“If that’s what she’s worried about she could go to the cops; they do this work for free.”
“You didn’t like her explanation for wanting to steer clear of them?”
“That it would piss Danes off? I don’t know. I’ve learned never to underestimate just how twisted things can get between exes, but even so…”
I ran my palm across the sole of Jane’s foot. She laughed and tore a croissant in half and spread some jam on it.
“Even so, what? What’s the problem?” The smell of coffee merged with Jane’s perfume and made me hungry. I nibbled gently at her thigh and she giggled.
“The problem is, she could’ve decided this a while ago and saved herself a lot of money. So why pull the plug now, right after I find out about Sovitch and about Danes’s phone calls? Why stop when I’ve finally found things that could be substantial?” I moved my mouth up to Jane’s hip, and she shifted on the bed. I slid my hand along the inside of her thigh. She laughed and brushed it away.
“I guess this opens up your schedule a little,” she said.
I propped myself on my elbow and looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you don’t have a case right now, and you have time on your hands- time to go somewhere, maybe.” Her eyes held mine, and after a while her smile began to fade.
“I guess so,” I said, and sat up. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“No?”
“Besides, Sachs is volatile. There’s a chance she’ll cool off over the weekend and rethink things.”
Jane swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge. Her back was stiff and perfectly straight. Her voice was soft and full of sarcasm. “Hope springs eternal,” she said, and she went into the bathroom and shut the door.
It was past noon when I awoke again, and I was alone. The breakfast tray was on the floor and breakfast was still on it. It was dark outside, and rain fell against the tall windows in a hectic clatter. It slid down the glass in sheets and cast twisting shadows on the walls. I rolled on my back and watched them and tried not to think about Jane.
A gust of wind rattled the glass. I pulled on my shorts and stood at the window. Low clouds scrambled across the sky and caught on the jagged edges of the cityscape. I looked down and saw the tops of many umbrellas, bumping at each other like clumsy fat men. I rubbed my hands over my face and got into the shower.
I owed Nina Sachs a final report, to go with my invoice, and I poured a cup of coffee and opened my laptop to write it. After forty-five minutes I pushed back from the table and read over my work. The INVESTIGATION section was a straightforward chronology of what I’d done, where I’d gone, and whom I’d spoken with, and the FINDINGS section was a recitation of everything relevant that I’d learned. It was depressingly short. I drank off the last of my coffee and went to the kitchen to brew a fresh pot.
Despite my best efforts, I’d been unable to wrestle my worry about Danes into anything like a theory, and the CONCLUSIONS section of my report was still unwritten. Maybe I should keep it simple: Something bad has happened. I put the paper cone in the coffee machine and spooned coffee in and thought again about Billy. I could still hear his nearly whispered question: You know where he is yet? I flicked the switch on the machine and the phone rang.
“You fucking bastard!” she said. She was nearly breathless with anger, and it took me a moment to place the voice. “You fucking son of a bitch! I trusted you- I talked to you- I spilled my goddamn gutsand you do this?”
“Calm down, Irene, and tell me what it is you think I’ve done.”
Irene Pratt huffed at the other end of the line. “Don’t give me that crap. You’re the one who was looking for him. You’re the one who was sniffing around his office. You know what you did, you lying shit.”
I thought for a moment and listened to the coffee trickle into the carafe. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Irene, so why don’t you take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on?”
Pratt started to speak and stopped herself a couple of times and settled into a furious silence. When she finally spoke the edge was off her voice, and something tentative had replaced it. “You’re serious?”
“I’m serious that I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“You’re serious you didn’t do it?”
“Didn’t do what?”
She seemed not to hear the question. “But if it wasn’t you, then… who did it?”
I clenched my teeth. “Who did what, Irene?”
It took her a long while to answer. “Who broke into my office… and into Greg’s?”
Peter Spiegelman
JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home
19
I met Irene Pratt in the lobby bar of the Warwick Hotel. There were lots of plump armchairs in there, and big windows that looked out on Sixth Avenue, and soft incandescent lighting that gave the place a snug feel against the rain. Irene Pratt wore jeans and sneakers and a school-bus-yellow rain slicker, and she looked young and scared. She was perched at the edge of a bar stool, nursing a Coke and fidgeting with a bowl of peanuts, when I came in. She looked up and looked ready to bolt.
“Tell me again how you had nothing to do with this,” she said. Her voice was low and taut. She pushed a strand of wet hair away from her face.
I shook the water from my shoulders and hung my jacket on the back of a bar stool. “I told you, Irene, I haven’t been near your office since you saw me there with Turpin. This isn’t me.” The bartender came by and laid a small napkin in front of me. I ordered a cranberry juice and club soda and turned back to Pratt. “What happened?”
She took a swig of her soda. “I came in just before noon and my office door was unlocked and I knew something was wrong.”
“Because of the door?” I asked. Pratt nodded. “You’re sure it was locked when you left last night?”
“Last night and every night,” she said. “And then I looked at my desk, and I knew that things were… different. Not obviously different, but… neater than I leave things. A little more squared off.” Her shoulders were rigid beneath the yellow slicker, and she kept shifting in her seat.
“The cleaners couldn’t have straightened things up a little and maybe forgotten to lock the door?”
Pratt shook her head. “They don’t have keys to our offices, and they don’t clean them unless we’re there. I was still working when they came last night. They just emptied the trash, vacuumed, and left.” She took a peanut from the bowl and chewed it nervously.
“What else besides the door and the desktop?”
“My credenza- behind my desk- it’s got a set of file drawers in it and they were opened.”
“Unlocked or actually pulled open?”
“The lock was still locked, but it wasn’t latched on to anything, and you could just pull all the drawers open.”
“And you’re sure-”
“I always lock it. Always.”
“Anything missing?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Your PCs were okay?”
“As far as I could tell.” A big group of tourists came into the bar. They were loud and took up a lot of space, and they seemed to make Irene Pratt even jumpier. I leaned toward her.
“And what about Danes’s office?”
“It was locked, but the knob was loose in my hand, and the little metal thing- in the doorjamb- was dented. And when I put the key in the lock, it didn’t turn at first.”
“It’s always locked?”
“Always, when Greg’s not there.”
