“Because of you.” Peter Howard stared straight at me.
“My smile,” I said to Jeri.
“You were disrupting the staff,” Peter remarked sourly. He wasn’t even remotely afraid of me. Too bad.
“Oh? Were there complaints?” I asked.
Jeri shot me a warning look.
“What do you want?” Peter asked, eyes shifting between Jeri and me.
“We’re investigating Mr. Sjorgen’s death,” Jeri said.
“I thought the police were doing that.”
“It’s a free country.”
He pursed his lips. “I don’t know anything at all. I have no idea how I could be the slightest help to you.” His tone was stiff and flat, indicating he was already bored with us, wanting to get back to his putter, make the PGA tour.
“Gregory Rudd was in here yesterday,” I said.
Peter Howard looked at me as ten seconds went by in silence. Finally he said, “I wasn’t any help to him either.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” His look hardened. Not easy, with his smooth, baby face, chubby cheeks, and pale-blue eyes, but he tried. It made him look like a pouty kid who wasn’t getting a toy he wanted, that kind of hard. A big spoiled kid, used to getting his way.
I looked around. A diploma hung on a wall. Peter had an MBA, purchased from Yale. He’d been to the ball, and the next morning the glass slipper had fit, lucky him. I doubted that he knew the first thing about title companies. If Peter Howard drove anything less than a top-of-the-line Audi, I would eat an adobe brick. He looked like the Audi Quattro type, sitting there in a $1500 suit, class ring on one finger. I thought the horsepower-to-weight ratio of a Porsche 911 would scare the lad spitless.
“Are you his grandson?” I asked. “Jefferson’s, I mean.”
“Great-grandson.” He must have figured that Jeri was the senior partner because he looked at her and said, “I don’t have time for this. The police already asked their questions.” He shrugged and added, “I didn’t have anything useful to tell them, either.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Why do you say that?”
He stared at me, frustrated. “What would I know? Jonnie had an office here. He came in every two or three weeks. He’s been the firm’s senior partner for the past four years, ever since my dad retired. As far as I can tell, that has nothing to do with anything.”
Probably. If it were true. No reason for it not to be, but I was feeling antagonistic toward the guy. I didn’t like him. Too smooth, eyes too close together, who knows? Maybe bad chemistry. That or I sensed he wasn’t a carbon-based life form.
“You want to see his office?” Peter said. Hoping to get rid of us, no doubt.
“How long was Mr. Rudd here?” Jeri asked.
“No more than five minutes.”
“Did you see him leave?”
“Not personally, no. The girls out front would have.”
The girls who did all the work, I thought churlishly. Like a true capitalist, Peter Howard was getting rich off the labors of others. But of course, that’s how it’s done. That’s what makes this country great. Soviet-style communism was the most visible political flop of the previous century.
“About Jonnie’s office,” Peter prompted.
“Sure,” Jeri said, standing. “Let’s go have a look.”
We trooped out past Amyee and down a short hall to an office twice the size of Peter’s, but without a secretary posted out front. Better view, too. A huge west-facing window showed casinos rising against the Sierras. At night it would be quite a sight, impressive. I was surprised Peter hadn’t moved in yet.
“Mr. Sjorgen didn’t have a secretary?” I asked.
“He had no need for one,” Peter said. “At least not here.”
“But you do?” I glanced back down the hall to where Amyee was busy with her manicuring chores.
“Of course. I’m here every day.”
“She looks like a whiz with a computer,” I said. Jeri kicked me in the ankle then spun me around to face the room. My employment interview wasn’t going well. Come tomorrow, after ten o’clock, I was likely to find myself in a county government building somewhere, filling out unemployment forms.
Jonnie’s desk was a big important slab of polished rosewood. It probably weighed four hundred pounds, even more than the behemoth, Officer Day.
“Anything in that?” I asked.
“The police went through it,” Peter said, yellowish teeth gnawing at his lower lip. “They took some stuff, logged everything they took.” He leaned against a wall. “I’ll have the rest of it boxed up for his daughter when I get a chance.”
“You should put Amyee on that,” I said, moving out of range of Jeri’s feet.
Peter remained silent.
Jonnie’s daughter, Rosalyn Sjorgen—Nicole’s dance instructor at Ithaca, New York. Floating out there on the far edge of this uproar. Which was hardly her fault. It sunk in then, standing there in Jonnie’s office, that one way or another, guilty or innocent, Rosalyn Sjorgen wasn’t that far out on the edge. She was Jonnie’s daughter, his closest relative. His only relative, in fact, since Jonnie had no siblings and hadn’t gotten around to marrying my wife. Okay, ex-wife. Rosalyn stood to inherit everything, every last dime. Maybe even this corner office, and the desk. A better motive than mine. I ought to run that past Russell Fairchild.
Family. Family member. Rosalyn was his family. I wondered if that might mean anything, given Fairchild’s pearl of wisdom the other day: The ones who know you best…
I wondered if she’d locked her doors in Ithaca, disconnected her phone, burrowed in to wait out the storm. Or if she was aware that he was dead. Like my daughter Nicole, she might be in Europe, roping her way up a craggy Alp. She might be in India, passing out alms.
Jonnie’s house alone was worth a bundle. I wondered how much equity he had in it, how much his estate was worth, all told—
“Mort?”
I popped out of my reverie. Jeri was seated at Jonnie’s desk, giving me a questioning look. “Huh?” I said sluggishly.
“I said, let’s go through this thing, okay?”
“What, the desk?”
“That’s what I
