“Is that blood on your pant leg?” Peterson asked.

“I guess it is. I kneeled down. I wanted to be sure there was nothing I could do for her before I got on the phone.”

I had seen that expression on the lieutenant’s face before. Like what the hell did you think you could do for the broad? is what he wanted to say. But I understood how Schultz felt. I had wanted to touch her, too. I had wanted to cradle her broken head and body and get her off the kitchen floor to a more dignified resting place.

“Did you touch her?”

“Yeah. I tried to find a pulse.”

“Make sure you swab him, Mike,” Peterson said. “Get his clothes, too.”

Schultz’s eyes opened wide.

“It’s routine, Billy,” Mike said. “We need your DNA for elimination purposes. You put yourself in the crime scene. It was the right thing to do, but we just got to account for it, in case you left any trace of yourself there.”

“Do you know who she is, Mike?” I asked.

“If you don’t mind, try being the silent partner tonight, Coop. You’re here by the grace of God and your good friend Mercer Wallace.” He was probably rolling his eyes, too. “How long were you in the kitchen, Billy?”

“Less than three minutes,” he said, taking his razorthin cell phone out of his pocket. “I couldn’t stay in there. I came back out and called 911. I mean right away.”

Peterson lit another cigarette and inhaled, pocketing his lighter, then bent down to examine a large garden ornament that had toppled over on its side, resting next to Barr’s back door. Light from within the kitchen reflected on the decorative brass object and its thick wrought-iron base.

That must have been the murder weapon. There was a dark stain covering a dented portion of the brass design, clumped with hair and probably brain tissue, too.

“But you knew who she was,” Mike said.

“Minerva Hunt.”

“You’ve met her before?”

“I’ve seen her in the building occasionally. She’s Tina’s landlady, if I’m not mistaken. Her name was on the buzzer before Tina moved in. I mean, I’ve never been introduced to her.”

“Did you touch the handbag, Billy?”

“No way.”

“How about the tote?”

Schultz hesitated a second too long before answering. “Maybe.”

“Whaddaya mean, ‘maybe’?” Peterson asked.

“Well, I saw the initials on it. M.H. I just turned it around-it was upside down-to make sure I was reading them right.”

“You tell the 911 operator-?”

“That I thought it was Minerva Hunt? Yes, I did.”

I took a few steps backward to the door and glanced toward the body. The shoulder strap of the python-skin bag still hung on the woman’s shoulder, but the contents had been strewn on the floor. Next to her was a large vinyl tote, the maker’s logo-now drenched in blood-garishly stamped all over it. The gold monogrammed initials of its owner-M.H.-were hard to miss.

“Just a minute, Billy,” Mike said, brushing past me to walk into the kitchen. His cell phone was ringing, and he answered it out of the presence of his witness. “Hello?”

The caller spoke to him and he held up a finger to me. “DCPI.”

The deputy commissioner of public information had gotten word of a murder on Manhattan ’s Upper East Side. Mike would have to keep that office up to speed on every development, no matter how minor, because newshounds would be on the scene in minutes.

“Only a tentative so far. We haven’t even started to look for next of kin,” Mike said. “No driver’s license. Nothing confirmed. Peterson’s got a couple of guys back at the office trying to run it down.”

I heard the front door of the apartment slam shut and footsteps-it sounded like a woman in spike heels-coming down the hallway. I was hoping to see Tina Barr, thinking she might shed some light on this.

“Give me a break, Guido, we just got here. We’re waiting for the ME now,” Mike said. “The broad was DOA, yeah. Don’t go with it yet, but it could be Hunt. Minerva Hunt, okay?”

The Chandleresque brunette-tall, lean, and tough looking-struck a pose in the doorway of the kitchen, dressed also in a well-tailored and probably expensive black suit. She looked through me as though I were invisible, tossed back her hair, and smiled at Mike.

“Now what kind of detective work is that?” she asked him. “Do I look dead to you?”

SEVEN

Minerva Hunt was perched on the corner of Mike Chapman’s desk in the offices of the Manhattan North Homicide Squad.

Mike seemed to be as interested in her affect as he was in her appearance. I watched him look her over again as she glanced around the room. She was casually coiffed and carefully made up to accent her dark eyes and full lips.

“Doesn’t exactly have the makings of a physical plant for a think tank, does it?” Hunt said, scanning the room.

The desks that were positioned back to back with each other had been cheap when they were purchased twenty years earlier. Computer equipment was usually outdated by the time it was installed. The drunken arrestee groaning on the bench in the holding pen behind us, who had beaten his mother-in-law to death just hours ago, was a harsh reminder of the business at hand.

“Most of the time we get it done,” Mike said. “You feeling better?”

Two hours earlier, when Minerva Hunt first saw the corpse on the kitchen floor, she had lost her composure. But the emotional outburst was short-lived, and a frosty veneer had settled over her like a thin sheet of ice.

“Karla Vastasi?” Mike asked, making notes on the steno pad he carried in his jacket pocket.

“Karla with a K, Detective. Could I trouble you to ask the lieutenant for one of his cigarettes, Mr. Wallace? And don’t tell me about the no smoking rules. I really need it.”

“There’s a chair for you here, Ms. Hunt,” Mike said.

“I’m perfectly comfortable,” she said, recrossing her shapely legs, which had caught the attention of the two older detectives working on the far side of the room.

“How long ago did you hire her?”

“She came to me during the winter. I’d say it’s been eight or nine months.”

“What did she do for you, exactly?”

“I told you, Mr. Chapman. Karla was my housekeeper. That’s what we call them now, isn’t it? I mean we don’t say things like ‘maid.’”

“Did she live with you?”

“No. She slept at my apartment occasionally when I traveled. Took care of the dog if I was called away.”

“And where is your home?”

“Thanks, Detective,” Hunt said to Mercer. She stood up and let him light her cigarette for her, holding her perfectly manicured hands around his. “I’ve got a town house on Seventy-fifth Street. Between Madison and Park.”

“Where did Karla live?”

“ Queens. Somewhere in Queens,” Hunt said, sticking the edge of a brightly painted red fingernail between her two front teeth while she thought. “The agency will have an exact address for her. Matter of fact, I probably have some receipts from the car service I use. Sometimes I sent her home that way if it was late or she wasn’t feeling well.”

“Family? Do you know anything about Karla’s relatives?”

“There’s a sister here in the States. Connecticut, I think. The rest are back home.”

“Where’s home?” Mike asked.

“Which is the country where the women all have such perfect skin? You know…they all come here to be facialists?” Minerva asked, looking at me. “ Romania, isn’t it? Yes, she’s Romanian. The employment agency has all that information.”

“How old was she, do you know?”

“She told me she was forty-five.”

I guessed Hunt to be a few years older than that.

“Did she have a husband, a boyfriend, a social life?”

“The ex is back in the old country. And no, no social life on my time.”

“She’s a good-looking woman,” Mike said. “Never a guy hanging around?”

Hunt inhaled and flicked her ashes on the floor. “She asked to sleep at the house once or twice because the man she was dating got a bit too possessive, maybe a little rough. But I never went into that with her, and I think they broke up during the summer.”