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Another dozen mouthfuls, then: “You haven’t asked so you figured out why I’m not smiling.”
“Nothing interesting in March’s call log.”
“Business, business, more business,” he said. “Airport lounges, hotels, drivers, longer conversations with investors, real estate agents, and contractors. Just bosses, no construction workers. And nothing remotely connected to New Orleans or San Pietro, just in the cities where March owns property or is building. The only personal calls were to Meagin.”
“How many?”
“A hundred twenty-three. Don’t bother activating your abacus, it’s less than two percent.”
“A couple of calls a week,” I said.
“Subtract travel times, sleep, and when he was home and it still doesn’t amount to much. And the conversations were what we saw on her phone, no more than a coupla minutes. ‘Hi, hon, how’s it going, I’ll be home whenever.’ Assuming he bothered with ‘hon.’ And same as Meagin, no texts.”
“Same reason,” I said. “In his case for business. Any chance he’s got another phone?”
“Anything’s possible, Alex, but I’m not feeling him as my suspect.”
“His reaction to the purple diamond.”
“Right from the beginning you figured he was no Olivier. Hearing him being kinda human when I told him about the diamond, I’ve come around. Why do you think it knocked him so low?”
“Sexual deceit was bad enough but maybe learning she’d bested him monetarily was too much to bear.”
“Not only is he socially inept, he’s not the financial alpha he thought he was.”
I said, “On top of being conned, he probably realized if he’d researched the price of purple diamonds in the first place—the way he does with his projects—he’d have known something was off. His choice was keep raging or admit he’d been taken and try to move on.”
“A little self-therapy.”
“Maybe hearing from his mother sped up the process.”
He laughed. “One place I donotwant to be for Christmas is Stuffy Manor in Tuxedo Park.”
He ate more pasta, pushed the bowl away. “Speaking of denial, I’m probably doing all this psychologizing so I can avoid thinking about my reality.”
He ticked his fingers. “No physical evidence, no witnesses, no motive I can prove. Before I came here, I called Toni Bowman again, maybe her maid had heard from Irma. She gave me that you’re-an-idiot attitude: wouldn’t I tell you if she had? And I’m thinking, maybe not, you’re a hard-edged piece of work.”
He drew the bowl back and resumed eating. “You make this or Robin?”
“She did.”
“Thought so. Very subtle. So. You have any therapy formoi?”
“I think putting Gio aside was smart—one less distraction. Ditto for Doug as a suspect. Richard Barlett may very well turn out to be relevant but until you can come up with a solid link to Meagin, I wouldn’t spend time on him, either.”
“It’s all about her.”
“It’s all about her past,” I said. “And I keep coming back to revenge. I’d been thinking of a financial scam but now I’m leaning toward a mixture of money and emotion.”
“Like with the diamond.”
“Exactly. There was no need to set up a ruse for the money. Doug had already paid for lots of jewelry, he’d have likely agreed to come up with the full cost. My gut tells me she wanted dominance over two men because she’d been severely dominated and manipulated.”
“Playing games with the big boys and losing,” he said.
“Maybe I’m making too much out of the ghost orchid painting but I think she identified with it. Not just because she became a phantom. We’re talking a plant with no solid roots, parasitic, rare and hard to locate. Is there anything more you can do on the Florida connection?”
“Looked at their missings, including felons on the run. No one who could be her.”
