“That’s right.”
“How explosive are we talking?”
She knew where he was angling and gently walked him back.
“You’re asking if I think a financial-services company sent a guy around with a gun, and the answer is no. Last year, Barron was tangled up in a few of the Buffalo Billion scandals. They bought off everybody who squawked and sued the rest. No need for the rough stuff.”
“What if they already tried buying him off?” Jordan asked.
“They didn’t try suing him. Tell me about the night doorman.”
“Nothing to tell, because between one and two in the morning he was out taking his meal break. Conveniently missed any and all commotion.”
Nell stared at him, incredulous. “On Fifth Avenue? Condos like this never leave the front desk uncovered, especially at night. He would have had someone to take over for him.”
“That’s his story and he’s sticking to it, right up to the edge of demanding a lawyer.”
“He got paid to take a long walk,” Nell said.
“You know it, and I know it, but knowing isn’t proving. Unlike, say, the crusading members of the fourth estate, I’m legally limited in the kind of pressure I can bring to bear.”
He paused, eyeing her.
“What?” she said.
“You did the city a solid,” he said. “With that Noah Sellers thing. Saved the cost of a trial and a cell.”
She felt a spider crawling up her spine. Suddenly she wanted to be anywhere but here. Or maybe she just wanted to slap that look off his face.
“I didn’t do it for you,” she said. She shifted gears. “You talk to the wife?”
“We’d like to know where she is.”
“Try Singapore.”
Jordan tilted his head. He glanced back into the condo, at the silk sheets, the twin glasses of wine, and caught up to where Nell had arrived five minutes ago.
“That changes things,” he said.
“It does,” she said. “That helpful?”
“Highly.”
“Like I said, the dearly departed had promised me some information. You find anything in there like a laptop, USB sticks—”
Detective Jordan became a wall, pushing his shoulders back and filling the doorway.
“Not letting you poke your nose around an active crime scene, Bluth. Anything in that condo is evidence.”
She held up her open palms. “Just asking questions about hypotheticals.”
“That, I can tell you. Nada. No computer, no nothing. Try his office maybe.”
Doubtful. No chance he’d keep the documents that could burn his employer anywhere that said employer could stumble across them.
“How about a phone? You find a cell on him?”
Jordan shook his head. “He has a company-issued phone, but his admin said he forgot it at the office when he left work yesterday afternoon. I sent a car over to pick it up, so we can take a look.”
Not the burner he used for talking to Nell, then. An idea crept in, sneaking around the shady corners of her mind.
“You’ll keep an eye out for me?” she asked.
He gave her a noncommittal don’t call me, I’ll call you wave, turned, and tromped back to the crime scene. She fished out her phone, lingering on the threshold, and dialed Arthur’s number.
The line trilled. Nell perked her ears and listened for a corresponding ring inside the condo, betraying any hint of where the burner might have been hidden. Silence.
On the fifth ring, just as she was about to hang up, someone answered the phone. They didn’t say anything, but their breath gave them away. High-pitched, tight, nervous.
“Hello,” Nell said. “May I speak to Arthur Wendt, please?”
They hung up.
She clutched her phone tight and marched back to the elevators, keeping her lips sealed until she got on and the doors glided shut. This time, the line only rang twice.
“Brooklyn Standard, city desk speaking.”
“Ty? Good news and bad news.”
“Bad news first,” he said.
“Arthur Wendt is dead. Someone killed him last night in his condo.”
She heard a rattle as Tyler shot bolt upright in his chair. “Jesus, Nell. Are you okay? Did they catch the guy?”
“No, but here’s the thing: there was a witness.”
“To the killing?”
“Arthur had female company last night. Not-his-wife company. Company that left in a very big hurry. And whoever she is, she has Arthur’s phone.”
“Or,” Tyler said, “and hey, just spit-balling here, tossing this out for your consideration, has it occurred to you that she might have been the one who killed him?”
“The watchman downstairs got paid to take a hike. Meanwhile, Arthur’s lady friend made absolutely no effort to hide the fact that she’d been there. Sexy-time bedsheets, multiple glasses of wine, probably left her fingerprints everywhere…it doesn’t add up. If she had the foresight to cover her tracks in the lobby, she sure as hell wouldn’t have left big neon signs plastered all around Arthur’s dead body.”
“What’s your take, then?”
“I think the killer knew Arthur’s wife was out of town,” Nell said. “He showed up, expecting to find him alone, and got a surprise. He killed Arthur and she ran in the confusion. She’s a witness, Tyler. She saw everything.”
“And you shared this information with the police.”
The elevator door chimed and rumbled open. She crossed the lobby, ducking her head as she skirted past a pair of officers on their way upstairs.
“I shared the most relevant details.”
“Nell.”
She knew that tone. “The witness has his phone. And considering the cops didn’t find any laptops or data-storage devices in the condo, there’s a very good chance he was using it for more than calling me.”
“Nell,” he said.
“He was going to bring us the receipts. The receipts. Absolute, hard proof that Barron Equity and the Weaver Group moved forward a week before the city approved their bid. In other words, they already knew they had won. In other words, the entire bidding process is rigged. If we get that, we can uncover the whole chain of corruption from the bottom rung all the way to the mayor’s office. We can expose everyone involved and name names. This could make the Buffalo Billion look like stealing money from a piggybank. It’s Pulitzer material. You know I’m right.”
“You know what I know? If she’s a witness to a murder, the cops are going to want a word with her. Know who else is? The guy who did it. Did you even think about that?”
“Then we’d better find her before anyone else does.”
There was silence on the line, just the muffled clatter of the newsroom, and then Tyler came back with a long-suffering sigh.
“What do you need?”
“You still have that contact with access to Microbilt?” she asked. “Assuming she hasn’t yanked the SIM card, we can track that phone. We find the phone, we find our witness.”
6.
Seelie didn’t know why she answered the phone. It sat in her hip pocket like a mystery, a dead man’s last bequest. Outside of letting her answer a call, it remained stubbornly locked, demanding a four-digit passcode. She tried every permutation of Arthur’s age and birthday, his wife’s…even her own, though she wasn’t sure if Arthur ever knew it. Every wrong choice made the screen give a warning jiggle, sending her back to the beginning.