“Shit coffee or shit tea. Maybe shit cocoa.”

  Eve continued on and pushed through the doors of Morris’s home away from home.

  Like Roarke, he didn’t wear one of his sharp suits today, and again, it threw her for a moment. Instead, under his clear protective cape he wore a green T-shirt with jeans and black kicks. He’d wound his dark hair into a single thick braid.

  Today’s choice of music as he stood over the dead ran to something jazzy with a lot of complicated piano.

  “Sorry to pull you in on a Saturday.”

  He just smiled. “The dead may, we hope, rest in peace, but the work for them never rests.”

  “I hear you. His wife states he wasn’t feeling well, turned in early. Wheezy, slight fever, so she slept in the guest room.”

  With a nod, Morris gestured toward Barrister’s open body cavity. “Upper respiratory infection. Not serious, but enough to make him feel, in medical terms, like crap, and warrant an early night.

  “Otherwise, I’m finding a healthy male, one in good physical shape. Muscle tone indicates regular exercise. Last meal, chicken soup, eaten at about seven last night. He’d taken OTC cold meds, had some valerian tea with lemon. I’d say closer to eight last night.”

  “Which is worse?” She stepped up to the slab. “Murdered when you’re feeling great, or murdered when you feel, in those medical terms, like crap? Kind of a toss-up, but I think I’d rather go out feeling great.”

  “I’d have to agree. Who wants their last moments dominated by a raw throat or gastronomical distress?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Either way, you’re on a slab. No sleep meds then?”

  “Nothing more than what’s in the cold tabs, but the lab will confirm with the tox report. He shows no sign of addiction, illegals, alcohol, tobacco, herbals.”

  “Mild injuries to the face, knees. Hit from behind, fell forward, knees hit, face hit.”

  “That’s accurate. A blow to the back of the head with a heavy object. In your prelim notes last night you indicated a rock. I didn’t see your updated report before I left this morning.”

  “Yeah, sorry, I didn’t write it up until shortly before I left.”

  “Understandable. Given his TOD, I imagine you didn’t get home until near to four this morning.”

  “That’s about right. Big rock.” She held her hands apart. “Sort of club-shaped. Roarke ID’d it as an amethyst.”

  “An amethyst.”

  “Yeah, big purple rock.” She pulled out her ’link, brought up the crime scene photo as Peabody walked in.

  “Sorry, sorry. Delay with the subway, so I hiked it. Whew.”

  “I just read that three miles a day keeps the Reaper at bay.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I read it on a T-shirt, so it must be true.”

  “Nothing keeps the Reaper at bay forever, but you’ll die in better shape.” Morris studied the image. “That’s a beautiful stone. A pity to use it for taking a life.”

  “It’ll need to be cleansed,” Peabody said.

  “Seeing as it’s got blood and brains on it, yeah, they’ll need to clean it up.”

  Smiling, Morris stepped back to the body. “I believe Peabody means a spiritual cleansing. Still, if his family loved him, they won’t want it back. Your notes indicated a break-in.”

  “That’s also accurate.”

  Eve filled him in while he worked, and Peabody found something—anything—else to focus on.

  “Fascinating. What joy does someone gain by hoarding the precious only for themselves?” He shook his head.

  “Considering the OTC meds, round about eight, is it likely he’d have woken, gone down sometime after twelve-thirty, heading toward one?”

  “With the infection at this stage, it’s very likely he’d have slept poorly, even with the meds, and after four hours or so, very likely been restless.”

  With his microgoggles in place, he opened Barrister’s mouth, shined a light. “His throat’s inflamed. Again, it’s not serious, but would be very uncomfortable.”

  “So he gets up.” Eve began to pace. “Goes down. Maybe going to get more tea, take more meds. But he didn’t. He goes into the office. Did he hear something, see something? Maybe just glanced in, saw the vault open. Possible.”

  “No defensive wounds,” Morris told her. “Nothing to indicate a struggle.”

  “Bashed from behind. Never saw it coming. A couple minutes, maybe three minutes later, because she’s looking for him, because she hears something fall, his wife walks in and finds him. Just him. Killer’s gone, that fast.”

  She frowned. “The window’s closed. He closed the window behind him. But not the vault.”

  “The window’s the escape route,” Peabody pointed out. “Takes a second to close it, and then nobody’s going over to look out and see you running away.”

  “And it would take longer to close the vault, close the panel. Yeah.”

  She slid her hands into her pockets. “His daughters are coming in from college. They may want to see him. I’m going to do a follow-up with the family later today.”

  “I’ll have him ready for their goodbyes by noon. If they want to visit later than one, Cicero will be on duty. I’m scheduled to meet Garnet and her daughter about that time. We’re going to the street fair.”

  Garnet DeWinter, Eve thought, scientist, bone expert, and fashion plate.

  “That’ll be fun. McNab and I were going but, you know, dead guy. But Mavis, Leonardo, and Bella are. You should tag them, maybe meet up.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “We’ll get out of your way.” Eve took a last look at the body. “If he hadn’t had a cold, he’d probably be alive.”

  As they walked out, Eve ran through the timing again in her head. “It’s all so damn close. If the wife checks on him after he wakes up, but before he goes down, she’s likely the one who goes for tea or whatever. Or gets him more meds. Need to check if they’ve got an AutoChef in the bedroom, because why not program tea there if that’s what he wanted?”

  “The cook kept loose valerian tea leaves in the pantry. He didn’t want any at dinner, but she suggested he have some before bed. Since they keep it for a kind of sleep aid, and nobody actually likes it, it’s not programmed. She always makes it at the time, a cup when needed, and adds fresh lemon because he prefers that when he’s not feeling well.”

  “That covers that. I want you to contact the MTs who worked on him, get the position of the body when they arrived—in relation to the vault, the door, the desk, the window. How much they had to move it to examine and pronounce.”

  “Okay.”

  “It won’t be much. The uniforms were right behind them.”

  Outside, Eve got behind the wheel. “We’ll work at Central. I’ve done a deeper run on the victim, and I’ll copy you. We need one on the wife, sister, daughters, staff, and the dead father.

  “Probably at some point the dead father’s four ex-wives.”

  She pushed back into traffic, already thickening, and headed downtown.

  “We’re going to split the list of stolen items in the vault. Since it’s Saturday, we might not reach anyone with real authority. But I’m betting when we say, ‘Hey, we found your priceless painting of an unripe pear,’ they perk up and get us somebody.”

  “How about telling somebody at the Tate, ‘Hey, we found out where your bunch of emeralds and diamonds were, but oops, they’re gone again’?”

  “Yeah, that’ll be a knee-slapper.”

  She had to be careful, had to be guarded in what she told Peabody and how. And she hated it.

  “Roarke’s reaching out to some contacts. So far there’s no talk about any of this. The theft, the murder, or the fact that Barrister had a load of stolen art and jewelry in a vault in New York.”

  Peabody gave her the side-eye—Eve felt it. “Okay. I guess there will be talk about it all pretty soon.”

  “That may be to our advantage. He thinks, and I agree, this Royal Suite is too recognizable, too famous, for a fence—even a high-end one.”

  “So somebody wants to do what Barrister did—the father anyway—keep them all locked away just for him.”

  “Maybe. Or, and what feels more likely, or at least worth pursuing: auction. Exclusive, underground. Then somebody with piles of money locks them away and gloats over them.”

  “It’s stupid, you know?” Shaking her head, Peabody looked down at her cowboy boots. “Somebody with that kind of money could buy whatever the hell they wanted.”

  “The David thing. The big-ass David statue thing. He has a big ass, all tight and toned, and in proportion, but big.”

  “Okay, not that. But you want to wear emeralds as big as my fist, you buy them. But someone like the vic’s father—his type—that’s not enough. They want the shine. It’s really a smear, but they see it as a shine, of taking it, hoarding it.”

  When they turned into the garage at Central, Peabody shifted. “Is it really, really frosty? The David. I mean seeing it for real, is it frost extreme?”

  “I didn’t think it would be. Okay, so a giant statue of a naked boy with a slingshot. So?”

  She pulled into her slot, parked, sat a moment. “It doesn’t seem possible. It’s taking your breath, dropping your jaw, and you’re thinking that can’t be real, and why is it so beautiful, this giant naked boy with a slingshot? How did anyone create that level of detail out of a giant slab of marble anyway? So take frost extreme up however many more notches are left, then double that.”

  Peabody sighed. “One of these days I’m going to see it for myself. That and all the other really frosty extremes.”

  They got out of the car, walked to the elevator.

  “All somebody like Henry Barrister can do is gloat,” Peabody added. “They can’t really admire or look in wonder. It’s just stupid.”

  “If he wasn’t dead, it’d be a pleasure to lock him up instead of all his loot. But since he is, and we’ve got murder attached to this theft, Roarke’s going to keep his ear to the ground. And we’re going to have EDD looking for chatter on the underground. We’re going to see if we can pull in Detective Willowby. Underground shit’s her specialty.”

  “That’s a good call. Do you want me to reach out?”

  “No, I’ll do it. Talk to the medicals, start your half of the loot list.”

  They walked into a mercifully empty elevator.

  “Get what you can get done by one, then take off. Hit the street fair.”

  “Oh, but you said you were doing a follow-up at Barrister House.”

  “And I can handle it. You can push on the rest of the list tomorrow. But Sundays are worse than Saturdays.”

  When the elevator opened and two annoyed-looking uniforms hauled in an even more annoyed-looking man of about twenty-five—trench coat, baggies, well-worn kicks—she resigned herself to the company of a busted street thief.

  “I found that stuff. You can’t prove otherwise. I told you, I found it, picked it up. Finders keepers.”

  The uniform on the right cast her eyes up. “Right, dipshit, you just happened to find three wallets, two ’links, and a wrist unit while strolling down Broadway.”

  “That’s right! You can’t prove otherwise. It’s my fault they’re just lying there?”

  The second cop slanted a look back at Eve and Peabody. “Yeah, like all the stuff you got busted for strolling along with last time was just lying there.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re really bad at this,” the first cop decided as they muscled him off again.

  “Some people,” Eve considered, “should just get a regular job. It may suck to bus tables or ring up sales at a twenty-four/seven, but it’s got to be better than cooling it in a cell for thirty or sixty days a couple times a year.”

  They got off, walked down to Homicide to find Baxter and Trueheart at their desks. The young, earnest Detective Trueheart worked his comp. The slick-dressed Baxter had his fancy Italian shoes on his desk, his chair kicked back, his eyes closed.

  “Since you caught the weekend roll, shouldn’t you actually do something to earn the pay?”

  Baxter opened his eyes. He touched a finger to the side of his head in casual salute. “Been quiet, and we caught up on paperwork so pulled a cold one. My boy’s doing some research on it. I’m giving it some thinking time.”

  Since she often took her thinking time in the same position, she couldn’t bitch.

  “Saw you caught one,” he continued, “so we put it on the board.”

  She glanced over, saw Trueheart’s precise printing.

  “B and E gone south. If you need extra hands or brain cells, we can put the cold one back on ice.”

  “What’s the cold one?”

  “Eight years cold. Woman mugged to death in Central Park. Looks like a mugging—struggle, she falls, cracks her head open on a rock. Looks that way, until you squint.”

  “Keep on it.”

  She went to her office, hit the AC for coffee, and drank some of it looking out her single, skinny window. Another position she favored for thinking time.

  First question: How did the thief and/or whoever hired him, if hired, know about the vault and contents?

  First answer: As a general rule, a secret’s only a secret if everybody who knows about it is dead.

  Conclusion: Someone in the family let it slip to someone else. Maybe the estate lawyer knew about the vault all along. Or he just found out as stated, and someone in his office let it slip. The dead father confessed/bragged/let it slip on his deathbed. Or he told one of his several wives along the way. Or a fuck buddy. Or the staff knew more than they admitted.

  Alternate conclusion: Someone in the household set it up so they could pocket a whole bunch of money. Or start their own secret collection.

  Hire the thief—maybe through a broker. It would take time to set it all up for the break-in.

  “And they’d need that,” Eve mused. “Can’t just go in, pocket a bunch of stuff. Gotta have the break-in, and it has to be real to pass the cop sniff test.”

  Drinking coffee, she paced.

  But why not schedule it when the family’s out? On a holiday, out for dinner and a show, something? No way, of course, to predict Barrister would come down with a cold, feel crappy, get up, and find the vault open.

  Bad luck, she thought, and tight timing.

  She sat to open the murder book, added what she’d learned from Morris. Then set up her board.

  Before she started on her portion of the list, she mimicked Baxter, but kept her eyes open and on the board.

  If the wife were involved, the timing shouldn’t have been so tight. If she knew the break-in would happen at that time, wouldn’t she have made damn sure her husband didn’t go anywhere near the office? Slip him a stronger sleep aid—simple enough—and keep an eye out in case.

  If the murder was part of it, the timing hit wrong again. Leave him lying there until morning, or at least another hour or so. Then scream your ass off.

  “Doesn’t work. Doesn’t fit, not really. And her story holds, right down the line.”

  It wouldn’t stop Eve from doing a deeper run, then working her way through the rest of the family.

  But she had to deal with a vault full of stolen property. And she had an idea on that.

  She reached out, across the Atlantic, to Inspector Abernathy of Interpol.

  When his face came on-screen, she thought he looked as pinched and snooty as ever, with a layer of the smooth over it. But she noticed he wore a casual shirt, and behind him some sort of bush with a bunch of little blue flowers bloomed.

  “Lieutenant. There’s nothing you can say that will move me from my garden and into a train, a plane, or a car going anywhere.”

  “Okay. Then I guess you wouldn’t be interested hearing about a vault full of stolen art and jewelry, much of which came from various points in Europe. Have a great weekend! Bye.”

  “Wait. What vault?”

  “The vault inherited by a guy currently on a slab in the morgue. He earned his place there by, apparently, interrupting a thief. The thief did manage to get away with something for his trouble. Just a little something called the Royal Suite. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

  He straightened in his chair as if electrocuted. “You have the thief? You have the Royal Suite?”

  “No, I have a dead man, and a lot of other stolen property nicely displayed and carefully cataloged in a vault on the Upper East Side. But I’m interrupting your Saturday.”

  “Shut up. I need the details.”

  “Which is it? I shut up, or give you the details?”

  He sniffed, then he hissed. “You can stop winding me up now.”

  “I’m sort of enjoying it. Nathan Barrister, son of Henry Barrister, who founded Zip Global, the shipping and delivery giant, was murdered last night.”

  Since she’d—mostly—finished winding him up, she ran through those details, cop to cop.

  “We will, of course, keep the property safely secured. We will, of course, have each item authenticated. And we will, of course, begin the process of having each item returned to its rightful owner. I assumed, correct me if I’m wrong, Interpol would have an interest in assisting in that, I expect, complicated process.”

  He was up now, pacing. “I need a list, a description, and a photo of every item.”

  “I have that for you.”

  “I’ll contact my superiors immediately. We will, naturally, take over possession and security for the property.”

  “No. That property is connected to a murder in my city. Just throttle back,” she ordered before he could speak. “I’m inviting you in, I’m giving you a big, shiny gift because we both know the light’s going to blast all over this. Billions of dollars of stolen art, artifacts, and jewelry, recovered after—in some cases—several decades. But my priority is Nathan Barrister, is finding the person responsible for caving his head in. Next in line, recovering the emeralds. And finally, seeing that everything goes back where it belongs.”

  He didn’t look snooty now, but frustrated and anxious.

  “You fail to understand that the Royal Suite is far too valuable and far too well-known to be treated like an ordinary theft. In the hours since it’s been taken it’s very likely found a place in yet another vault, and may very well be held there until it can be put up for auction exclusive to those who not only can afford its worth but care nothing for how it was acquired.”