“Oh, I don’t think Kimberly will need to throw any telethons,” said Paxton.
Nikki processed that as she wandered the room. Last time she visited, it was a crime scene. Now she was simply taking in its opulence. The crystal, the tapestries, the Kentian bookcase with fruit and flower carvings…She saw a painting she liked, a Raoul Dufy yachting scene, and leaned in for a closer look. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts was a ten-?minute walk from her dorm when Nikki attended Northeastern. Although the hours she spent there as an art lover did not qualify her as an art expert, she recognized some of the works Matthew Starr had collected. They were expensive, but to her eye, the room was a two-?story grab bag. Impressionists hung beside Old Masters; 1930s German poster art rubbed elbows with an Italian religious triptych from the 1400s. She lingered before a John Singer Sargent study for one of her favorite paintings, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. Though it was a preliminary sketch in oil, one of the many Sargent made before each finished painting, she found herself transfixed by the familiar little girls, so wonderfully innocent in their white play dresses, lighting Chinese lanterns in a garden in the delicate glow of twilight. And then she wondered what it was doing beside the brash Gino Severini, a pricey, no doubt, but gaudy canvas of oil and crushed sequins. “Every other collection I’ve seen has a…I don’t know, theme to it, or a common feel or, what am I trying to say…?”
“Taste?” said Paxton. Now that he’d crossed his line, it was a free-?fire zone. Even so, he lowered his voice to a hush and looked around as if he would be ducking lightning bolts for speaking ill of the dead. But speak ill he did. “If you’re looking to see rhyme or reason to this collection, you won’t, due to one unavoidable fact. Matthew was a vulgarian. He didn’t know art. He knew price.”
Rook came up beside Heat and said, “I think if we keep looking we’ll find a Dogs Playing Poker,” which made her laugh. Even Paxton indulged himself a chuckle. They all stopped when the front door opened and Kimberly Starr breezed in.
“Sorry I’m late.” Heat and Rook stared at her, barely masking disbelief and judgment. Her face was swollen from Botox or some other series of cosmetic injections. Redness and bruising highlighted the unnatural swelling of her lips and smile lines. Her brow and forehead were marked with deep pink speed bumps that filled wrinkle lines and seemed to be growing before their eyes. The woman looked as if she had fallen face-?first into a hornet’s nest. “The traffic lights were out on Lexington. Damn heat wave.”
“I left the papers on the desk in the study,” said Noah Paxton. He already had his briefcase in one hand and the other on the doorknob. “I have a lot of loose ends to attend to at the office. Detective Heat, if you need me for anything, you know how to find me.” The eye roll he gave Nikki behind Kimberly’s back threw water on Heat’s trophy wife/ accountant sleeping together hypothetical, although she would still check it out.
Kimberly and the detective took their identical seats in the living room from the day of the murder. Rook avoided the toile wingchair and sat on the couch with Mrs. Starr. Probably so he wouldn’t have to look at her, thought Nikki.
The face work wasn’t the only change. She was out of her Talbots and into Ed Hardy, a black tank dress with a large tattoo print of a red rose and the legend “Dedicated To The One I Love” in biker scroll. At least the widow was in black. Kimberly came at her brusquely, like this was some intrusion on the rest of her day. “Well? You said you have something for me to look at?”