Jeppe returned her offered fist bump with one of his own—a compromise greeting, somewhere safely between a hug and a handshake, which suited them both nicely. “What did you have to cancel today?”

“A family picnic. It’s fine. How about you?”

“I was out at Johannes’s place in Snekkersten.”

“Aha, so he’s still in hiding from the mean, nasty tabloids?” She pointed to an entrance around the side of the building and started walking. “The front door is around that way.”

Jeppe let his partner’s sarcasm slide. Besides, there was a grain of truth to it. Ever since Johannes had returned from Chile with a divorce in his suitcase, he had stalled out. Jeppe was starting to worry if he would ever return to the stage.

The intercom button for number 24B revealed that the Dreyer-Hoff family owned the whole top floor of the building. A spotless stainless steel elevator, which made Jeppe think of the Department of Forensic Medicine, brought them straight to the family’s condo. On the way up, Jeppe texted Sara to warn her that he might be late tonight. There was no telling what the day would bring.

The elevator doors opened to an impressive room, where wide-plank flooring disappeared under Persian carpets and continued out to floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the marina. Clean, modern lines were punctuated by colorful works of art and antique, worm-eaten wooden furnishings that looked to have been shipped home from Italian monasteries wrapped in tissue paper. Not a humble home, and the woman who received them also looked anything but humble. Malin Dreyer-Hoff was voluptuous like a Botticelli angel, with big eyes, pink lips, and a green floral dress that sat tight across her chest. When she saw them she called out in a strained voice.

“Henrik, they’re here!” She clasped her hands together in front of her, twisting them nervously. Her fingers were stained with some type of blue paint.

“Hello.” Jeppe hesitantly held out his hand. “Jeppe Kørner from the Copenhagen Police’s Investigations Unit. This is my colleague, Anette Werner.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just… Thank you for coming so quickly.” She responded to his handshake with limp fingers and averted eyes.

“Is there somewhere we can sit down?” Jeppe gazed around the large room with an open kitchen to the left and glass walls all around. It looked like a modern version of the loft apartment he had dreamed of owning ever since he had seen Flashdance as a child. It looked like money.

“We’ll go join my husband in the living room.”

Malin led them to a long hallway with a view of the water on the one side and doors to various rooms on the other. Jeppe peeked in an open doorway and saw more paintings and two sleek computer screens. The Dreyer-Hoff family had built their fortune running an online auction house for art and antiquities. It showed in their home.