Possession in Death (In Death #31.5)(11)

“Appreciate it.”

“She’s a looker. Smart, from what I get, savvy, but still green when it comes to city. Used to wandering with her family—tribe, you’d say. Came here wanting to be a Broadway star, and the family wasn’t happy about it.”

“Is that so?”

“Wanted her home. Wanted her to stay pure, you could say. Get hitched, have babies, keep the line going, that sort of thing. But, the old woman—Szabo —overruled them. She wanted the girl to take her shot, find her destiny, like that. The girl got a job here and a place a couple blocks away. Started taking classes—dance classes, acting classes, stuff like that, at West Side School for the Arts. Went to the cattle calls regular. No boyfriend—or not one in particular. Dated a few guys. I got the names and statements, the data in the file there.” He nodded toward the disc. “Nobody rang the bell.”

He paused when Mirium came over with a tray holding three tall glasses. “I don’t mean to interrupt. Just something cold to drink while you talk. If you need me for anything, I’ll be out front.”

“They’re good people,” Lloyd commented when she left them. “Her, her husband. They come up clean. Ran the whole staff when I caught the case. Got some bumps here and there, but nobody popped.”

“What’s the time line?”

When he didn’t refer to his notes, Eve knew the case had him, and his teeth were still in it.

“Beata Varga went to her regular dance class, eight a.m. to ten. Hit a rehearsal for the show she just landed at Carmine Theater on Tenth at eleven. Reported here for work at one, all excited about the show. Worked a split shift, so she was off at three, hit her acting class from three thirty to five, back to work at five thirty, off at eleven. Walked down the block with a couple friends from work—names in the file—then split off to go home. That’s the last anyone can verify seeing her. Eleven ten, then poof.

“Apartment’s not big on security. No cams,” he added. “No log-in. The neighbors can’t say whether she came in that night, but nobody saw her. A bag and some of her clothes and personal items are gone, and there was no money in the place. According to statements, she pulled in hefty tips and was saving. It looks like she got itchy feet, tossed what she wanted in a bag, and took off.”

“That’s not what you think,” Eve said, watching his eyes.

“Nope. I think between here and home she ran into trouble. Somebody snatched her. I think she’s been dead since that night. You know as well as I do, Lieutenant, we don’t always find the bodies.”

No, Eve thought. “If she’s dead, then someone she knew killed her. Why else try to make it seem like she took off? Why pack clothes?”

“I lean that way, but I can’t find anything.” Frustration rippled around him. “It could be whoever did her used her ID for her address, had her key—she carried all that in her purse. Tried to cover it up. I’m still working it, when I can, as an MP, but my sense is it’s more in your line.”

He glanced around as he sipped his drink. “The old woman didn’t buy it for cheap,” he said. “Claimed she talked to the dead, and if the girl was dead, she’d know. I don’t buy that for free, but… Now the old woman gets murdered? People get dead in the city,” he added as he set his glass down. “But it’s got a smell to it. I’d appreciate you giving me what you’ve got on it. Something or somebody might cross somewhere.”

“You’ll get it,” Eve promised. Because something or somebody would cross.

Chapter Five

The ballet studio ranged over the fourth floor of an old building on the West Side. Under the glare of streetlights the pocked bricks were dull and grayed with time and pollution, but the glass in every window sparkled.

Out of Order signs hung on the chipped gray doors of both elevators. Students, staff, and visitors had expressed their opinions on the situation with varying degrees of humor or annoyance by tagging the doors with obscenities, anatomically impossible suggestions, and illustrations on how to attempt the suggestions. All in a variety of languages.

“Guess they’ve been out of order for a while,” Peabody commented.

Eve just stared at one of the series of strange symbols and letters while her mind—something in there—translated it with a kind of dry humor.

“Fuck your mother,” she murmured, and Peabody blinked.

“What? Why?”

“Not your mother.”

“But you just said—”

Eve shook her head impatiently. “It’s Russian. A classic Russian insult.” She reached out, ran a fingertip over the lettering on the door. “Yob tvoiu mat.”

Peabody studied the phrase Eve traced and thought it might as well be hieroglyphics. “How do you know that?”

“I must have seen it somewhere else.” But that didn’t explain how she knew—knew—the elevators had been down for weeks. Turning away, she started up the stairs.

Nor could she say why her heart began to beat faster as they climbed, passed the other studios and classrooms. Tap, jazz, children’s ballet sessions. Or why, as she approached the fourth floor, the music drifting out hit some chord inside her.

She followed the music, stepped into the doorway.

The woman was whiplash thin in her black leotard and gauzy skirt. Her hair, wildly red, slicked back from a face that struck Eve as thirty years older than her body. Her skin was white as the moon, her lips red as her hair.