The Collector (5 page)

Instead, obsessing, she grabbed her iPad, went on a search for any stories about the murder.

“Runway model falls to her death,” she read. “I knew it. She was built for it.”

Grabbing the last cupcake—knowing better but grabbing it anyway—she ate while reading the sketchy story about the two deaths. Sage Kendall. She even had a model's name, Lila thought. “And Oliver Archer. Mr. Slick had a name, too. She was only twenty-four, Thomas. Four years younger than me. She did some commercials. I wonder if I've seen her. And why does that make it worse somehow?”

No, she had to stop, do what she'd just told herself to do. Clean herself up and get out for a while.

The shower helped, as did pulling on a light summer dress and sandals. Makeup helped more, she admitted, as she was still pale and hollow-eyed.

She'd walk out of the neighborhood—away from her own thoughts,
maybe find somewhere for a quick, decent lunch. Then she could call Julie, maybe ask her to come over again so she could just dump all this out on a sympathetic, nonjudgmental ear.

“I'll be back in a couple hours, Thomas.”

She started out, walked back, picked up the card Detective Fine had given her. She couldn't reasonably stop obsessing until she'd finished obsessing, she told herself. And there was nothing wrong with an eyewitness to the murder portion of a murder/suicide asking the investigating detective if they'd closed the case.

In any case, it would be a short, pleasant walk. Maybe she'd use the pool when she got back. She wasn't technically supposed to have use of the complex's pool or gym as a non-resident, but the most considerate Macey had wheedled around that block.

She could swim off the dregs of fatigue, stress, upset, then end the day with a whine session to her best friend.

Tomorrow, she'd go back to work. Life had to go on. Death reminded everyone life had to go on.

A
sh emptied the contents of the bag. “Effects,” they called them, he thought. Personal effects. The watch, the ring, the wallet—with too much cash, the card case with too many credit cards. The silver key ring from Tiffany's. The watch, the ring, had likely come from there—or Cartier's, or somewhere Oliver had deemed important enough. The slim silver lighter, too.

All the shiny pocket debris his brother had gathered up on the last day of his life.

Oliver, always on the edge of the next big thing, the next big score, the next big anything. Charming, careless Oliver.

Dead.

“He had an iPhone, we're still processing it.”

“What?” He looked up at the detective—Fine, he remembered. Detective Fine, with the soft blue eyes full of secrets. “I'm sorry, what?”

“We're still processing his phone, and when we've cleared the apartment, we'll need you to go through with us, identify his possessions. As I said, his license lists an address in the West Village, but our information is he moved out three months ago.”

“Yeah, you said. I don't know.”

“You hadn't seen him for . . . ?”

He'd told her, told her and her hard-faced partner all of it when they'd come to his loft. Notification, that's what they called it. Personal effects, notification. The stuff of novels and series television. Not his life.

“A couple of months. Three or four months, I guess.”

“But you spoke with him a few days ago.”

“He called, talked about meeting for a drink, catching up. I was busy, I put him off, told him we'd make it next week. Jesus.” Ash pressed his fingers to his eyes.

“I know this is hard. You said you hadn't met the woman he'd been living with for the past three months, almost four months now.”

“No. He mentioned her when he called. Bragging some—hot model. I didn't pay much attention. Oliver brags, it's his default.”

“He didn't mention any trouble between him and the hot model?”

“Just the opposite. She was great, they were great, everything was great.” He looked down at his hands, noticed a smudge of cerulean blue on the side of his thumb.

He'd been painting when they'd come to his loft. He'd been annoyed by the interruption—then the world changed.

It all changed with a few words.

“Mr. Archer?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Everything was fucking great. That's how Oliver works. Everything's great unless it's . . .”

“Unless?”

Ash dragged his hands through his mop of black hair. “Look, he's family, and now he's dead, and I'm trying to get my head around that. I'm not going to punch at him.”

“It's not punching at him, Mr. Archer. The better picture I have of him, the better I can resolve what happened.”

Maybe that was true, maybe it was. Who was he to judge?

“Okay, Oliver ran hot. Hot deals, hot women, hot clubs. He liked to party.”

“Live large.”

“Yeah, you could say. He liked to consider himself a player, but God, he wasn't. Always the high-stakes table for Oliver, and if he won—gambling, a business deal, a woman—he'd lose it and more in the next round. So everything was great, until it wasn't and he needed somebody to pull him out. He's charming and clever and . . . was.”

The single word slashed through him. Oliver would never be charming and clever again.

“He's his mother's youngest, her only son, and basically? He was overindulged.”

“You said he wasn't violent.”

“No.” Ash pulled himself back from the grief—that was for later—but he let the quick flash of temper come through. “I didn't say Oliver wasn't violent, I said he was the opposite of violent.” It stuck in his gut like a knife, the accusation that his brother had killed. “He'd talk himself out of a bad situation, or run from it. If he couldn't talk himself out of it—and that was rare—or run from it, he'd hide from it.”

“Yet we have a witness claiming he struck his girlfriend multiple times before shoving her out a fourteenth-story window.”

“The witness is wrong,” Ash said flatly. “Oliver's more full of bullshit and delusions of grandeur than anyone I know, but he'd never hit a woman. And he sure as hell wouldn't kill one. Over and above? He'd never kill himself.”

“There was a lot of alcohol and drugs in the apartment. Oxy, coke, marijuana, Vicodin.”

As she spoke, cop-cool, Ash imagined her as a Valkyrie—dispassionate in her power. He'd paint her astride a horse, her wings folded, overlooking a battlefield, face carved like stone as she decided who lived, who died.

“We're still waiting on the tox screens, but there were pills and a half-empty bottle of Maker's Mark, a glass still holding a finger of it, on the table beside your brother's body.”

Drugs, alcohol, murder, suicide. The family, he thought, would suffer. He had to pull this knife out of his gut, had to make them see they were wrong.

“Drugs, bourbon, no argument. Oliver was no Boy Scout, but the rest? I don't believe it. The witness is either lying or mistaken.”

“The witness has no reason to lie.” Even as she said it, Fine spotted Lila, visitor's badge clipped to the strap of her dress, walking into the squad room. “Excuse me a minute.”

She rose, headed Lila off. “Ms. Emerson. Did you remember something else?”

“No, sorry. I can't get it out of my head. I keep seeing her falling. Keep seeing her begging before he— Sorry. I needed to get out, and I thought I'd come in just to see if you've finished . . . closed it. If you know for certain what happened.”

“It's still an open investigation. We're waiting on some reports, conducting other interviews. It takes a little time.”

“I know. I'm sorry. Will you tell me when it's done?”

“I'll take care of that. You've been helpful.”

“And now I'm in the way. I should go, get back. You're busy.” She scanned the room. Desks, phones, computers, stacks of files and a handful of men and women working.

And a man in a black T-shirt and jeans carefully sliding a watch into a padded bag.

“Everyone's busy.”

“We appreciate the help.” Fine waited until Lila started out, then walked back to her desk and Ash.

“Look, I've told you everything I can think of,” he began, and got to his feet. “Gone over it a couple times now. I need to contact his mother, my family. I need a little time to deal with this.”

“I understand. We may need to talk to you again, and we'll contact you when it's clear for you to enter the apartment. I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Archer.”

He only nodded, walked out.

And immediately scanned for the brunette in the thin summer dress. He caught a glimpse—grass green skirt, long, straight tail of hair the color of a strong mocha—as she took the stairs down.

He hadn't caught much of her conversation with the girl cop, but enough to be fairly certain she'd seen something that had to do with Oliver's death.

Though the stairs were nearly as busy as the hallways, the squad room, he caught up with her, touched her arm.

“Excuse me, Miss . . . Sorry, I didn't quite catch your name up there.”

“Oh. Lila. Lila Emerson.”

“Right. I'd like to talk to you if you've got a few minutes.”

“Okay. You're working with Detectives Fine and Waterstone?”

“In a way.”

On the main level, with cops coming and going, with visitors working their way through security, she unpinned her badge, set it on the sergeant's counter. After the briefest hesitation, he took his own out of his pocket, did the same.

“I'm Oliver's brother.”

“Oliver?” It took her a moment, which told him she hadn't known Oliver personally. Then her eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Thanks. If you'd talk to me about this, it might—”

“I'm not sure I should, that I'm supposed to.” She looked around, gauged her ground. Then looked back into his face, into the grief. “I don't know.”

“A cup of coffee. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. Public place. There's got to be a coffee shop around here, and it's probably full of cops. Please.”

He had eyes like Thomas's—sharp and green—but she could see sadness in them. Sharp features, too, she thought, as if someone had carved them out with a keen and clever blade. The stubble gave him an intriguingly dangerous look, but the eyes . . .

He'd just lost his brother, and more, his brother had taken two lives. Death alone was hard enough, but murder, and suicide, had to be brutal on the family left behind.

“Sure. There's a place just across the street.”

“Thanks. Ash,” he said, holding out his hand. “Ashton Archer.”

Something tickled the back of her brain at the name, but she offered her hand in turn. “Lila.”

He led her out, nodded when she gestured to the coffee shop across the street.

“I really am sorry,” she said as they waited for the light beside a woman who was arguing bitterly on her cell phone. “I can't imagine losing a brother. I don't have one, but I can't imagine losing him if I did. Do you have other family?”

“Other siblings?”

“Yes.”

He glanced down at her as they started across the street, washing along in the surge of pedestrian traffic. “There are fourteen of us. Thirteen,” he corrected. “Thirteen now. Unlucky number,” he said half to himself.

The woman on the phone marched beside Lila, her voice pitched high and shrill. A couple of teenage girls pranced just ahead, chirping
and giggling over someone named Brad. A couple of horns blasted as the light changed.

Surely she'd misheard him. “I'm sorry, what?”

“Thirteen's unlucky.”

“No, I meant . . . Did you say you have thirteen brothers and sisters?”

“Twelve. I make thirteen.” When he pulled open the door to the coffee shop, the smell of coffee, sugary baked goods and a wall of noise greeted them.

“Your mother must be . . .” “Insane” crossed her mind. “Amazing.”

“I like to think so. That's step-sibs, half sibs,” he added, grabbing an empty two-top booth. “My father's been married five times. My mother's on her third.”

“That's—wow.”

“Yeah, modern American family.”

“Christmas must be a madhouse. Do they all live in New York?”

“Not exactly. Coffee?” he asked her as a waitress stepped up.

“Actually, can I get a lemonade? I'm coffee'd out.”

“Coffee for me. Just black.”

He sat back a moment, studied her. A good face, he decided, something fresh and open about it, though he could see signs of stress and fatigue, especially in her eyes—deep, dark brown as rich as her hair with a thin line of gold around the iris. Gypsy eyes, he thought, and though there was nothing exotic about her, he immediately saw her in red—red bodice with a full skirt, and many colorful flounces. In a dance, mid spin, hair flying. Laughing while the campfire blazed behind her.