Covino doesn’t have any to spare—but maybe we should go down to New Orleans after all.”

“Laissez les bon temps rouler.”

She stopped, stared. “What?”

He smiled. “We’ll have to go down for Mardi Gras one of these days.”

“Yeah, that’s what we’ll do. Go party with the drunks, the street thieves, and the half-naked people riding on those—whatever they are.”

“Floats. Should I arrange for a shuttle?”

She rubbed her eyes. “Damn it. It’s a stone, and you’ve got to turn it over. It just feels like I’m not going to find anything under it but those creepy bugs.”

“Ants are industrious and useful.”

“No, not those. Those little white wriggling—never mind,” she said when her ’link signaled. “Dallas.”

“Oh, hey, um, Lieutenant Dallas, this is Darci at Salon Pro. You and Detective Peabody came in this afternoon. I got all flustered because I just so hearted the Icove vid.”

“I remember.” Just as Eve remembered the squeals emanating from the perfectly coiffed and made-up twentysomething assistant manager with the enormous, emeralds-on-steroids eyes. “Did you find something on the nail kit?”

“No. I mean I didn’t. I’m going to get flustered again! We don’t have a record of a sale of the Adora Nail It deluxe with the On a Moonlit Sea polish, but my friend Carrie—she’s salesperson of the month—we were just talking about it because she totally hearted the vid, too. And she was all sad she was on a break when you and Detective Peabody came in so she didn’t get to meet you and—”

“Darci.” For the sake of her own sanity, Eve interrupted. “Do you have any information for me?”

“Okay, well yeah, that’s the thing. We’re talking, Carrie and me, when we’re closing up for the day, and I’m telling her, and she says how it’s abso on the weird that she sold this old man, I mean this older gentleman, a Lovelle Pro Deluxe Faux Nail kit with the choice—it has a deal where you get one choice of standard Lovelle color, or a discount on the Super—and he got the Super in Midnight Madness.”

Eve stabbed a finger at Roarke, said, “Peabody.”

“She said how she thought oh crap when he came in because it was pretty close to closing, but he knew just what he wanted. The brand, the color, so it was just peasy, right? I mean it’s not the kit and color you said, but the thing is,” Darci went on, “there’s not a whole lot of difference in the product. I mean to say, they’re, um, comparable, so we sort of wondered if maybe there was a mistake on the brand.”

“It’s possible.” Comp glitch, she remembered.

Convenient.

“When did he come in, when did he buy the kit?”

“Oh, just yesterday, Carrie said, and I went ahead and checked the receipts. Cash purchase at, um, four-fifty-eight. He had a pro license and everything.”

Peabody came on the run, with Roarke and McNab behind her. Eve held up a hand. “You have in-store security feed.” She’d seen the cams.