The Perfect Marriage(38)

One dark suit hung in the closet. Gabriel checked the label. Tom Ford. Gabriel wasn’t much of a fashionista, but he knew that Daniel Craig had worn Tom Ford in the last few Bond films, which meant this suit didn’t come cheap. A tie and a white shirt were on a separate hanger, and a pair of black high-shine oxfords and dark socks were on the floor beneath them. Apart from that, the only other garment was a pair of boxer shorts that were on the floor beside the bed.

The lack of clothing caused Gabriel to rethink his initial bachelor-pad assumption. No one lived here full time. The term love nest came to mind, though the space could have been used for anything from an Airbnb rental to a commuter’s pied-à-terre.

Whatever the apartment’s purpose, the dead man had apparently come from a business meeting. Maybe he was on his way home before fate—or, more accurately, an attacker—intervened. On the other hand, perhaps he was planning to stay the night and wear the same suit, shirt, tie, and socks the next day.

When Gabriel reentered the main room, Asra and the medical examiner were crouching beside the body. Asra stood as Gabriel approached, but the ME continued her closer examination of the corpse.

“It looks as if the murder weapon is likely going to be the corner of the table here,” Asra said.

Gabriel nodded, looking at the relative positions of the body and table. “You said murder weapon. So not an accident?”

“He wasn’t alone. See here?” Asra was pointing at the streaked blood. “Someone moved him a bit. I’m hard-pressed to think of a scenario where he accidentally falls and there’s this kind of blood, and whoever is with him moves the body but doesn’t call the police.”

“You have a preliminary TOD?” Gabriel asked.

Asra looked to the crouching ME. This was her bailiwick, after all.

“Right now, my best guess is sometime between three p.m. to maybe eight p.m. yesterday,” Erica said while coming to her feet.

Gabriel considered the fact that the sheets had been used in the middle of the day. That said affair. Married people wait until bedtime, at least in his experience.

“The bed was used recently. For sex, not just sleeping,” Gabriel said. “Maybe that’s our vic’s less-than-helpful friend.”

“We’ll do a full workup of the sheets,” Erica said.

“Which likely means it’s a she we’re looking for,” Gabriel said.

“Not very PC of you,” Asra said, teasing him.

Gabriel considered the point. She was right. No reason the vic’s lover had to be a woman.

“You have anything we can work with, Erica?” Gabriel said with a smile, the one that usually got him what he wanted.

“Well, since you’re asking nice . . . I don’t think someone deliberately smashed the man’s head against his table. Might have happened that way, but not likely. What probably occurred was that someone took a swing at the vic, and he toppled over, causing him to hit his head, and that’s all she wrote.”

“What makes you say that?” Gabriel asked.

“The chin is scratched a bit, consistent with what you’d see from a blow to the jaw from a punch. Hard to tell definitively right now, though. Maybe he got the scratch when he hit the floor.”

“Who is he?”

“There was a wallet in his coat pocket,” Asra said. “James Sommers. His driver’s license has a SoHo home address.”

Gabriel took out his phone. “Summers like the season?”

“No. With an o.”

He typed the dead man’s name into Google. The search engine asked if he meant Jaime Sommers—the Bionic Woman. Gabriel smiled, recalling reruns of the show from when he was a kid.

“James Sommers” came up with a lot of hits. Gabriel refined the search to include “Prestige Art.”

That did the trick. Staring up from his phone was information for James Sommers, president of Prestige Art. The address listed matched this apartment. A click later, Gabriel was looking at a picture of the dead man, whose actual face he still had not yet seen.



Reid felt less than comfortable standing around outside James’s office building. He should have never even come here in the first place. Once he had and had seen all the commotion, he should have left at once. What kind of an idiot returns to the scene of the crime?

He assumed it would take Jessica close to an hour to get there from the loft, but less than ten minutes after he called, he saw her get out of a cab and run toward the front door, only to be intercepted by a uniformed policeman.

Reid watched her frantically gesturing to the cop. From her arm movements he deduced that she was asking to go inside. And from the shaking of the cop’s head, it was clear he was having none of it.

“Officer,” Reid said, walking toward them. “This is the owner of apartment 7E, Jessica Sommers.”

“Who are you?” the cop—a boy in a uniform, actually—asked.

“I’m a friend of Mrs. Sommers. I just thought it might help if I vouched for her.”

“Thank you,” the boy-cop said, seemingly not thankful at all. “I’m sorry . . . Ms. Sommers, is it?” Jessica nodded. “Let me see if a detective or someone can talk with you. But until then, you have to stay here, behind the yellow tape. No one’s allowed upstairs at this time.”