Treasure Hunt

“Who was that? Besides Nancy, I mean.”

“Well, I suppose all or most of the beneficiaries. Us, Mission Street, Sunset, Delancey, all the others.” Now, her color suddenly high, Adele Watrous tapped impatiently on her desk. “People don’t realize. It’s harder than it looks. You’ve got to put on a song and dance to get people to come out and give you money for these projects. You see what’s in the paper today, you think it’s all about throwing this foundation money away on music or public relations consultants or other nonessentials, but you’ve got to spend money to make money, especially in these times, in this field. Mr. Turner understands that. There’s no other way to do it.”

“I believe you,” Mickey said, keeping his calm. The mention of Len Turner’s name in this other context suddenly put his brain on high alert. “So you’re fairly certain that Nancy was pla

“I’m sure she was. But you can find out if she did easily enough.”

“You’re right, Mrs. Watrous, we can. Well”-Mickey started to get to his feet-“I want to thank you for all your help and cooperation here today. I know this news must have been brutal.”

“It was. I still can’t make myself believe it. And you know what’s really so terrible, almost the worst part?”

“What’s that?”

Suddenly her weariness seemed to overcome her. She sighed again and closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, she shook her head in what Mickey took to be resignation. “The worst part is that we’re so used to terrible news here. We get terrible news here every single day.”

18

Due to the late night they’d both spent at the Neshek home, neither Juhle nor Russo got into work until just before Hunt arrived to make his statement to them. In Nancy Neshek, they had a fresh homicide to begin investigating, and the crime scene analysis and report to review, but Russo wanted to go down and finish up whatever work remained with the limousine first. After all, they’d gone to all the trouble of getting a warrant and having the Lincoln towed to the impound lot, and that lot was only just across Seventh Street, adjacent to the Hall of Justice, where they currently found themselves anyway.

“But Hunt’s going to be here to make his statement any minute.” Juhle was at his desk in the homicide detail, a wide-open room filled with desks on the fifth floor of the Hall of Justice. “We’re going to want to talk to him about that and find out what else he knows or knew about Neshek. I’d bet you he’s also going to know about those CityTalk numbers-”

But Russo cut him off. “I don’t even want to talk about Wyatt Hunt.”

“Sarah, come on. It was late. What were we going to accomplish by taking him downtown?”

“We were going to accomplish the mandate of our job. We were going to accomplish what we’re supposed to do to somebody who discovers a body in any kind of a compromising ma

Juhle shook his head. “He didn’t kill Nancy Neshek.”

“No? How do you know that? How do you know he didn’t contaminate the crime scene? How do you know what he did before you got there?”

“Look, Sarah, Hunt isn’t going anywhere. If his statement’s squirrelly in any way, we haul his ass back here and grill him till he’s well-done. But that’s not going to happen. He was up at her place because she’d called with a question about the reward and… well, we’ve been through all this.”

“Yes, we have. And for the record, it still fries my ass. I don’t care what time it was. We should have hauled Hunt down here. And if Marcel”-this was Marcel Lanier, head of homicide-“if Marcel gets wind of this and goes ballistic, I’m laying the whole goddamned thing off on you as my senior partner who made the final decision. And meanwhile, just so I’m not tempted to lock up Hunt on general principles if he shows up here when he’s supposed to, I’m going to stroll on out of here and take a look at the guts of that limo right now. You and your pal can play patty-cake in the interview room and I’ll catch the rerun on the tape later.”

Sighing, Juhle got up from his chair. “You were way more fun when you were younger, you know that?”

“Not really,” she said. “People just think I must have been.” And she turned on her heel.

When Hunt got to homicide to make his statement, Juhle was waiting for him. After wrestling with the decision, Hunt decided that his job was to pass relevant or potentially relevant evidence along to Devin and Sarah. So he included an account of Alicia Thorpe’s completely unverifiable and somewhat provocative alibi for Monday night.

Hunt finished with Juhle, then grabbed both his sport coat and a tan overcoat against the still-gusting and cold north wind that he could hear whipping up the street. When he got back into his office, he waited for Tamara to finish her call and hang up, and asked about her progress with his potential pool of part-timers.

“We’re in luck. And more than that, you might be happy to hear that the downturn in business over the last six months might not all have been fallout from Craig.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, my first call was to Willard White”-another local private investigator firm-“and Gloria said I could have her whole staff for a few days if we could put ’em to work. Beats her having to lay them off, she said.”

“Really? How many people she talking about?”

“Up to five.”

Clearly, the number surprised and pleased Hunt. After Mickey had gone out again this morning for his interviews, Wyatt had spent some time with Tamara going over the notes he’d taken yesterday on the work he’d acquired. He’d estimated that load at close to two hundred hours. Five stand-ins would bridge the gap nicely. And from what it sounded like, they and perhaps even their bosses might all be available to fill in on standby if he kept hustling future work. “Why don’t you see if you can get all five of them down here later today, and maybe even Gloria and Will themselves, say two or two-thirty, and call me on my cell and let me know?”

Tamara snapped him a salute. “Will do, mon capitaine. Oh, and we also did get one more reasonably intelligent-sounding reward call, finally, from Hang-up Lady, real name Linda Colores. She was walking home from work-she’s one of the floor people at the Pottery Barn on Chestnut-and she heard a man and a woman having an argument on one of the streets down by the Palace. She thinks this was last Tuesday night, but she’s not sure exactly.”

“Did she get anything they actually said?”

“I didn’t ask her that. I didn’t want to step on your toes. But I got her vitals if you want to go out and talk to her, although she works all afternoon starting at one. Or I could ask her to come in here in the next hour or so and I could talk to her.”

Hunt, standing in front of her desk, shook his head in admiration. “Has anybody recently told you how fantastic you are?”

Tamara blushed and looked down briefly, then back up. “Thank you. It’s good to be back working. I didn’t know if I could do it anymore. Or do anything, really.”

“I wasn’t worried about that. In fact, it never crossed my mind.” He came forward and put his palms down on the desk across from her. “You can do anything you put your mind to, Tam. You know that, don’t you?”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “I used to. But then I kind of got convinced I was fooling myself.”

He was standing looking down at her, but she couldn’t seem to commit herself to raising her eyes. “Hey.”

When he reached across, touched her chin, and gently lifted it, she looked up and gave him a half-broken smile. “You know,” she said.

He shook his head. “You weren’t fooling yourself, Tamara. You were amazing. You are still amazing, okay?” Waiting, still touching her chin, he held her gaze on him. “Okay?”