“Love the shoes,” she said. “Blahniks?”
I didn’t deny it. If she couldn’t tell four-hundred-dollar Blahniks from forty-five-dollar no-names, why should I enlighten her?
“Did Lieutenant Harald have any idea how the cat got over there?” I asked.
“I don’t think she cares. She was more interested in knowing who came to my party that might know about art. Like Cam and Nicco.”
I looked at Broughton. “You’re an artist, too?”
He shook his head and turned his back on us to help Luna’s boyfriend straighten the rug.
“Oh, but you
“Which isn’t going to happen tonight,” said Nicco Marclay. “I’m ready for a drink.”
As I apologized for the interruption and made to go, she gestured to a large green glass bowl on a nearby table. “You didn’t lose a phone last night, did you? Or a tube of lipstick?”
I glanced into the bowl at the lost phones, keyrings, pill bottle, and lipsticks and did a double take. “That’s my earring!” I grabbed the red rubber flip-flop that had my missing gold earring embedded in the sole and said, “Whose flip-flop is this?”
For a moment I thought Cameron Broughton was going to claim it. He gave me a startled look, then bolted through the back door. The elevator dinged from down the hall behind me and I turned to see Dwight emerge. Snow covered the brim of his hat and he was loaded down like a Sherpa guide.
“Catch you later,” I told Luna as I whirled away. “Thanks again for the food and the great party.”
A moment later, I was pushing open the door of 6-A for Dwight. I threw the flip-flop on the vestibule sideboard and helped him take some of the bags into the kitchen. He stowed some ale in the refrigerator and stooped to pick up a lemon that had rolled off the counter.
“Nice shoes,” he said as he straightened up. “New?”
I waggled one foot at him and lifted a carton of outrageously expensive buffalo cheese. “They were right next to the fresh mozzarella,” I said.
CHAPTER
16
—
, 1909
SIGRID HARALD— MONDAY MORNING
Upon succeeding to Captain McKinnon’s position, Captain Jane Fortesque had instituted formal weekly briefings. After that first uncomfortable session in which she patted Sigrid’s hand and sniped at the lieutenant’s celebrity status, Sigrid was careful to get there early enough to choose her own chair rather than being stuck with whichever was left over. Today she greeted the other early arrivals and took a seat halfway down the long conference table. She was well aware of the psychological inferences that could be drawn if she sat at the far end, but she had no desire to put herself within patting distance of Fortesque if she could help it. She had not resented the woman’s promotion from another house, and had Fortesque continued Mac’s hands-off style, the new order would not have bothered Sigrid.
Gruff and demanding, Mac had been of the trust ’em or bust ’em school of leadership. Even though he was now married to her mother, he had never patted her hand and he had not cared what his subordinates did on their own time as long as it did not reflect badly on the force.
Not only was Fortesque a micromanager, she also believed in team spirit. Some NYPD cynics held that the only way a woman could advance to a position of true power within the system was on her knees while trying not to get her tongue caught in the zipper. This was not a charge that had ever been leveled at Captain Fortesque. The luck of being in the right place at the right time and seizing the initiative had earned her a spot on a narcotics squad in Harlem where she had, without question, done solid work.
It was known that she was not shy about taking a generous share of the professional credit when she turned in her reports and that she had a talent for dropping innocent-sounding double-edged remarks about colleagues when in the presence of power, but she deflected serious criticism by becoming a tireless cheerleader for the personal milestones of those she worked with and for. She noted birthdays and anniversaries with cupcakes or a box of doughnuts and was a relentlessly hearty worker. Even those who resented her found it hard to voice that resentment when their mouths were full of Krispy Kremes.
(“They probably recommended her for promotion just to keep from choking on the sugar,” Hentz said when he realized that Sigrid was gritting her teeth.)
Pictures on the captain’s wall showed versions of a tall, rawboned woman in varied attire through the years. There she was in her official police uniform at her swearing-in ceremony, and here she was wearing shirts with lettering across the chest and holding enormous bowling and softball trophies, several of which now stood on the shelves in her office. By the time of the latest picture, wherein the police commissioner shook Fortesque’s hand in congratulation while Mac looked on, the captain wore an artfully draped suit meant to disguise the extra pounds she was packing.
She occasionally spoke wistfully of the softball and bowling teams she had played on and of the camaraderie such activities fostered. So far, she had not insisted that similar teams be formed here, but Sigrid lived in dread.
Nevertheless, even though she could no longer run baselines or bowl strikes, their new captain seemed determined to encourage off-duty personal relationships among her squad leaders. Sigrid had been forced to attend
