The twins were going to be putting on a holiday play at their preschool in a few hours, and it killed Amanda that she couldn’t be there. Beatrice was going and promised her that she would record the entire event, but it wouldn’t be the same. As a mother, it was up to her to get to things like that. Important events for your kids. But a homicide was the kind of case that always took precedence. There was nothing she could do. It wasn’t something you could put to the side for an afternoon or a day. They had a killer to catch before the trail grew cold. So she sat in the car as pictures of them in their costumes, standing on the stage, and singing their hearts out danced in her imagination. Just the thought of it made her choke up, and she swore she wouldn’t let herself miss these things as they got older. She couldn’t. It wasn’t right. She’d have to find a way to balance a caseload and her kids at the same time. Others could do it. She wasn’t the first single-mom cop. She just didn’t have a game plan quite yet.
Turning up 42nd Street was no better than I-87. Between the lights, the general congestion, and a street sweeper that eliminated an entire lane, it took them another half hour before they finally pulled into the parking garage across from the north end of Madison Square Park and got out onto the sidewalk.
Tommy pointed to a glass door. “In here.”
They walked through a marble lobby and waited for an elevator that took them up to the fourteenth floor. When the doors opened, they were instantly inside a working office. There was no hallway or reception area. The elevator simply opened to a floor full of individual desks, a section of drawing tables, and a kitchen area in the back. Several of the employees looked up as they stepped out onto the floor, then went back to whatever it was they were doing.
“Fourteen, right?” Tommy asked.
Susan pointed to a sign hanging in the back. “Yeah, this is it. HL Architects.”
A woman came around from the first drawing table and met them. She was tall, wearing an oversized white T-shirt that swallowed most of her frame. Her dark hair, streaked with bands of purple, was up in a single braid.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re looking for Hooper Landsky,” Susan said.
“He’s not here right now, but I’m Jan, Hoop’s second-in-command.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“I don’t. But I can help you with whatever you might need. Are you planning a project? If you tell me a little about what you have going on, I’m sure I can get you started in the right direction.”
Susan held up her shield. “Thanks, Jan, but this isn’t about architectural services. Do you know where Hooper is?”
Jan’s face contorted into a grimace. “Is he in trouble?”
“Do you know where he is?”
“I haven’t seen or talked to Hoop since he left the night before last.”
“Is that unusual?” Tommy asked. He also had his shield and ID out.
Jan shrugged. “I wouldn’t say totally unusual, but normally he’d at least send me a text or something to check in. Sometimes he gets on these creative kicks and does a lot of his planning remotely. Other times he just partied too hard the night before and stays in bed. I’ve been here for about six years now. I know how to keep the balls in the air when he’s not around. It’s no biggie.”
Susan put her shield back in her pocket. “Where does Hooper live?”
“Brooklyn.”
“Can you call him for me? Right now? We really need to speak with him. Call his house phone and cell.”
“He doesn’t have a house phone. I’ll try his cell.”
Jan took her phone from her back pocket and dialed Hooper’s number. She put it on speaker, and the three of them listened as it rang over and over.
“Hey, this is Hoop. You know what to do. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
Jan hung up. “Been like that for a day and a half.”
“Does he have a girlfriend?” Susan asked. “Maybe he’s with her?”
“No girlfriend that I know of, but maybe.”
“Write down his home address. We’ll check in on him for you.”
Jan snatched a piece of paper from the table and wrote down the address. “Is this something I should be concerned about?”
“No.” Susan took the paper and folded it. “We just have a few questions for him. Nothing more than that.” She dug inside her bag and came away with a business card. “If you hear from him, have him give me a call.”
“No problem.”
They turned and waited for the elevator to arrive as Jan walked back to her workstation.
“I can feel them staring at us,” Tommy whispered.
“Wouldn’t you be staring if you were them? Cops coming in asking about their boss?”
“I guess.”
The elevator opened, and they stepped on. Susan pressed the button for the lobby.
“So around the same time I run Amanda Brock’s phone records and discover the existence of Hooper Landsky, he disappears?”
“I think that Gina lady in Randall’s development knew more than she let on. Maybe she knew Hooper. Could’ve tipped him off after we met with her.”
The elevator opened, and they spilled back into the lobby, then out onto the sidewalk. The crowds walking around the park had grown since they’d been inside.
“Looks like we have three stops today,” Susan said as she looked up and down the street. “We’ll head to Hooper’s apartment now and see if anyone’s there. I’ll call ahead and have an NYPD unit with us for backup. After that I need to go visit Randall’s attorney to see what all that fuss was last night. Then I want to hit Peter Reems’s house as a final stop. He’s a family friend of Randall and Amanda. Met him when I went to notify Dr. Brock about his wife. Saw him again last night at the wake. I want to get a better feel for this guy.”
“Okay,” Tommy replied, zipping his coat closed to protect himself from the bitter wind. “Let’s do it.”
25
The day was quickly getting away from them. Susan and Tommy had endured more traffic jams and construction reroutes into Brooklyn only to find Hooper’s apartment empty. Two NYPD officers had met them there and gained access to the three-story walk-up from the superintendent. They knocked on Hooper’s door and identified themselves several times, getting only silence in return. One of the officers climbed a rear fire escape to look through the windows. The place was empty. They checked the assigned parking space in the garage across from the building. It was also empty. No one seemed to know where Hooper Landsky had gone.
They now sat in Bernie Hayman’s office about thirty minutes north of Manhattan, in White Plains. Bernie was a business-and-estate attorney and ran a one-man shop with no other employees except for an aging secretary who had been with him for over thirty years. There were no ornate carvings, mahogany bookcases, or oversized desks polished new with meticulousness that you might find in the larger firms, but it was nice enough, even if it was small.
“Cliff Sturges and I were best friends in college,” Bernie explained as if reading Susan’s mind, eager to explain how such a small firm could keep such a large client. “I was the only person he trusted with his wealth and his estate. When he died, Amanda kept me on. I’d known her since she was born. She was like family. I know the ins and outs of every plan and every penny that flows through that family and the foundation. It wouldn’t make sense to go with anyone else. There’d be too much to relearn. It’d be a waste of time, and something could fall through the cracks. So here I am.”
The short, pudgy man was dressed in tan khakis and a blue long-sleeve polo. He played nervously with the watch on his wrist.
“What about Randall?” Susan asked. “Would you consider him family?”
“No. Randall’s a good man, but their marriage came out of nowhere. We didn’t even know he existed until he moved in with Amanda.”
“Did you do any investigations on him before the wedding?”
“There wasn’t much out there. We di
d a general background check—you know, credit report and criminal records. Everything was fine.”
“Did Amanda know you did the check?”
“No. She wouldn’t have approved, but I needed to make sure he wasn’t a wanted man or something. I’m sure you can understand, with the Sturges fortune at stake.”
“Was there a prenup?” Tommy asked.
Bernie nodded. “Yes.”
“And the prenup is superseded by the will if Amanda dies?”
“Yes.”
Susan wrote a few notes in her pad. “Did you know Amanda was having an affair?”
Bernie looked down at the floor. “Yes. But that was none of my business. What she did in her private life was up to her. It wasn’t my place to get involved.”
“Had you ever met her lover?” Tommy asked. “Hooper Landsky?”
“No. Amanda never even told me his name. One day she stopped in, unannounced, and said she was thinking of leaving Randall. She explained she’d met someone, and that was it. Then she instructed me to draft a set of divorce papers and asked me to send her plans to rewrite the will. She was removing Randall from the will and giving him a small alimony stipend for the next fifteen years. Better than what was in the prenup. She didn’t want to completely cut his legs out from underneath him.”
“Talk about going zero to sixty,” Tommy said. “One minute you’re a couple, and the next she’s leaving you and cutting you out of the will? Did that seem rash to you? Out of nowhere Amanda’s planning to divorce Randall and adjust the will?”
Bernie shrugged. “Of course it seemed rash to me, but so did marrying him in the first place. That was Amanda. She was rash and decisive. When she made her mind up about something, she followed through. I don’t know how long she’d been thinking about leaving Randall. She just asked me to draw up some drafts so she could see what things would look like. I consulted a friend of mine who does divorce work, and we mapped it out. I gave her the reworked will and the divorce documents like she asked. That’s the last time we spoke about it. She never called me to have me file them or make any more changes, so I figured she’d changed her mind. Which, by the way, is also not uncommon.”
Susan made more notes, then looked up at the lawyer. “I was at Amanda’s wake. I saw the exchange between you and Randall. What happened? He seemed very upset.”
Bernie began moving piles of paper from one end of his desk to the other. “Everything we just talked about is what happened. Randall found the draft documents in a safe-deposit box Amanda had. He was angry that I didn’t tell him about it. Furious. That’s why I’m here today and not at the funeral. Figured I wasn’t welcome. It’s no matter. I’ll pay her a visit later on. Let him have his day with his wife. If he doesn’t want me there, I won’t interfere.”
“Did you ever feel like you should’ve given Randall a heads-up?” Tommy asked. “Maybe an off-the-record warning or something?”
“Not my place,” Bernie replied. “I’m the lawyer for Amanda Brock’s estate. That’s where my loyalty lies. I wasn’t about to break my oath, or any laws, warning Randall that Amanda was going to leave him. Besides, she never did anything with the paperwork, so why mess with it?”
Susan looked out the dingy window toward the neighboring building. “Let me ask you something. Since the will never got changed, and Amanda is dead, how is the money allocated?”
Bernie dug through a pile of forms next to his chair and came away with a brown folder. He opened it, tracing his finger down the page as he read. “The foundation gets seventy-five percent of the estate. Randall gets the rest.”
“And how much is that?”
The attorney looked up from the folder. “Randall will inherit roughly thirty million dollars.”
26
Susan could hear the commotion coming from inside the house before she even rang the doorbell. Tommy took a position on the right side of the door, a habit she knew he’d developed responding to calls as a trooper. She waited for a moment, leaning in to see if she could hear what was going on, but there was nothing specific that she could make out. She rang the bell.
“You think they’ll even hear that?” Tommy asked. “Sounds like they’re either having one hell of a party or one hell of a fight.”
She rang again, and the front door opened. A little girl, maybe a year or so older than Casey, stood before them.
“Hello,” Susan said, bending down. She glanced inside and could see adults milling about, drinks in hand, plates of food, laughing, shouting, music on somewhere in the background. “We’re looking for Peter. Is that your dad?”
“Uncle Peter is my uncle,” the girl said matter-of-factly. “We’re visiting from Maryland. I’m Zana.”
“Wow, what a pretty name. Are you the only one who heard the doorbell ring, or did someone ask you to see who was here?”
“No, I heard it by myself.”
“Can you get your uncle?”
“Okay.” Zana stopped and thought for a moment, her brow creasing. “I think I’m supposed to ask you if you want to come in. That’s good manners, right?”
“Yes it is,” Susan replied. “But we didn’t come for the party, so we’ll wait out here. Just go get him for us, okay?”
“Okay.”
The girl shut the door and left the two investigators in the cold quiet of the night. Tommy remained in his position on the porch, his hands involuntarily swinging toward the holster on his belt. Susan could remember those days, fresh off the front lines, when procedures were suddenly different but years of training wouldn’t let you forget. Her hand had swung the same way for her entire first year as an investigator. Every time she was in a situation she wasn’t completely comfortable with, her hand would be reaching for her holster. It was as automatic as shutting your eyes when you sneezed.
The door opened again, and this time it was Peter Reems. He was dressed in a wool sweater, the collar of a denim button-down peeking out from underneath, navy slacks, and white tennis shoes. He gripped his scotch with his right hand, his left still on the knob.
“Investigator Adler,” Peter said. “We meet again.”
“That’s right. This is Investigator Corolla. We’re sorry to interrupt your party. We’d just like to ask you a few questions about Randall and Amanda. You stated you were close with both of them, so we need to get a perspective on a few things.”
“So Randall was right. You guys really do think Amanda’s death is suspicious. No other reason for you to be here at this hour talking to me. Especially on such a night.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We buried Amanda this morning, and tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. Needless to say, it’s been a long day.”
“I didn’t realize. We just need a few minutes, and then we’re gone.”
Peter pushed the door open wider. “We can talk in my office, but I can’t be away from my guests for too long.”
“In and out,” Susan replied. “You have my word.”
The home office was exactly what Susan had in mind. Large oak desk, high-back red leather chair, dark-green carpet, red-gold-green plaid wallpaper, a bookcase full of scientific texts and published case studies, a large antique globe, awards and certifications hanging in frames on the walls, no windows. She and Tommy sat in the two smaller armchairs in front of the desk. Peter took his position in the high-back, crossing his legs and propping his elbows up on the chair’s armrests.
“Ask your questions,” Peter said, his voice even but stern. “I really do need to get back to my family’s celebrations.”
“Let’s start with Randall Brock,” Susan began. “What’s your relationship with him?”
“He’s like a brother. Randall and I went to NYU together. We were roommates our freshman year and have remained the best of friends ever since. We had a lot of things in common. Music, girls, what we wanted out of our major. Both of us were very focused on helping others. There were students in our program that were hell bent on making money and taking a d
ifferent route, working for Big Pharma or major university research. Randall and I wanted to try and cure the patient. When he met Amanda, I knew it was a match made in heaven. I was his best man at the wedding. He was mine as well.”
“You seemed very protective of him at the wake.”
“Like I said, we’re practically brothers. He’s going through the devastation of losing a spouse, and now he learns that Amanda was cheating on him and was planning to leave him? It’s too much. If I was abrupt in any way at the wake, it’s because I feel the last thing he needs is the police showing up raising suspicions when he’s trying to bury his wife. There’s a time and a place, and the back porch of the funeral home wasn’t it.”
Tommy crossed his legs to match Peter. “Do you think Randall had any indication his wife was planning to leave him and cut him out of the will?”
“No.”
“Did you know he’s going to inherit thirty million dollars now that she’s dead?”
Peter smiled and shook his head. “I see where you’re going, but I can tell you with certainty that there is no chance Randall had anything nefarious to do with Amanda’s death. If I thought he could be involved in any way, I’d tell you. It wouldn’t make sense not to.”
“Gets cheated on. A divorce. Losing all that money. That’s a good list of motives right there.” Tommy uncrossed his legs. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“My friend didn’t kill his wife,” Peter replied. “What about Amanda’s lover? Do you know who he is? Maybe you should be talking to him.”
“We’re working on it.”
There was a knock on the office door, and a tall boy with acne covering his face shuffled into the room. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his khakis. “Mom needs you to help with the kugel. She told me to come find you.”
“Tell her I’m coming,” Peter said. The boy nodded and disappeared.
Susan stood from her chair. “I appreciate you taking a few minutes for us, and I really am sorry to barge in on your holiday.”
Peter walked them to the office door. “I’m sorry you had to come and waste your time, but I really don’t have anything to share with you. Randall is a good man. I know he had nothing to do with Amanda’s accident.”
I Know Everything Page 12