by J. D. Robb
All dominated by the big house of dusky blue with its generous terraces, glass rails, tall windows, and wide, covered porch where flowering vines wound up thick columns.
No strict and stern here, she thought. Inhabited by a mobster, yes, guarded by armed security, no doubt, but with a facade, at least, of welcome.
The guard came back. “Mr. Bardov is pleased to meet with you and offer you refreshments in the garden. You may go to the house, and Mrs. Bardova will show you the way.”
“Thanks.”
She got back in the car.
“It’s beautiful,” Peabody said. “And I know it’s probably built on the crushed bones of his enemies, but it still looks sort of like a mansion in a fairy tale.
“That water feature. I wonder if I can build something like that.”
Eve nearly stopped the car. “Build?”
“It would be a fun project—maybe next spring. I’ve never built anything like that.” Peabody craned her neck as Eve drove past it. “I think I could.”
“You baffle me, Peabody. Sometimes you just baffle the crap right out of me.”
Before they reached the house, a woman came out on the porch.
Like Marvinia, Marta Bardova wore simple leggings and an overshirt, hers in bright red with some frills down the front. Tendrils of silvery-blond hair escaped from the loosely bundled knot on top of her head.
“Welcome to our home,” she said when Eve got out of the car. “I’m Marta Bardova. I’m starstruck.” She laughed as she pressed a hand to her heart. “I so loved The Icove Agenda, even though I wept for the babies. Oh, those babies broke my heart.”
She held out her hand to shake. A ringless hand, Eve noted, of a woman who smelled like … sugar cookies.
“Detective Peabody.” Marta shook again. “I have to ask you a personal question.”
“Um. Okay.”
“McNab. In the book, and now in the new book, he’s your love. Is he?”
“Ah, yes. We’re…”
“I’m so glad!” Beaming, Marta clapped her hands together. “He’s adorable. In the books, he’s adorable. I wish you many happy years together. Please, come in. Yuri’s working in the garden. My granddaughter brought her twins to visit.”
“We’re sorry to interrupt,” Eve began.
“No, no. We’re baking, so you’ll have lemonade and cookies. They’ll be thrilled.”
Here was color, Eve thought as Marta led them through the house. Lofty ceilings, open space, happy colors, and floods of light, vases everywhere filled with flowers.
And the smell of sugar cookies.
“You’ve beaten the storms they say are coming,” Marta continued. “It should be nice to have a talk in the garden while the sun shines.”
Eve heard squealing, a female voice order someone named Nicholas Michael Cobain! to Stop that right now, followed by laughter.
Marta rolled her eyes. “Our great-grandson is a handful.”
Eve spotted the handful—around four, she guessed, all curly headed and caramel skinned and wickedly gleaming eyes—squeezing some pink stuff out of a tube onto a girl—obviously his twin.
“I make a flower on Tasha, Mama!”
The girl, a near mirror image of her brother, squeezed something green out of a tube. It shot out in a stream, hit him right below the left eye.
Hilarity ensued.
“My charming and perfectly behaved family.”
The woman currently refereeing looked over, sighed. “We’re a mess, Mama. So sorry.”
“Messes clean up. But how will the cookies get decorated if you decorate each other?”
The girl offered an angelic smile. “We taste good!”
“Let me see.” Marta walked to the wide kitchen island, bent down, made smacking noises on the girl’s arm, the boy’s face. “Good enough to eat. Now pretend you’re good children and say hello to our guests.”
“Hello!” they chorused.
“Well done. Just this way,” she added, and gestured to the wide opening where the glass doors had been folded back to let in the June day.
Peabody actually gasped, and had Marta pausing to look at her.
“It’s—it’s just glorious. Your gardens. And another water feature, the arbors! Oh, and the play area for the kids. The flagstone paths, with moss. It’s the good witch’s garden. I have to steal these ideas. We’re going to start gardens and landscaping.”
“You garden?”
“When I can. But not like this. I haven’t worked in a garden like this since I came to New York. Smell the peonies! I’m sorry.” She caught herself—or Eve’s bland stare caught her.
“Yuri will be delighted. And you must talk to him about your gardening. I dig and plant where he tells me, but this is his.”
She led them down one of the paths, beyond a knoll buried in flowers, through a screen of slim trees to where the mob boss, in dirt-stained baggies, a faded blue shirt, and a straw hat, sat on a low, rolling stool, doing something to what even Eve recognized as a tomato plant.
“Yuri, your guests.”
“Yes, welcome, yes. One second.”
“Epsom salt mixture,” Peabody said. “For the magnesium.”
He looked over in approval. “You know.”
“Your gardens are amazing, Mr. Bardov.”
“They’re work, and the work is my pleasure.” He rose, dusted his gloved hands on his pants.
“You’ll talk,” Marta said. “And when you’re ready, there will be lemonade and strangely decorated cookies on the patio.”
“Thank you, lyubimaya.”
Eve recognized the look in his eye as he watched his wife walk away. And wondered if she’d still see the same in Roarke’s for her when they were eighty.
“So,” he said. “There’s more for us to discuss?”
“We came to the area to speak with Elinor, J. Bolton, and Marvinia Singer. And thought we’d conduct a follow-up with you, as we’re here.”
“Ah, Marvinia. A lovely woman. She and my Marta are good friends.”
“So she told us.”
“I fear Elinor will be displeased with me, for Alexei’s sins. What can you do? So, Alexei, he’s on his way to his new life?”
“I’m sure you know he is.”
Bardov smiled. “You and your associates have done an excellent job. I don’t believe I’ll waste time, any more time, on Alexei. He’s hurt and disappointed his aunt and, for me, this is a bigger sin than the theft. She shed tears for him, but they’re done now. Our granddaughter brought the twins to make her happy. They do.”
“They were decorating each other more than the cookies,” Peabody told him, and now he flashed a grin.
“Children are the light that cuts through any shadow. You don’t ask, but I’ll tell you. We’ve gone to see and reassure Nadia. She’s family, her children are our children. As are the others. They’ll be cherished and tended as children should be.
“Now.” He gestured and began to walk. “Tell me why you came. You don’t worry I’ll hunt for Alexei. The woman he killed, I know, is to be laid to rest by her family, in her home. As I know the man who once beat her, treated her cruelly will now be punished for it.”
“You know quite a lot.”
He nodded at Eve, stopped to pull small snippers from his baggies. He cut a fat red peony and offered it to Peabody. “You enjoy the scent.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“I know quite a lot because I have an interest. You and Detective Peabody are of interest to me. At one time of my life, this interest would have had a different purpose. But these days, I enjoy my gardens, I think to get chickens. The children would enjoy them. I think a puppy. It’s time, as old Boris died in his sleep last winter. I think I have years ahead and will spend them with the gardens and the children, the chickens, the dog. Two dogs,” he said with a nod. “We’ll get two puppies.”
The idea seemed to please him as he took off his gardening gloves.
“The … pursuit?” he contin
ued. “The interest in such things wanes. I wonder if your husband would like to buy my company.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I have no one to leave it to now. It would have been Alexei’s. How foolish he was to steal what would have been his own in only a few years. My children have other lives, and are not involved in this part of mine. I’m grateful for that now. I see Marta was wise to insist. So, I think I am retired.”
He nodded again. “I’ll be speaking to Roarke. But that’s another world from this, from you coming to see me. This is about the woman, the one with child. I have thought of her since I learned. I’ve asked some questions, but I don’t have any answers for you.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
“Yesterday, ah, perhaps, perhaps not. Today, I’m retired.” He smiled, radiating charm. “Yes, I would. I would accept your way of justice today. And I hope, tomorrow. She haunts me. I have no face to give her, but she haunts me. I ate in the restaurant with my family, many times, with her and the child trapped under our feet. I would help you if I could.”
Eve pulled out her PPC. “Let me give you her face.”
20
Bardov studied the sketch, then crooked his finger.
He sat on a bench and, when Eve sat beside him, studied the sketch again.
“A man in the line of work from which I have retired must remember faces. I remember faces. I don’t know hers. Didn’t know hers,” he corrected. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you who she was. But I know I’ll remember her face now.
“Will you find her?”
“I will. We will.”
“Good.” He put his hands on his thighs. “She had a mother, perhaps my age now. Her mother should know.”
“How closely was your business aligned with the Singers when the woman in this sketch died?”
“They had more trouble than me. I had ways to profit from the … unrest. Some still call it unrest. Ways I won’t detail to cops on such a pretty day. We can say my interests were more diverse, and not so bound up in building and development. So during the time this young woman died, and the push for building ran hot, the Singers, and others, required backing. Loans or influence.”
“Such as knowing which inspectors to bribe, what official to blackmail?”
“Such as,” he said with a smile. “Though Elinor still pulled most strings, J.B. was the titular head and he would have his vanity project.”
“The Singer Tower.”
“Yes. It had survived the unrest, but hadn’t been completed and, as many buildings did, had damage—from the unrest, from squatters. He had a vision, and not a bad one for all that. For the tower, for the lesser buildings to accent it. He poured the company into that, and gave less to the—ah, what did they call it?”
“South-West, or Hudson Yards Skyline, depending on the records.”
“Yes, yes, I remember. I like better Roarke’s Hudson Yards Village. Be that as it may, J.B. overweighted his outlay—he’s a poor businessman—and they needed backing. I—my company—made them a loan, taking a ten percent interest. On both sites. Elinor was not pleased.”
At his satisfied smile, Eve spoke her mind. “You don’t like her.”
“She’s a dislikable woman, as I’m sure you found her. But business is business, and it wasn’t my problem, was it, if J.B. accepted the terms so quickly, and without fully informing her. So we became partners of a sort, and that’s continued on a few projects over the years. Such as the River View project—the renewal of it—where Alexei killed the woman.”
He sat back. “You wonder if they knew of my other … my diversity at the time we made this partnership. Of course, but business is business. You wonder if they ever came to me for a favor. This might be true. It might be true I granted that favor and took one in return. Business.”
He gestured toward an emerald-green bird that hovered with a blur of wings at a red flower.
“Hummingbirds are so industrious. And such a bright sight in any garden. They’re very territorial, and will fight off their own kids to drink their fill.”
He smiled again.
“You wonder if favors continue. If the grandson now in the big office asks for favors from me or seeks my influence. And I can say he doesn’t. I can say he’s not the businessperson his grandmother was, but a far better one than his father. This is a low bar,” Bardov added with a laugh.
He looked at Eve. “This is why you’re here. For the gossip.”
“Yeah, you could say.”
“I like gossip. It adds some spice to the bland.”
“Did J.B. have affairs? Were there other women?”
Bardov’s eyebrows winged up. “Juice as well as spice. Some men can love with their heart, but their body wants more, and their mind allows this by believing it doesn’t matter. Or count. Or hurts no one. The mind lies. But what J.B.’s faithfulness matters in this … Oh, oh, I see.”
He went silent a moment, brows drawn together now.
“You wonder if J.B. indulged himself with this young woman. A much younger woman than his wife, as many men look for. We’re not friends, you see. I’m not a confidant or someone he’d speak to about his infidelity.”
“But you know he had affairs.”
“It pays to know a partner’s weaknesses. I know that for a time and, during this time, there was dispute, tension. As I said, Marta and Marvinia are friends. They are confidantes.”
“Tensions because he cheated?”
“No, not that precisely. Tensions that may have allowed his mind to justify breaking his vows. Their son didn’t want the business. He wanted music, the freedom of it. The fame from it. He has talent, and his mother very much wanted him to pursue his dreams. I know she and Elinor fought over that and Marvinia, outnumbered as J.B. won’t stand against his mother, made a bargain. They wanted the boy safely out of New York during the troubling times, in any case, and so he was allowed to go to the school he wanted and study his music. But he had to take business courses as well.”
“Seems reasonable.”
“Yes, it was a good bargain, but the getting there caused trouble. And their son’s passion for the music caused more. For a time, Marvinia lived separately and there was talk—she talked to Marta—about divorce. The son stayed away—somewhere in the South, I think. Marta would remember. And J.B. traveled, and enjoyed a single man’s lifestyle, for that time.”
“But she didn’t divorce him?”
“No. The bargain—which she might have broken—was kept, as J.B. went to her, romanced her, asked her to try again. So the bargain—that they would not support the son financially—was kept. I have reason to know J.B. didn’t fully honor his vows for a longer time, but the son finally came home, tail between his legs, his dreams turned to smoke. And now he sits in the big office.”
“Did she know he had other women?”
“She knew there were others when they lived separately. She forgave him. I don’t believe she knew he had others after they reconciled. He learned to be discreet and, eventually, learned to be faithful.”
“Was she his type?”
Bardov looked at the sketch again. “Younger women were his type. I don’t know if this girl was. I never heard of J.B. having a liaison that resulted in a pregnancy. I would have tucked that away for use in any future negotiations.”
He let out a short laugh. “This isn’t what I expected we would discuss today.”
“Could he kill?”
The humor faded, and his eyes latched on hers. “You know, as I know, all and any can. Is he a violent man? No. I would know. But he’s a weak man, dominated and indulged by turns by his mother. And perhaps indulged, yes, by a wife who prefers not to look at him too deeply.”
“You don’t like him, either.”
Now he pursed his lips in thought. “I can’t say J.B. is a dislikable man, but he is, under the polish, a contemptible one. He all but frittered away a company and fortune his grandfather and father had built, one his grandmother ha
d steered successfully through difficult times. Then rather than allow his son dreams of his own, he pressured him to accept a legacy the son didn’t want.
“I’ll sell what I built to your husband, if he wants it. I would never demand any of my children accept what they don’t want. Could he have killed this woman and the child he’d planted in her if that part’s true? Yes, a man can do anything, can do evil things, out of fear, anger, greed, envy. Did he?”
Bardov shook his head. “This is for you to learn. If it’s true, I’ll be sorry, for it will hurt Marta and the good woman J.B. married. It will make them weep.”
He pushed up. “Come, we’ve talked of this enough. We’ll sit on the patio and have lemonade.”
“We appreciate your time. We’ll let you get back to your family.”
“One glass, two cookies.” He wagged a finger at her. “You can give that time in return for mine. Marta will be disappointed if you don’t.”
“Mr. Bardov?” Peabody fell into step with him. “Some of your children would be about the same age as Bolton Singer. Did they socialize?”
“Not much, no. As I said, they traveled considerably, and Elinor would not have approved. Now, I would say Marvinia would have overruled her—or attempted to—if my children and their son had struck up a friendship. I do recall, now that I think, my younger daughter sighed over him a bit one summer—but he barely noticed her. His music was all.”
“He didn’t have girlfriends?”
“I suppose he did, but nothing serious—or I would have heard. His music, Detective, was his passion and only love. Until he met his wife. They have a beautiful family. And no, he does not break his vows.”
“You’d know?”
He glanced at Eve. “I would. Of course, now I’ve retired and have no purpose in knowing. There, see?” He pointed to where the twins swarmed over some sort of outdoor play deal with a slide and bars and a kind of fort. “There is the future. Let’s have cookies and talk of pleasant things.”
Eve decided having cookies with a Russian gangster (retired) on his patio while he bounced a couple of kids on his knees went down as one of the strangest interludes of her career.
