Forgotten in Death(101)

“I’ll sell what I built to your husband, if he wants it. I would never demand any of my children accept what they don’t want. Could he have killed this woman and the child he’d planted in her if that part’s true? Yes, a man can do anything, can do evil things, out of fear, anger, greed, envy. Did he?”

Bardov shook his head. “This is for you to learn. If it’s true, I’ll be sorry, for it will hurt Marta and the good woman J.B. married. It will make them weep.”

He pushed up. “Come, we’ve talked of this enough. We’ll sit on the patio and have lemonade.”

“We appreciate your time. We’ll let you get back to your family.”

“One glass, two cookies.” He wagged a finger at her. “You can give that time in return for mine. Marta will be disappointed if you don’t.”

“Mr. Bardov?” Peabody fell into step with him. “Some of your children would be about the same age as Bolton Singer. Did they socialize?”

“Not much, no. As I said, they traveled considerably, and Elinor would not have approved. Now, I would say Marvinia would have overruled her—or attempted to—if my children and their son had struck up a friendship. I do recall, now that I think, my younger daughter sighed over him a bit one summer—but he barely noticed her. His music was all.”

“He didn’t have girlfriends?”

“I suppose he did, but nothing serious—or I would have heard. His music, Detective, was his passion and only love. Until he met his wife. They have a beautiful family. And no, he does not break his vows.”

“You’d know?”

He glanced at Eve. “I would. Of course, now I’ve retired and have no purpose in knowing. There, see?” He pointed to where the twins swarmed over some sort of outdoor play deal with a slide and bars and a kind of fort. “There is the future. Let’s have cookies and talk of pleasant things.”

Eve decided having cookies with a Russian gangster (retired) on his patio while he bounced a couple of kids on his knees went down as one of the strangest interludes of her career.

As they drove back to the heliport, Eve pushed forward.

“Find out if any of the Singers have a gun collector’s license.”

Peabody shifted the little container of cookies as she pulled out her PPC. “You have to take these cookies. I had three damn cookies, and that’s it. You take them. A gun collector’s license?”

“If we treat this theory as fact, there had to be a gun, a thirty-two. Maybe they kept it after the gun ban, got licensed as a collector, then we can at least try to find out if any of them had a license for the weapon thirty-seven years ago.”

“That’s a stretch, plus plenty of unregistered and illegal possession of firearms back then.”

“We look, then maybe we know. Like we asked, and now we know—because that’s a credible source—J. B. Singer had affairs and liked younger women.”

“Men always like younger women.”

The sour tone had Eve glancing over. “McNab’s only got a couple years on you.”

“Because we’re both young. But say when we hit like fifty, he could start eyeballing twenty-year-olds. Of course, if he does, I’ll spoon out his eyeballs and keep them in a glass box on the mantel. That’ll stop that shit.”

“I like that one. I’m keeping that one in reserve.”

“Happy to share.” Peabody looked up from her PPC. “No collector’s license for any of them.”

“Okay, that was too easy anyway. They could’ve gotten rid of it, or reported it stolen, or it was never registered so they’ve still got it somewhere. Start searching for incident reports, involving any of them. Intruders, theft, domestic disturbance, vandalism, anything that involved a police report.”

“All the way back, thirty-seven years?”

“Go forty.”

“Once I go back over twenty, twenty-five, it’s going to get murky. Can I pull McNab in to help?”

“Do that. Prioritize anything that involved violence or a weapon, but get it all. Global.”

“Jesus, Dallas.”

“Yeah, yeah, but they traveled. After that, it’s civil suits. Let’s start putting their history together. And how big a financial hole did J.B. dig back then? Our profile says the victim was Middle Eastern, and from a solid background. Maybe he hoped to squeeze some money there. Rich parents, potential investors, romance the daughter. Oops.”

“It’s a big oops.”

“It wasn’t piddly shit that put her in that cellar. Yeah, Bardov’s right. People will kill for all sorts of reasons, but not the way this went down. Too much purpose.”

As she pulled into the heliport, she comforted herself that at least on the return trip she had work. Plenty of work to get her through.

She intended to dive straight back into the work when she got to Central. Armed with coffee, she read Reo’s roundup of the Wicker deal.

He took the ten.

She checked the facial rec on her victim and found the problem wasn’t a lack of matches, but a bounty of them.

Not enough detail, she reminded herself, and started to contact DeWinter when she got the word Alva’s siblings had come in for her effects.

She took them to the lounge, spent the next twenty minutes with them. On the way back through the bullpen, Peabody hailed her.