or more for the bruising to fade completely. And while her voice was almost back to normal—the hoarseness relieved by repeated doses of hot tea and honey—the bruises were a constant reminder of just how close she’d come to being Barry Eisen’s third victim.
Which brought to mind the man’s second victim . . .
“That’s nice of Hilda to think of me, considering what she’s coping with right now,” Darla said, meaning it. “So how is Tera doing?”
That the missing girl had resurfaced later that same day, while Darla had been recuperating at the hospital, had been the one bright spot in the whole tragic affair. Barely had Darla learned to her immense relief that the body she’d found in the brownstone basement had not been Tera—according to Jake, the victim was instead the blond ponytailed building inspector who’d had words with Barry a few days earlier—than Reese had called her hospital room. Fearing dire news, she’d instead been overjoyed to hear that Tera Aguilar had been discovered alive, and relatively well despite a broken arm, and was being reunited with her mother.
You won’t believe this, Red, the cop had told her, but the whole time she’s been holed up with a couple of her girlfriends. And the real kicker? The girls are Alex Putin’s daughters.
The fact that Tera had been suffering from mild amnesia and was obviously in fear of her life had convinced her friends that it wasn’t safe for anyone else to know where she was.
This Putin guy made a couple of phone calls and got a doc to patch her up on the QT, Reese had continued. They figured she was hiding from an abusive boyfriend, so no way were they going to let her out in public. And Tera couldn’t remember enough about what had happened to know if it was safe for her to tell her mother where she was. It wasn’t until you made the news, Red, that she knew it was okay to come out of hiding.
“The doctor said whoever set her broken arm did a decent job of it, so she won’t need any follow-up surgery once she’d out of the cast,” Jake said. “And she doesn’t seem to have any lasting damage from the concussion, though she really doesn’t remember much of what happened before she crawled out of that Dumpster and went looking for help.” Jake shook her head and added, “Too bad we can’t say the same thing for that building inspector friend of Eisen’s. But if it comes down to a choice between either his or her body wrapped in that plastic, I’m damn glad it wasn’t Tera.”
“Tell me about it!” Darla agreed with a sigh. “When I saw that long blond hair sticking out of the tarp, I was sure that Barry had killed her, too. It never occurred to me it could have been Toby who had been murdered.”
Now, Darla wanted to know, “Did Reese get anything out of Barry that would explain what the heck happened there?”
“At this point, since Tera is still iffy as a witness, it’s mostly conjecture,” Jake replied, idly playing with the tassels on the display of bookmarks beside her. “Eisen’s no fool. He lawyered himself up and isn’t talking. But I can make a few educated guesses.”
“Go ahead,” Darla urged. “I want to hear it.”
“Okay. From what Reese pieced together from Tera’s statement, she showed up at the brownstone Wednesday night sometime after midnight. That fits in with when Robert said he saw her on the street. Unfortunately for her, she arrives just in time to witness Eisen club her boyfriend with the crowbar. She panics and tries to run out of there. Barry doesn’t want any witnesses, so he goes after her and gives her the old crowbar treatment, too. That’s how she got the broken arm and concussion.”
“But the whole thing about the Dumpster . . . how did Tera end up in there?” Darla wanted to know.
Jake let the tassels fall back into place and moved on to the cartoon pencil display.
“In the heat of the moment, Eisen probably didn’t check Tera too closely,” she replied. “He just assumed he’d killed her. And then he had the problem of two bodies lying around the brownstone. I’m sure he figured he would be pretty safe in trying to pass off Curt’s death as an accident. And if the ME ruled it murder, he’d have the scrap thieves or someone else to pin it on. That’s why he made