Page 134 of Random in Death
“Build an oven? What the hell, Peabody?”
“I could. Outside, with the grill. Do a kind of outdoor kitchen. Brick-oven pizza! Maybe wood burning. Man, that would be a really fun project.”
“Your definition of fun doesn’t approach the same universe as my definition of fun.”
“You’d have fun eating pizza made in my new wood-burning brick pizza oven.”
“There is that. Make the tags.”
They spent over an hour pushing on the shoes. The single lead they gleaned from that took them to a twelve-year-old boy—inches shorter than five-six—whose mother bought them for him to wear to his All-State Orchestra competition the previous spring.
He played the piccolo. They placed second.
Since she verified he, his parents, and his two younger siblings had spent the weekend at an amusement park upstate, she had no trouble crossing him off the suspect list.
Pulling into Central’s garage, about to deem the damn shoes a dead end, she got a tag.
“Three hits, Lieutenant,” Officer Carmichael told her.
“Gimme.”
“Arnold Post, age fifty-two, bought a pair, size eleven for himself, and a size seven for his son, Junior, age sixteen. Matched set, in April. Second hit, three pair, size six and a half, charged to Kevin J. Fromer, black brogues, navy ankle boots, and the loafers. All last March. Last hit, five pair, sir. Black lace-up, brown brogues with buckle, ankle boots, black, navy house skids, and the loafers. Charged to Allisandra Charro in March.”
“Send me the addresses. We’ll take them.”
“Yes, sir. We’re only a few blocks from the Post residence if you want to us to take that one.”
“Take it. Send the other two.”
She backed out of her parking space. “Who buys five pair of shoes at one time?”
“Me, if I could.”
“Plug in the addresses, then do a run on all three.”
“Fromer’s closest.” Peabody programmed the address. “Charro’s uptown. Okay, okay, Arnold Post. One marriage, one divorce, one offspring—that would be Arnold Junior. CFO Livingston Wine and Spirits. No criminal, a handful of civil suits. Junior attends Breckinridge Academy. He’s five-eight, Dallas. Decent grades, but not the big brain sort. Caucasian, blond and blue. Good-looking kid, on the smirky side.”
Needed to check it out, Eve thought, but he didn’t buzz.
“Fromer.”
“Two marriages, one divorce. Second marriage going into year twenty, so it looks like it stuck. Two offspring from that: son, Lance, age seventeen; daughter, Marnie, age thirteen. Fromer’s an estate attorney. Spouse, Arlene, maintained professional mother status until two years ago when she went back to work as an event planner. Runs her own shop.
“The son, Lance, comes in at five-eleven. That’s above our range, and he’s mixed race.”
“We check it out anyway.”
“The last, Allisandra Charro, age forty-one, single. Hell, Dallas, she’s a professional shopper.”
“So are half the people in this city at this very moment in time.”
“I mean that’s her job. She shops for people who don’t want to. Like Roarke does for you. But for a living, not for fun. I don’t get it.”
“Shopping? Neither do I.”
“No, I mean, don’t you—not you specifically, obviously—want to browse, see what’s out there? I mean, you tell somebody you want a black, bucket-style handbag, and they bring you one. How do you know it’s the one you really, really want without seeing the vast universe of black, bucket-style handbags first?”
Eve took a moment to wonder why anyone wanted a purse that looked like a bucket, then let it go.