He flushed, pink and pretty. “Well, ah, Baxter mentioned he’d seen that model before, and it was built for that particular purpose.”
“Uh-huh,” she said and walked through to a kitchen so shiny silver and glossy black her eyes wanted to twitch.
A man sat at a square table of glass on a silver pedestal, his head in his hands, a cup of something in front of him.
He looked up as she entered, showed her a ridiculously handsome face poet pale with shock and grief. And young, she noted as she gauged him as barely old enough to drink legally.
“Are you in charge?” He had a voice like a bell—deep, clear, resonant.
“Lieutenant Dallas. Yes, I’m in charge. This is Detective Trueheart. I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Baker.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. Granddad—someone killed him. I don’t understand.”
Eve flicked a glance at the uniform, dismissing her, then sat across from Baker. Another glance, this one at Trueheart, had the new detective taking a seat.
“This is hard. Why don’t you start by telling me why you’re here. This isn’t your residence.”
“No, I don’t live here anymore. I did for a while, when I was just starting out. I stay sometimes. He’s mostly alone here, so I stay sometimes.”
“When did you get here tonight?”
“It was late—early, I mean. Three-thirty or something.”
“Do you usually come over so early in the morning?”
“No. No. He didn’t come to opening night, and he always . . . I thought maybe he forgot or just got busy, and I was even a little upset because it was my first . . .” He paused, pressed his fingers to his eyes, tawny gold, rimmed with red.
“
Baker dropped his hands at Trueheart’s words. “It’s been getting a lot of buzz,” Trueheart continued. “I just put it together. Jonas W. Baker, you’re the lead. I was going to try to take my girl to see it sometime. You opened last night?”
“Yeah. Opening night. Musical comedy,” he said to Eve. “I’m the male lead. It’s my first time headlining. My mother’s in Australia, and my father—well, even if he was in the country, he probably wouldn’t have come. But my grandparents never missed.”
“Your grandparents?” Eve repeated.
“Yeah, they’re not married anymore—not for years—but they do the united front for my plays. But she’s stuck in Chicago. Her flight got canceled—they’re snowed under good. What I mean is whenever I got a part, they’d be there opening night. Front row center, every time. And my grandfather was the one who backed me when I wanted to go into theater instead of law or medicine or politics—whatever would’ve been suitable for my parents. He backed me, and he helped me, and let me live here while I was getting my start.”
He picked up the cup in front of him, set it down again, pushed it away.
“He never missed, so when he didn’t show, I thought he was running late or something. I had to put it away, you know, and do the job, do the show. We rocked the house, too, yeah, we did.”
“You must’ve been upset not to have him there. Big night for you,” Trueheart added.
“The biggest.”
“I guess you didn’t have time to try to reach him. Try his ’link.”
“I did, actually. I left a couple v-mails. The last one, during intermission, was pretty pissy. God. And when the show was over—six curtain calls, and a standing O—what did I do? I sulked about it.”
“You wanted to share it with him,” Trueheart prompted.
“I’ve got a girl, too, and she was there. But . . . he’s the one I wanted most. I just wanted him to see all that faith and support, they weren’t wasted.”
“You wanted to make him proud.”
“More than anything. So when he didn’t come, didn’t contact me, didn’t even send a message, I thought, Okay, fine, and went to the after-party. I drank a shitload of champagne, basked in the glory, basked some more when the reviews started coming in. Megastar—that’s me—in a megahit. I’m a freaking triple threat who owned the stage. Yeah, I basked. We’re all flying, nobody wants to let go of the night, you know. We’re going to go have some food somewhere, but I can’t let it go, I can’t let go he didn’t come. So I tell everybody I’ll catch up, but I have to take care of something.”
He took a breath. “I know it was getting on to three o’clock by then. It just started nagging at me. My voice coach was there, my ex-girlfriend was there, my girlfriend, actors I’d worked with off Broadway, friends from Juilliard, all there. But the most important person hadn’t come. And it nagged at me because why hadn’t he come? I finally realized—got over myself and realized—something must’ve happened. Maybe he got sick or had an accident, something. So I came over, half expecting to find him sick in bed, or hurt on the floor—though he’s healthy as they get and really fit. Then I opened the door, and . . . God. God, God, God.”
Eve gave him a minute while he wrapped his arms tight, rocked, as tears streamed down his face.
“Mr. Baker—”
“Jonas. You could call me Jonas. I was named for him.”
“Jonas, was the door secured?”
