MARY CLARK - Every Breath You Take

“Will do,” she said.

A few minutes later, she returned to Laurie’s office. “He’s driving back from his country house in Kent tonight, but said he’d be happy to meet with you in the morning. He’s coming here at ten.”

That would have to be soon enough. In the meantime, she knew at least one other person who had attended the gala that night who might be available.

Laurie used her cell phone to send a text message to Charlotte. Dad’s taking Timmy to a Knicks game tonight. Takeout at my place? Warning: I plan to pick your brain a bit .

She smiled as she watched dots at the bottom of the screen, indicating that Charlotte was typing a reply. Sounds perfect, but, these days, I can’t promise anything useful will come out :-). 7 pm? I’ll bring the wine .

Laurie typed a final message. See you soon!

38

Laurie passed the container of sliced chicken and mushrooms toward Charlotte, who politely declined. “I can’t manage another bite. Is it possible to get a high from too much MSG? I can’t believe how much food you ordered!”

“I wanted you to have choices,” Laurie explained. They were at her dining room table, surrounded by barely touched take-out containers. “Timmy and I are going to be eating leftovers for days.”

She watched as Charlotte refilled her wine glass with sauvignon blanc.

“Speaking of Timmy, he must be thrilled to be at the Knicks game with his grandfather,” Charlotte commented.

“He loves it. I think he got a little spoiled last year with Alex’s season tickets. Tonight’s tickets are courtesy of one of Dad’s cop friends. Not courtside like Alex’s, but it beats the television.”

Charlotte took a sip of her wine and then asked quietly, “So have you spoken to Alex at all since I saw you at Brasserie Ruhlmann?”

Laurie shook her head.

“I thought maybe he would have called you after the judicial nomination, or vice versa.”

“No, he didn’t call me, and I don’t think I should call him until I’m ready to give him some kind of grand gesture.”

“A grand gesture?” Charlotte asked with an arched brow. “What? You’re going to show up at his office with a radio, ready to serenade the future judge?”

“Nothing so dramatic,” Laurie said. “But, yes, something . . . determined, let’s say. Anyway, it’s complicated.”

The table fell silent for the first time since Charlotte had arrived. “So, you said you wanted to pick my brain about something,” Charlotte said, changing the subject.

“Yes, let’s do that now, before I get too far into this glass of wine.” Laurie got up from the table and returned with both the official exhibit book Charlotte had lent her and the binder of documents she had gotten from Detective Johnny Hon. “How well do you remember the ‘Fashion of First Ladies’ exhibit?”

Charlotte let out a sigh. “I can barely remember what I had for breakfast these days. That was three years ago, and I just did a quick walk-through before the gala. What do you need to know?”

Laurie pushed aside enough take-out containers to make room to open her two books. She showed Charlotte the two photographs of the mannequin in Jacqueline Kennedy’s white cotton dress.

“I would wear that today,” Charlotte said. “Maybe I should do a knockoff for Ladyform’s new weekend lounging collection.”

“I’ll buy it,” Laurie said, “but, for now, this is what I’m more interested in.” She explained the absence of the silver charm bracelet by the time Virginia Wakeling was killed. “I don’t suppose you remember whether the bracelet was there when you walked through the exhibit, do you?”

“Oh, gosh no. I wouldn’t have even noticed something like that.”

“What about the layout?” Laurie spelled out her theory that Gallery C, where the alarm was triggered, was in the middle of the exhibition. “Here are pictures of the room,” she said, shifting Hon’s binder in Charlotte’s direction.

Charlotte studied the photographs and then leaned back and closed her eyes, as if trying to re-create a memory in her head. “I do remember that room. It was the only one that was long and narrow. Most of the other rooms were big squares with items on all four sides. I was comparing the two because Ladyform was in the process of planning a few pop-up stores, and I was contrasting the two approaches. You’re right. That room was basically in the middle.”

“So to get back to the rest of the gala, you’d have to go through a few other rooms?”

“Right.”

Laurie was getting more convinced that the alarm that night was connected to the missing bracelet. What she couldn’t figure out was how either one of them was connected to Virginia Wakeling’s murder.

She was thinking aloud to Charlotte as they carried the take-out containers into the kitchen. “There is one troubling fact I can’t ignore,” she said. “The NYPD homicide detective told me that he heard a rumor that the security guard assigned to Virginia that night—Marco Nelson—was fired because of suspicions that he was stealing high-end merchandise from the gift shop.”

“So you think Sticky Fingers may have stolen that bracelet while everyone else was working on the gala?”

“Maybe.”

“But as a security guard, wouldn’t he have been able to turn off the sensor? Or step over it, or sneak under it, or something?”

“I’m not sure about that. I’d have to ask the Met how much individual security guards know about the placement of sensors.”

“And how would that connect to Virginia’s murder?” Charlotte asked.

Laurie shook her head. Charlotte did not have the same kind of analytical skills as Alex, but she could feel the rhythm of this conversation beginning to pull disparate threads of thought together in her mind. Charlotte’s questions were pressing Laurie to contemplate the possible connections among a number of seemingly unrelated facts.

“If Virginia wanted to be alone, she might have wandered into the exhibit. If she found Marco stealing pieces from the exhibit, he could have killed her before she could report him. But then how did he get her to go up to the roof?”

“Maybe that’s why she was upset. Maybe she caught him and wanted to go up to the roof so she could decide what to do about it.”

The theory didn’t sound right to Laurie. She couldn’t imagine a member of the board of trustees having the slightest hesitation to report a security guard caught stealing something from an exhibit. “He could have given her a story to buy himself time,” Laurie said. “Maybe he told her the director of security was up there or something. What I do know is that Marco Nelson was the only witness who told police that Virginia was upset that night, as if she had argued with someone. He was the one who said Virginia wanted to be alone.”

“And if he’s not telling the truth—”

“That might change everything. I just know that when I call him, he’ll have an excuse not to talk to me. Even if he’s a hundred percent innocent of anything related to Virginia’s murder, he’s not going to want his current employer to know that there are rumors that he was stealing from the Met.”

“Who’s his current employer?”

“A private security company called the Armstrong Firm.” Laurie had looked up Marco’s LinkedIn profile after she first spoke to Sean Duncan at the museum.

“So I’ll talk to him instead. Ladyform may need to hire private security for our next fashion show. He comes in to interview with me, and you can be waiting there with some questions.”

“I don’t know, Charlotte. The last time you tried to help me at work, I almost got you killed.”

Just a few months ago, both of them had been held at gunpoint after Charlotte got too close to the truth in one of Laurie’s cases. “First of all, you didn’t do anything except come to my rescue. And second, a meeting in my office sounds like a fairly safe way to help you out.”