I saw where he was going with this. “But wouldn’t it be stupid to get your roommate to deliver a threat? Especially someone with a distinguishing mark on his face?”
“Criminals are the stupidest people I’ve ever met.”
He was right. I did a story about two burglars who were caught because the cops followed their footprints in the snow to their house. That was about the mentality of the average criminal.
“But wouldn’t a murderer be more careful?” I asked.
“Maybe not,” Tom said. “Maybe it was a crime of passion, it wasn’t planned, it just happened, and he found himself in the middle of it without really expecting it. And David Best is really young, he grew up in a sheltered environment. He could afford to be sloppy because he’d be bailed out no matter what.”
All points well taken. But it still left me with a threatening note and a feeling that Mark Torrey was just around the corner.
“I can’t shake the feeling that Torrey’s somehow involved.”
Tom shrugged. “Maybe he is, maybe not. But I can’t say one way or the other until I can interrogate him, and we can’t find him.”
“He said he’d go to the police.”
“And you believed him?”
Okay, I was batting a thousand today. And it wasn’t even 10:00
A.M.
“If it’s David Best, then I can move forward with checking into this McGee thing, right?”
“Sure, sure. But if Torrey calls you again, I want to talk to him about Melissa Peabody. He was one of the last people to see her alive, and he saw David Best that night, too. Do you have a Baggie?”
I pulled a Ziploc bag out of a drawer. It had some bread crumbs in it.
“Do you have a clean one?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. All out.”
He emptied the crumbs in the sink and put the note in the bag. “I need this for evidence.”
“In case I’m murdered, too, and you can say, oh, she was threatened?” I was trying to make a joke out of it, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
He didn’t say anything, which made me really start worrying.
“Do you have any leads on Allison’s murder?” It was my feeble attempt to change the subject, but I couldn’t stay away from death completely.
Tom shook his head. “Nothing. Crime scene was so goddamned clean. It just doesn’t make any sense.” He absently kissed me on the cheek. “I’m going to go talk to David Best’s roommate.”
“What’s his name?” I asked, innocently, I hoped.
“No, you’re not getting that out of me.”
“Like I wouldn’t be able to find out.”
“But by the time you find out, I’ll already have talked to him, and that’s the way it should be.” He closed the door behind him and left me with a half cup of cold coffee.
Vinny DeLucia was leaning against my car when I left my building. So much for thinking my day could turn around.
“What are you doing here?”
He grinned. “Do you know you have very nosy neighbors?” He pointed up, and Amber’s curtain fell back just as I looked. I could see Walter’s silhouette behind his mini-blinds.
“Ignore them. I’m looking for another place anyway.”
“Why? This is a great location.”
I had to agree. I loved this place, but my anonymity was one of the things I loved about it, and now that was gone. I sighed.
“Why was the cop here?”
I rolled my eyes, but didn’t say anything.
“I know he didn’t spend the night, so why would he show up in the morning when he was already at work?”
“How did you know he was at work already?” I ignored his reference to Tom’s not spending the night. I didn’t want to get into how he knew that.
“Because I was at the police station earlier and found out David Best was released on bail.”
I wasn’t even going to ask him what he was doing. I didn’t really want to know, and I didn’t really care.
“So why did he come here?” he tried again.
“It’s none of your business.”
“I can find out from one of your neighbors.”
And he probably would, too. They’d be more than happy to tell him.
“Okay, I got a note under my door. Said I should stop asking questions.”
“Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Stop asking questions.”
“Of course not.”
“Do you think it’s a real threat?”
I stared at him. “What are you doing here? Why are you leaning against my car?”
“You met Mark Torrey last night.”
“What about it, and how do you know?”
He chuckled. “I’m a private dick, remember?”
He was a dick, all right.
“Don’t even say it.”
How did he know everything I was thinking? This guy was nuts. “I’m in one piece, okay? It wasn’t a big deal.”
“But you got a threatening note this morning. You don’t think they’re connected?”
I did, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Tom thinks David Best is involved.”
Vinny bit his lower lip thoughtfully. “I guess so. Could be. But my bets are on Torrey.”
“What’s your interest in all this, Vinny? What’s my mother got you working on?”
He smiled, a slow, seductive smile that made my toes start to curl; then I reminded myself he was the geek from high school. He couldn’t have that effect on me.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he teased.
“Is it about Melissa Peabody’s family suing the school?”
“You have to ask your mother. I’m not at liberty to say.”
“All right then, why were you following me to Torrey and why are you here now? I don’t have anything to do with Melissa Peabody’s death.”
“But you did have contact with Allison Sanders, who is now dead. And you’ve talked to Mark Torrey, who until then and since has spoken to no one else. You seem to be some sort of key.”
To what? The door to nowhere? “I have no key. I just get phone calls and I talk to people.” We stared each other down. “Hey, wait a minute. It’s Torrey, isn’t it? It’s not Melissa. It’s Torrey. What’s he done? Why is my mother so interested in him?”
“Give the girl a gold star. But I still can’t say.”
“Maybe I could help. He did talk to me. Maybe he’ll contact me again.”
Vinny smiled.
I was slow on the uptake, but once I started to figure things out, there was no stopping me. “So why didn’t you get to him last night, after I left him?”
“Who says I didn’t?”
Something else dawned on me. “That’s why you’re watching me. To see if he contacts me again.”
He still didn’t say anything. It was infuriating.
“What did he do, Vinny?”
He shook his head. “You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.” He pulled himself away from my car and started down the street.
“You’re a real asshole, you know that?” I yelled after him.
He turned and laughed. “You’re such a charmer. I’ll see you around.”
I slammed the car door and cranked up the radio, as if the Rolling Stones could erase Vinny DeLucia’s voice from my head. But he’d gotten me thinking despite myself. Mark Torrey was into something that my mother knew about. I was going to have to see her, continuing the day’s unfortunate course.
I had to drive around the Green more than once before I found a parking space near my mother’s office building. I refuse to pay to park in one of the garages or lots. Luckily, someone was pulling out just a block away from the building when I came around the corner for the fourth time. I slipped my parking pass on the dashboard so I wouldn’t have to feed the meter and hoped this wouldn’t take too long.
I could feel my heart quicken in that panic-attack sort of way I get when I smell fresh paint and clean carpets. I remember the smell of the hot wax in the composing room where we pasted up the stories in the old days, before computers, before everything went straight to the pressroom, rendering the waxers useless. They were idle for a while, until one day they were gone. It would be like that in the newsroom, too. One day we’d come in and we’d all have cubicles instead of being out in the open where phone conversations could be heard five desks away and we all knew when our society reporter arrived because we could smell her perfume before we saw her.
I had a theory that the only thing that kept the company from dividing us up now was its fear that we’d somehow misuse our time if we weren’t able to be watched constantly.
“Hello, Angie. Is my mother in?” My mother’s secretary was about my mother’s age, but without my mother’s style. She was intelligent, and I have the utmost respect for secretaries, who usually know more than anyone and are invaluable sources, but she lacked that certain something that made other women her age go back to school and become hotshot lawyers.
“She has a meeting in a few minutes.” Angie’s eyes flickered with the lie, but I played along.
“It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” I said as I pushed open the door to my mother’s office.
It’s never ceased to amaze me that my mother, who once spent her days creating floral baskets and ironing underwear à la Martha Stewart, now had a corner office with a huge window overlooking Church Street. The mahogany desk shone with its polish, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother stayed after hours to give it her own elbow grease. She certainly had never trusted anyone else to clean her belongings before, but times had changed.
“Oh, Annie, yes, what is it?” Her eyes were wide, she looked like a rabbit about to flee. But I closed the door.
“I need to talk to you.”
“I have a meeting in a few minutes.” She pushed some papers around on her desk to make it look good. But the full cup of coffee gave her away. My mother would never get a cup of coffee if she was going into a meeting, for fear of dribbling in front of those she felt should be in awe of her.
I plopped down on the leather chair in front of her desk. “Mark Torrey. I know you’re after him. What for?”
She stared at me over the top of her glasses, trying to figure out how much I knew. “I can’t tell you,” she finally said.
“Bullshit. Off the record then. I’ll find out from someone else officially.”
She laughed. “Oh, Annie, I’m your mother, but I’m also a lawyer. And you’re a reporter. You can’t take advantage of the fact that you’re my daughter.”
“Bullshit,” I said again, for lack of anything else. “I met with Torrey last night.”
“I know. I read the paper.” She probably read it in bed with Bill Bennett, the thought of which made my stomach turn.
“Vinny DeLucia wants to talk to him. So do the cops. But I’m the only one he’s contacted. Want in on the action? I can make a deal.”
“How do you know he’ll contact you again?”
“He already has,” I bluffed, hoping I wouldn’t give myself away. She was my mother, after all.
That did pique her interest, because her back stiffened and she took the glasses off. “When?”
“Tell me first what your interest in him is.”
“Now, Annie,” she started, and I knew I was in trouble. She had that preachy voice, the one she used when she was going to “teach me a lesson.” “I told you I can’t tell you. The only thing I can say is that if you continue to talk to him, you could be charged with obstruction of justice.”
Christ, he really was hot. “Does it have to do with the city redevelopment project?”
She shook her head condescendingly, and I knew I wouldn’t get it out of her. I wondered if Bill Bennett could. No, I really didn’t want to go there.
“You should tell me where he is, Annie.”
I got up and grabbed my bag off the floor where I’d dropped it. “No. Forget it. I’ll find out somehow.”
I started to leave, but I heard her say, “Wait.” I turned.
“Two girls are dead, and they both had contact with Mr. Torrey.” She paused, and I could see she was struggling between mom and lawyer. Mom was winning, and I waited. “He’s made some people very unhappy, some very rich people. That’s all I can say. Watch yourself. Do you still have that gun your father insisted on giving you?”
The gun again. First Vinny and now my mother. “Yeah. I’ve got it.”
“Keep it handy, Annie, especially if you meet him again. But I hope you’ll be smart and call the police if you hear from him. It’s terribly important.”
Despite my mother’s warning, I left the building with a lighter step than when I’d gone in. Mark Torrey was ripping someone off. But who? Lundgren? I hated to stereotype developers, but I couldn’t help myself. If they were mobbed up, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Norwegian mobsters? Why not? Maybe they weren’t even really Norwegian. My brain picked through all sorts of scenarios on my way to the paper.
Dick wasn’t in my chair for the first time in a few days. In fact, he wasn’t even in the newsroom. Neither was Marty. The message light on my phone was winking at me, and in seconds I was hearing Mark Torrey’s voice.
“A good story, Ms. Seymour, but you should’ve left out the references to McGee and my work with Lundgren.” I’d used them at the end, as a sort of background, with the intention of following up on them in my next story. “I also thought you’d be smart enough to leave the private investigator out of it, even though he’s obviously not as good as his reputation.” So Vinny had tried to get to Torrey last night and failed. That made me smile.
The message continued: “I’d hoped we could’ve formed a relationship, but I don’t think that’s possible now.” Damn. “It was lovely meeting you.”
So I really didn’t lie to my mother. Torrey had contacted me again. But it was to say goodbye. I pulled my address book out and dialed the number that the lawyer at my mother’s party had given me. “The number you have dialed is out of service.”
The guy was good. So good that I didn’t have a clue how to move ahead with this. Except . . .
“Come Together.”
I was getting so used to hearing it that it didn’t even make me chuckle anymore. “Hickey Watson, please. Anne Seymour calling.”
He made me wait just long enough to hear the Aerosmith version of the Beatles’ “Come Together.” It isn’t a bad version, but I don’t like remakes of something that’s perfectly fine just the way it is.
“I’m getting a little tired of this, Miss Seymour. It’s bordering on harassment.”
“No, it’s not, Hickey. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of all this, and you cared about those girls, so I know you’ll want to help me.” It was worth a shot. “I need to know the names of those other two guys who were in with Torrey.”