by John Lutz
“Important stuff,” she said.
Jody had within a week pegged Dollie as too loose with her tongue and the facts to be working at a law firm. And she liked to trail gossip bait.
Even knowing this, Jody bit. “Important how?”
“They’re deciding whether to go ahead and raze Dash’s apartment building while Dash is still in the hospital.”
“They’ve been arguing that for days.”
“But Dash has been given a release date. She comes home from the hospital tomorrow, if home is still standing.”
That explained the sense of urgency Enders was emitting. He was probably arguing to turn the dinosaur-like wrecking machines loose on the building while it stood empty. That’s how Jody had come to think of the destruction of the apartment building, an attack by iron-jawed prehistoric beasts as might be depicted in a high-tech science fiction movie.
“Leaving Mildred Dash an invalid with no home to return to would create such a firestorm of bad press, it wouldn’t be worthwhile,” Jody said.
“You should be telling that to them in there.”
“Hah! Anyway, I thought that was already decided. So what’s changed?”
“The development company’s position. They’d rather be the bad guys, figuring it would cost less to repair their reputation than it would to delay the project even longer.”
“But it isn’t a dollars and—”
Dollie grinned and held up her hand in a stop signal. “I hear you, Jody. But the fact is, for them and for us, it is a dollars-and-cents issue.”
“There’s always right and wrong,” Jody said.
Dollie smiled. “Notice how odd that sounds in here?”
Jody had noticed. It was as if her words had been absorbed and made meaningless by the deep carpet and thick drapes.
Dollie gave her a reassuring smile. “Remember, kid, this is a law office.”
Jody did remember. For a moment she stood watching the silent storm of discussion in the conference room.
“What are you thinking, Jody?”
“Nothing, really.”
She was wondering what the development company’s position would be if the Dash apartment building was occupied by someone other than Mildred Dash.
Weaver entered Harley Renz’s office and laid a padded yellow envelope on his desk.
Renz reached into it cautiously, as if fearing something might bite him, and pulled out a plastic tube with a metal plug on the end.
“Know what those are?” Weaver asked.
“Thumb drives for a computer,” Renz said.
“Right. You plug them into a USB port and you can transfer information to or from them.”
“I know all that. I’m not a computer Luddite, whatever that is. Where’d they come from?”
Weaver thought the question a little odd, since it was Renz who’d suggested—indirectly, of course—that Weaver enter Dr. Grace Moore’s apartment and search for more information about her patients than her files had provided. Who could tell what kinds of information might be on those drives? Information was Renz’s lifeblood, and nobody knew better than Weaver how to scour an apartment.
Weaver also knew enough not to answer the question directly. “They came into my possession last night.”
Renz looked at her carefully across his desk. She noticed how red his eyes were and how he appeared more jowly than ever. As if gravity were tugging at his features extra hard this morning.
“Anything about Tennyson?” he asked.
He’d tried to make the question sound casual, but there was a charge in the air that made Weaver’s scalp tingle.
She could have said she couldn’t know about Tennyson, because Renz had suggested she seek an opportunity to get into Moore’s apartment, and she couldn’t be two places at once. But she simply said, “Nothing.”
Something was very wrong here. It was time to tiptoe.
“Harl—Commissioner, is everything all right?”
He sat back as if the question needed to be mulled over. “Yes. I’d say so.” He leaned forward and began shuffling papers on his desk. A caricature of a busy executive. “We got a double homicide in the West Village, an ambulance shot at on Broadway, a foreign dignitary arrested in a bar fight, a professional escort dead from a heroin overdose in a Midtown hotel ... the usual.”
Professional escort?
Weaver’s voice was steady. “Got a name on the escort ?”
Renz pretended to check for information in his mess of papers. “Olivia something ...”
Weaver showed no emotion. A game needed to be played here, and she was learning the rules as it went along.
“Any indication of foul play?”
“Not really.” He trained sad, angry eyes on her and shrugged. “But who knows for sure?”
“I’m ... sorry,” Weaver said.
Renz suddenly smiled slyly at her. “What for? You want the escort case?”
She couldn’t help but smile back. Pretending could have its moments, and once you sold your soul to the devil there was a lot to smile about.
“If it’s okay with you, sir, I’ll stay on my present assignment with Quinn and his gang.”
“Watch those people,” Renz said. “All of them. They’re slippery as hell.”
“Don’t I know it,” Weaver said.
But it wasn’t the slipperiness of Quinn and Q&A that concerned her. Not right now, anyway. Other questions were tumbling around in her brain. Had street-smart Tennyson figured out what was going on and killed Olivia so the murder might be blamed on Weaver? Did he think it would appear that Weaver had killed Olivia as a favor to Renz?
Sure, Weaver had an alibi; she was illegally searching Dr. Grace Moore’s apartment. Try that one on a judge or jury.
Had Harry Primo suspected that Olivia was an informer and killed her because she was a threat to his business? Did Tennyson think Weaver actually had killed Olivia? Did Renz suspect her? Had Olivia simply overdosed on heroin and died on her own, leaving behind the other players to decide what had happened?
There were plenty of questions here that no one wanted asked, much less answered. One thing might lead to another, might lead to total ruin. A balance must be maintained.
It seemed that the three of them, Renz, Tennyson, and Weaver, would forever be locked together in this grotesque dance. That was how it worked—closer than family.
God, corruption could be complicated!
Renz pretended to become preoccupied with the paper storm on his desk, and Weaver left the office.
Wondering what ever happened to closure?
72
They had dinner in the brownstone.
Pearl had outdone herself in the kitchen this evening, stopping at two delis for pre-cooked and heated vegetables that went perfectly with the stuffed pork chops she’d had delivered from a restaurant six blocks away.
“Delicious,” Quinn proclaimed, wondering if this was as close as he’d ever again come to a home-cooked meal. He pushed his plate away to signify that he was finished.
“Much better than passable,” Jody said.
“It’s all in the timing,” Pearl said.
“What’s that, Mom?”
“Being a good cook is all in the timing, having everything ready and heated at the same time.”
Quinn and Jody exchanged glances. Neither knew if Pearl was kidding, so they maintained wooden expressions.
Pearl brought in vanilla ice cream and coffee for dessert. The ice cream was from D’Agostino, some brand Quinn had never heard of, but it was pretty good. The coffee tasted much like the coffee she made at the office. They ate the ice cream with chocolate syrup and a sprinkling of chopped nuts on it.
The ice cream was in fact so good that no one spoke until they were finished eating it. They sipped their coffees contentedly without speaking. A family scene too late for Rockwell. Quinn was reminded of his first marriage, with May, when their daughter Lauri was young and living at home. Somehow the memory didn’t make
him sad. This was good, what he, Pearl, and Jody had. For Quinn it was like an unexpected bonus. He wondered if the other two felt the same way. He was pretty sure Jody did. Not so sure about Pearl.
Jody dabbed at her lips with a napkin, which she then wadded and put on the table. “Either of you heard of Waycliffe College being involved with Meeding Properties ?” she asked.
“Involved how?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve heard mention of the college at the firm, and it’s usually in an odd way, as if there’s some kind of secret connection.”
“Some kind of legal matter,” Quinn suggested. “I hear they do that kind of thing there.”
Pearl gave him a be serious look.
Jody shook her head, not noticing Quinn’s sarcasm. “No, I, er, checked and the firm doesn’t have anything pending with the school.”
“Checked how?” Quinn asked.
“Never mind that.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Snitch, the cat, appeared and Jody placed her paper deli dish on the floor so the animal could lap up what was left of her ice cream.
“Maybe there’s something hush-hush about the way the internship dropped into my lap after Macy Collins was killed.”
“You’re in an advanced student program,” Pearl reminded her. She couldn’t help sounding a little proud. “There’s nothing that unusual about you getting the open internship.”
“Yeah, so maybe I got the wrong impression. About Meeding Properties, too. They’re always whispering about that at the firm.”
Quinn sipped his coffee and studied Jody over the cup’s plasticized paper rim, which was beginning to break down from the heat. “You’re linking the law firm, Meeding Industries, and Waycliffe College together?”
“And Sarah Benham.”
“The woman you sometimes go to lunch with?”
“Yeah. We’ve become pretty good friends. She’s also a former Enders and Coil client, but only in a small way. A class action suit against a mutual fund. Diddly-squat for everyone but the lawyers. Anyway, I’m sure I heard her mention my name when she and Jack Enders were talking.”
“While you were eavesdropping,” Pearl said.
“I was out at Waycliffe today and I think I caught a glimpse of her.”
Pearl placed her heated, cooled, and reheated coffee cup where the tablecloth was already stained. “So what were you doing at Waycliffe?”
“I’d gone through all the files at Enders and Coil. Because of the Mildred Dash dilemma.”
“Dilemma?” Quinn asked.
“Sure. You must have been reading about it in the papers. How Mildred Dash is in a coma and she’s—”
“We know about it,” Pearl said. “She was due to go home, but she’s staying in the hospital. Which puts Meeding Properties in something of a public relations quandary.”
“So I was searching the files for something to use against Enders and Coil.”
“Use against them?”
“Against their client, actually.”
“It amounts to the same thing,” Quinn pointed out.
“You were searching for something your own firm did that could be construed as criminal?” Pearl asked.
“Sure.”
“Isn’t that criminal?”
“I could make a case for it being legal. I’m an employee. Why shouldn’t I have access to the files? I might have broken some obscure company regulation—though I’ve never seen anything specific—but that doesn’t mean a statute has been violated.”
Pearl chewed her lower lip. Quinn tried not to smile,
“I’m not going to argue law with you,” Pearl said. “What did you find?”
“Exchanges of encrypted e-mails with somebody at Waycliffe.”
“My, my,” Quinn said.
“Did you break the encryption?” Pearl asked.
“Enough to see the word cabal used more than once. And my business psychology professor at Waycliffe, Elaine Pratt, was the recipient and sender of some of the e-mails. That’s why I rented a car and drove up to Waycliffe.”
“To do some breaking and entering,” Pearl said.
“I’m a student there,” Jody reminded her.
“So did you learn something more about Meeding Properties and Mildred Dash?” Quinn asked. “And a cable?”
“Cabal,” Jody said. “A secret group that has some kind of agenda.”
“Did you learn the secret agenda?”
“No. But Meeding is in trouble. Time’s running out on the date they have to finish demolition. If they don’t make the deadline, they’ll lose a humongous amount of money. I could tell even though they were encrypted that the issue with Mildred Dash was what a lot of the e-mails were about.”
“So maybe the college is invested in Meeding Properties,” Quinn said.
“So why would that be such a big secret?”
“I dunno. PR?”
“Ha! The college portfolio contains cigarette companies, so I don’t think they’d be ashamed of Meeding. Unless murder was involved.”
“Murder?”
“Maybe. Hard to say for sure, with the encryption. Or Professor Pratt might have been talking about a teaching project. She had a file stuffed with newspaper items about some old murders. We discuss that kind of thing in her class all the time.”
“So who was the killer?” Quinn asked.
“Daniel something.”
“Daniel Danielle? Last name a female version of the first?”
Jody slapped her forehead so hard her springy red hair jiggled. “Of course! It should have registered. Only this guy died like over a decade ago.”
Quinn looked at Pearl. Pearl looked at Quinn and Jody. All of them thinking this could be a coincidence, Professor Pratt researching for her class presentation the same killer who appeared to have returned and taken up where he’d left off when he’d supposedly died ten years ago. After all, Daniel Danielle was a topical subject again. Fair game for a psych teacher.
“Coincidences do happen,” Jody said, “or there wouldn’t be such a word.”
“What are you going to do with your information?” Quinn asked.
“Try to stop demolition somehow on Mildred Dash’s apartment.”
“You mean calling the shots because you might have something on Enders and Coil?”
“Possibly.”
“Leverage?”
“Maybe.”
“Extortion?”
“I’m not gaining anything.”
“Blackmail?”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“Preventing something criminal. Do either of you know anything about it?”
“I don’t,” Pearl said.
“We don’t,” Quinn added.
“Okay.”
Quinn and Pearl sat staring at each other. They both felt as if they’d just been spewed from a conversational whirlpool.
Jody smiled and stood up from her chair. “Is it my turn to help with the dishes?”
“It’s your turn to do the dishes,” Pearl said.
“That’s right.” Jody began collecting the paper plates and plastic utensils supplied by the restaurant and delis.
Off she went into the kitchen, almost tripping over the cat still intent on its ice cream.
Pearl hadn’t moved. She was gazing toward the kitchen, looking solemn and concerned.
“Your kid,” Quinn said.
73
Pearl shouldn’t have followed Jody the next morning, but she did.
Things were accumulating in a way that made her uneasy. Who was this Sarah Benham woman, and what was the basis of her friendship with Jody? What might Jody do to get herself into the kind of trouble that would follow her all her life? Pearl suspected her daughter wasn’t far from going to the demolition site of Mildred Dash’s apartment and causing a problem. Youth often thought that if enough hell was raised, a solution would be forthcoming.
Why was Jody so discontent
ed? Such a pea under the mattress? Pearl thought about Jody’s father. He’d been, if anything, too mellow. It had been as if his music sweetened his life. Even more than Pearl had sweetened it. He had always been too preoccupied to get into the various kinds of trouble that seemed to attract Jody. Where the hell did Jody get—?
Pearl put the question out of her mind so she could concentrate on what she was doing. Following her daughter, as any good mother would.
Ahead of her, Jody paused to look at some junk in a street vendor’s cart. T-shirts, caps, belts, paste jewelry, silver and gold chains, sunglasses, and visors—the gaudy display seemed to sway in the morning breeze. Or maybe that was an illusion.
Pearl moved over to a florist shop doorway, out of the stream of pedestrian traffic. While she watched her daughter absently pick through the street vendor’s merchandise, she was thinking Okay, or No, no, don’t buy that.
Mom interfering by telepathy.
Jody did buy something. Apparently some small piece of jewelry. Then she walked on.
As Pearl followed, Jody broke into a jog in order to join a knot of people hurrying across an intersection with the traffic signal.
Uh-oh.
Pearl knew she’d have to jog to keep up, maybe cross over the other way and keep pace on the opposite side of the street. If traffic would cooperate.
All she could see of Jody now was her head of springy red hair. She decided her best bet would be to reach the intersection where Jody had crossed and see if she could catch a break in the traffic.
Pearl thought she might make it and was approaching the curb when a large shadow engulfed her. She slowed, glanced back, and saw that one of those red double-decker sightseeing buses was about to make a right turn in front of her.
She slowed to a walk, giving ground to the behemoth.
When she was almost at a stop, something rammed into the small of her back and shoved her from behind.
She was in front of the turning bus.
Pearl instinctively brought up her hands and slapped at the front of the bus with both palms. She pushed away from the warm wall of metal as the bus came at her. It wasn’t moving fast, but fast enough that she couldn’t get out of its path. She was in so close she wasn’t sure if the driver was even aware of her.