Savich smiled at her. “Tell you what, Agent Sherlock will look around while we talk, how’s that?” He didn’t wait for an answer, simply nodded to Sherlock and walked to the sofa.
He heard Sherlock moving around in the kitchen. If there were any videos or compact disks Peter had secreted away here in Melissa’s apartment, Sherlock would find them.
“Tell me, Ms. Ivy, did you notice if Tommy and Peter had any more money than usual lately?”
She blinked her marvelously thick darkened lashes at him. “More money?”
“Yeah, more cash. On display, for you to see.”
She pursed her pink lips. “Well, Tommy took me to buy my Christmas present and said I could have whatever I wanted, that I didn’t even have to look at prices. Of course, that was a crazy thing to say at Tiffany, so I looked for something I thought he could afford, and asked for these earrings. He did pay cash, I remember, because I saw him pull the bills out of his wallet, all hundreds. I asked him if he was trying to impress me with that stash, but he only smiled and told me I was beautiful and I deserved it. You mean like that?”
Savich nodded. “That’s exactly what I mean. When was this?”
“A week before Christmas, I remember, because Tiffany was really crowded. It was so fun, actually buying something expensive in there with all the rich people.”
She sounded like an orphan, and he wondered if she wasn’t laying it on a bit thick. Probably.
“Did Tommy usually have lots of cash with him?”
“No, that’s the first time I ever saw so much. He usually paid with a credit card, but after that we went to a couple of really expensive restaurants, and he paid cash there, too. Why, Agent Savich?”
He only smiled and asked her, “Then why did you leave him, Melissa, for Peter? Sounds like Tommy treated you well, gave you an expensive Christmas present, bought you whatever you wanted.” He pointed to the pearl earrings in her perfect ears. “I’d say he was head over heels in love with you.”
She searched his face, as if suspecting him of sarcasm, and seeing none, she shrugged. “His grandparents hated me. His Aunt Marian hated me, too. His sisters, though, thought I was beautiful and wanted me to do their makeup. Tommy told me not to worry about it, said we didn’t need his family, but I knew he did, and that I’d never fit in with them. Then Peter was there and he wanted me, too, and his parents were really nice to me.”
He heard Sherlock move into Melissa’s bedroom.
“What about Peter? Did he have a lot of cash?”
“Peter always seemed to, even before we went together. He paid for nearly everything in cash. I asked him once if he wasn’t afraid of being mugged and having all that money stolen. He laughed, said cash was better than having The Man know everything he paid for, whatever that meant.”
He looked toward the pile of compact disks next to her stereo. “All music?”
“Yes. When you said you wanted to look for a video, I looked through them all first. I listened to the ones I wasn’t sure about. They’re all music, I’m positive.”
He and Sherlock left Melissa’s apartment an hour later with nothing to show for the effort.
Then Sherlock mentioned the SUV Delsey had seen in their neighborhood, and Savich remembered. “I’ve asked Davis Sullivan over tonight for spaghetti. After dinner we’ve got work to do.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “You make the spaghetti sauce, and I’ll let Sean help me make an apple pie. What have you got in mind for our after-dinner work?”
He grinned at her as he gunned the Porsche’s engine. Ah, sweet music to his ears. “We’re gonna rock ’n’ roll.”
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
Tuesday evening
Savich let out a contented sigh when he was finally seated at the dinner table with Sherlock, Delsey, and Agent Davis Sullivan, Delsey’s pilot from Maestro, and her date for tonight.
He said, “Davis, I hear you’re not new to the Bonhomie Club. You visited with Quinlan and Sally?”
“Yep, heard our boy play. He makes that sax wail.”
“Who’s playing tonight?”
“Ariel,” Davis said as he spooned some of Savich’s meatballs and sauce over his spaghetti. “I could sit for hours and listen to her play. Talk about floating you in the clouds; she mellows you out better than any recreational drug back in college, not that I ever tried any, naturally, or inhaled.”
Delsey said, “I thought you liked Vincent and Big Escape, people with nose rings and tattoos.”