The Collector

  At least until Ash pushed his break-in theory, and to Lila’s surprise, Julie bought it wholesale.

  “Why didn’t I think of that!” Julie swung her attention to Lila. “That makes sense, that fits.”

  “You said the teenager fit,” Lila reminded her.

  “Because I was grasping. But what silly teenage girl can get through the locks without leaving a sign? The cops did check the locks.”

  “And a murderer takes away your Manolos and lipstick? Wouldn’t somebody who’d committed double murder have, I don’t know, different priorities?”

  “They’re great shoes, the lipstick is the perfect red—and that perfume isn’t easy to come by. Plus, who says a murderer can’t have sticky-finger impulses? If you can kill two people, stealing is pretty tame. Lila, you need to be careful.”

  “I didn’t see anything that helps the police, and a well-heeled, sweet-smelling killer with perfect red lips would’ve figured that out by now.”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lila turned to Ash immediately. “It’s your brother, and I know it’s not a joke. But you don’t have to worry about me. Nobody has to worry about me.”

  “If she ever gets a tattoo,” Julie commented, “it’s going to say exactly that.”

  “Because it’s true. And even if all this is also true, which is a long, long taffy stretch for me, in a few days I’ll be in a swank apartment on the Upper East Side, with a teacup poodle named Earl Grey.”

  “How do you get the jobs?” Luke wondered. “How do people find you?”

  “A lot of word of mouth, client recommendations. And the gods of the Internet.”

  “You’ve got a website.”

  “I suspect even Earl Grey has a website. But no,” she continued, following the line, “you can’t access my location through it. There’s a calendar showing when I’m already booked, but not where. And I never list clients’ names.”

  “Your blog,” Julie pointed out.

  “I don’t give specific locations, just areas. I never post clients’ names, anywhere. Even the client comments I list only have initials. Listen, here’s what I’d do if I were a murderer wondering if the annoying woman in the complex saw my face, saw enough to identify me. I’d walk up to her on the street one day and ask directions. If she gave them to me without a blink, I’d move along on my murderous ways. If she gasped out, ‘It’s you!’ I’d stab her in the thigh—in the femoral artery with my stiletto—then move along while she bled out. Problem solved either way.

  “Is anybody thinking dinner?” she said in a firm change of subject. “I’m thinking dinner. We can order in.”

  “We’ll take you out.” Luke’s response flowed smoothly. “There’s an Italian place just a couple blocks from here. Great food, stupendous gelato.”

  “Echo Echo.”

  He smiled at Julie. “That’s it. I know the owner. I’ll call over, make sure we can get a table. That work for you?” he asked Lila.

  “Sure, why not?” It wasn’t like a date, she reasoned. Not like some weird double date with her and the brother of the dead guy and her best friend and her best friend’s ex-husband who didn’t really count. It was just eating.

  And eating really well, she discovered over fried calamari and bruschetta brought out as table appetizers. She found it simple enough to keep conversation moving, always a priority for her, by peppering Luke with questions about his bakery.

  “Where did you learn to bake? There’s so much to bake.”

  “My grandmother initially. Then I picked things up along the way.”

  “What happened to law school?” Julie wondered.

  “I hated it.”

  “Told you.”

  “Yeah, you did. I gave it a shot. My parents really wanted either a doctor or a lawyer, and since medical school was worse than law school, I gave it a shot. Worked in an off-campus bakery to help pay the way for the two years I gave it, and liked that a hell of a lot more.”

  “How are your parents?”

  “They’re good. Yours?”

  “The same. I remember the chocolate chip cookies—your grandmother’s recipe—and the really fabulous cake you made me for my eighteenth birthday.”

  “And your mother said, ‘Luke, you could make a living.’”

  Julie laughed. “She did! But I never imagined you would.”

  “Neither did I. Actually, Ash pushed the idea. He’s good at pushing because you usually don’t know he’s pushed you where he thinks you should be until you’re there.”

  “I just said, Why are you working for someone else when you could have people working for you?”

  “Or words to that effect,” Luke finished. “And you, an art gallery. You always loved art, talked about studying art history, that sort of thing.”

  “And I did. I went back to school, moved to New York, wheedled my way into the gallery. I got married, met Lila, got divorced and moved up to manager.”

  “I had nothing to do with any of it,” Lila claimed.

  “Oh, please.”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “We met at yoga class,” Julie began. “Lila and I, not me and Maxim—my ex. We hit it off during up dogs and down dogs, started hitting the juice bar together after. One thing led to another.”

  Lila sighed. “I was seeing someone, and it looked like it might get fairly serious. So, being females, we talked about the men in our lives. I told her about mine. He was great-looking, successful. He traveled a lot, but was very attentive when we were together. And Julie told me about her husband.”

  “Also great-looking and successful. Working longer hours than he once did, and not as attentive as he’d once been. In fact, things were a little rocky, but we were working on smoothing them out.”

  “So with a few yoga sessions, a few smoothies, some sharing of details, it turned out the guy I was seeing was married, to Julie. I was sleeping with her husband, and instead of drowning me in my own smoothie, she dealt.”

  “We dealt.”

  “We did.” Lila tapped her glass to Julie’s. “And our friendship is written in his blood. Not literally,” she added quickly.

  “No violence necessary when you take your husband’s slut—”

  “Ouch.”

  “When you take his slut home for drinks and introduce her to him as your new best friend. He packed up what he could in the twenty minutes I gave him and moved out. Lila and I ate the best part of a half gallon of ice cream.”

  “Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch,” Lila remembered, with a smile that had the little dimple flickering. “Still a favorite. You were so amazing. I just wanted to crawl into the deep dark hole of shame, but not Julie. ‘Let’s get the bastard,’ that was her reaction. So we did.”

  “I ditched the bastard, kept the slut.”

  “I ditched the bastard,” Lila corrected, “and kept the pathetic and clueless wife. Someone had to.”

  “I want to paint you.”

  Lila glanced at Ash. Blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I’ll need you at the loft for some preliminary sketches. A couple of hours would do it to start. What size are you?”

  “What?”

  “She’s a two,” Julie said, “as so many sluts are.” She angled her head. “What are you looking for?”

  “Earthy, sexy gypsy, full skirt, flame red, bold colors in the underskirts.”

  “Really?” Fascinated, Julie turned to Lila, gaze sharp and assessing. “Really.”

  “Stop it. No. Thanks. I’m . . . The knee-jerk is flattered, but I’m more baffled. I’m not a model. I don’t know how to model.”

  “I know what I want, so you don’t have to.” He glanced at the waiter, ordered the pasta special. “Day after tomorrow would work. About ten.”

  “I don’t— What he said’s fine,” she told the waiter. “Thanks. Listen, I don’t—”

  “I can pay you by the hour or a flat fee. We’ll work that out. Do you know how to play up yo
ur eyes?”

  “What?”

  “Of course she does,” Julie put in. “A full-length portrait? She’s got long and excellent legs.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Really, stop.”

  “Lila doesn’t like being spotlighted. Toughen up, Lila-Lou. You’ve just been tapped to model for a highly respected contemporary artist whose fanciful, sometimes disturbing, sometimes whimsical, always sensual paintings are acclaimed. She’ll be there. I’ll get her there.”

  “Might as well give it up,” Luke told her. “You’re going to end up standing where he wants you anyway.”

  “I’ll paint you anyway.” Ash shrugged. “But the work will resonate more, have more depth if you’re involved. Lila-Lou?”

  “Lila Louise, middle name after my father, Lieutenant Colonel Louis Emerson. And you can’t paint me if I say no.”

  “Your face, your body?” He jerked a shoulder. “They’re right out there.”

  “She’ll be there,” Julie repeated. “Come on, time for a little sortie to the ladies’. Excuse us.” To ward off protests, Julie simply rose, took Lila’s hand and hauled her to her feet.

  “He can’t make me model,” Lila hissed as Julie towed her along. “And neither can you.”

  “I bet you’re wrong.”

  “Plus, I’m not an earthy, sexy gypsy type.”

  “There, you’re definitely wrong.” She led Lila down the narrow flight of steps to the restrooms. “You have the coloring, and you have the lifestyle.”

  “One fling with a married man I didn’t know was married, and I have an earthy lifestyle?”

  “A gypsy lifestyle.” Julie drew her into the little bathroom. “It’s a fabulous opportunity—and a chance for an interesting experience, and you’ll be immortalized.”

  “I’ll feel flustered and shy.” Might as well pee since I’m here, Lila thought, and went into a stall. “I hate feeling shy.”

  “He’ll find a way around that.” Following the lead, Julie used the second stall. “And I’m going to lobby to be allowed to sit it on a session or two. I’d love to watch him work, and be able to talk about his process with clients.”

  “You sit for him. You be the sexy, earthy gypsy.”

  “He wants you. He has a vision and he wants you.” At the sink Julie tried the pink-grapefruit-scented soap, approved. “Plus, doing this, giving him a new inspiration, a new project, will help him through the grieving process.”

  In the mirror, Lila narrowed her eyes at Julie’s smug face. “Oh, that’s dirty fighting.”

  “It really is.” Julie refreshed her lip gloss. “Also true. Give it a chance. You’re no coward.”

  “More dirty fighting.”

  “I know.”

  Laughing, Julie patted Lila’s shoulder, then started out. Halfway up the steps she let out a muffled shriek.

  “What? Mouse? What?”

  “My shoes!”

  Julie charged up the steps, skirted around the hostess station, had to dodge and weave around the group of people who’d just come in, then finally shoved her way out the door. Head swiveling left and right, she rushed up the two short steps to the sidewalk.

  “Damn it!”

  “Julie, what the hell?”

  “The shoes, my shoes. The shoes, really great legs, some sort of ankle tat. Short red dress. I couldn’t see much more.”

  “Julie, Manolo made more than one pair of those shoes.”

  “They were mine. Think about it.” She whirled around, six feet of flaming female fury. “You see the murder, somebody breaks into my place, takes my shoes. Now I see a woman wearing them leaving a restaurant where we came for dinner—a restaurant just a couple blocks from the murder?”

  Frowning, Lila rubbed at suddenly chilly arms in the evening heat. “Now you’re creeping me out.”

  “Ash could be right. Whoever killed his brother’s keeping tabs on you. You need to talk to the police again.”

  “Now you’re seriously creeping me out. I’ll tell them, fine, I will. I promise. But they’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “Just tell them. And put a chair under the doorknob tonight.”

  “They broke into your place, not where I’m staying.”

  “I’ll put a chair under the doorknob, too.”

  Jai slid into the car about the time Julie hit the top of the stairs. She didn’t like this connection between the brother of the idiot and this nosy woman who’d been watching the apartment.

  She hadn’t seen enough, so it seemed, to cause any problem. But no, Jai didn’t like this connection.

  Her employer wouldn’t care for all these dangling ends.

  They wouldn’t be dangling if Ivan hadn’t pushed the stupid whore out the window, and if the idiot hadn’t passed out after a few drinks. She hadn’t put that many pills in the bourbon.

  So she could only deduce he’d already taken some before her arrival.

  Bad luck, she thought. She didn’t care for bad luck either, and this job brought a streak of it.

  Maybe the brother knew something after all, had something.

  He had his loft secured like a fortress, but it was time to get around that. She had a couple hours, she imagined, as he was having dinner with the nosy one.

  “The brother’s place,” she told Ivan. “Take me there, then go back, sit on the brother and the others. Contact me when they leave.”

  “We’re wasting time. The bitch didn’t know anything, and they didn’t have anything. If they ever did, they sold it.”

  Why did she have to work with morons? “You’re paid to do what I tell you. Do what I tell you.”

  And then, she thought, she’d deal with at least one of those dangling ends.

  Lila didn’t argue when Ash insisted on walking her home—because Luke insisted on doing the same with Julie, in the opposite direction.

  “It’s interesting you knowing both Julie and Luke, considering the history.”

  “Life’s full of the strange.”

  “It is. And it was strange seeing all that sparkage between them.”

  “Sparkage?”

  “Old flame, low smolder, a few fresh sparks.” She made a pow sound as she flicked her hands in the air.

  “Old flame, short, crappy marriage. Doused.”

  “Bet.”

  “Bet?”

  “You’re not paying a lot of attention because you keep repeating what I say, and I say I bet—let’s say ten bucks—there’s a pow and not a fizzle.”

  “I’ll take that bet. He’s already half seeing somebody.”

  “Half seeing’s just sex, and the somebody isn’t Julie. They look great together. All handsome and healthy and built.”

  “Come by my place.”

  “Wait. What?” She felt a quick buzz—fresh sparks—and thought it wise to avoid the singe. “I knew you weren’t paying attention.”