Annie Seymour 01-Sacred Cows

by Karen E. Olson

  “Quinn.”

  “Seymour,” I said. “I need a favor.”

  “Shoot.”

  I could hear rapid typing in the background. “McGee Corporation. Fifty-seventh and Lexington. No phone, but I need to know what it is. Could you take a walk sometime in the next few hours and get back to me?”

  “No phone?” I could hear the curiosity as the typing ceased. Few things can make her stop working.

  “Some sort of small investment firm.”

  “No phone?” she repeated. This was a woman who had a phone in her bathroom. “What’s up?”

  “The Yalie who was found dead yesterday. May be some connection.” She was my best friend, but I was unwilling to say more. She was a journalist, too.

  “Right-o. I’ll call you this afternoon.” She hung up without saying goodbye. She never said goodbye.

  I didn’t know whether Tom was in the office, so I called him on his cell phone.

  “Hello?” His voice was muffled.

  “Anything new?”

  “Annie, you know you shouldn’t use this number.” I could hear the unspoken words “when I’m working.”

  I didn’t give a shit, and he knew it, but he wanted to give me a hard time anyway. That was the kind of relationship we’d nurtured.

  “Anything new?” I asked again.

  “Press conference at one. At City Hall.” He hung up.

  They must have pushed up the autopsy. The medical examiner’s office wouldn’t give me any information at all, referred me to the New Haven police department. I was making too many phone calls and not getting any real information.

  I threw my bag over my shoulder and started walking out.

  “Where are you going?” Dick caught up to me in the hall.

  “Tell Marty I’m going to the press conference. I have something I need to do now.”

  “But I thought I went to press conferences.” He started whining, which did not endear him to me.

  “You went to the one yesterday. Now it’s my turn.” That seemed to be a satisfactory answer for him, because he started walking away.

  I got out of there before anyone could stop me.

  CHAPTER 5

  I found Sarah Lewis in the library again and sat down without being invited.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She scowled at me. She might be pretty if she was more cheerful, but we can’t ask too much of some people.

  “David, Melissa’s ex-boyfriend. How can I find him?”

  “Oh, go bother someone else. I’m tired of you reporters.”

  That’s right. Richard Wells had talked to her, too, I’d seen in the Times. “You also talked to that guy from the New York Times.”

  “At least he bought me a cup of tea.”

  I looked around. He must not have found her in the library.

  I tried again. “I need to talk to David. Do you know where he is?”

  Sarah sighed, a long-drawn-out sound that I thought only my mother had perfected. “His parents are here.”

  Great. And they probably had a good lawyer baby-sitting him, too, since the cops were looking at him. I didn’t have a chance in hell, but I had to try. “So you don’t know where they are?”

  She shrugged. “You could try his college. He’s at Saybrook.”

  I wasn’t sure where it was, so she directed me, grudgingly. It wasn’t too far, and the sky was bright, the air was comfortable, and I actually started to feel revitalized. Unfortunately, if I got too revitalized, I’d get frisky and I’d have to call Tom. At work.

  As I got near the building, I saw a familiar figure in front, and I pulled back so he wouldn’t see me. The winking guy, twice in one day, in the morning, no less. Maybe it was Richard Wells. Could be. He seemed to be hitting up all the major players and spots, too. But why would he watch me last night at Sally’s? I wasn’t the story, I was just an observer. Maybe it wasn’t Richard Wells. Then who could it be?

  I watched him turn the corner and he was gone. I quickly made my way across the street. A young man wearing chinos and a polo shirt was coming out of the gate as I pushed my way in, making eye contact to get his attention.

  “David Best?”

  He pointed across the courtyard at a stone building. “Second floor.”

  It wasn’t hard finding the room. The door was wide open. The attorney, it had to be the attorney, was pacing in the small room. A fireplace was stuck to one wall, and two bedrooms shot off to the side. A couple a little older than me were perched on the edge of the couch across from the fireplace. I figured the young man with his back to me, looking out the window, was David.

  I knocked on the door frame, and they all looked up as if they were expecting me.

  The lawyer frowned. “Yes?”

  “I’m Anne Seymour, with the Herald.” The lawyer ignored my outstretched hand, and I pulled it back. “I was wondering if you wanted to make a statement.” I directed my question at the young man, who still had his back to his entourage.

  “No comment,” the lawyer said. “Now get out of here.”

  “But he must have a comment about Melissa. He was her boyfriend.” I wondered how far I could push this before getting physically thrown out.

  The young man turned then. He had circles under his eyes, and his hair was disheveled. It looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, kind of the way I’d looked yesterday.

  “I want to say something,” he said, a low rumble coming from the back of his throat.

  The lawyer shook his head. “David, you shouldn’t say anything.”

  “For Christ’s sake, I loved her,” David said harshly. “I want everyone to know I couldn’t hurt her, I loved her.” I could hear the pain in his voice, but there was something in his eyes, something that didn’t quite add up to this professed grief.

  “David, honey,” his mother started, but the lawyer held up his hand to silence her.

  “Did you know she was working for the escort service?” I asked, knowing full well he did, but wanting to hear his response.

  He rolled his shoulders back as if he had a crick in his neck. “Yeah, I knew.”

  “I’m advising you as your attorney not to say any more.”

  David and I both glared at him.

  “Did you know who she was meeting that night?” I asked David as if we were the only two people in the room.

  “Don’t talk to her,” his father advised, but lucky for me David wasn’t listening.

  “No. I saw her at the party, then she left. I was pretty drunk, I stayed until about two-thirty, then came back here.”

  “I heard you had a fight.”

  Something crossed his face, but it came and went so fast I couldn’t read it. “Yeah, we fought a lot. There’s a lot of pressure, you know, it’s tough sometimes.”

  The parents exchanged a look that wasn’t hard to notice. “How are your grades?” I asked.

  He shrugged again. “I dunno. Medium. I guess I could be doing better.”

  “How was Melissa doing in school?”

  His face changed again, and the smile he was trying for didn’t quite come off. “Oh, she was doing fine. She’s, she was, I mean, one of those people who didn’t have to study too much to get good grades.”

  “Why did she break up with you?” Throw him a curveball, see if he hits it.

  His eyes grew dark. “She said she had to concentrate more on school, but that was a lot of bullshit. She was getting into that job, big-time.”

  “Now I have to ask you to leave. I won’t allow him to talk to you anymore.” The lawyer took my arm and started leading me out. “If you have any more questions, call my office.” He handed me a card. I glanced at it. Bill Smythe, attorney at law.

  “Thank you for your time, David,” I said over my shoulder. When Smythe and I were in the hall, I asked, “There was a guy in here earlier, tall, dark hair, Italian-looking. Who was he?”

  Smythe looked startled, then recovered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
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  He knew damned well who that guy was and he wasn’t talking. If it was Richard Wells, he was making sure I didn’t find out his angle. I was soon outside the building, wondering just exactly how I could get more information about David Best, when my cell phone rang. I dug in my bag until I found it. “Hello?”

  “Hey, girl.” Priscilla didn’t waste any time. “I found that place.”

  “McGee?”

  “It’s a fucking Gap.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a Gap store. No kidding.”

  I stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk and some guy crashed into me. He glared at me. “Sorry,” I muttered. “What about upstairs? Anything upstairs?” I asked Priscilla.

  “I checked it out. Lawyers, doctors. No McGee.”

  What the hell was going on? They had an apartment in New Haven but no office in New York, where they supposedly did business. “Jesus,” I said softly.

  “Gotta run. Let me know what’s up, you’ve got me curious now.”

  I put the phone back in my purse and wandered aimlessly, trying to put the pieces together, but nothing fit. I found myself back at University Towers, staring up at the balcony.

  “Come back to the scene of the crime?” Tom’s voice pierced my thoughts and I stared at him.

  “Do you know?” I asked.

  “Know what?”

  “About the McGee Corporation?”

  “It’s a Gap store.” He knew and he didn’t tell me. Figures. “How’d you find out?”

  “Priscilla.”

  He chuckled. “It helps to have friends in convenient places.”

  “So what’s the story?”

  He shook his head. “Beats the hell out of me.”

  “What about rent checks?”

  “They’ve got the post office box on them, and the rent’s paid in full and on time every month. Landlord says Mark Torrey, representing McGee, checked out. Why would he double-check the checks when the guy renting the place works for the city?”

  So it was the city’s Mark Torrey after all.

  “Have you talked to Torrey yet?” I asked.

  Tom shook his head. “They say he’s in California. We’re checking that out.”

  These things usually were so damned neat. Maybe it really was the ex-boyfriend, but then what was this all about? A mysterious corporation, a missing city lawyer. This opened up a whole new can of worms regardless of the murder.

  “Press conference in half an hour,” Tom said. “I’ve got to be there. You going?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Medical examiner’s report?”

  “The whole case is going to break wide open once they find out how she died. Chief thinks if there’s a big show, then Yale and the city won’t freak as much.”

  “I talked to David Best.”

  He stared at me, his blue eyes dark. “How?”

  “He wanted to talk. His lawyer said no, but he said some stuff.”

  “He loved her, right?” Tom was skeptical of everyone and everything.

  “Maybe he did.”

  “That’s the best reason to kill a girlfriend who’s a hooker.”

  Point taken. Tom touched my arm, and it shook me out of my confusion. I touched his hand, and he winked. It reminded me of something.

  “Hey, there’s some guy wandering around who seems to be everywhere I am. Italian, good-looking, in that Frank Sinatra sort of way. Have you seen him?”

  “He’s following you?” Tom frowned.

  “It’s just that he always seems to be in the same places I am. I’ve seen him a lot the past couple of days.”

  Tom’s forehead wrinkled in that way it does when he’s worried about something or thinking. “Next time you see him, call me, okay?”

  He seemed so concerned that I didn’t have the heart to tell him this guy was here one minute, gone the next, so it probably wouldn’t do any good.

  “Time to get crucified,” he said abruptly. “See you there.”

  I’d forgotten to ask him what he was doing at University Towers, and when I remembered, he was waving at me from the window of his car. He probably was here for the same reason I was: to get some sort of psychic message about who had done such a thing to this girl. I stared up at the balconies and shuddered.

  IT WAS A ZOO. Reporters crammed into the conference room, TV cameras pointed at the empty podium, microphones were being hooked up. Like they were really covering the story. Next time I’d see all these guys would be at the funeral.

  “You’re here.” Dick Whitfield always showed up in the wrong places at the wrong times.

  “I said I’d be, didn’t I?” I snapped, pissed that he would even think I wouldn’t show up. “What’re you doing here?”

  “No one heard from you all morning.”

  “I’ve been working. I have to leave the office to do that.”

  Fortunately the police chief arrived at that moment, before I could say anything else. I had to get a grip on myself. I couldn’t spend good energy arguing with Dick Whitfield. He wasn’t worth it.

  Tom walked in behind the chief as the primary investigator on the case. I think he saw me, but he didn’t show it.

  They ran through the information I already had, and when they came to the medical examiner’s report, everyone froze. Until then, it had been fairly civilized. Everyone started shouting questions at the same time.

  “Has anyone been charged yet?”

  “What about David Best? Is he going to be charged?”

  “Are there any other suspects?”

  “Was she sexually assaulted?”

  The last question was shouted from the back of the room, a deep baritone bouncing off the wall behind Tom. We all waited.

  The chief shook his head. “No.”

  “But had she had sex before she died?”

  It was the question we all wanted to know the answer to. I craned my neck to see who was asking the right things.

  The chief took a deep breath. “Yes.” He put his hand up. “I’m afraid that’s all we have time for.” He ducked out through a back door, Tom not far behind. They left a roomful of hungry reporters very unsatisfied.

  “Who was that?” I whispered to the Channel 30 reporter next to me.

  “The guy from the Times, Richard Wells. Asshole,” he added before he turned back to his cameraman.

  I wondered if I was as beloved as Richard Wells. I wanted to think I at least had the respect of my peers.

  I pushed my way through the crowd and into the hall with Dick hot on my trail. “Where are you going now?” he asked.

  I successfully suppressed an urge to say something really out of line. “Have you ever met Richard Wells?” I asked him instead.

  “Sure. That’s him over there.” Dick pointed and I felt my mouth hang open down to my knees. This was the guy who bedded sources and wooed councilmen into telling him secrets?

  Richard Wells was at least a head shorter than me, balding with a comb-over that seemed to tuck behind both ears. His gray eyes were small, his nose hooked, his cheeks chipmunk-like. He was heavyset and wore a red plaid sport jacket over brown pants. He spotted me looking at him and grinned. It was like a train wreck. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. Unfortunately, it sent the wrong message.

  “You’re Anne Seymour, aren’t you? I’ve seen your byline.” He stuck his hand out and I felt compelled to take it. It was like shaking a dead fish. “I’m Richard Wells.”

  “Hi.” I must have sounded and acted like a giddy schoolgirl, but I was merely in shock. He wasn’t clever enough to see that.

  “Want to get some coffee? Maybe we can help each other out on this.”

  Help each other? How? I didn’t like the sound of that and it snapped me back into the moment. “Sorry, I don’t collaborate with the competition,” I said coldly.

  “We could still get some coffee.”

  I searched his face, his person, trying to find the charm. If it was there, it was not obvious. “I’m sorry. I’ve got an
appointment.” I walked away.

  Dick was laughing behind me. “Shut up,” I said.

  “He hit on you.”

  “Yeah. But I shot him down.” Had I? I wasn’t sure.

  “He works at the Times. Maybe he could get you a job there.”

  “And maybe I could fuck a duck.”

  He was still laughing when we got out on the street.

  CHAPTER 6

  I had to call Hickey Watson again, but this time I didn’t get a breathless “Come Together.” I got an answering machine, would I please leave my name and a message, we’re so sorry for the inconvenience. The cops got to them, and they were keeping a low profile, if not going out of business altogether. I left my name. It was the only option.

  Within minutes my phone rang.

  “I thought I gave you all the answers I could.” Hickey Watson didn’t waste any time. He was probably screening the calls.

  “I need some more. Can we meet somewhere?” We weren’t going to get anywhere on the phone, I knew that and he knew that, because I could hear him thinking, the wheels of his brain louder than a train whistle.

  “Would it get you off my back?”

  “Listen, I don’t give a damn what you do, but a girl is dead. You know, if you help out with this, the cops might look more kindly on you.”

  I must have pushed a button. We agreed to meet at the Twin Pines Diner in East Haven on Route 1, a little dive of a place, just out of the way enough so we would be left alone. It was his choice, so I wondered just where his “office” was located. “I meet all my girls there,” he explained. I didn’t tell him that even though I was thinking of a career change, it wouldn’t include becoming one of “his girls.”

  “Early deadline tonight,” Marty said as I passed his desk.

  “Okay, okay. Why don’t you have Dick write up the press conference?”

  “Where are you off to?”

  I told him about Hickey Watson. “I’m going to try to get more out of him about who Melissa met that night. I don’t think he’d meet me if he wasn’t going to tell me anything.”