Allison Brennan - Stalked

Sean drove straight to the Park Central Hotel where he and Lucy had stayed in February when he was searching for his missing cousin. He grinned at the smile on Lucy’s face. “Surprise.”

“You’re sneaky.” She leaned up and kissed him. “I love it.”

He glanced at his watch. “We’re going to have to hustle to meet Suzanne by six.”

They dropped their bags in their room-which had a view of Central Park-and left the hotel. Sean hailed a taxi. “We’re not driving?” she said.

Sean always preferred to drive, but he didn’t like traffic. “Don’t want to deal with parking,” he said.

It was less than a ten-minute cab ride and Lucy and Sean walked into the bar and grill. Lucy spotted Suzanne sitting at a table, facing the door. A plainclothes cop sat next to her. Lucy watched as the cop handed Suzanne a twenty.

“What was that for?” Sean asked.

“I was right. I said you’d be here within forty-eight hours. DeLucca doubted me. Good to see you both.”

After introductions, Suzanne got down to business.

“I’ll let you look at the files, but you’re not taking a copy.” She stared at Sean. “I’ll be watching you.”

He smiled. “I don’t want a copy.”

“You want to talk to the sister. Why?”

“See if she’s lying.”

“About?”

“Anything.”

Suzanne shrugged. “My gut says she’s clean, but that’s fine with me. And Kip Todd, Weber’s assistant?”

“Ditto.”

“So you’re checking up on me? Didn’t you learn last time that I know how to do my job?”

Lucy said, “We trust you, Suzanne. It’s my story I don’t want getting out. And Kirsten has finally started to get her life back. She’s in Los Angeles, going back to school; what happened here is buried. I want to make sure Rosemary Weber’s assistant isn’t planning on writing the book.”

“And that’s the only reason you came to New York?”

Sean nodded. “And to find out where Tony Presidio went. Off-the-record.”

Suzanne nodded. “Dr. Vigo called me. I told him exactly what happened, sent him my report. I also told him that Tony had some ideas he didn’t share with me. But his strategy paid off.”

“Strategy?”

“Tony leaked to the press that we didn’t think robbery was the motive, and bam, this afternoon we get a call from one of the pawnshops DeLucca briefed. A junkie walks in and pawns the ring. We got his prints.”

DeLucca said, “A street thief from Queens, Jimmy Bartz, I have patrols out looking for him at all his haunts. We’ll have him before midnight.”

“And that’s it?”

“Maybe; we’ll know when we interrogate him.”

“And why would a street thief kill Weber?”

“Could be that he robbed her after she was killed,” DeLucca said.

Sean assessed the cop. “You don’t think he killed her.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know Bartz, but my buddies in Property Crimes laughed their asses off when I said we were looking at him for murder. Stealing purses, rolling a drunk, smashing a window to grab shopping bags-that’s Bartz. Not a stiletto in the heart.”

“But he could have grabbed the ring if he found her in the parking lot,” Suzanne said. It was obvious that they had discussed this theory.

DeLucca nodded, but Sean sensed he thought something was fishy about the whole deal.

“Do you know Bob Stokes, a cop down in Newark?” Sean asked.

“Should I?” Suzanne said.

“Weber’s first book was dedicated to him. Presidio’s phone records show he tried to call Stokes Thursday evening driving from the airport to Quantico. He died of a heart attack.”

“Stokes or Presidio?”

“Both,” Lucy said. “Bob Stokes died last month. Did his name pop up in any of Weber’s files?”

Suzanne looked through her notes. “He was in her address book, that’s it. Why was Tony trying to call him?”

Lucy said, “He was very upset about the missing McMahon files, and he called me about his own personal file-he wanted to see it as soon as he got back.”

“Did you bring it?”

Lucy hesitated, then said, “It disappeared.”

“You lost it?”

“No,” Lucy said, “it disappeared from his office between the time of his heart attack and when Hans arrived the next day.”

“This is starting to smell like a conspiracy,” DeLucca said. “Maybe your federal colleagues are trying to cover something up.”

Suzanne hit him on the arm, hard. “Shut up, Joe.”

Sean said, “Lucy’s the only one who’s recently read Tony’s file, so we hope if she goes everywhere Tony did, she’ll figure out what Tony was thinking.”

“It’s a long shot,” Lucy admitted.

“After watching you analyze that psycho nut job back in February, I’ll put my money on you,” Suzanne said.

Lucy said, “So essentially, from what you’ve said and the reports show, the victim was most likely meeting someone at Citi Field, a baseball stadium, in the middle of a baseball game, was killed, and either the killer took the jewelry to make it look like a robbery, or this Bartz guy stole the ring himself after the fact.”

“Bingo.”

“But,” Suzanne said, “what’s making me crazy is why did he pawn the ring today, four days after her murder, but only hours after the newspaper came out with the deliberate leak to the press?”

“It’s like he wants you to think it’s a robbery,” Sean said. “Not very smart.”

“Not smart fits Bartz,” DeLucca said.

“Why meet someone at a baseball stadium in the first place?” Lucy asked.

“Citi Field is very family friendly,” DeLucca said. “We don’t get a lot of real trouble out there. It’s public; she might have thought it was safe.”

“I take it no security cameras,” Sean said.

“Nothing on the section of the parking lot where she was killed.” DeLucca looked from Lucy to Sean. “Is there anything you know that I should?” he asked. “I don’t like surprises, I don’t really like P.I.’s doing police work, and I’m not a fan of the feds.” He glanced at Suzanne. “Except blondie here.”

“Screw you, DeLucca.”

Lucy caught the smile between the two. They had been friends-or more-for a long time.

Lucy said, “If we learn anything that will aid in your investigation, you have my word that we’ll give it to you. Right, Suzanne?”

“I’m still not one hundred percent sure about this,” DeLucca said. He took out a folder and handed it to Sean. Sean turned it so both he and Lucy could see. DeLucca walked them through the photo evidence.

Nothing jumped out. There was extensive blood at the scene-the victim had been killed in front of her vehicle, then dragged approximately five feet to hide her body between two cars. All the cars in the area had been printed and cleared. The knife had never been recovered. No blood trail.

Lucy asked, “Was there anything about the murder that was never released to the media?”

“Only one thing-there was an inscription on the inside of the ring. We gave pawnshops and a few CIs a photo of the ring and the information that there was an inscription, but not what the inscription said. ‘Love is patient, love is kind.’ That’s how we IDed the ring and Bartz.”

“From Corinthians,” Lucy muttered.

Sean’s phone vibrated. He ignored the text message but hoped it was info he was waiting for. He turned to Suzanne. “What’s going on with the library archives? Are there computer logs?”

“Yes and no,” Suzanne said. “Everyone signs in. Borrowed material is logged in the computer, but if they’re simply looking, they have free run of the place.”

“So either the documents are still there-hidden or misplaced-or someone with knowledge of the system took them.”