by Delia Rosen
“The world is indeed off its axis if I’m quoting Hatfield to myself,” I thought aloud as I went to bed. I was asleep within minutes—within minutes of 9:30 p.m., which was a measure of how tired I was—and was up with the sun.
In the light of day, the thing that seemed the strangest about the previous day was the thing about the jeweler’s screwdriver. Who the hell carried one of those around? There weren’t any jewelers on our long list of suspects.
I was about to leave for the deli when my cell rang. It was Grant.
“Bad news,” he said. “That screwdriver belonged to Joe.”
“What for?”
“According to McCoy, who asked his sister last night, he used it to make baseball displays for Dave’s memorabilia shop. Kind of a hobby.”
“So why was it in the truck?”
“He was going to tighten some of the stands during lunch. Apparently, they come loose when you screw and unscrew the plastic holders.”
“Because . . . ?”
“People like to examine the signatures, make sure they’re real and not printed. Anyway, Joe kept it in the ashtray so he wouldn’t forget.”
“Wow. Gotta say, I didn’t see that coming,” I said.
“If it’s true, it tells me the killing wasn’t planned.”
“Yeah, but what a stupid, random way to die—because your ball screwing tool was in an ashtray to remind you to go somewhere.”
“Would it have been better if it were a pen or pencil?”
“A little,” I said. Though Joe would still be just as dead.
“But you were right about the gloves,” he added. “Brenda said he always wore them when he made deliveries. Good get, Gwen.”
“Thanks.”
I had no idea where the investigation was going after this, and I was glad it wasn’t my responsibility.
I got to the deli early, figuring I owed it to the staff to beat everyone there and get as much of the prep work done as possible. Naturally, it didn’t happen that way. I parked, and walking over, I saw a figure sitting on the front stoop, bent low, wearing a wrinkled hoodie. The rain had stopped, but the garment was damp; the person must have been there all night.
As I neared, I saw that it was Stacie.
“Jesus, girl,” I said, hurrying the last few steps. I bent beside her, put my arms around her, helped her to her feet. Her head went back. Her cheeks were red, her skin was pale, and her eyes were bloodshot. Her hair was a scraggly mess under the hood. I didn’t smell liquor on her breath, her pupils seemed normal, and her head wasn’t rolling around.
“Sorry, sis,” she said. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“It’s all right,” I said, my arm around her waist as I shoved the keys in the door and pushed it open. I locked it behind us and helped her into a chair. “You’re freezing,” I said. “Let me make some coffee.”
I ran behind the counter, tore open a packet of instant, and used hot water from the tap. I came back with the cup, a spoon, and a Danish on a plate. I placed them in front of her. I took off the sweatshirt and threw a man’s sports jacket around her shoulders. Someone had forgotten it, and I kept it in my office. I never did figure out how a man forgot a sports jacket and didn’t miss it.
“Eat,” I said.
She picked up the pastry and took a bite.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Nothing to be sorry for. What happened?”
She snickered. “When? With who?”
“It doesn’t matter. Talk.”
She washed the pastry down with coffee.
“Good,” she said. “Real good.”
“I’m glad.”
She took a long breath, seemed to recover slightly. “Okay. So I took your advice and wrote to Stephen that I wanted to see him. He wrote back, telling me I was ungrateful, and that it wasn’t necessary to come and see him. Everything of mine that was at his house was really his, he said, so there was no reason to come back. He wished me well.”
“What a prince,” I said.
“I don’t blame him,” Stacie said. “It was pretty sudden. I don’t regret it.”
“Good for you.”
“Maybe not.” She smiled weakly. She ate more Danish. “When I got home, I made spaghetti for Scott—his favorite—and told him everything that had happened. About dating Stephen, about everything you said, about dumping Stephen. All of it. You know what he did? He started to cry.”
“Did he say why?”
She shook her head, drank more coffee, added sugar, swirled it around. “He just cried for a while, and when I tried to comfort him, he told me not to. He stopped, picked at the spaghetti, had a little beer, cried some more—and then left.”
“Had he ever cried before?”
“Only when he lost a hundred dollars on a Sting game.”
“A what?”
“Charlotte Sting—women’s basketball. It was the first and only time he bet. It was when he wanted to get me a nicer diamond for our engagement. Instead, he had to get me one that was a hundred dollars worse.”
“I see.”
“I went out looking for him. He had the car, so I ran for a while, going to the bars he usually visits. He had been to one of them, the Ghostly Booze, but he wasn’t in any of them when I got there.”
“Did you call the police?”
She nodded. She fought tears. “They found him beat up and unconscious on Harrison Street, by his car.”
“My God. How is he?”
“He came to in the hospital but was real confused, not makin’ any sense. They sedated him. I left, and . . . I came here.”
“Do you think it was Hatfield?”
She drank her coffee and stared into her cup.
“Stacie?”
She looked over. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t take my call, and I knew he wouldn’t let me in the gate. So I just sat, thinkin’ that I had caused this to happen.”
“No!” I leaned across the table and took her by the shoulders. “I talked to Scott, and I saw how heavy this thing weighed on him. I think he cried when you told him because he was relieved, and maybe a little ashamed, and he just didn’t know how to handle it. After he left, he had a few drinks. Maybe he talked to the bartender. Maybe he got mad. Maybe he did something stupid. But you didn’t cause that. You did the right thing by talking to him.”
I hoped. I wasn’t a shrink, and I’d made a couple of pop-psych suggestions based on a quick read of Scott and a quick read of Stacie. God help us all if I messed up.
One thing I needed to do, though, was get a picture of what happened after he left the bar.
“Will you be okay out here for a few minutes?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry about all this,” I said. “But we’re going to make it all right.”
“I believe you,” she said.
I hurried to my office and shut the door. I had not, I’m ashamed to admit, torn up the business card Stephen Hatfield had left me. I had thought about it, more than I should have. It had a kind of electric power, like it was a conduit of the man. Even contemplating what he might have done, I found myself . . .
You’re a sick girl, I chastised myself, though not hard enough.
I was actually aroused.
I took the man’s card from my drawer, picked up the phone, and punched in his private number without hesitation. I was brave and jitter free when he was . . . I didn’t even know how many miles away.
The phone rang. It was either late or too early by night-crawler standards. Either he was still up or I’d wake him. . . .
“Gwen Katz,” he answered. “This is an unexpected surprise.”
“Is it?”
“Completely.”
“Just one question, Mr. Hatfield. Did you do anything to Scott Ferguson?”
There was a brief silence. “What is it you think I’ve done to him?” he asked.
“Had him beaten halfway to dead.”
“Not me,” he said.
He spoke with such certainty that I didn’t know what to say next. Anger is good for marathon runs and multiple assaults; fury is only good for short sprints. I was furious and out of gas.
“Let me guess what happened,” Hatfield said. “Our little cheerleader confessed all to her football hero, was met with relief and confusion and probably dollops of unhappiness, after which he toyed with the idea of confronting me in person. That is what jocks do, after all. First, though, he stopped at a local booze joint to fuel up. And then, tragically but perhaps fittingly, he ran afoul of some other jock or redneck or God knows who and had his ego, face, and vague plan rearranged. Would that not be an equally likely scenario?”
I didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, I didn’t feel obligated to say anything to this man. Which was another thing, I thought miserably. I always feel like I have to talk to Grant about something. Anything.
“Gwen? Are you there?”
“Sorry to have wakened you,” I said, chilled by the double entendre I found in that.
“No problem. I go to bed rather early when there’s no one to keep me awake.”
“Creepy.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I have to go.”
I could see him smile. He could probably see me squirm.
“You do fascinate me,” he said. “I hope you will consider dinner some night. Out, if you feel safer.”
“Thanks. I don’t think so.”
“That’s the problem,” he said.
“What is?”
“Don’t think.”
I hung up. The conversation had gone on about four exchanges too long. My hand was still on the receiver. It was shaking. I wished to hell I could follow my own advice and talk about what was inside me right now. But I didn’t know. He was wrong. I had done things without thinking. My first, the professor, was one—a big one. A no-returns-accepted impulse buy my freshman year. That was probably why I was so cautious now: that one did major damage.
You have never talked to anyone about that. Not even Phil, who didn’t want to hear about the men who came before. It is long overdue. Maybe now that you have a sister who has been in similar shoes . . .
My eyes fell on a scrap of paper in the corner of my desk. The writing blasted Stephen Hatfield out of my brain and into next week.
“Not possible,” I said, thinking back. “Not . . . no. How does that even fit?”
I went to call Grant, realized he wasn’t the man I needed to talk to. I turned on my monitor, looked up another number. It was early, but that was too damn bad.
I took a quick trip to the dining area. “Stacie, are you all right?”
“Can I get myself another coffee?”
“Of course. Behind the counter in a box marked Maxwell House.”
She nodded.
She was all right enough. I went back to the office and picked up the phone.
As for Robert Reid, he would take my call and like it.
Chapter 22
“The list?” he said groggily.
“The phone list,” I repeated. “From last night. The one with the calls from Joe Silvio’s cell phone.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “What time is it?”
“Nearly six,” I said.
He yawned loudly. “That’s why I run a family newspaper. Woodward and Bernstein hours blow.”
I didn’t touch the line. I was too distracted. I was pretty sure I was right. I just couldn’t make the pieces fit.
“Robert, get the hell up and do your damn job. The job your daddy’s trust fund pays you for.”
“No need to get personal,” he said.
“Oh, there’s every need. Finding a killer and doling out payback to you, which is going to be a gift that keeps on giving.”
“I’m going,” he said. “The list is in my jacket, I think. Which is in the car.”
I heard shuffling sounds. A robe, slippers. Maybe he was shushing a lover.
God, what if he’s no different than Stephen Hatfield, festooning his bed with boy toys like that receptionist in his lobby, giving them gifts, then discarding them when he’s through? Why does that behavior seem somehow more acceptable in his world than in mine? Why do the young men who take his trinkets seem smart, canny, not used?
Then I thought, Why can you think so clearly about his imaginary love life and not your own? Because—drumroll, cue Stephen Hatfield—it’s just about the sex, as far as you know.
Then I thought, You’re being an idiot. How do you know any of what you just thought is true? For all you know, he may be in a long-term committed relationship.
“I’m going,” he said. “It’s in the garage.”
“You leave your clothes in the garage?”
“When I get home late,” he said.
“Go out partying?”
“Huh? No. I was reviewing the files my PIs compiled for me. Hey, did you know Scott Ferguson got into a fight last night?”
“Where? Do you know why?”
“Some guy was being too attentive to a cocktail waitress at the Ghostly Booze Bar. Scott offered her a ride home. The guy was a biker with the Muscles for Anarchy motorcycle club. Bodybuilding bikers. Three of them surrounded him outside the park. One took the girl. The others trashed him. Wrong iron crosses to cross.”
Not if you have something to prove or feel like you should be punished for something, or both, I thought.
“Catchy headline, don’t you think?” he said self-admiringly.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I’m going as fast as I can on two hours’ sleep. What is this, anyway?”
“I’ll let you know if I’m right.”
He went the rest of the way in silence. I heard room doors open and close. I heard a car alarm beep. I heard that door open. I heard more rustling.
“Okay,” he said. “You ready?”
I looked at the desk. “Ready.”
He read the number. I swore. It matched.
“So?” he asked.
I said, “Guess what? I’m right.”
“Sweet! Whose number is it?”
I replied, “I said I’d let you know if I was right. I was. Bye.”
“Dammit, Gwen—”
I hung up. And felt very good about it, I did.
I was wired. “Priorities,” I said.
I decided to give Grant five more minutes of sleep. I went into the dining room. Stacie was back in her chair, huddled over her second cup of instant.
“Let me make some of the real stuff,” I said.
“This is okay—”
“For me,” I said.
I worked with filters and a bag of McNulty’s behind the counter. They were from a coffee bean store on Christopher Street in the West Village. I’d been buying beans there since my student days. I wasn’t about to stop drinking Bavarian Chocolate Cherry just because I’d moved to another world.
“I have some news,” I said.
She looked up hopefully. I guess my tone of voice told her it wasn’t bad news, for once.
“Scott was hurt because he tried to defend a server at that bar last night,” I said.
“He did?”
“Yes indeed. From the Muscles for Anarchy motorcycle club.”
“Bikers? He’s hated them since high school!”
“Well, he got it out of his system last night,” I told her. “Maybe he was doing for himself what you did for yourself. Had to express something he’d been keeping inside.”
“God, the MFA,” she said.
The big machine was locked and loaded, and I switched it on. The blurping sound filled the room, followed by the incomparable smell of fresh-brewed. I went back to her table.
“Why don’t you go see him?” I said. “Stay with him?”
“I—I can’t. Work.”
“Does Sammi have anyone else she can call?”
“Sure, but I need the paycheck.”
“Not from there,” I said.
“Sorry?”
“Why don’t you come to work here?” I asked, not quite sure I was doing the right thing. But I was taking my own advice: it was what was inside. I was just laying it out.
“Are you serious?”
“Pretty much all the time,” I said ruefully.
She jumped up and hugged me and ran her left hand up and down my spine and wept and probably would have stayed there if I hadn’t put my hands on her arms and gently pushed her back.
“Why don’t you call her and explain what happened?” I suggested. “I’m sure she’ll understand. Then you can stop by later and give your two weeks’ notice.”
She lunged at me again. “Thank you, sister. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
She finished the Danish and drank more coffee, and then—showing promise—took the cup and dish back to the sink, which she found without having to ask.
“I’ll call you,” she said as she took off the jacket and grabbed her damp sweatshirt. “I love you.”
“Talk to you later, Stace,” I said.
I wasn’t quite at that same gushing level. Stacie to Stace was about the best I could do then.
I let her out, locked the door behind her, then went to the office. I called Grant on his cell. He answered groggily.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I replied.
Shit, damnation, and Faust. That was lame buddy talk.
“How are you this morning?” he asked.
“Good.”
And more of the same.
“Guess what?” he said, without waiting for me to buddy-answer, “What?” “I called the chief at home last night. Told him about the Silvio cell phone list. McCoy’s in for an internal affairs investigation after the funeral.”
“Now I’ve got news for you,” I said. “That cell phone number on Reid’s list? It belongs to Lydia Knight.”
I could hear the intake of air. I recognized intake from outflow from sex. Our lovemaking was at the same level as our more interesting conversation.
“Does Robert know?”
“He knows that I know, but he doesn’t know what I know.”
“Thank you,” Grant said. “Crap. I’m going to need that list in order to get a search warrant. We should have it this morning. How do you know it’s Lydia’s number?”
“She wrote it down for me.”
“You have it in her handwriting?”