1 Runaway Man (24 page)

The three of us sat there in Mom’s office listening to Meg throw up. I didn’t know what Legs Diamond or Mom was thinking. I was feeling sorry for someone who I never thought I’d feel sorry for.

When she came out, Meg looked extremely pale. “I used some of your mouthwash, Mrs. Golden. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, hon. That’s what it’s for.” Mom turned the combination lock on the big old Wells Fargo safe, yanked open the door and removed our bottle of good cognac. She found four glasses in the credenza next to her desk and poured each of us a generous slug. “You’ve had a shock,” she said, holding a glass out to Meg. “This’ll put some color back in your cheeks.”

Meg took it from her and drank it down in one gulp. Then she sat back down on the sofa. “It makes for a nice story,” she said calmly. “You actually had me going there for a second.”

Mom frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”

“The four of us are going to do something, okay?” Meg was all business now. Bare-knuckles business. “You’re going to forget what I said. And I’m going to forget what you said. We never had this conversation. Is that understood?”

“But we did have it, Mrs. Kidd,” Legs pointed out. “You can try to forget, but you won’t. And neither will we. Your husband was Bruce Weiner’s biological father. That’s what he was afraid Kathleen would expose when she established contact with Bruce. That’s why Bruce had to die, she had to die, all of these people had to die. Because Bobby’s afraid the ugly truth will torpedo his political career. I can’t prove it. They’re too smart for that. But I know it. And so do you. Your husband signed off on these murders. He and the old lady both. Peter Seymour reached out to Jake Leetes for them, and one of Jake’s people took care of it.”

Meg let his words soak in before she said, “If what you say is true, Lieutenant, then the only person who has been out of the loop all along is me. I’m still not buying that. But I’ll convene an emergency meeting at Eleanor’s apartment right away. I’ll make certain that Mr. Seymour and Mr. Leetes are both there. And I’ll get to the bottom of this one way or the other.”

“They’ll deny everything,” Legs told her.

“I’m quite sure they will. And when Bobby insists he’s innocent I’ll insist that he take a paternity test.”

“That’s something he’ll never do,” he reiterated.

“Oh, he’ll take it,” she said with total certainty. “If he refuses I have the power to destroy his candidacy.”

“How?” I asked her.

“By leaving him. I’ll take the children and go. It’ll set off such a huge tabloid firestorm that he’ll be forced to withdraw from the race. But I don’t think it will come to that. You see, I happen to believe you’re wrong.”

“You
want
to believe we’re wrong,” I said. “I don’t blame you one bit. But you know we’re not. And you know he’ll never take that DNA test.”

“We’ll just see about that.” Meg stuck her Grayson chin out at me. “I’ll find out the truth. And, believe me, if I’m not one hundred percent satisfied that Bobby’s telling me the truth I’ll leave him—tonight.”

“Where will you go?” Mom asked her.

“My mother has a house in Boston. I’ll go there.”

“Maybe I ought to come to this meeting with you,” Legs said.

“This is a private matter, Lieutenant.”

“Still, I think I should come.”

“No.”

“Mrs. Kidd, I’m concerned about your safety. If you confront them over this and then threaten to walk out they’re liable to…”

“Have
me
killed? Never. They wouldn’t dare.”

“Tell that to Kathleen,” he said. “Oh, wait, you can’t. Someone threw her off of her balcony.”

“I’ll be fine,” Meg insisted. “I have Ralph.”

“Your driver?” Legs said doubtfully.

“Ralph was a Green Beret before he came to work for the Grayson family. He’s armed twenty-four hours a day and he won’t allow anything to happen to me or to my children. I’ll be safe, Lieutenant. Don’t you worry. It’s Bobby who has to worry now.” Meg took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know whether to thank you people or curse you. I feel as if I ought to be thanking you, except I hardly feel grateful right now. I don’t know what I feel. I don’t think I’m going to feel anything for a long, long time.”

*   *   *

IT WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH.

Meg Grayson Kidd had brought us as close to the truth as we were ever going to get. And, damn it, it wasn’t good enough. I didn’t care whether she derailed her husband’s bid for the governor’s mansion. I cared about real justice, the kind where the bad guys go to jail and stay there. But the ugly reality was that five people were dead and there’d be no such justice. We were up against the wealthiest, most powerful family in New York City and we couldn’t prove a thing. The supremely smooth Peter Seymour was too smart for that. The supremely smarmy Jake Leetes was too smart for that. They were all too smart for that. Even Legs had admitted so. And, trust me, Legs Diamond never backs down from a fight.

He took off right after Meg did. I could see the two of them through Mom’s office window, talking on the sidewalk next to her limo. Legs was still trying to convince her to let him come with her, I imagined. Meg was shaking her head no.

Mom poured both of us another slug of cognac before she tucked the bottle away and closed the safe. “I’m sorry, Bunny.”

“For what?”

“For the way you feel right now.”

I drank down my cognac. “How do you know what I’m feeling?”

“I can see it in your face. I used to see that same look in your dad’s face. You’re dissatisfied. You’re frustrated. And you’re a little bit angry.”

“No, I’m not. I’m a lot angry.”

“It’s part of the job. Sometimes we get the closure we’re hoping for. But a lot of the time we don’t. Me, I have faith in that woman. I believe she’s going to leave Bobby the K. He
won’t
be our next governor. He tried to engineer a massive cover-up and he failed—because of you. You can be proud of that.”

“I don’t feel real proud.”

“I know you don’t.”

“How did Dad deal with it?”

“Instead of focusing on what he couldn’t do, he focused on what he could. Tomorrow, you can go to Bruce Weiner’s funeral and be a comfort to that nice girl. Sara needs you to be there for her.”

“And the day after that?”

“You move on to the next case.” She took a sip of her cognac. “It does help if you have someone to come home to. So that the job isn’t all there is.”

“I’m working on that part, Mom.”

“Sure, you are. Now give me a kiss and go on up to bed. You look exhausted.”

“How about you?”

“I’ll be up in a minute.”

I kissed her on the cheek and grabbed my duffel coat. Rita was still working at her computer, looking grim-faced. “G’night, Rita.”

“G’night, little lamb. Wait, come here.…” She got up from her desk and gave me a big hug. In her high-heeled boots, Rita’s an honest six inches taller than me. My face found its way to her neck, where I got a strong whiff of her intoxicating perfume. “Don’t beat yourself up over this, okay? Promise me.”

“I promise you, Rita.”

I coaxed the elevator up to the fifth floor. My apartment was chilly. My shoulder and knee ached from that headfirst dive I’d made into those trash cans. I was thinking a nice hot shower would feel pretty good if our furnace was in the mood. I hung my duffel coat on the rack by the door, went in my bedroom and took off my Harris Tweed sports jacket. I was hanging it up in the closet when my hand found a folded sheet of paper in the inside breast pocket. It was the list of names that Legs had slipped me—the visitors who’d signed in with the doorman of Kathleen Kidd’s building on Riverside Drive in the hours leading up to her so-called suicide. I’d forgotten to look at it. I looked at it now.

And when I saw one of the names on that list I gulped at it in disbelief.

And stared at it. And stared some more—until I had trouble reading it because my hands were shaking so badly.

I put my jacket back on, got my duffel coat and headed back downstairs to the office.

Mom had gone up to her place for the night. Rita was getting ready to lock up.

She looked at me in surprise. “What brings you back?”

“I need you to run a DMV trace for me. Right now, I’m afraid.”

“No problem,” she said, sitting back down in front of her computer. “Beats going home to a dark, empty apartment. What’s going on?”

“We may get some closure after all—unless I’m wrong.”

It took her a couple of minutes to run the trace. While she was doing that I unlocked the safe in Mom’s office and removed one of our voice-activated microrecorders. I tucked it in the outside breast pocket of my jacket and closed the safe. By then Rita had done her thing.

And I wasn’t wrong. I knew I wouldn’t be.

I said good night for the second time, dashing for the door.

“Where are you going now?” Rita asked me.

“To finish this thing.”

*   *   *

“I DON’T
BELIEVE
IT
!
”
she cried with delight as I stood there on her doorstep. “Is this an honest to God booty call?”

“I really needed to see you.”

“Cookie, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.” Sonya threw her arms around me and kissed me, her body plastered against mine. She was wearing a silk robe with not a stitch under it. Her hair was gathered up in a bun. She pulled herself away, gasping. “Okay, that’s a gun in your pocket
and
you’re happy to see me, am I right?”

“I can’t fool you one bit, can I?”

“Don’t even try. Come in before we both freeze.”

She led me inside her town house. The living room and dining room were in darkness. The stairs leading up to the master bedroom suite were lit. “I was just about to climb into bed. Let’s go down to the kitchen. I’ll make us some hot cocoa first. How does that sound?”

“It sounds great.” As I followed her down the stairs I unbuttoned my coat and flicked on the microrecorder in the breast pocket of my jacket. “Sonya, there’s something I need to ask you. It’s kind of awkward and personal.”

“You can ask me anything.” She flicked on the lights in her restaurant kitchen. Put a copper saucepan on the Viking stove. Got milk out of the refrigerator, then found a tin of really expensive-looking cocoa in the cupboard. “And you know you can get me to
do
just about anything—except for a threesome. I won’t share you with another girl. I’m super old-fashioned.”

I stood there with my coat on, hands buried deep in my pockets. “Actually, this isn’t about us. Well, it is but it isn’t. I was wondering whether you’re a kindergarten teacher at all. Or was that total bullshit, too?”

“Of course I’m a kindergarten teacher. Why would you ask me something like that?”

“Because your name’s on the list. You were in Kathleen Kidd’s building at the time of her murder.”

Sonya stuck out her lower lip, frowning. “They said on the news she committed suicide.”

“She was pushed by someone. A professional killer employed by the Leetes Group. A professional killer who drives a dark-green Jeep Grand Cherokee—judging by the tire tread pattern they found in the snow outside of the Candlewood Lake house.
You
drive a dark-green Grand Cherokee.”

Sonya fired up the burner under the saucepan of milk. Spooned in the cocoa powder and stirred it gently, calm as can be. “Sure, I do. Me and a gazillion other people. I garage it right around the corner. And, you’re right, I was in Kathleen Kidd’s building that afternoon. One of my kids, Brittany Levine, lives there. Her mom asked me to walk her home that day because Brittany’s two-year-old brother had the sniffles and Mrs. Levine didn’t want to shlep him around in his stroller in the freezing cold. That happens to me a lot. Half of those West End Avenue moms think I’m their au pair.” Sonya continued to stir the cocoa, looking down into the saucepan. “I don’t mean to get in your face, Benji, but have you been out drinking with the boys? Because I smelled alcohol on your breath and it’s late and you’re not making a lot of sense.”

“Okay, then let me put it to you this way: Why didn’t you finish me off last night?”

She gazed at me those incredible pale green eyes of hers. “Well, I tried my best.”

“I mean when you fired those shots at me, Sonya. You threw on some clothes after I left here, followed me down the block and shot at me three times with the same Glock 17 that you used to kill Bruce and Martine. It was you, Sonya. It’s been you all along. I can’t believe it never occurred to me. I guess I was besotted by your talents.”

“I’m a great lay,” she acknowledged easily. “Not to brag on myself.”

“In your case it’s not bragging. Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Because I was trying to scare you off of the case.” Her voice sounded a bit deeper now, more mature than I was used to. The semi-ditsy Sonya I knew had been something of a put-on. “You’ve become someone special to me, Benji. I didn’t want you getting in over your head. And the answer is yes, I really am a kindergarten teacher. I like kids. Plus it provides me with a legit cover.”

“You work for the Leetes Group?”

“Sometimes.” She studied me curiously. “We’re not that different, you know. I perform a professional service on a freelance basis and get paid for it. I’m just like you.”

“You’re nothing like me. I help people.”

Sonya let out a laugh. “Is that right? Who have you helped on this case?” On my silence she said, “Besides, I need my freelance career to pay for the upkeep on this place. It’s positively criminal how little they pay kindergarten teachers.”

The milk was hot. She poured our cocoa into a pair of big mugs, sprinkled some cinnamon on top and pushed one of the mugs toward me.

I left it where it was. “So you don’t have a rich father?”

“Afraid not. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’ll get over it. Tell me, how many people have you rubbed out?”

She sampled her cocoa. “I don’t keep count.”

“Sure, you do. You’re a pro. A damned good one, too. And so unlikely that no one would ever suspect you. I sure didn’t. But you’ve been playing me from the get-go. You worked your Uncle Al for that intro at shul. Then you … wait, what am I saying? Are you and Al Posner even related?”