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“Ma’am? Um, Lieutenant? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks for your help. I may need to speak to you again.”
“If we’re not here, we live up on six. Six A, front of the building,” Karrie told her. “Anything we can do.”
“If you think of anything, you can contact me at Cop Central.” Eve dug into her field kit for a card. “Anything strikes you.”
Eve walked out just as Peabody approached. “Sweepers have the alley,” she said.
“Vic was Gizi Szabo, and had a weekly unit on four. Claimed to be a Gypsy from Hungary.”
“Wow. A real one?”
“Nobody claims to be a fake one,” Eve returned, and felt herself steady a little. “Been here about three months, looking for a great-granddaughter who went missing.” Eve used her master to access the apartment building’s entrance. “Did some fortune-telling out of her place.”
One glance at the ancient elevator had Eve choosing the stairs. She handed Peabody the flyer. “Run them both,” she said. “Had Morris confirmed TOD before you left?”
“His TOD jibed with your gauge. Around one this afternoon.”
“That’s just bogus.” And it infuriated her more than it should have. “I know when somebody dies when I’ve got my hands on their fricking heart, and I’m talking to them.”
“Hungarian Gypsy fortune-teller. Maybe it’s some sort of—”
“Don’t even start with that voodoo, woo-woo, Free-Ager shit. She was alive, bleeding, and talking until about an hour ago.”
At the door of 4 D, Eve took the key she’d found out of the evidence bag, slid it into the lock. And turned the knob.
Four
It reminded her of her first apartment—the size, the age. That’s what she told herself when struck, just for an instant, with a sharp sense of recognition.
The single room had no doubt been rented furnished, with a couple of cheap chairs and a daybed with a cracker-thin mattress, a chest—newly and brightly painted—that served as dresser and table.
Boldly patterned material had been fashioned into curtains for the single window, and with these and scarves and shawls draped over the faded chairs, spread over the narrow bed, the room took on a hopeful cheer.
One corner held a sink, AutoChef, friggie, all small-scale, along with a single cupboard. Another table stood there, painted a deep, glossy red under its fringed scarf. For seating, there were two backless stools.
Eve saw the old woman there, telling fortunes to those who sought to know their future.
“She made it nice,” Peabody commented. “She didn’t have a lot to work with, but she made it nice.”
Eve opened the single, skinny closet, studied Szabo’s neatly hung clothing, a single pair of sturdy walking shoes. Kneeling, she pulled two storage boxes out of the closet.
“Beata’s things. Clothes, shoes, ballet gear, I’d say. A few pieces of jewelry, face and hair stuff. The landlord must have boxed it up when she didn’t come back, didn’t pay the rent.”
It hurt, hurt to look through, to touch, to feel Beata as she dug through pretty blouses, skimmed over worn slippers.
She knew better, she reminded herself, knew better than to become personally involved. Beata Varga wasn’t her victim, not directly.
The promise is in you.
The voice spoke insistently inside her head, inside her heart.
“Tag these,” Eve ordered, shoving to her feet. She crossed over to the chest, studied the photo of Beata propped there and fronted by three scribed candles. Beside the photo a handful of colored crystals glittered in a small dish along with an ornate silver bell and a silver-backed hand mirror.
“What do we have on the granddaughter?” Eve asked.
