“Good idea. I’ll check it out tomorrow. Why are you whispering?” he asked. He knew the layout of her apartment. Even with Ben asleep, she wouldn’t have to whisper to avoid waking him. She didn’t answer him.
“Oh, Jez. For Christ’s sake,” he said with a groan.
“He shot someone last night. He wanted to see Ben.”
Matt had heard a cop shot some kid in the Bronx last night but he hadn’t made the connection. He wasn’t surprised. Dylan always was a cocked fist looking for a jaw, a drawn gun waiting for an excuse. It had only been a matter of time before he killed someone.
“Was it good?”
“Yeah, he says it was good. But he’ll have some time on his hands while they investigate.”
“And he’ll be looking to spend it with you.”
“With Ben,” she said firmly.
He bit his tongue. There was no point in lecturing. Dylan Breslow was a habit Jesamyn couldn’t break. It never ceased to amaze him when good, smart, beautiful women fell for the men who were guaranteed to hurt them again and again. At least she’d gotten as far as divorcing him. Now it seemed it was just a matter of learning not to sleep with him every time he showed up at her place.
“I gotta go,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
“Good-night, Jez.”
Seven
I don’t know the address,” said Dax, looking at the photocopy of Michele LaForge’s driver’s license under the bright track lighting in his kitchen. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”
He hefted his weight onto one of the bar stools that stood in front of the counter. Lydia could tell by the way he had been standing that his injury was hurting him. She didn’t say anything. It made him mad when she did. But it was hard to see Dax struggling physically, like watching a dog with three legs. It just seemed so wrong; especially since Lydia blamed herself and knew Jeffrey felt a similar burden of guilt.
“Everything’s always about the two of you,” Dax had said when they’d tried to apologize. “The
She realized she was staring at him and averted her eyes when he raised his eyes from the paper in his hand. “She looks a little freaky, if you ask me,” said Dax.
“That was her two years ago,” said Lydia. “This is her now.” She handed him the picture she’d taken from Lily’s wall.
“Big improvement,” said Dax. “Wow. What did she
They told him about Lily and Mickey Samuels, about Mariah, a.k.a. Michele LaForge. Dax glanced at the photograph of Mickey and Mariah.
“You can’t trust a woman who looks that good,” said Dax with a shake of his head, handing the picture back to Lydia.
“That is insulting on so many levels, I can’t even begin to address them,” she said, snapping the photo from his hand.
“What?” he said, pulling wide innocent eyes. “Why?”
“Well, what are you saying?” she asked, leaning toward him on the counter. “That I’m ugly or that I’m not trustworthy?”
He smiled at her in the obnoxious way he had when he was baiting her. “Why do you have to take everything so personally?”
She rolled her eyes and moved over toward Jeffrey, looked over his shoulder at the screen.
Lydia shrugged. “She’d only been dating Mickey for a short time, so I doubt he wrote her into his will. It’s my sense that she and Lily didn’t get along but I don’t see where she’d have anything to gain by Lily disappearing.”
Jeffrey was looking at her. “Maybe it’s possible that they put their differences aside and were working together to try to find out what happened to Mickey. Maybe neither of them believed he’d killed himself. That would explain her giving Lily a lift to the bank. Maybe they’ve gone off together, following some kind of lead.”
“But Jasmine mentioned that Mariah didn’t even come to Mickey’s funeral. They’d broken up.”
Jeffrey nodded. She could see him shifting the pieces around in his mind.
“Maybe,” said Dax, “she was taking advantage of Lily’s vulnerable state, manipulating her in some way.”
“What? To take her money?” asked Lydia. She answered her own question. “Maybe.”
The world was full of all kinds of predators. Lydia looked at the picture of Mickey and Mariah. Where before Mariah had just seemed somewhat off-putting with her coquettish smile and knowing eyes, now Lydia saw malice in her.
“Well, let’s see if we can’t find Ms. LaForge and see what she has to say,” said Jeffrey, turning around the screen and showing the map to her last known address.
Give it to me,” whispered Lydia. It had been her habit for most of the fifteen years they’d known each other to lean over his shoulder and give him advice on whatever it was he was doing and then try to take over. Tonight it was picking a lock on a wooden gate. Jeffrey found this simultaneously annoying and lovable, like so many of her personality quirks.
“I got it,” said Jeffrey, working at the lock with the tools he’d brought in the inside pocket of his coat.
The night was cold and dark with no moonlight, no stars visible in the sky; a streetlamp above them was browned out, glowing an eerie orange but casting no light.
“Can you even see?” she asked, trying to nudge him out of the way.
“Excuse me,” he said, nudging her back. “I was doing this when you were still in grade school.” The lock to the wooden gate snapped open as if to emphasize his point. Behind it was a high, narrow set of stairs that led into a deeper darkness.
Jeffrey led the way up the stairs as Lydia closed the gate behind them. The night was hushed, only the distant rush of cars on the Henry Hudson to the west of them and Broadway to the east was audible, just barely. And the occasional squeal of the 1/9 train coming to a stop in the railroad yards below them.
The steep stone staircase was overrun with weeds and in terrible disrepair, making their progress upward difficult and treacherous. At the top there was another door. The wood was decayed, looked as if it might have been painted red at one point. A notice had been pasted there. It read menacingly: CONDEMNED: THIS STRUCTURE HAS BEEN DECLARED UNSAFE AND UNINHABITABLE BY THE CITY OF NEW YORK. TRESPASSING IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
“You don’t think that means us, do you?” asked Lydia.
“Nah,” answered Jeffrey. He was about to go to work on the lock when Lydia pushed on the door and it opened slowly, emitting a high-pitched squeak.
They stepped onto a floor that felt soft beneath their feet; a smell of mold and rot was strong. Lydia pulled a small flashlight from her pocket and shone the powerful beam into the darkness. Some small dark forms skittered away from the light and she shuddered. The room was narrow and bare, wood floors, stone walls, a fireplace centered on the supporting wall. Two large windows at the back of the narrow space looked out into a thick of trees. They walked the space and found a narrow staircase toward the back of the building leading up to a second level. It looked old. It smelled old. It
“What is this place?” Jeffrey asked. The layer of dust, the sheer aura of abandonment told Jeffrey that no one had lived there for years.
