by Cleo Coyle
Ellie tossed her head of layered strawberry blond hair. Then she turned from the hotel counter, and moved into the large lobby. She settled herself into one of the many plush couches and crossed her long, bare legs. Her pink skirt was short enough to turn a passing gentleman’s head.
“She must be waiting for someone,” I said.
“I hear the V’s Mediterranean Grill is quite good. I’ll bet she’s meeting someone for lunch.”
“But she already ate an entire Cornish hen with me, back at the Garden’s cafe.”
Madame waved her hand. “Then she’ll just order salad, or coffee and dessert. Eating two lunches for business reasons is not uncommon.”
I glanced in my rear view mirror. Taxis were pulling up behind me, and a sign nearby warned that this lane was for V Hotel drop off and pick up only.
“If I stand here much longer, I could get a ticket,” I said.
“Then you’d better park.”
“But we don’t want to lose sight of Ellie. You’d better get out and keep an eye on her.”
“Yes, of course.” With glee, Madame popped the door. “I’m on it!”
“Wait!” I cried.
“What?”
“Ellie hasn’t seen you in years, but she might remember you, so be careful. Sneak in and hide behind something.”
“Sneak in?” Madame frowned. “How?”
“I don’t know. . . . Maybe—”
Madame patted my arm. “Don’t worry, dear. Just park and join me—and be careful coming in yourself.” She exited the car, then bent down. “Come to think of it, your friend will recognize you if she spots you coming in, so you’d better watch what I do . . .”
Madame shut the car door and walked behind the car toward the corner. She dug into the pocket of her burgundy wrap coat and fed coins to a New York Times vending machine. After retrieving a paper, she pretended to read it, keeping it to the side of her face as she passed V’s picture windows.
At the hotel’s front doors, she stopped and loitered for about a minute. When a group of trendy looking office workers ventured inside, Madame inserted herself among them. Holding the paper up again, to shield her face, she slipped into the front door, then quickly darted off to a far corner of the lobby and sat.
I shook my head, astonished. “Who needs Mike Hammer when you’ve got a nosey mother-in-law?”
I revved my Honda, pulled away from the curb, and circled the block twice. There was legal parking on the side streets, but all of the spots were taken—of course! I was just about to bite the bullet and start searching for an underground parking garage when I noticed an SUV (yes, another one, this time blue), pulling out of a legal space.
“Bingo!”
I parallel parked, cut the engine, locked the doors, then jogged to the corner. Mimicking Madame, I bought another Times, and snuck into V amid a newly arriving group of Yupsters. Shielding my face, I slunk across the lobby.
The large, high-ceilinged space was done in muted tones of buff and clay. Glass tables, slender black gooseneck floor lamps, and exotic, somewhat frightening-looking plants gave the entire decor a sleek, modern, rather disturbing feel.
“Did I miss anything?” I whispered, sinking into the corner couch’s goose down cushions.
“No,” Madame replied beside me. “She’s just been reading magazines and checking her watch.”
I didn’t want to take any chances, so I kept the newspaper in front of my face. Peeking around the headlines, I could see that Ellie was sitting far away, with her Pretty in Pink back to us.
“Has she talked to anyone else besides the front desk clerk?” I asked.
“No,” said Madame. “She tried to make a cell call, but it was so quick that I suspect she just left the other party a message.”
We sat for a few more minutes, and I started glancing around the entire lobby. We weren’t far from the Village, and I was a little worried about someone recognizing me.
I saw two young women talking in a corner, and an African-American man typing on his laptop. I didn’t recognize any of them. One other man was sitting at the far end of the room in a large leather armchair. But he was holding his magazine so high, I couldn’t see his face.
I tapped Madame’s shoulder.
“What?” she whispered.
“Look over there. See that man in the corner, reading a magazine?”
Madame peeked around her newsprint. “Yes.”
“Do you see what magazine it is?”
“Girl . . . It’s hard to read the title from here. Girl . . . ?”
“Girl Talk. Joy used to subscribe to it when she was a teenager. It’s filled with celebrity gossip—boy bands and young actresses, fashion, and sweet sixteen advice on dating.”
“What’s a grown man doing reading Girl Talk?”
“He’s either in the young adult magazine business or he’s not reading it and just picked up the first magazine he saw on one of these lobby coffee tables.”
“So?”
“So I need you to walk over there and get a look at the man.”
“In heaven’s name, why? Ellie might see me.”
“I need you to risk it. I want to make sure that guy’s not the middle-aged man we saw following Ellie.”
“Oh, Clare, you’re being paranoid. We lost that man before we entered the tunnel. The man over there isn’t even dressed like the one we saw.”
Madame was right about that. From this angle, I couldn’t see more than the man’s upper torso, but there was no sign of a silver-blue track suit. This man was wearing a tweedy brown sports jacket over a white T-shirt.
“I just think something’s not right,” I whispered. “Look! He’s peeking around the magazine.”
“I can’t see his face very clearly,” Madame said. “He’s got that Mets cap pulled too low.”
“Well, I can’t walk up to him because, if he is that Asian guy, then he saw me talking to Ellie. But he didn’t see you.”
“All right,” Madame said. “I’m going.”
She rose slowly and took a leisurely spin of the room, moving around the perimeter. When she got to the man, she said a few words. He looked at his watch and, I assumed, told her the time. Then she moved casually back to me.
I was careful to keep the newspaper up. “What did you see?”
“It’s him! You were right! It’s the Asian man we saw in the Garden parking lot. He’s wearing a tweedy sport jacket over a white T-shirt on top, but his pants are obviously the bottom half of that silver-blue track suit.
“He’s followed Ellie here, I’m sure of it.”
“But how? We lost him.”
“He must have noticed that we were following him. So he shook our tail, then took up Ellie’s scent again without our noticing. He’s good.”
“But who is he? And what does he want?”
“Look . . .” Madame whispered, “there’s a dark-haired man walking up to Ellie, but I can’t see his face!”
“Is that Matt?”
“Matt?”
“I recognize his clothes.” The Italian made jacket was a beautiful peacock blue, and the gray slacks draped like fine silk curtains. “Breanne gave him those recently.”
“They’re very nice.”
Ellie sneezed just then. Matt pulled out a monogrammed handkerchief and gallantly handed it to her. Then he took her hand, kissed it, and helped her rise from her seat.
When they embraced and locked lips, Madame and I stared in shock.
“Oh my goodness. What’s my boy doing with that woman?”
“Wild guess? I’d say he’s kissing her. Passionately kissing her.”
But something wasn’t right about the way he was kissing her. I knew how my ex-husband kissed, and the way he was holding Ellie just didn’t seem right. A moment later, I realized why. As Matt turned with Ellie to walk out of the lobby, we finally saw his face.
“That’s not Matt,” Madame whispered. “It’s Ric Gostwick.”
Silently, we watched a
s they headed, not for the restaurant, but for the elevators to the bedrooms.
“I guess she’s doing more than hugging him, after all,” I murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“Ellie mentioned to me that her assistant, Norbert, caught her embracing Ric in the Garden. I pressed, but she implied it was just polite affection. She wouldn’t admit that she was sleeping with Ric.”
“Well, it certainly looks like she is.”
“Unless tight sweaters and short skirts are some new requirement for discussing botany in hotel rooms, I’d say you’re right.”
I noticed the Asian man rising from his armchair. I tapped Madame and pointed. She silently nodded.
The man’s magazine was gone. Keeping his head down, he moved carefully across the lobby, stopping as soon as he was within sight of the elevators.
“What’s he doing?” Madame whispered.
“Nothing. He’s just standing.” I noticed him adjust his Mets cap again, and I squinted. “They make cameras now that are small enough to fit into hats, don’t they? Do you think he’s filming Ellie and Ric?”
Madame frowned. “I guess anything’s possible, but I certainly can’t tell. The man just looks as though he’s loitering.”
Ding!
One of the elevators arrived, and Ric and Ellie disappeared inside. Then the doors shut, and Mets Cap Man turned. A young blond woman in a dark business suit approached him. He spoke to her, as if he knew her. She nodded, said a few words, then she went directly to the armchair in the lobby that he’d just left.
“Come on,” I rasped to Madame.
“Come where?”
“Where do you think? We’re going to follow Secret Asian Man.”
He left the hotel and walked south a few blocks. When he reached an underground parking garage, Madame and I hailed a cab.
“What about your car?” she asked.
“We’re not that far from the Blend. I can walk down here, and pick it up later.”
After a few minutes, a big, black SUV appeared in the garage’s driveway and turned down the one way street. “Follow that SUV!” Madame commanded our cabbie.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The black SUV headed east then north, traveling all the way up to Midtown. Madame barked orders to the cab driver, making sure he hung back. Judging from Secret Asian Man’s ability to shake our tail in Brooklyn, then pick up Ellie’s scent again—and without our noticing—we both agreed that he might get suspicious of a taxi hugging his bumper.
Traffic was heavy enough for us to blend into the sea of cars. Finally, the SUV pulled into a small parking lot, behind a clean concrete plaza near the United Nations.
“Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza,” I murmured. “Okay, I’ve finally found a winner for the most obscure, hard to pronounce place name in New York City.”
“Clare! I’m surprised at you. Don’t you know who Dag Hammarskjöld is?”
“What do you mean who? Are you telling me Dag Hammarskjöld is a name?”
“He was the secretary general of the United Nations. He died in a plane crash in Africa in the 1960s. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize. In my time, every schoolchild knew his name.”
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you, Madame, times have changed.”
Madame sighed. “You don’t have to tell me, dear. I notice every day—often several times a day. . . . So what do we do now?”
“We wait to see where he’s going.”
We sat in the cab until we saw Secret Asian Man again. He was leaving the parking lot on foot, heading up the block toward Second Avenue.
“You follow him,” I quickly told Madame. “I’ll pay the driver and catch up.”
Five minutes later, I found Madame on the sidewalk, in front of a typical seventies-era Bauhaus office building— an avocado green box with pillars of faded aluminum, and all the charm of a thirty-year-old chamber pot.
“Where did he go?” I asked, worried she’d lost him.
“Tenth floor,” she said with a smile. “And do you know who has an office on that floor besides a gynecologist and a marriage counselor?”
“Who?” I asked.
“A private investigator.”
FIFTEEN
THE office wasn’t large, about the size of a busy dental practice. The walls were a freshly painted off-white, the framed prints on the walls the sort of generic pastel landscape art designed to put one at ease, if not asleep.
“I’ll be with you in a moment. Please have a seat.”
The young African American receptionist with stylish jade eyeglasses and a beautiful head of long braids pointed us to a small waiting area before she turned her attention back to the receiver in her headset. “Yes . . . I understand,” she murmured, “that’s correct . . . would you mind spelling that for me?”
She appeared to be scribbling down an extensive phone message, and I was relieved to see that she was preoccupied. It gave Madame and me a chance to catch our breath and get our bearings.
Downstairs we’d already discussed strategy. The plan was simple. Madame would show the receptionist her set of keys and claim that she’d seen an Asian gentleman drop them when he’d parked his SUV near Dag Hammarskjöld plaza.
If the receptionist offered to take the keys, Madame would refuse to give them up, requesting a chance to speak to the man himself. When he appeared, she’d challenge him, recounting his movements and demand that he give up the name of the person who’d hired him to tail Ellie.
I didn’t like the idea of direct confrontation, but I couldn’t think of a better scheme at the moment, and my former mother-in-law felt confident she could make this work. Maybe she could. Madame was the sort of regal dame with whom most people were reluctant to argue. Secret Asian Man might be one of them.
Given the fact that he was a professional investigator, however, I was willing to bet we were in over our heads. My bookie dad probably would have given us 7 to 3 odds: the long-shot being our actually getting the information for which we came and the more likely scenario landing us unceremoniously on the sidewalk downstairs.
While the receptionist continued talking on the phone, Madame and I settled into the standard issue waiting-room furniture. Madame pawed through the magazines and brochures on the coffee table. I glanced around the room.
“Are you nervous?” I whispered.
“Not at all,” Madame replied, opening one of the office’s glossy brochures. “Just a little impatient.” She dipped into her handbag and pulled out her reading glasses. “This is interesting . . .” she murmured a minute later.
“What?” I asked, my eyes still on the receptionist.
“This office is being run by a man named Anil Kapoor, but it’s only one branch of a global company. Have a look . . .”
I took the brochure, and began to read:
At Worldwide Private Investigations, Inc. (WPI), our licensed private investigators, forensic experts, and legal information specialists achieve results. With offices around the globe, we are especially equipped for international investigations, including missing persons, marital and child custody cases, property and copyright disputes, extradition and asset inquiries as well as a host of other investigations and security needs. At WPI, no case is too big, or too small. Whether you are an individual, a C-level executive, or a government official, you can rest assured that our confidentiality is paramount.
Many of our agents are bilingual and are culturally, nationality, and gender diverse. All must clear a thorough background check prior to employment. In addition to military and law enforcement sectors, WPI recruits talent from private service industries such as accounting, computer information systems, and . . .
I flipped to another leaf of the brochure, where the company bragged about its protective services division, providing security and bodyguards for global corporations and diplomats. Their client list was extensive, and in very small print. I squinted as I scanned the list, pretending that I hadn’t finally reached the age when I needed to borro
w Madame’s reading glasses . . .
Ensor Pharmaceuticals, Gaylord Group, J.P. Madison Associates, Lamelle-Fressineau, Paratech Global, Snap Cola Enterprises, Komiyama Industries, TerraGreen International, XanTell Corporation . . .
My gaze returned to one of the company names. “Terra-Green . . .”
“What did you say, Clare?”
I pointed to the brochure. “TerraGreen International,” I whispered, “they’re a client of this office’s protective services division, and Ellie’s husband works for them.”
Madame’s eyebrows rose. “You’re sure?”
I nodded. “About two or three years after Ellie and Ric broke up, she was still dropping by the Blend. I remember she’d gone through a stint interning at the TerraGreen labs on Long Island. That’s how she first met her husband, Jerry Lassiter. He was an executive with the company.”
“Did you say labs? What sort of company is this TerraGreen?”
“They make fertilizers and plant foods. Back then, I think Ellie was working on some sort of project to genetically engineer crops.”
Madame frowned in thought for a moment. “Ellie was an intern and her husband was an executive when they first met? Is that what you said?”
“Yes.”
“Then there must have been quite a few years between them.”
“He’s at least fifteen years her senior.”
Madame sighed. “It seems we have a classic recipe here. Older, rich husband provides a young Ellie with security and stability, but years later, she begins yearning for the adventure and passion she lost. Enter old flame Ric . . .”
“But is Jerry Lassiter having his wife followed to document infidelity?” I whispered. “Or is there more to it?”
“What more could there be?”
“Ric was mugged last night. I doubt a professional investigator got involved with something like that.”
“So you think Jerry Lassiter did the deed himself?”
“Or he hired someone to do it. Yes, that’s what I think. What I can’t do is prove it. I’m not even sure of his real motive.”
“Real motive?”
“Don’t you see? He could be after Ric’s hybrid cutting . . . or he could be out to make it look like someone else is after it, so if harm comes to Ric the police will look for another suspect.”
