Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III #1)(37)

“As rain.”

“What does that mean anyway? Why would someone describe rain as being right?”

I sigh. “Anyway.”

“Anyway, I shared a floor with one of those massage parlors. Not what you’re thinking. They were legit. Cheap, no frills, but legit. At least I think they were legit. But who knows? All that happy-ending stuff. Who cares, I’m just babbling, sorry.”

I try to sound kind as I say, “It’s okay,” so as to encourage her to keep talking.

“We were happy, Ry and me. I mean, sort of. Like I said, I knew what I was getting in for. It wasn’t going to be forever, but I’m not big on forever. My relationships with men are like a wild buckaroo ride at a rodeo—it’s exciting and crazy and I know it’s going to be me who gets thrown off in the end and breaks a rib when I smack the ground.”

I like her.

Kathleen turns now and gives me a well-crafted, oft-used side smile that lands.

“That ride lasted longer than I would have thought.”

“How long?”

“As a couple? On and off for years. As a friend? Well, right up until today.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I bet the Staunch family found him.”

“Nero Staunch?”

“The family always wanted revenge, you know. One of the people who died that night was a niece or something. Ry always figured they got to the others.”

“The Staunches?”

“Yeah.”

“Ry thought that the Staunches killed the other Jane Street Six members?”

“Something like that, yeah. The Staunch girl who got killed? I think her brother runs the family business now.” She shrugs. “Ry got nuttier and more paranoid as time passed. He was erratic at best. Sometimes, for no reason, he’d start thinking the cops or Staunch was closing in on him. Maybe because he heard a funny noise or someone gave him a weird look. Maybe because Mercury was in retrograde. Who knew? So Ry would run off for a while. Sometimes he’d be gone for months. Then he’d just show up one day and want to live with me again. He’d do that—come back and stay with me—until he got the place in the Beresford.”

“When was that?”

“What year? Oh, let me think. Mid-nineties maybe.”

Hmm. That would be around when the paintings were stolen.

“You set up a weekly meet?” I ask.

“Yeah. Whatever was wrong with Ry, it was getting worse. You take all his issues, which are really an illness, you know, like cancer or heart diseases. Incurable maybe, I don’t know. But you take all that and you take his paranoia and then you add in the fact that he really did have people after him—the FBI, the Staunches, whatever. Then pile on the guilt from that horrible night and, kaboom, like with the Molotov cocktails. So by the time Ry moved into that tower, he couldn’t handle life anymore. He shut out the world.”

“Except you.”

“Except me.” The R-rated smile again. “But I’m pretty special.”

“I’m sure you are.”

Are we flirting?

I move on: “When you two met for your weekly rendezvous in the park, what did you do?”

“Talked mostly.”

“About?”

“Anything. He didn’t make much sense in recent years.”

“But you still met?”

“Sure.”

“And you talked?”

“I also gave him the occasional hand job.”

“Nice of you.”

“He wanted more.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Right? And I’d try. For old times’ sake. Like I said, he used to be so damn beautiful, like you, but, I don’t know, by 2000, maybe 2001, he lost his physical appeal. To me at least.” Kathleen arched an eyebrow. “Still, a hand job isn’t nothing.”

“Truer words,” I agree.

Kathleen stares me down a bit. I like that. I am, I confess, tempted. She may be on the older side, but she’s got that innate sexual allure you can’t teach—and I did lose out earlier tonight. Kathleen saunters now toward the crystal decanter and gestures whether it would be okay to pour herself another. I do the honors.

“To Ry,” she says.

“To Ry.”

We clink glasses.

“He was also afraid people would steal his stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“I don’t know. Whatever junk he had in his apartment.”

“Did he ever tell you about his junk?”

“Huh?”

“As in, what he had in his apartment.”

“No.”

“Did you read about the recovered stolen Vermeer?”

Her eyes are emeralds with yellow specks. She looks at me over the amber liquor in her glass. “Are you saying…?”

“In his bedroom.”

“Holy shit.” She shakes her head. “That explains a lot.”

“Like?”

“Like how he got the money for the apartment. There were other paintings stolen, right?”

“Yes.”

“From someplace in Philadelphia?”

“Right nearby.”

“Ry visited Philly a lot. When he’d run away. Had friends there, I guess, a girlfriend maybe. So yeah, Ry could have done it, sure. Maybe he fenced a painting or two, and that’s how he got all that money.”