'Oh, yeah? What?'
'She was placed through the Anderson Agency. I did a feature on the agency a few years back, and I know quite a bit about it.'
'Great. What do you know?' April raked her hands through her wet hair, then poured herself some tea, and made a face. It was a generic brand of tea. The water turned the unappetizing color of rust and didn't taste much better. 'I'm sorry. I must have missed the program.'
Lily laughed. 'You miss everything, April. You're always working.'
April nodded—the story of her life.
'So how about a trade?' Lily asked.
'No way. I've told you a thousand times I can't say anything,' April replied impatiently. 'Don't waste my time.'
'How about I ask you questions and you give me a yea or nay?'
April shook her head.
'A shake of the head, then.' She laughed again. For once she was relaxed, and April was all nerves. 'Come on, it's my day off,' she wheedled. 'Make me happy for once.'
'No one makes me happy,' April grumbled.
'Bullshit. Didn't I do that great story on you? And you got promoted?' Lily reminded her.
April didn't want to tell her that she'd done the interview under orders from a superior, but another correction was in order. The interview had nothing to do with the promotion. 'I took a test for the promotion,' she said.
'Still, the story didn't hurt.'
April smiled. 'All right, I'll let you break the story when we're ready to make an arrest, okay?' That was a big concession. 'But you'll have to keep your mouth shut about your source.'
'Serious? How soon will that be?' Lily bounced in her chair.
'I have no idea. We're following leads. What was your take on Anderson?'
'Oh, it's the oldest domestic employment agency in the country still run by a family member. I did the piece as a human-interest service story just after 9/11 when thousands of people lost their jobs in the city and were looking for any kind of work, kind of like the Depression,' she reminisced.
'I mean the owner,' April prompted.
'Well, actually she did the interview with me because she wanted my help to write a book about her service to the rich and famous.'
'No kidding.' April woke up.
'I didn't have time to use what she gave me because the slant was the high-end field of domestic workers. But what she had was dynamite. She claims to have the inside dope on three generations of high-profile, wealthy clients. You should see her home. It's filled with memorabilia and photos of herself with megastars. She showed me gifts from movie stars and politicos, princes and presidents. Frank Sinatra, mob bosses. You wouldn't believe the people she knew. It's like a museum.'
'What about her? What's she like?'
'This is the part that I thought would interest you. She kept files on everybody—the people she worked for, the staff members she placed, their friends. She made a point of knowing everything about everybody. Get this—she called it good business. She bragged to me about having their complete trust. She went into their places to water their plants when they were out of town. 1 thought it was kind of creepy. It seemed to me that if you had her or one of her people in your house, you were kind of harboring a spy.'
April had already been alerted to that possibility. 'That's very interesting,' she said. 'What happened to the book?'
'Oh, 1 referred her to some agents I know. She needed a writer, of course. And that got her all paranoid. She was afraid someone would steal her material.'
'So nothing came of the book?'
'No. What do you want to eat?'
April glanced at the menu, then checked her watch. Five minutes to Woody time. 'I'm really sorry. I have a long day, and 1 have to get cracking. '
Lily looked disappointed. 'This was my day off,' she grumbled.
'We'll do a long lunch soon, okay?'
'Right.'
'One more thing. Where is Miss Anderson's home?'
'Beekman Place. She has a town house on Fiftieth.'
'Fiftieth Street?' April's head jerked up.
Lily nodded. 'I wouldn't forget something like that. It's a real freaky place, been in her family for a long time. Didn't you know?'
'Oh, the home address was on my list for today,'
April said slowly. Jo Ellen had been on her list for the day.
'It's close, right?'
'Yeah.' April touched her hair. It was drying off now, absolutely flat on her head. It reminded her of another question she needed to ask. 'By the way, what color hair does she have?'
'Jo Ellen? Gray.'
'No kidding. She doesn't color it?'
'She didn't when I talked with her.'
April started gathering up her things. 'You've turned out to be a doll,' she said. 'I'm really grateful for your time.'
'Was I useful?'
'Very useful. Where are you- going? Do you want a ride? I'll take you anywhere between here and Midtown North.'
Lily laughed. It was almost a straight line west. 'No, thanks,' she said. 'And good luck.'
April nodded. She needed it.
Forty-five
Woody was right on time, waiting double-parked outside when April emerged from the restaurant at five past eight. The wind had picked up in the last half hour, and sleeting rain pounded the pavement.
'Morning, Boss. Was that Lily Eng?' Woody said as she scrambled into the car.
'Yes.'
He knew better than to ask what they were meeting about. 'The shop?'
'Yes. How are you doing, Woody?' She knew he hated to be left out.
'Me? I'm fine. It's quiet,' he told her, as if crime was all that really mattered to him. He pulled the car out, angling across First Avenue through the traffic to make the turn west onto Fifty-seventh Street. For once, he did it without hitting the siren, and for that, she was grateful. At the red light on First Avenue they watched pedestrians fight the gusting rain as they crossed the street. The sky had darkened almost to night. As Mike would say.
'Turn up the box,' she said anxiously. If something happened this morning, she didn't want to be the last to know.
For a few minutes only static blew in. Then the dispatcher's voice came on with business as usual. Woody stopped whistling before April told him to, and she was thankful for that, as well. The slightest positive thing helped on a bad day. She was feeling bloated and queasy from another of Skinny Dragon Mother's sticky breakfasts and the diner's rusty-nail tea. She hadn't drunk very much of it, only enough to know it wasn't going to be a health aid. 'Anything new?' she asked after a pause.
'Looked like Charlie worked all night, and he's wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Maybe he didn't go home. I didn't see the sergeant,' Woody reported.
'Anything else?'
'Barry was hinting around. He wants in.'
Barry Queue was their former intelligence officer, the one who was so secretive and didn't try to make
