Stalked

“No witnesses?”

“None came forward. No security cameras in the area-only on the entrances and exits.”

“And Weber herself?”

“I know what you know.”

“I thought we were retracing Tony’s steps.”

“We are. Suzanne will give us the rundown, but he made at least one stop after he left her and that’s what we’re going to follow up on.”

“And Suzanne is fine with us helping?”

“Hans called her already. He wanted this off-the-books because he didn’t know what Tony was up to and he didn’t want anything in the press.” Sean glanced at Lucy. “And I want to know what’s in her files.”

“Why did we have to come here? Couldn’t we have gotten the files e-mailed or faxed? Talked to Suzanne on the phone?”

“We could have, but I wanted to get you away. Last time we were in New York you said you wanted to come back, and this is our chance to have a night off, just you and me.” He glanced at her. “You’re okay with that, right?”

“Of course I’m okay with it.”

“Good. Because I missed you and I only have twenty-four hours having you all to myself. In between this investigation.”

“Tonight, Sean, will be ours.”

She smiled, and Sean was relieved. While he knew Lucy loved him, he was the more romantic one. He relished these moments when they could get away. And every vacation they’d had to date had ended in disaster. So he wasn’t calling this a vacation, but he was going to treat tonight as such.

The time away would help Lucy regroup and think clearly before she decided what to do about Hans, as well as how to deal with the possibility that Tony’s death might not have been of natural causes. Sean wasn’t convinced it was murder-could a killer get away with two murders, in different states, at different times, staged as heart attacks? That would be pushing it. However, if it worked once, why not again? They needed to find out if there was any connection between Stokes and Presidio other than the McMahon case.

Sean drove straight to the Park Central Hotel where he and Lucy had stayed in February when he was searching for his missing cousin. He grinned at the smile on Lucy’s face. “Surprise.”

“You’re sneaky.” She leaned up and kissed him. “I love it.”

He glanced at his watch. “We’re going to have to hustle to meet Suzanne by six.”

They dropped their bags in their room-which had a view of Central Park-and left the hotel. Sean hailed a taxi. “We’re not driving?” she said.

Sean always preferred to drive, but he didn’t like traffic. “Don’t want to deal with parking,” he said.

It was less than a ten-minute cab ride and Lucy and Sean walked into the bar and grill. Lucy spotted Suzanne sitting at a table, facing the door. A plainclothes cop sat next to her. Lucy watched as the cop handed Suzanne a twenty.

“What was that for?” Sean asked.

“I was right. I said you’d be here within forty-eight hours. DeLucca doubted me. Good to see you both.”

After introductions, Suzanne got down to business.

“I’ll let you look at the files, but you’re not taking a copy.” She stared at Sean. “I’ll be watching you.”

He smiled. “I don’t want a copy.”

“You want to talk to the sister. Why?”

“See if she’s lying.”

“About?”

“Anything.”

Suzanne shrugged. “My gut says she’s clean, but that’s fine with me. And Kip Todd, Weber’s assistant?”

“Ditto.”

“So you’re checking up on me? Didn’t you learn last time that I know how to do my job?”

Lucy said, “We trust you, Suzanne. It’s my story I don’t want getting out. And Kirsten has finally started to get her life back. She’s in Los Angeles, going back to school; what happened here is buried. I want to make sure Rosemary Weber’s assistant isn’t planning on writing the book.”

“And that’s the only reason you came to New York?”

Sean nodded. “And to find out where Tony Presidio went. Off-the-record.”

Suzanne nodded. “Dr. Vigo called me. I told him exactly what happened, sent him my report. I also told him that Tony had some ideas he didn’t share with me. But his strategy paid off.”

“Strategy?”

“Tony leaked to the press that we didn’t think robbery was the motive, and bam, this afternoon we get a call from one of the pawnshops DeLucca briefed. A junkie walks in and pawns the ring. We got his prints.”

DeLucca said, “A street thief from Queens, Jimmy Bartz, I have patrols out looking for him at all his haunts. We’ll have him before midnight.”

“And that’s it?”

“Maybe; we’ll know when we interrogate him.”

“And why would a street thief kill Weber?”

“Could be that he robbed her after she was killed,” DeLucca said.

Sean assessed the cop. “You don’t think he killed her.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know Bartz, but my buddies in Property Crimes laughed their asses off when I said we were looking at him for murder. Stealing purses, rolling a drunk, smashing a window to grab shopping bags-that’s Bartz. Not a stiletto in the heart.”

“But he could have grabbed the ring if he found her in the parking lot,” Suzanne said. It was obvious that they had discussed this theory.

DeLucca nodded, but Sean sensed he thought something was fishy about the whole deal.

“Do you know Bob Stokes, a cop down in Newark?” Sean asked.

“Should I?” Suzanne said.

“Weber’s first book was dedicated to him. Presidio’s phone records show he tried to call Stokes Thursday evening driving from the airport to Quantico. He died of a heart attack.”

“Stokes or Presidio?”

“Both,” Lucy said. “Bob Stokes died last month. Did his name pop up in any of Weber’s files?”

Suzanne looked through her notes. “He was in her address book, that’s it. Why was Tony trying to call him?”

Lucy said, “He was very upset about the missing McMahon files, and he called me about his own personal file-he wanted to see it as soon as he got back.”

“Did you bring it?”

Lucy hesitated, then said, “It disappeared.”

“You lost it?”

“No,” Lucy said, “it disappeared from his office between the time of his heart attack and when Hans arrived the next day.”

“This is starting to smell like a conspiracy,” DeLucca said. “Maybe your federal colleagues are trying to cover something up.”

Suzanne hit him on the arm, hard. “Shut up, Joe.”

Sean said, “Lucy’s the only one who’s recently read Tony’s file, so we hope if she goes everywhere Tony did, she’ll figure out what Tony was thinking.”

“It’s a long shot,” Lucy admitted.

“After watching you analyze that psycho nut job back in February, I’ll put my money on you,” Suzanne said.

Lucy said, “So essentially, from what you’ve said and the reports show, the victim was most likely meeting someone at Citi Field, a baseball stadium, in the middle of a baseball game, was killed, and either the killer took the jewelry to make it look like a robbery, or this Bartz guy stole the ring himself after the fact.”

“Bingo.”