Chapter Fifty-One
She was still yawning at eleven o’clock the next morning.
“Damn it, Rogan. I’m telling you, I’m about to burst. I don’t have any choice. I’m doing it.”
“That is disgusting. You are officially a disgusting person.”
“God, you are such a germaphobe. I’ll wash my hands when I’m done.”
“Don’t be counting on any soap in there. Or you know it’s going to be all funked up.”
Ellie hovered over James Grisco’s toilet. The bathroom, like the rest of the apartment, was filthy. She tried not to think about the yellow streaks beneath her feet.
Rogan was right. The only soap was in the mildewed shower stall, and she had no interest in touching soap that had been rubbed on the body that had occupied this space. She found a bottle of dish soap in the kitchen, then rubbed her hands on her pants to dry them.
“Told you it’d be nasty,” Rogan said.
“You and your Starbucks.” That’s the last time she’d suck down a Venti Americano before heading to an ex- con’s crash pad. Regular deli coffee in a normal-size cup was just fine for her.
They’d found the apartment just as Detective Howard had suggested, working backwards from the handwritten directions to the Hamptons that Grisco had left in his car. That had landed them on Ninety-first Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. She took the north side of the block; Rogan took the south. The fourth door she’d knocked on belonged to a sweet old man who had no idea the new tenant living above his garage was a convicted killer.
The landlord could use a lesson in property management, because he confirmed that Grisco had rented the filthy prefurnished apartment only six days earlier. He also confirmed that Grisco lived alone. Now that the sole tenant was dead, so were his expectations of privacy, which meant they didn’t need a warrant.
As it turned out, there was very little to search. The single room was no bigger than four hundred square feet. No computer. No television. Just a few items of clothing in a rickety dresser, undoubtedly unpacked from the empty duffel bag in the closet. Milk, cereal, and two frozen dinners in the kitchen.
“Why can’t this be easy?” Rogan asked. He was searching through Grisco’s clothing more thoroughly.
“What did you expect to find? A neatly typed memo from George Langston to one Mr. James Grisco, subject line ‘re: Murder My Wife’?”
“A computer. A phone. The kinds of things that hold people’s secrets. Wait, I got something.” He reached into a balled sock and pulled out a roll of money. “About fifteen hundred dollars. How much did the old man say Grisco paid for this place?”
“Twelve hundred a month.”
“You could get a palace in Buffalo for that.”
“It may be a dump, but how was he paying for it, and with fifteen hundred bucks to spare?” They had no explanation for why Grisco was in New York City. Now they had learned that Grisco had paid his landlord first and last months’ rent plus deposit-all in cash, despite having no apparent source of income.
Ellie crouched next to the bed, supporting her weight with her knees so she would not need to place her clean hands on the threadbare carpet.
“Grisco was a reader.” She used a pen to slide the stack out from beneath the bed. “Two pornos and a paperback. Hey, look-he’s got the same taste as you.”
She recognized the image on the cover-the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car-as a series Rogan was always raving about.
“I’m strictly online now for all my pornography needs.”
“Very funny. I meant this.” She held up the paperback, and two small cards fell from the pages. She immediately recognized the first as a MetroCard for the buses and subways. The other was one of those frequent- customer cards promising a freebie after the requisite number of purchases. Ellie’s own wallet was bursting with them, and she hadn’t filled one yet. She was about to replace the cards in the book when she pulled the frequent- customer card out again. Grisco had been halfway to a free cup of coffee, but it wasn’t the regularity of his beverage consumption that caught her attention.
The card was from Monster Coffee. “Check this out.”
“Monstrous Coffee. Still have the taste of burnt oil in my mouth.”
Ellie pulled up the Monster Coffee website on her BlackBerry. Eleven locations scattered throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. Maybe it was only a coincidence, but she didn’t like the fact that one of those branches was right across the street from the Casden School.
They moved on to the less obvious places to search: above the kitchen cabinets, behind the dresser, inside the toilet tank.
Rogan must have seen the disappointment in her face. “Maybe we’ll find something in George’s bank records.” They had sent all the major banks a request for account statements for the Langstons, hoping to find proof that George Langston had paid money to James Grisco.
But Ellie’s mind was elsewhere. “You know, I keep thinking about Langston showing up at the police station last night. He looked terrified.”
“If we’re right about him, then things didn’t exactly go as he planned, did they? He might have been terrified of getting caught.”
“No. He looked genuinely worried about Adrienne. Plus, I did some Googling this morning on that family law attorney whose number I got from the Langstons’ caller ID. We assumed George was looking for a divorce, but it turns out Michael Wiles, Esquire, Attorney at Law, is seventy-eight years old with an office above a Chinese restaurant on the Lower East Side. Not exactly the kind of hired gun a guy like Langston would need for a high- priced divorce fight. And why would he send Grisco to the Hamptons house with a knife when he knew Adrienne would have access to a loaded gun?”
“Damn. Are you actually rethinking this?”
“We already made a mistake with Casey. I just don’t want to jump to the wrong conclusion.”
“But you never did jump to any conclusions with Casey. You said all along it didn’t feel right. George, on the other hand, is the one person who ties it all together, remember?” He used his fingers to count off all of the relevant points. “We know one of the threats about his wife came from Julia’s computer. Julia has a mystery boyfriend. Julia is Langston’s daughter’s best friend. And, oh yeah, don’t forget about that picture we have of her at his country house.”
He suddenly stopped talking and looked up at the ceiling.
“What?” She followed his gaze. “You see something?”
“No. But the country property. Ramona said her dad bought it right out of law school with a group of friends. What do you want to bet one of those friends is David Bolt?”
“We’ve been focusing on George because he’s married to Adrienne and obviously knew Julia. But if Adrienne knows that George helped Bolt sweep the Moffit family’s lawsuit under the rug-”
“Then Bolt might have more to lose than even George.”
“Shit. Remember Casey said yesterday that Brandon sent him an e-mail apologizing? According to Brandon, Julia was the one who originally hooked him up with Dr. Bolt, which means she knew about the drug testing, even though Ramona didn’t. Maybe she knew Bolt.”
“As a shrink, Bolt could have slipped her those Adderalls we found in her purse.”
“And David Bolt seems more like Julia’s type than George, anyway,” Ellie said. “She went after her science teacher, so I could imagine her being drawn to someone like Bolt. They could’ve met through the Langstons, or at some Casden alumni event.”
“So now we’re back to Bolt’s drug trial. Assuming Adrienne knows what those guys are up to, is it all so bad that they would not only try to scare her, but send Jimmy Grisco to kill her?”
“We need to talk to Casey.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
