“Out,” Varadkar ordered as she lowered the bed rail to get to Silva. Foster backed away from the bed as two nurses rushed in to answer the alarm. “Who?” Silva asked again, weak but more insistent this time, her eyes finding Foster as she stood back.
“She’s Bodie Morgan’s twin,” Foster said.
As the medical staff assessed her, Silva seemed to be in another world, her look changed. It wasn’t fear Foster would swear she saw in Silva’s eyes anymore but exhilaration.
“Out,” Varadkar ordered again when she turned to see Foster still standing there. “Now.”
Foster bolted out of the bay and rushed toward the elevator, dialing Li as she went. She stabbed the elevator button, impatiently waiting for Li to pick up. When she did, she blurted out, “She just ID’d Amelia Davies.”
“No fucking way,” Li said. “Why would she . . . her brother!”
“Silva said she smelled paint on her. That fits. Let’s hit her studio.”
“If it’s her, wouldn’t she be halfway to Timbuktu by now?”
“And leave him behind? No. And I don’t think she’d go far, not with Silva still breathing.”
“I’ll fill Griffin in,” Li said.
“And Li, we need to get someone on Silva’s door. Amelia might just be scared enough to try again.”
“Roger that. I’m heading into her office now. Meet you at the studio.”
Foster stepped onto the elevator crowded with visitors. There really wasn’t room, but she pushed her way on anyway, ignoring the put-upon sighs meant to chastise her.
When she got to Davies’s studio, Li was already there with two squad cars out front for backup. “What’d you do, fly?” Foster asked.
Li eased through the door. “Where you go, I go.”
Amelia wasn’t working on her painting, and there was no one at the sculpture. But the door had been open. Someone was here.
“Police,” Foster called out. “Amelia Davies?”
“Or Morgan or Jensen,” Li muttered.
A shocked Black woman walked out from the back with her hands up in surrender, a stocky dog with drippy jowls trotting along behind her. “Oh my God. Oh my God. What’s happening?” She noticed the squads outside. “Don’t shoot. I’m Joie Lenk. I work here.”
“We’re not going to shoot. You think we just walk into places and light them up for no good reason? Put your hands down.” Li was gruff, offended.
Slowly the woman complied. “Then what do you want?”
“We’re looking for Amelia Davies,” Foster said. “Is she here?”
Joie looked past them to the cop cars outside. “What the hell did she do?”
“Is she here?” Li asked.
Joie walked to her worktable, the dog following, eyeing them the entire time. “No. I haven’t seen her in a couple days. Not since . . . never mind. What’s happened? Why are you looking for her?”
“You were starting to say something. Not since? Not since what?” Foster approached the table. Li stayed put, still salty.
The woman wiped back a purple strand from her face. “Look, I don’t want to get involved in anything. I just rent the space. I don’t know her all that well. But the vibe’s different lately; even Winston feels it. Both of us feed off energy, and it’s gotten strange here. Suddenly, this place feels . . . tainted.” She patted a hand against the plaster thing with wings. “How can I work here now? I need light, hope.”
Foster stared down at the dog, who stared up at her. “Not since what?”
“I wanted to call the police when it happened, but Amelia talked me out of it. I mean, it was her uncle and all, so I didn’t push it. But if he was going to be coming around, upsetting Winnie, well, I just can’t have that.”
“Ms. Lenk, do you want to tell us what happened?” Li was losing patience.
“I was working. Amelia wasn’t here. A man came in looking for her. Right away Winston went nuts, barking, growling, baring his teeth. He didn’t like this guy at all. He never does that.”
“What’d this guy want?”
“He wanted her. Said he hadn’t seen her in a while and was just passing through. He told me to tell her some hokey thing from The Three Musketeers? You know, the ‘all for one, one for all’ thing? Then he checked out Amelia’s painting, gushed all over it, started this creepy whistling, and left. He freaked us both out. I swear the place went from frigid to warm the second he left. When Amelia got in, I told her what happened, and she said he was her Uncle Frank and that it was no big deal.” Joie rubbed her arms as if she’d gotten a chill. “It sure felt like a big deal.”
“Uncle Frank,” Foster said, her eyes wandering over to the canvas, the one that had attracted her attention the last time she was here. The intricacy of it pulled her in. “What do you know about her other than this?” She pointed at Amelia’s work.
“Not much, really. We get along okay. I know she has a sister who recently broke her leg. And that she always takes three pumps of hazelnut in her latte. She’s moody, doesn’t talk much, and isn’t big on sharing confidences. Winston loves her, only—”
Foster turned when Joie stopped talking. “Only what?”
“Well, the last time she was in, after Uncle Frank frosted up the place, Winston wouldn’t go anywhere near her. He gave her the same treatment he gave him. Usually, the two of them are cuddled up on the floor like a couple of pound puppies. I can’t explain it.”
Li pulled a photocopy of the CPA ad she’d found for Tom Morgan out of her pocket and showed it to Joie. “Does he look familiar?”
Foster stepped back from the painting but didn’t take her eyes off it.
“Holy shit!” Joie said. “Put some years on him, gray his hair a little bit, and yeah, that’s Uncle Frank. But wait, this says his name’s Tom Morgan. So . . . wait, is he her uncle, or isn’t he?”
Neither Foster nor Li answered. “Did you see if he was driving a car?”
“Yeah. When he left, I ran to the door and locked it so he couldn’t get back in. I thought I saw him drive away in a dark car. I don’t know models, so I don’t know what kind, and I couldn’t get a look at the plate from where I was standing. He headed east.”
Li got her notepad out and drew a pen from her pocket. “Four doors or two doors? Black or blue, if you had to say?”
Joie thought it over. “Four doors, definitely. Maybe blue?”
Foster studied Amelia’s canvas. It was frenzied in spots, calm and soothing in others. There seemed to be a weird sort of linear progression from a flowing serenity to strikes of violence. She moved closer, close enough to see the grooves in the brushstrokes. She lightly ran her fingers over the surface. As she moved down the length of it, as she listened to Li try to get more out of Joie Lenk, she suddenly recognized the face of a woman Davies had painted, a face she’d seen before on Dr. Grant’s autopsy table.
“Li.”
When her partner eased in beside her, Foster pointed to the face.
“Looks like Peggy Birch,” Li said.