Forgotten in Death(22)

Eve made a note to dig into more details later when she could pull the unknown victim’s murder into her focus.

Less than a year after her mother’s death, Elinor married R. J. Singer and gave birth to J. Bolton Singer, their only child, the following year.

The Bolton financial business went under in the eighties, and Eve made more notes to look into—or hopefully have Roarke translate—what she saw were multiple legal issues.

Upon her father’s death following a series of strokes, Elinor sold everything but the Hudson Valley estate. Though it looked to Eve like she’d juggled some of the acreage into Singer for development.

Eve breezed through the society stuff—galas, politics, benefits, fashion—taking away the impression of a woman who’d enjoyed her position, her lifestyle, and knew how to use both.

A widow at sixty, she stepped into the big chair, increased holdings, profits. Maybe a figurehead, Eve thought, maybe not, until she retired.

Interesting.

She lived in her longtime family estate, kept an apartment in the city, maintained a flat in Paris.

Though fully retired for about twenty years, Eve noted she was still listed on the company letterhead as consultant.

J. Bolton Singer was not.

“Did you step aside, J.B., or get tossed?” Eve wondered.

She started to shift to his background when she heard Peabody coming down the hall.

“I think you’re going to want in on this interview. I’m getting a buzz—not from her, Chloe Enster, hard-and landscape—but what she’s telling me.”

Eve programmed her search, rose.

“What’s the buzz?” Eve demanded as they walked to Interview.

“It may apply to Singer’s partners in the project. Enster says she and her brother saw a couple of people they think are questionable characters on the site.”

“I’m always interested in questionable characters.”





5





Eve opened the door to Interview. She studied the petite woman in work pants, a scruffy T-shirt, and beat-up boots. She wore her midnight-blue hair in a short braid and studied Eve in turn out of emerald-green eyes that reflected nerves.

Petite she might have been, but she had strong swimmer’s shoulders and diamond-cut arms.

Strong enough, Eve thought, to have bashed in a skull with a crowbar.

“Chloe, this is my partner, Lieutenant Dallas.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“We appreciate you coming in, Ms. Enster,” Eve began. “I’m sure Detective Peabody explained this is routine.”

“Easy for you to say.” She took a glug from her water bottle. “I know there’s somebody dead, and there’s a finite number of people who had access to the Singer site. Me and my brother are two of them.”

She blew out a breath. “Deke’s covered, my brother’s covered because he wasn’t even in New York last night. But I was, and I got nothing. I busted up with my boyfriend a couple days ago—to be known forever as the Cheating Bastard—and I was home, alone, sulking. I didn’t talk to anybody. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, especially my friend Lorna, who’d I-told-you-so me to freaking death. Or my mother, because the same.”

“All right. Did you know Alva Quirk?”

“That’s the woman who’s dead, Detective Peabody said. I didn’t know her name. But when I saw the picture there”—she gestured to Peabody’s folder—“I recognized her. Deke and I saw her up at the site a few times. Early, before the crew. Before they broke ground the first time. Deke told her she wasn’t supposed to be up there, how it wasn’t really safe. But she said something like it was safe under the stars and gave him like this little origami dog.”

Chloe drank again, sighed. “We spotted her little nest when we were doing the early site work, but we let it go. She wasn’t hurting anything. I guess if we’d made her leave, kept her out, she’d still be breathing.”

“That’s not on you unless you killed her.”

“I’ve never hurt anybody in my life. A lie,” she said immediately. “I lie. I kicked the Cheating Bastard in the balls when I found out. And once, I punched a drunk who grabbed my ass in a bar. But that’s it.”

“Both of those sound justified.”

Chloe managed a smile. “Felt good, too.”

“Detective Peabody told me you saw someone else on the site.”

“Yeah.” Now she rubbed the back of her neck. “We’ve done other jobs for Singer, and we did one for Bardov—that’s one of the partners on this. Deke and I, we’ve only been in business four and a half years. We’re still building a rep. We keep the overhead down, do the design and prep work ourselves. We’ve got a tight crew, and pay fair, and we don’t cut corners. Quality work for a fair price, that’s how you build your rep and your business.”

“Okay,” Eve said when Chloe paused.

“Okay, well. We did two other, smaller jobs for Singer, and we worked our asses off to get this one. We’d work for them anytime. They pay on time, listen if there’s an issue. But we wouldn’t do another job for Bardov.”

“Because?”

“In construction—like in anything, I guess—some cut those corners. Or know which palms to grease. We did good work for Bardov, but we saw some of that. So unless we’re squeezed, we won’t bid on their projects.