Tim had something Darby wanted or needed. That had to be true. It couldn’t have been money. Tim didn’t have any to speak of. He’d lived large his last months, throwing parties, traveling, donating to worthy causes. He had his family name, but Darby couldn’t get at that in any substantive way. The boat? Surely, even Darby wouldn’t kill just for that; besides, he had a sweet deal hanging out on his boss’s boat and he looked comfortable living here—however that little arrangement came to be.

I trotted down the stairs, turned back, and studied the colorful Victorian, hoping to see Darby peeping out of a window so I could glare at him one last time. I felt fairly confident that when I found out why Tim Ayers died, I’d find Darby there, wrapped up tightly in the mess, all the way up to his six-pack abs. I headed back to my car in one piece, relieved I could.

* * *

On the face of things, Sterling looked legitimate, but after Vincent Darby’s threat to break me in two, I had a strong feeling his contribution to the operation wasn’t completely on the up and up. I had no problem believing an ex-con could turn it around and lead a productive life—Whip did and he was doing just fine. But there was something about Darby—the way his charming persona shriveled up and died when I’d pressed him, the way he minimized his contact with Tim with what seemed like an obvious lie. Artwork? I don’t think so. And now the threat. It told me his time in prison hadn’t done much for him. If Spada hired Darby not knowing about his past, that was one thing. If Spada knew full well who Darby was, that said something else. Could the handsome con man be running a con right under his boss’s nose? I headed downtown to Spada’s office to find out.

Stopped at a long light, I pulled up Spada’s company website and found a photo of him. He didn’t look like much. He was white, sixtyish, his face well lived in, though it appeared he’d had some cosmetic work done around his eyes, and didn’t have even one inch of chin jowl. It was the wide smile, though, that leapt off the screen and grabbed me by the throat and held on. It was just a little too eager, too bright, too much wattage, like a used-car salesman’s whose very life depended on unloading a lemon he knew full well had questionable provenance.