“Cordial. I got along with him better than most.”
“And he relied on you.”
The orchestra manager nodded. “I helped him a lot.”
“What did you get out of it?”
“The satisfaction of a job well done,” Browne replied almost smugly.
“Somehow I think that there was more to it than that.” Pratt turned to the younger detective in the corner. “Ellis, were you able to get more information about what we were talking about earlier?”
“Certainly.”
“And could you tell Mr. Browne about it? We don’t need the exact words. Just sum it up.”
Ellis consulted his notebook (for show), then cleared his throat. “At twelve eighteen, I was in the orchestra’s rehearsal hall and noticed a cell phone on the floor partially under the conductor’s podium. Further examination showed that it belonged to Luigi Spadafini. It must have fallen from the pocket of his overcoat. On its call history was a record of a dozen phone calls to Mr. Browne’s cell over the past two weeks. I also found a number of incoming calls, all from Mr. Browne’s cell phone, as-”
“How can you possibly find that suspicious?” Browne interrupted. “We were consulting about next season’s programming.”
“Why would you be using a cell phone at all?” Pratt asked. “Some of those calls came in the middle of the day when you were both here. We’ve checked. Why wouldn’t you just stroll down the hall to talk to him? If you were both that lazy, you could have used your office phones. Why talk on a cell every time? That’s what made us suspicious.”
“I don’t know. I’m just so used to using my cell, I suppose. I reach for that first, that’s all. Luigi too.”
“Really?”
“Yes, goddammit!”
Ellis got up and handed a scrap of paper to Pratt, who pushed it across the desk toward Browne.
“Recognize that phone number?”
“No. Should I?” Browne’s forehead now had a light sheen of sweat.
“We also found that number in the call history of Spadafini’s cell phone. Being curious, we dialed it. The person at the other end told us some very interesting things. Luigi Spadafini was planning on jumping ship. You agreed with my statement that he relied on you. Surely you knew about this.”
Browne looked at his watch. “James Norris told me about this not half an hour ago. It came as a very great shock. Luigi never said a word about it.”
“I’ll come back to this. Just before I came up here, I spoke with Eliza Wanamaker. I was curious as to why you told the orchestra about the murder. I think you told me you just blurted it out.”
“That’s correct. I was very upset.”
“Funny. Eliza got the feeling that you didn’t seem at all upset. She described you as outwardly calm and in control.”
“Appearances can be deceiving, Detective. Surely I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”
“Why then did you pick up Spadafini’s overcoat before you left the room? Ms. Wanamaker remembers that clearly. Everyone was in a panic, and you caused that. Were you trying to distract them so you could search for Spadafini’s cell phone?”
Now Browne was definitely sweating.
Pratt continued. “I think you wanted it to disappear along with the record of all those calls.”
“That’s a lie!” Browne shouted.
Pratt was about to hammer another nail into the coffin when the office door opened. Norris stuck his head in, and Browne used the interruption to leap to his feet.
“James! How fortunate you’ve shown up. The detectives here seem to want to drag me into this mess. Please come in. I want a witness to hear the outrageous accusations.”
Browne came around the desk and opened the door wide. Grabbing his boss by the arm, he whipped him into the room, directly where Pratt was seated. The two men collided hard, knocking over Pratt’s chair. In a flash, Browne was through the doorway. Equally fast, Ellis jumped right over the low table in front of him and disappeared out the door.
As he struggled to get up, Pratt heard a loud cry followed by a crash. By the time he got out to the hall, it was all over. The orchestra manager lay on his stomach with the youthful Ellis on top of him.
“Get off me! Get him off me!” Browne shouted.
Ellis grinned up at Pratt. “You wouldn’t happen to have any handcuffs, would you?”
He did. Handcuffs were his good luck charm and he always had his pair in a jacket pocket. Ellis placed them around the orchestra manager’s wrists with a satisfying
“Why did you do it?” Pratt asked calmly.
“Because Spadafini was a complete bastard! He deserved to die. When he told me he wasn’t taking me to the new orchestra, he laughed! I wasn’t going to let him screw me just like he screwed everyone else.”
As they led their prisoner to the elevator, Pratt said with a laugh, “Let me guess, Ellis. You were also a star on your high school track team. Hurdles, right?”
The young detective nodded. “Got it in one, sir…I mean, Pratt.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
All the six o’clock news showed was someone being led out the stage door, an overcoat pulled up over his head. There were a lot of loose ends to tie up, so all Pratt would say to the crowd of reporters was that someone had been arrested for the murder of Luigi Spadafini. There would be a news conference the next morning.
As the film clip played on the tv in the corner of the captain’s office, Pratt, Ellis and McDonnell were watching it carefully.
“Pretty slick bit of detecting, Pratt,” the captain laughed. He’d enjoyed telling the chief and mayor that the crisis was over.
“It’s because our young Detective Ellis is a nosy bastard with good instincts. He’s also a dab hand with a computer-and fast on his feet.”
The captain leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about it, Ellis.”
“It actually was lucky that I decided to use Browne’s office because that gave me access to his computer. I only needed his connection to the Internet for my laptop. I did happen to turn on his computer, though, since I was there. It had a password, but I figured that out on the first try. It was his wife’s name, and that was on the family photo on his desk. Amazing how many people do something that simple.”
When the captain started to say something, Pratt held up his hand.
“The lad knows how illegal that was. But it got us some important information. With that warrant they’re hopefully getting signed now, we can ‘officially’ find the information Ellis uncovered. It will make our case even stronger.”
“Which was?”
“Browne kept copious notes. There’s a ledger, I guess you could call it, that tracks who he helped, why and what he expected to get out of it. Spadafini had promised to take him to the new orchestra and become its manager. It was supposed to be payback for all the crap Browne had shoveled for him. Unfortunately, the conductor was a lying bastard. Last night he told Browne he’d never even told the other orchestra about their deal-and he wasn’t going to. The girl Spadafini was with last night heard one end of that argument. When we arrested Browne, he had his cell phone in his pocket. Since it was now evidence, we checked. Sure enough, in its history there was a phone call to Spadafini at precisely that time.”
“I interviewed the girl a second time,” Ellis added. “And she’d heard more than she’d told Pratt originally. She thought from what she heard that it was an orchestra member on the phone. After the murder, she didn’t want to rat on any of her colleagues. She didn’t think that would go down well.”
“Nice girl,” McDonnell said. “And getting lied to about a new job was enough to push Browne over the
