That left her more than sixty to interview, and a sexy artist chick who might, potentially, identify a missing piece of art.
She grabbed her ’link when it signaled, saw Harvo on the readout.
“Give me a name.”
“Hi back.” Harvo’s hair, currently short, spiked into lethal points and blazing orange threatened to melt the screen.
“Hi. Give me a name.”
“Delores Larga Markin. Want the rest?”
“Whatever you’ve got.”
“Being me, I got it all.” A heart-shaped blue stone winked on the left side of Harvo’s nose as she turned to read from her own screen. “Female—and a natural redhead—age twenty-eight. Sending you her address and contact info now. She’s the younger of two daughters. Mom’s Carlotta Larga, empress of footwear.”
“Footwear has an empress?”
“You’ve probably worn her seeing as you married the sexy rich guy. I’ve got a pair of the knockoffs myself. Anyhoo, the empress has been married to Phillipe Larga for a zillion years. One marriage, only marriage for both. The daughter—our redhead—is also a designer for Larga’s secondary line, Alores, named for both daughters, Alora and Delores. They’re all stupid rich. The redhead’s been married to Hugo Markin, a scion—frosty word scion—of Roger Markin, the casino king for a couple years.”
“Gambling,” Eve mused aloud.
“Roll those dice,” Harvo said cheerfully. “Spin that wheel. Obviously if redheaded Delores lost her hair of intimacy in your dead guy’s hair of intimacy, they were having intimacy.”
“Obviously. Thanks for the quick work.”
“Hey, this was breezy. Next time give me a challenge.”
“I’ll work on it.”
She clicked off, started a run on the redhead and the scion. Then picked up another tag, this one from Trueheart.
“Sir. Baxter’s still with Ms. Kelsi. She can’t be absolutely sure, but she thinks the missing artwork might be from one of three artists.”
“Three?”
“She thinks—again, not a hundred percent—Banks took those three off the books. We took her back to Banks’s apartment for another on-site look. None of them are here at the crime scene. She needs to get back to the gallery, check there, but she’s pretty sure it’s one of these three. Angelo Richie, Selma Witt, Simon Fent. All the art in that area of the crime scene are what she calls, ah, figure studies.”
“Naked people.”
“Yes, sir. And black-and-white studies, like charcoal or pencil drawings and that sort of thing. She knows these three artists used that, ah, form and medium for some of their work.”
“Take her back to the gallery, see if she can pinpoint. And get me more data on whoever she pinpoints. All three, if that’s the closest she gets. I want locations and contact info on the artists asap.”
“Yes, sir.”
Something there, she thought when she clicked off. Something. And she’d pull that line as soon as she finished
pulling the one on the Markins.
After finishing a run on both, she got up, grabbed her coat. “Peabody,” she said as she swung through the bullpen. “With me.”
Coat in hand, scarf already winding, Peabody hustled to catch up. “I’ve got ten dropped down to the bottom of the list. I get why you had them on there, but—”
“That’s on hold. Harvo ID’d the redhead.”
“The . . . oh, that redhead.”
“Delores Larga Markin.”