“You were upset.” All sympathy, Peabody nodded. “Disappointed.”
“Crushed, beyond reason really. We’d already arranged for the nanny to stay the night. I’d bought a new frock. I just went. The hell with it. I wanted to go to this opening, I’d just go. So I did.”
“You met Banks,” Eve finished.
“Yes. He was there, and somehow we started talking about one of the paintings. He was so charming and attentive. I flirted, I did, partially because I was angry with Drew, but primarily because it felt so good to have someone pay attention.”
“You’d spent nearly two years of the last three pregnant.” Sticking with the theme, Peabody layered on more understanding. “You wanted to feel like a person, a woman. Not just a mother.”
“Oh, God, yes. It was wrong, but I had a drink with him after, and we talked, about art and literature and cinema. We just talked. He kissed my hand when he put me in a cab. Just my hand. But he said he’d only be in London for a few days, and wouldn’t I have lunch with him. He hated to eat alone.
“So I did. The next day, I left my babies with the nanny and I went to have lunch with him, and flirt with him. And the next day I met him again. A drink, in the middle of the afternoon. It felt so wonderfully wicked. And this time he kissed me, and I let him. In the bar of his hotel. And he asked me to come up to his suite.”
She stopped, pressed both hands to her face. “I almost did. I’m so ashamed of that. Part of me wanted to. But the rest of me was appalled. What was I doing? What was I doing with this man I didn’t even know while my husband was working, while my babies were home with the nanny? I told him no. I apologized because it was my doing, it was my fault. I left, and I never saw him again. I swear to you.”
“What did you tell him about the merger?”
“The merger? We didn’t really talk about—”
“You told him you were married,” Eve interrupted. “You wear a ring. Did he sympathize, say flattering things when you told him your husband was always working.”
“I . . . yes, I suppose so. Yes. He said—something like—he’d never be able to keep his mind on work with such a beautiful, vibrant woman at home. And he asked what was so important it kept him away.”
“And you told him.”
“I . . .” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “I did, just that it felt like the family business was more important than family to him right now, and he was so wrapped up in crafting this deal with Econo, he barely knew I was home.”
“You mentioned Econo specifically?”
“I did. Yes, I did.”
“Did he ask you more about it?”
“He might have. Yes, of course he did. I was complaining, and someone—a very attractive, charming man—listened to me, sympathized with me.”
“What did you tell him?”
“There wasn’t much to tell, honestly. It was all just getting started. Things like Drew and his father, some others were meeting with Willimina Karson and some of her people. How Drew spent so much time traveling to New York, and in meetings. I resented it, all of it, and maybe because I wasn’t part of it. Honestly, I was stupid and selfish, but there wasn’t enough to tell. There weren’t any real details. If he was involved in this, I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all.”
Eve did, but she let Sybil go. And though it was only for form, spoke with the others.
“Well, shit,” Peabody said when they got back in the car. “Do you think she’ll figure out she got the exploding ball rolling?”
“Maybe. But Banks took that fragment of a ball, rolled it over to Karson and expanded it. Then for ego or profit, he tosses the expanded ball around. Somebody else fields it, weaponized it, and boom.”
“Do you think Banks set up Sybil?”
“No way he could know she’d come to that art opening, and come alone. He saw an opportunity—good-looking woman and wealthy, as the rock she’s wearing on her finger would tell him. Also married, but alone. Strike up a conversation, get a feel. Okay, the lady’s vulnerable, unhappy,” Eve said as she pulled into traffic. “He just exploits that. Probably figuring he can get laid, maybe skin her for a few bucks. Then she drops the seed of the merger in his lap.”
“He does a little research,” Peabody continued, staring out into the rain as she thought it through. “And look here, Willimina Karson—very attractive, unattached, and a good source for more information. Arrange to meet her, charm her, pursue her, attach, and milk her for whatever he can get. I think he probably figured to make some money on the insider trading part of it—or whatever it’s called—and puffed himself up bragging about it. To the wrong people. Now he’s dead, too.”
“It plays,” Eve agreed. “Right down the line. Here’s how I see it: The idiot contacted them, or one of them. He tells them he’s figured it out, and wants a cut. Maybe he threatens to rat them out, maybe he’s that stupid, but the wanting a cut’s enough. Loose end.”
Eve made a fist, twisted it.
“Snap.”
“We’re probably not looking for an inside man,” Eve concluded. “Anyone on the inside wouldn’t need the tidbits Banks could blather about. But he knew them, or at least one of them, well enough to brag, maybe offer the information for a small fee or favor. Well enough he walked into Central Park to meet up.”
“People like Banks? They do so much slithering and sliding they don’t think anything’s ever going to stick to them. He figured he had those two over a barrel.”
“Yeah. Let’s go see what Morris can tell us about Banks falling off the barrel and breaking his neck.”
* * *
By the time Eve walked through the white tunnel of the morgue the rain had eased to a piss-trickle of chilly wet, one that looked and felt as if it would continue to drip, drip, drip, until somebody came along with a giant wrench and fixed the damn faucet.
The morgue smelled of chemical lemons and death, and through Morris’s double doors, low-down blues played. He wore a protective cape over a suit of forest green with needle-thin gold stripes. He’d paired it with a shirt of dull gold, a deep green tie, and used both colors in cords wound through his long, dark braid.
With sealed hands he lifted the liver from Banks’s splayed torso to weigh. Smiled over at Eve and Peabody.
“A morning made for blues and bed, but since we can’t have both . . .” Still, he ordered the volume on the music to decrease.
“It’s slowing down,” Eve told him. “It’s down to really freaking annoying.”
“Could be worse,” he said, cleaning the blood off his sealed hands. “Could be snowing, and I’ve had enough of that this winter.”
“I’m forcing some narcissus—paper whites—in the kitchen,” Peabody told him. “They get me through the last of the winter.”
“I’ll have to try that myself.”
“The dead guy probably doesn’t care about rain or snow or whatever narcissus is,” Eve pointed out.
“A very pretty and fragrant flower,” Morris told her. “A harbinger of spring. In any case . . . I’m told our dead guy was pulled out of the JKO by a couple of boys too insulated by various substances to worry about the filthy weather or the jump into the drink.”
“Young and stupid. Without the young or stupid, Banks would have spent another couple of hours in the water. Not a prime day for jogging in the park.”
“Your killer had to have some muscle to get Banks over the fence.”
“There were probably two of them.”
“Ah, that would help. Still, it took some upper-body strength and skill to break this neck manually.”
“Military training, most probable.”
“And logical. From behind,” Morris added. “Dominant right hand. The late Mr. Banks didn’t put up a fight. No defensive wounds, no other injuries. He’d consumed quite a bit of red wine along with some brie and herbed crackers—rosemary—two deviled dove eggs, about a quarter ounce of beluga, with the accoutrements: a few marinated olives, some goose liver pâté. He capped all that off with a few ounces of absinthe.”
“Party food,” Eve stated. “Expensive cocktail party.”
“The goose liver and the absinthe? He’d have enjoyed that less than an hour prior to his TOD.”
“Left the party, went to the park. The killers may have been at the party,” she speculated as she studied the body. “Or arranged for the meeting after. He knew them, told them I was poking around. So . . .” She twisted her hands in the air. “Snap. Tox?”
“Sent off. We should have the full results fairly quickly. He didn’t just eat and drink at the party,” Morris added.
He picked up a clear sample case from his tray, held it up. Inside, Eve saw the single bright red hair.
“Pubic hair, combed out of his own,” Morris told her. “I’ll send it to Harvo at the lab.”
“It’ll be female. There’s nothing to indicate he was into same-sex play. DNA would be helpful.”
“If the owner’s in the system, our queen of hair and fiber will track her down. I can tell you he’s had a bit of work here and there,” Morris continued as he set the case back on the tray. “Face and body, nothing major. As you can see, he believed in pubic grooming—of the permanent sort.”
Eve glanced at the narrow line of hair. “Made it easy to spot the stray red hair.”
“It did. The evidence indicates he died well-fed, buzzed, and sexually satisfied. I don’t suppose that’s much comfort to him.”
“Or me, since I was looking forward to slapping him in a cage as an accessory. Thanks, Morris.”
“We’re here to serve.”
As they walked out, he ordered the music up again, on a sob of tenor sax.