Haunted in Death Read Free

planting them. Wanted us to find the bones, that’s a given. So connecting the dots, the skeleton and our vic are linked, at least in the killer’s mind. What do we have on Hopkins so far?“
    “Vic was sixty-two at TOD. Three marriages, three divorces. Only offspring – son from second marriage.“ Peabody scanned her memo book. “Bounced back and forth between New York and New L.A. with a couple of stints in Europe. Entertainment field, mostly fringe. Didn’t seem to have his grandfather’s flair. Parents died in a private plane crash twenty-five years back. No sibs.“
    Peabody glanced over. “The Hopkins line doesn’t go toward longevity and propagation. Part of the curse.“
    “Part of birth control practices and lousy luck,“ Eve corrected. “What else – salient – do we have?“
    “You gotta wonder,“ Peabody went on. “I mean Hopkins number two was married four times. Four. One surviving son – or surviving until now. He had a daughter from another marriage who drowned when she was a teenager, and another son – still another marriage – who hanged himself when he was twenty-three. That’s the kind of consistent bad luck that says curse to me.“
    “It says pretty irrelevant background data to me. Give me something on our vic.“
    “Okay, okay. Rad Hopkins went through a lot of the money his father managed to recoup, and most of what he’d inherited from his mother, who was a socialite with some traces of blue blood. He had a few minor smudges for illegals, solicitation, gray-area business practices. No time served. Oh, no collector’s license for firearms.“
    “Where are the ex-wives?“
    “Number one’s based in New L.A. B-movie actress. Well, B-minus, really. Number three’s in Europe, married to some minor English aristocrat. But Number two’s here in New York. Fanny Gill – dance instructor. The son’s Cliff Gill Hopkins – though he dropped the Hopkins legally at age twenty-one. They run a dance studio.“
    “New York’s an easy place to get to and get out of. We’ll run them all. Business partners?“
    “None currently. He’s had a mess of them, off and on. But he was the sole owner and proprietor of Number Twelve Productions, which has the same address as his residence. He bought the building he died in at auction about six months ago.“
    “Not much work done in there in six months.“
    “I tagged the construction company from the name on the building permit. Owner tells me they got called off after three weeks. Their scuttlebutt is Hopkins ran out of money, and scrambled around for some backers. But he said he had a call from the vic a few days ago, wanting to schedule work to start up again.“
    “So maybe he got some money, or wheeled some sort of deal.“
    She found the miracle of a street-level spot a half block from Hopkins’s building.
    “Decent digs,“ Eve noted. “Fancy antique wrist unit, designer wallet, pricey shoes. Doesn’t give the appearance of hurting financially.“
    She flashed her badge at the doorman. “Hopkins,“ she said. “Radcliff C.“
    “I’ll ring up and let him know you’d like to speak with him.“
    “Don’t bother. He’s in the morgue. When’s the last time you saw him?“
    “Dead?“ The doorman, a short, stocky mixed-race man of about forty, stared at Eve as his jaw dropped. “Mr. Hopkins is dead? An accident?“
    “Yes, he’s dead. No, it wasn’t an accident. When did you last see him?“
    “Yesterday. He went out about twelve-thirty in the afternoon, came back around two. I went off duty at four. My replacement would have gone off at midnight. No doorman from midnight to eight.“
    “Anybody come to see him?“
    “No one that checked in with me. The building’s secured. Passcodes are required for the elevators. Mr. Hopkins’s apartment is on the sixth floor.“ The doorman shook his head, rubbed a gloved hand over the back of his neck. “Dead. I just can’t believe it.“
    “He live alone?“
    “He did,