“You might wish I’d let her shoot you.”
Ms. P took my still-trembling hand in hers and led me out.
CHAPTER 22
Ms. Pentecost wanted us to get a cab, but I refused to leave the Caddy in front of that woman’s house.
Somehow I got us to Brooklyn. I started the journey dazed and numb, but as thought and feeling worked their way back into my brain, numbness turned to anger. Either Belestrade was channeling the spirit of my dead mother, or someone had given her enough personal information about me to allow her to turn me into a mark.
There was only one person in recent memory to whom I’d let slip details of my mother’s death.
When we got back to the office, Ms. P suggested I go to my room and rest, or at least let Mrs. Campbell make me some rice pudding, which always helped when I was in a mood. Instead, I asked to be left alone in the office.
I picked up the phone and dialed. Becca answered on the third ring. She barely got out “Hello” before I tore into her.
“Did she pay you for the information, or did you just hand it over?”
“I don’t know what—”
“I hope you got something out of it,” I snarled. “A C-note, a kiss. Something.”
“Will, what’s going on? What happened?” she pleaded. “I don’t understand. Is this about my mother?”
“It’s about you slipping details of my mother’s death to that…to Belestrade.”
“Why would I tell that woman anything?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you were drunk.” My voice dripped with bitterness. I barely recognized it. “Maybe that’s how she gets all her good blackmail dirt. She feeds pretty little girls gin until they tell her whatever she wants to know. Maybe the only reason you asked me to dance in the first place was to crack me open. If that’s the case, well played.”
There was silence on the other end. I wondered if she’d disconnected.
“Will, I’m going to hang up the—”
I beat her to it.
I stared at the phone for a good minute, waiting for my heart to slow to jogging speed. I looked up to see Ms. Pentecost standing in the doorway.
“I know I flubbed it, okay? I let both of them play me and…”
I started leaking tears for the second time that night. Ms. P came around her desk, put an arm around me, and led me upstairs to bed. She walked me into my room and waited as I went into the bathroom and washed my face and changed into pajamas.
“I’m not a child,” I told her as she saw me into bed. “You don’t need to treat me like one.”
She looked surprised.
“I don’t think you’re a child,” she said. “I think you’re my associate and my friend, and that you have helped me into bed more times than I can number.”
Then she left, and I slept. Or I tried to. I couldn’t get those words out of my head.
You have to stop blaming yourself.
Because I did.
The rational part of me knew that I was just a kid back then. There was nothing I could have done to keep my father from whaling on my mother. I didn’t have a gun holstered under my arm, no knife strapped to my calf. No words to convince her to leave him while she could.
But the part of me that had pulled the gun on Belestrade? The part that twists my stomach into knots whenever I think about those days? It doesn’t listen to reason. It still thinks I should have done something. And if I just save enough women, help put enough killers behind bars, maybe the guilt will go away.
* * *
—
The next morning was bog-standard, as Mrs. Campbell would say. Wake, breakfast, correspondence, phone calls, patient waiting for my boss to come downstairs.
I hadn’t forgotten the events of the night before, but they felt less immediate. The anger had mostly receded.
The only aberration was a certain nagging guilt about how I’d exploded at Becca. I still figured her for being the leak. But what if Belestrade had used some kind of trick to pry the information out of her? Had hypnotized her somehow?
Either way, Becca was a main character in an active case and she didn’t deserve me spitting curses in her ear. I figured I’d wait until early afternoon when I was sure Becca would be awake, and call and apologize. Or head over in person if she’d agree to see me.
Ms. Pentecost came downstairs around two—a little later than usual. Maybe she wanted to give me some more time to myself. I didn’t ask and she didn’t offer. I was about to request the day’s orders when there was a knock at the door—five raps hard and fast.
“I know that Morse code,” I said, getting up to answer. I was surprised to find that Lieutenant Lazenby wasn’t alone. He was accompanied by two uniformed sergeants.
“Parker,” he said in a voice like a mine collapse. “Is she awake?”
His abruptness startled me. It was a lapse in cordiality that was unlike the burly policeman. And his face had a bit of the granite I’d seen the first night we met.
“I’m sure she’ll be delighted to see her favorite public servant.”
I led the three into the office. Lazenby immediately pulled a folded document from his coat pocket and handed it to Ms. P.
“This is a warrant for any and all firearms on the premises.”
He waited as she read it top to bottom. Then she gave me a nod.
I had a lot of questions, but I took my .38 from my desk drawer and retrieved a .45 from the safe.
Ms. P pulled a two-shot derringer from her own desk. It was only accurate to about six feet, which was all she’d need if somebody ever got into the office with mischief on their mind.
Lazenby directed the narrower of the two sergeants to take the weapons.
“That’s all?” Lazenby asked.
“You think we have an arsenal?” I quipped.
That earned me a look I didn’t like one bit. Once the first sergeant had left with our cache of shooters, Lazenby pulled out a second paper.
“This is a material witness warrant for Willowjean Parker,” he declared.
Ms. P shot to her feet and snatched it out of his hand. Her eyes flickered down the document. I peeked over her shoulder.
A material witness warrant allows the police to take a person into custody and requires the individual to provide information about a crime. If they refuse, they’ll be held in contempt. It wasn’t rare for the cops to use them as a prelude to an arrest warrant.
I noticed a conspicuous blank space on the document. As usual, my boss got there first.
“There’s no crime mentioned here. What is she suspected of having knowledge of?”
“We’re not required to provide that information,” Lazenby said.
Ms. Pentecost’s eyes would have burned a hole through a lesser man. Lazenby might as well have been made of stone.
She saw he was resolved, and her face relaxed.
“Nathan,” she said in a gentle voice. One word. Very calm.
He gave a nod and turned his dark eyes to me.
“The murder of Ariel Belestrade.”
CHAPTER 23
It was the exact same interrogation room. No foolin’. Same cheap metal table. Same wobbly chair. Except this time, I didn’t have to work my way up the ranks. I got the big guy right off.
“We’ve got you dead to rights, Parker,” he growled. “It’s not a matter of guilty or innocent. It’s murder or manslaughter. If we can show you were provoked, maybe we can keep you out of the chair.”
He leaned across the table, his voice soft and low.
“What Belestrade did to you was awful,” he said. “To use a personal tragedy, to play you like that. If she had done the same to me, I might have killed her then and there. You had more restraint than me. So what I’ve got to know is—when you went back to her house last night, what did she say? W
as it more of the same? More lies and voodoo?”
Every detective has his or her own interrogation style. Ms. Pentecost’s is to be everyone’s second-favorite aunt—not the cheery one you can have a drink with, but the no-nonsense one you turn to when you need serious advice or serious money.
Mine leverages people’s misconceptions. If they look at me and see a little girl playing detective, I use it. If they see a glorified secretary, I use that. In between I give people the character from all those pulp novels I was weaned on, all hard-boiled charm and acerbic wit. Or at least I try. Like Kalishenko used to say: Every act is a work in progress.
Lazenby’s style is the father confessor. Maybe he figures that since he looks like a sixteenth-century friar, he should play the part. Every question is couched in an offer of understanding, of absolution. Not being on the receiving end too often, I tend to forget how good he is.
Unfortunately for him, I knew his tricks. Even if I didn’t, I was too steamed at him for them to work on me. I’d always hoped his comments about my not putting any more knives in people was just play. Harmless jabs between professionals. This wasn’t playing. He’d gone to a judge with a warrant and gotten him to sign it. Maybe he didn’t really think I offed Belestrade and he was just covering his bases, but that meant he considered me a base that needed covering. That no matter who did my tailoring these days, I was still a cirky girl with a body to her record.
I was tempted to answer his questions with a few single-syllable answers. Then I thought about how Ms. Pentecost would handle things. I hadn’t spent three years in her company for nothing. She wouldn’t let Lazenby get under her skin, and if she did she sure as hell wouldn’t show it.
I thought about my dime-novel heroes, leaned back as much as the wobbly chair would allow, and put on a grin.
“That’s a nice yarn,” I said. “I prefer Hammett myself. Gardner if I’m in a pinch.”
“I’m dead serious, Will,” he said. “This isn’t a joke.”
“Do you see me laughing?”
I recited a name and number I had long since memorized—the lawyer Ms. P had on permanent retainer. Not that it was necessary. I was sure both he and Ms. P were somewhere in the building working to break me loose.
Apparently Lazenby realized that, guilty or innocent, I wasn’t going to bite on his usual line, so he started asking the useful questions. The when, where, how, and so forth. I gave him the basics of our trip to Belestrade’s the night before, glossing over the juicier details.
To my surprise, he pushed in every puzzle piece that I held back.
“You pulled a gun on the woman,” he declared. “Your boss actually threatened her life.”
“You know you can’t take Neal’s word for anything,” I said. “Whatever schemes Belestrade was up to, he was part of it.”
“We’ve got a lot more than his testimony.”
A lot of confidence in that line. I believed him. Combined with everything else he’d let slip, it could only mean one thing.
“It’s on tape,” I said—a statement not a question. “The room was wired for sound.”
Hardly a Pentecost-level feat of deduction. Not with the questions he was asking and his ability to quote Belestrade verbatim. Also, I remembered that soft ticking I’d heard. Not a clock, but the reeling of a hidden tape recorder.
“How far back do the recordings go?” I asked. “Did she record everything in the room? Do you have the entire catalog?”
The detective’s poker face was good, but I caught the flicker of frustration.
“You don’t, do you? You don’t have the lot.”
His face got that fun shade of crimson I enjoy so much. “I’m asking the questions!” he shouted.
“Of course you are,” I said. “Never any doubt. But still…If she recorded last night, she recorded every night. Why wouldn’t she? Which means she’d have her sessions with Abigail Collins on tape.”
I set the gears in my head into motion.
“Somebody gave you the tape of last night. I’m guessing Neal,” I said. “So the question becomes, did Neal hold back the rest? Or did he never have them? If he didn’t, who does?”
To his credit, the lieutenant applied the brakes. After a moment of fuming silence, he returned to the nuts-and-bolts questions of my contact with Belestrade. This time, I held nothing back, including my first botched surveillance of the clairvoyant.
All in all, it took about two hours from start to finish. By the time we were done, I was a limp rag. Lazenby wasn’t looking so starched himself.
He leaned back in his chair, which creaked under his weight.
“We’ll get ballistics back soon,” he said. “Anything you want to add to your tale?”
I leaned back as well. Since I had the chair with the wobbly leg, it didn’t have quite the same effect.
“Not a thing,” I said. “Bring on the ballistics.”
He nodded. If I had to make a bet then, I’d have put his inner scales tipping in favor of innocent. It was a very mild tip, though.
“So,” he said, “why do you think Belestrade had such a fix on you?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it a fix. She had her sights set on my boss and I was the next best thing. She happened on some information about me and decided to pull her trick.”
The big policeman chuckled. It’s a disconcerting sound, hearing a statue laugh.
“She didn’t just happen on anything, Parker. We found a whole file in her office,” he said. “Interviews with some reporter cronies of yours. People you’ve had relationships with. Looks like she was even able to get some of your old circus friends on the phone.”
My stomach dropped. There were plenty of folks at Hart and Halloway who knew about my early years. I’d torn into Becca for nothing.
“Looks like she’s had her eye on you and your boss for a while,” Lazenby continued. “A lot more on you than Pentecost, but Lillian’s always been one to cover her tracks. Believe me, I’ve pried. Makes me wonder what Belestrade was planning on doing with all that information. Other than piss you off.”
It made me wonder, too.
Had she known Ms. P had been investigating her these last few years? Had she been gathering nuggets to use against us if we got too close? If that was the case, she hadn’t done a very good job of it. The scene in her parlor? That late-night tour around New York? They were beyond showy. It almost assured we’d keep our eye on her.
I was still pondering this when the door opened. The narrow sergeant who’d confiscated our firearms walked in with a note. He handed it to Lazenby, who read it. He waved a hand and the sergeant scurried back out.
“Ballistics,” he said. “Last chance to change your story.”
For a quick, panicked moment I tried to figure the odds of someone sneaking into the house, borrowing one of our guns, going off and shooting Belestrade, then returning the gun so as to frame yours truly. But, as Ms. Pentecost would say, that was pulp mystery thinking.
“You’ve got all the news that’s fit to print,” I told him.
He stared me down for a long few seconds, then stuck a thumb in the direction of the door. “You’re done here,” he said. “Your boss is waiting.”
I evacuated my wobbly chair and cracked my back.
“Ballistics were negative?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Just go. And try and not point your gun at anyone in the near future.”
“Can’t,” I said. “You’ve got my gun. Speaking of which…”
“You’ll get them back. Eventually. Paperwork, you understand?” I suspected a grin underneath his beard, but I didn’t stick around to check. The door had been left unlocked and I walked through it.
CHAPTER 24
When he’d said my boss was outside, I hadn’t expected immediately outside, but there the lady d
etective was, waiting on a bench in the hall.
“He held out for a long time, but I eventually got him to crack,” I told her as she collected her coat and cane.
“Good,” she said. “I would like to leave now. I find myself incredibly angry with Nathan. I’m afraid I might say something we’ll both regret.”
We caught a taxi out front and compared notes on the way back to Brooklyn. I gave her the rundown of my interrogation, including my surmise that Belestrade had recorded her clients and that somewhere there were recordings of Abigail Collins talking about…what? I didn’t know. If she suspected, Ms. P wasn’t saying.
The lady detective hadn’t been loafing, either. While our lawyer was attempting to poke holes in the warrants, Ms. Pentecost had taken a trip to the morgue. Hiram hadn’t been there, and there had been a uniformed sergeant on guard. But it was a sergeant we were familiar with. He was far from friendly but knew the value of a dollar. Or a hundred dollars, as the case may be.
“So there’s no doubt?” I asked.
“None. Ariel Belestrade is dead.”
“You know, I read that there are drugs that can slow the heart down so much that it can mimic death.”
Ms. P shook her head. “Unless these drugs can mimic two bullets to the skull, I think we can rule out fakery.”
Damn. Belestrade had been shaping up to be a good fit for Abigail Collins’s murder. If the message from the late, lamented Jonathan Markel was to be believed, Belestrade was a good fit for a lot of other shady business as well.
“Hang on,” I said. “She could still be good for the murder. This could be blowback from something else. The woman probably made a lot of enemies.”
“Perhaps,” Ms. P conceded. “Though the timing suggests a connection.”
“The word ‘connection’ covers a lot of territory. Mastermind, accomplice, witness, blackmailer. Any idea where to start?”
Ms. P sank into quiet thought. The silence lasted the rest of the way home. Back at the office, I sat at my desk and dialed the Collins residence. This time, my second-favorite Collins sibling answered.
Fortune Favors the Dead Page 19