“Never came to the neighborhood functions,” Ray said, disapproving, and Barbara startled, blinking twice at her husband.
“Never came out of the house,” Barbara corrected, her manner brisker now. “Not once that I recall. Maybe she had trouble adjusting to the States.”
“Adjusting,” Sullivan repeated, glancing over at Tobias with a warning gleam in his eye, somehow guessing that Tobias was about to squirm out of his chair with excitement. “She wasn’t American?”
“Larry called her his ‘foreign beauty,’” Ray said, and if a tone of voice could roll its eyes, his would’ve.
“She asked the maid something while I was there. Had an accent. Russian, maybe.” Barbara pursed her lips, thinking about it. “Or it could’ve been Ukrainian.”
Sullivan leaned forward. “Did Larry ever mention her name?”
Barbara and Ray looked at each other, brows pinched in identical frowns, and as one said, doubtfully, “Lena, wasn’t it?”
There it was. Tobias stared at Sullivan, fighting the urge to reach over and shake him, to say that’s her, Yelena Krayeva—Mama!—was Larry’s girl way back then, she was living there, but Sullivan looked every inch the chill detective.
“What about around the time of the murders? Did you hear anything about her then?”
Barbara shook her head. “I remember being surprised that Lena never showed up in the news. She wasn’t listed as one of the victims, and the police never asked about her. I mentioned her to the nice police officer who talked to us right after everything happened, but he didn’t seem to know who I was talking about.”
“You think something happened to her?” Sullivan asked.
“No.” Barbara considered. “Larry had stopped talking about her altogether well before the murders, now that I think about it. It’s entirely possible that they broke up and she moved out, perhaps years before everything happened. I suppose we’ll never know now.”
* * *
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Tobias asked when they were back in the car. “Larry’s girl? Lena? That’s Mama, isn’t it? And Margaret Trudeau must’ve been the maid Barbara mentioned. Lena and Margaret were probably friends.”
“It’s likely.” Sullivan didn’t start the engine, instead staring into space. “Interestingly, I don’t remember reading about Lena in the police reports I’ve got. My client passed on what he had access to, and I’ve read it pretty thoroughly. There’s no girlfriend mentioned, Russian or otherwise, throughout the investigation.”
“Sloppy? Or did she leave so long before the murders that she wasn’t relevant?”
“Good question. Probably impossible to answer, but good. What was the thing with the sports jacket?”
“She was saying he was new money.”
Sullivan frowned. “How’s that?”
“Evening weddings are usually formal. Sports jackets are more informal, and they’re made for, like, afternoon events. It’s the kind of stupid social expectation that some rich people tend to think denotes someone’s value.”
“Huh.” Sullivan was giving him a mildly unfriendly look now.
Tobias pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers. He wasn’t sure why Sullivan’s opinion should burn, not when Sullivan didn’t know him and couldn’t understand, but it did. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Oh?”
“Poor little rich boy whining about how hard his life is. But I’m not.”
“Says the man who can afford to live in a hotel.”
“It’s not exactly the Bel-Air,” Tobias said, trying not to sound snide or juvenile, “and I meant that I’m not whining. Besides, I’m paying for the motel out of my savings.”
“Not the money you use to go to ‘functions,’ I’m guessing.”
Tobias gritted his teeth. “I’ve been working since I was fifteen, and I’ve been living at home to save for school, so no, it’s not ‘function’ money. It wasn’t handed to me.”
“Okay.”
“My parents put themselves through undergrad and medical school while working full-time. They’re not spending weekends at someone’s hunting estate, for crying out loud.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t talk about my family.”
“Okay,” Sullivan said, and this time, instead of doubting and bland, it sounded gentle. Not apologetic exactly, but calming. “Okay.”
“Fine.” Tobias heaved a breath. “What’s next?”
“That’s a very good question.” Sullivan started the car. “Let’s get sandwiches and brainstorm. You’re paying.”
Chapter Ten
The house Sullivan drove them to after picking up food was located a few blocks from the cutoff between nice Denver and crappy Denver, although if he’d been pressed, Tobias wasn’t sure which side he’d say it was on, because the place was a nightmare. For a good ten seconds, all he could do was sit in the car and marvel. The clapboard had been painted a sickly pastel orange and the little bit of trim that hadn’t rotted away was a dingy, faded purple. The portico was half collapsed over the front door, several of the big windows were cracked or boarded up and the rest were filthy. The yard was bare dirt, the privacy fence sun-bleached almost white and sagging so low as to be useless, and the driveway was so pitted as to be a long stretch of rubble.
“Why?” Tobias wondered out loud before deciding that he sounded kind of snobby and should probably shut his mouth. If someone wanted to live in that...thing...they should be
