The Wrong Man: A Novel of Suspense (17 page)

“No,” he said. “No, I didn’t.”

“You should know that the Miami police consider you a person of interest in Healy’s homicide,” she said. She was tipping him off, but if his story was legitimate, it seemed wrong not to.

“How do you know that?” he asked. “I mean, it makes sense. I even wondered if Ithaka would try to implicate me. But what makes you so sure?”

“The police found my business card in one of Healy’s pockets
and called me about it. At first I thought you were the victim—the description seemed to fit, and I’d given you my card after all. I told them about my encounter with you. Later, after they had me I.D. the body and I saw that it was actually Healy, I helped them do a sketch of you.”

“Oh great,” he said. “That’s just the extra nightmare I need.”

“You can hardly blame me. The only thing I knew about you at that point is that you’d totally deceived me.”

“You’re right,” he said, letting the sarcasm fall away. “And I
can’t
blame you. But this complicates everything.”

“Then all the more reason to go to the police. To clear your name so it doesn’t interfere with what you’re trying to do about Ithaka.”

Kelman checked his watch rather than answer.

“It’s late,” he said. “We should split.”

He paid the bill and they stepped outside. It had begun to drizzle again, and the street was quiet now, except for a few stray people rushing through the dark, as if hoping to beat a potential downpour.

Kelman turned left, in the direction they’d come, and she sensed by the way his body led that he had every intention of accompanying her. Not so fast, she thought.

“I’ll take it from here,” she said.

“I can’t let you go alone. I’ll walk you most of the way and then watch to make sure you get in okay. So if someone’s lurking around your building, they won’t see me with you.”

That was funny, she thought as they started to walk. She was being escorted home by someone she’d just considered might be a cold-hearted killer. But at least for now he scared her less than the unknown, the person or persons who had broken into her apartment, who might be the real ones behind Healy’s death. Besides, she still had a question, and she could ask him it as they walked.

“Did you follow me that day in Islamorada?” she asked, after they’d gone half a block. “Into the shop where we talked?”

“Why do you ask that?” Even in the dark street, she could see his expression grow perplexed.

“Ungaro wanted to know. It’s clear he thought you might have.”

“Really? You mean to force an encounter with you for some reason?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I get it. Healy told them that I was claiming you’d stolen the flash drive, but they might have entertained other explanations—that I could have marked you and used you as some kind of unsuspecting mule to sneak the flash drive out of the area.”

That, she realized, could explain their interest in the fact that she and Kelman had literally run into each other early in the day.

“So you didn’t follow me that day?”

A pause. The only sound was from her boot heels scuffing the pavement.

“I didn’t say that. The truth is I
did
follow you. But not for the reason Ungaro suggested. I saw you go into the store, and that’s why I went there, too. You’d intrigued me from the moment I saw you that morning. I should have left you alone, Kit, but I didn’t. I wanted you.”

His voice was seductive. It was a kind of quicksand, she told herself, and she needed to be careful. She ignored the comment and picked up her pace, anxious to be home.

A half block from her apartment building, Kelman touched her arm, signaling for her to stop. “I’ll watch from here,” he said.

She nodded and started to turn.

“Wait,” he said, suddenly. “This is yours.”

She turned back. In his hand was the pen, the one her father
had given her. As she accepted it, his fingers brushed against her own. She met his gaze. Under the street lamp, his eyes were back to being that piercing blue. It was utterly crazy, she thought. After everything, there was still something about Kelman that made her want him, too.

“Text me when you’re in your apartment,” he said as she started to turn again. “I want to know you’re safe.”

“You know when I’ll feel safe?” she said. “When you call to tell me you’ve been to the SEC and the police. And not a second before then.”

“Point taken. I know it’s hard for you to trust me, but I’m going to make good on what I’ve said. All I’m asking is that you give me a few more days.”

She nodded tentatively and then darted across the street. As she covered the last yards to her building, she could almost feel his eyes on her back, like a magnetic force.

As soon as she’d slammed the apartment door behind her, she flipped on the lights, checked around the space, and then set the alarm on the door. Only then did she text Kelman.

Her brain felt ready to explode from all the information she’d heard tonight, and from the constant weighing she’d done of Kelman’s words, trying to assess the veracity of everything he said. She was also frustrated. She’d gone out hoping that it would be a turning point for her, that she’d somehow be able to dig out from under, but as she’d told Kelman, little he’d said was truly of help to her.

And she felt scared, too—more than earlier. If Kelman’s story was legit, they were both up against a powerful entity, one with the money and resources to truly hurt them.

Even though it was after eleven and she’d risk a headache from drinking wine this late, she pulled a bottle of Pinot Grigio out of the fridge, a fresh one she’d added the day before. She
poured a glass and took it with her into the bedroom. On the way she grabbed her laptop from the coffee table.

First she emailed Baby to say she was safe. It was too late to call but she wanted Baby to see the message first thing in the morning. For the next half hour, she Googled insider trading cases. There had been a number of high profile ones in the past few years, mostly involving male defendants, and the vast majority had ended in conviction. And Kelman was right. The penalties in every case were huge fines and daunting prison terms, the kind that took forty- and fifty-something men away from their growing families for years. It wasn’t hard to imagine someone doing their utmost to guarantee that didn’t happen to him.

The cases were complicated, too, often involving weeks of testimony. That seemed to back up Kelman’s claim that he had to be shrewd about what he came forward with and when.

Also of interest: Whistleblowers could receive a financial award from the SEC, and it could amount to millions of dollars. She realized that was a possible motive for X to kill Healy—so he’d be able to keep all the money for himself.

Kit took a sip of wine without tasting it and leaned back against the headboard of her bed. She still didn’t know whether to believe Kelman’s story—maybe parts of it were true and others not—but there was one thing she knew for sure. Kelman might have his game plan but she wasn’t going to be held hostage to it. If she felt in any danger, she would act. For the first time she realized that something in her had changed over the past few weeks. She’d become determined not to spend her life waiting in the wings.

The next morning she was at her desk early again, trying to focus on work and catch up. Most of her attention was devoted to the Barry Kaplan concept. Doodling with a
pencil, she suddenly had a vision of a purple velvet sofa offset by earthy Irish matting on the floor. It would look stunning, but Barry would probably find it too designer-y, not masculine enough. Perhaps, she thought ruefully, she should suggest a tiki bar in the middle of his living room.

Frustrated, she stuffed his folder back in a drawer. Maybe her head would be clearer in the afternoon.

Dara arrived at nine, looking more laid back than she had earlier in the week, though, as Kit knew, nothing had changed for the better. She wondered if the right thing would be to insist that Baby and Dara work from home for the foreseeable future.

“I see Avery picked up the boards,” Dara said, glancing toward the spot on the wooden table where they’d been stacked.

“Yes, she blew in here just as the rain started.”

“When’s she planning to get back to you about them? We have to start placing orders if things are going to be ready by summer.”

“Hopefully today, though with Avery you can never be sure.”

The office phone rang and Dara glanced at her screen. “Speak of the devil, that’s her calling. Want me to get it?”

“No, I will. Let’s hope it’s a good sign that she’s responding so quickly.” She grabbed the receiver and answered.

“This is Chloe Marzilli, Avery Howe’s assistant,” a voice said after Kit answered. Avery liked to have her assistant place her calls, Hollywood-mogul style, but it suddenly dawned on Kit that the assistant wasn’t about to put Avery on. She was pretty sure she knew the real reason for the call.

“Good morning,” she replied. “Are you calling about my coat?”

“Excuse me?”

“The coat I loaned Avery.”

“No, not a coat,” the girl said breathlessly.

“Oh, sorry. Does she want to speak to me?”

“She’s not here—that’s why I’m calling. We don’t know where she is and I was praying you might have a clue.”

Kit’s body tensed, as if she’d heard the sound of a window splintering during the dead of night.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“She’s totally missing. I can’t reach her on her phone. The driver from last night said he dropped her off at your place just before seven and never saw her again.”

Kit’s mind scrambled, trying to dislodge what Avery had conveyed last night about her plans. She’d mentioned that she needed to pop in a few other places—that’s why she’d borrowed the coat.

“Yes, Avery was here, but just for a short while,” Kit said. “From what she told me, she had additional stops to make but she didn’t say where.”

Dara had halted what she was doing by this point and was watching Kit, her expression concerned, as if she knew just from the snatches of conversation that something was brewing, and it wasn’t good.

“But why not get in the car—or at least tell the driver?” the assistant asked, her voice almost in a wail. “The guy waited like two hours and the dispatcher said they tried her cell a zillion times. She never answered.”

“Maybe the stops were close by and she decided to walk and never went back to the car.”

But even as she uttered the words, Kit realized how stupid they were. It had been practically raining sideways at the time, and even if Avery
had
decided to travel to the next location on foot, she would have dropped the fabric boards in the car instead of lugging them around with her.

“The driver says he was reading the paper so if she walked past him he might not have seen her, but it isn’t like her to just ditch the car,” the girl added. “No one’s heard from her, she hasn’t been tweeting, and she never showed for her eight a.m. meeting.”

A voice began to whisper hoarsely in the back of Kit’s mind: This has to do with me somehow. This has to do with everything bad that’s been happening.

“Have you been to her apartment?” Kit asked. But of course they would have checked there.

“Yes, someone from the office went up there after she missed the meeting and we couldn’t reach her on her cell. The night doorman doesn’t recall ever seeing her come in. Plus, the clothes she was wearing yesterday aren’t in her apartment.”

“You need to call the police,” Kit said. “And—I’ll go outside and ask around. At shops along the street. Maybe someone saw her.”

“Okay,” the girl said, her voice trembling now.

“Keep trying her cell, too,” Kit said. “Maybe she had an accident or medical emergency.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Kit signed off, promising to be back in touch soon. She quickly related the news to Dara.

“Did she look okay when she was here?” Dara asked anxiously. “I mean, you hear of people suddenly going into these crazy fugue states. Wasn’t there an NYU student that happened to?”

“She seemed okay to me, just busy. From what I’ve heard it takes the cops a while to act on a missing persons report, so what we need to do is hit the street and ask if anyone at a store or restaurant saw her after seven o’clock. We’ll split up to make it faster. Can you print out a couple of photos of Avery from the Internet to take with us?”

Kit could feel her dread blooming, but she commanded herself to chill, to think this through. Sure, Avery was a control freak, someone who ran her business fastidiously, but there was an impromptu side to her that surfaced now and then. Kit remembered that when the two of them had gone on their first idea-gathering mission together, Avery had suddenly ducked into a bakery and bought a box of macaroons for them to nibble on. Maybe last night her head had been turned unexpectedly and she’d given in to a spontaneous urge.

Across the room the printer began to whir and Dara snatched the pages, turning one over to Kit. Dara grabbed her coat and Kit a sweater and the two of them stepped out into the corridor. As Kit locked the door, she caught Dara looking at her almost pleadingly, desperate to know what was really going on. Kit didn’t want to share the fear that seemed intent on sucking her breath away.

“Why don’t you head south,” Kit said. “And if you recognize people from the neighborhood, ask them, too. I’ll go in the opposite direction.”

“Right.”

And then, a sound reached her ears, like the pinging of one of those gradual alarm clocks that slowly permeates the outside edges of your sleep. She froze. From Dara’s expression, Kit could tell that she’d heard it, too. It was the ringtone for a phone.
Bamboo
. She used that one herself, and she’d heard it on Avery’s phone, too.

“Where’s that coming from?” Dara said.

Kit turned her head slowly to the right.

“The stairwell,” she said. “Dara, you stay here. I’ll check.”

“No, I’m coming with you.”

“Only if you stay far behind me, okay?”

Kit forced herself toward the stairwell door. Slowly she pushed it open. There was no one in sight, either on the steps
to the roof or those leading down to the landing. But she could hear the ringtone clearly now. It was coming from below, probably just outside the door to the fourth floor.

Suddenly the sound ended, mid-riff, as if someone had just answered the phone.

“Avery?” Kit called out feebly.

Silence. Something bad was waiting down below. Kit braced herself and made a move for the stairs.

“Stay right here,” she urged Dara without turning around.

She took the stairs haltingly, grasping the handrail for support. As she reached the landing, she held her breath and slowly pivoted, letting her gaze fall to the stairs beyond.

She spotted Avery’s legs first. They were splayed upward from the ground onto the first few steps, with both knees bent. She was facedown, her face mashed into the pale concrete floor and her wheat-colored hair fanned out on each side. The trench coat—the one Avery had borrowed—was bunched up around her torso. For a split second, it seemed to Kit as if she was staring at herself. She moaned in despair. Please, she begged, let her be alive.

She descended a few steps and called out Avery’s name again. No response. No movement. Behind her she could hear Dara scurrying down the stairs.

“Omigod,” Dara yelled as she reached the landing and caught a glimpse of Avery’s body. “Is she dead?”

“I’m not sure,” Kit said, but by now she’d honed in on the blood. Dark as chocolate, it had formed a pool to the left side of Avery’s head. There were smears of it, too, on the package of fabric boards, which lay just above her, the wrapping paper partially torn.

Kit fished her keys from her purse and tossed them to Dara. “Go back and call 911, okay? I’m going to go down there to check.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I’m all right, just hurry.”

Kit knew you weren’t supposed to touch anything in a situation like this, but if Avery was still alive, she had to take action. She eased down the steps. At the same time she heard Dara scramble up the stairs and tug open the door.

Kit reached the fourth floor and crouched next to Avery, her heart thumping hard. Now that she was so close, she could see that Avery’s hands were purplish red, and small pools of blood had formed beneath the skin. Not good, she thought, anguished. Holding her breath, she reached out and gently touched the center of Avery’s left hand, the fingers of which were still slightly tangled in the strap of her handbag. It was cool, almost cold, like a shell dug from wet sand at the shoreline.

A sob caught in Kit’s throat. She turned and tore back up the steps. In the corridor she almost collided with Dara, who was just pulling a phone from her ear.

“Help is coming,” she said. “I told them we didn’t know if she was alive or not.”

“She isn’t. It looks like she hit her head pretty badly. We better get back to the office and wait there.”

How had this happened? she wondered, fighting to stay calm. Had Avery slipped, the consequence of trying to juggle the fabric boards as she navigated concrete steps in her high-heeled boots? But why in the world would she have taken the stairs?

Once back inside, Kit urged Dara to sit at the wooden table.

“Should we call Avery’s assistant and let her know?” Dara asked quietly. She seemed eerily subdued to Kit, overwhelmed by what had happened.

“That was my first instinct, but I don’t think we should do anything until we clear it with the police.”

“Okay,” Dara said. She reached up and pressed both hands to her temples.

“Dara, listen to me.” Kit said, “As soon as you’re done talking
to the police, I want you to go home and work from there until this is resolved, okay? While we’re waiting for the cops, think about what supplies you might need to take with you.”

“Uh huh. But what about
you
? I can’t just leave you here.”

“Don’t worry, I’m thinking I can work out of Baby’s place,” she said. “I’m going to run over to my apartment for a minute or so. I’ll call Baby and make sure she doesn’t head down here.”

It was essential for her to talk to Baby in private, but after entering her apartment and placing the call, Kit reached only voicemail. She left an urgent message.

Disconnecting the phone, she sank onto one of the stools by the kitchen island. She couldn’t stop picturing Avery splayed out at the base of the stairs, all that vibrant energy of hers gone without a trace.

Why, Kit asked herself again, had Avery taken the stairs, especially when she had so much to carry? The building elevator could be wonky at times, and that might have forced Avery to the stairwell, but it had been working when Kit went out later. And how had Avery’s fall turned so deadly?

A thought that had been gnawing at her subconscious finally chewed through: What if it wasn’t an accident? What if Avery had been pushed down the steps? Had an intruder done it? A mugger? But the motive couldn’t have been robbery—her purse was still with her. Unless the assailant had panicked once Avery fell and didn’t dare waste time untangling the strap of the purse from her fingers.

Kit pictured the body again: There was the wheat-colored hair, the same color as her own and styled more simply last night, closer to the way she wore hers. And then the borrowed trench coat.

Her stomach twisted. What if someone had meant to hurt
her
, and in a case of mistaken identity, had killed Avery instead?

Don’t go there yet, she told herself. There was still a chance
it was all a horrific accident. She had to stay calm, wait for the facts. But she also knew she had to reach Kelman, fill him in. She tried his burn phone but he didn’t answer. She left a message telling him that there was an emergency and she needed to talk to him immediately.

As she tucked the phone into her skirt pocket, another thought broke through, this one with the force of wood splintering. Could Kelman be the killer?

But no, it wasn’t possible. He’d been waiting at the restaurant for her, eager for information. He would have hardly tried to kill her before hearing what she had to say. But Avery’s death was going to shift everything. Kelman would have to change course and go to the police
now
. This would be a test of how much she could really trust him.

She forced herself to the sink, turned on the tap, and splashed water toward her face, just to wet her mouth. She needed to get back to Dara. She also had to figure out how to handle the police. They would have to be told about the break-in and they’d, of course, wonder if the two situations were linked. But there was no way she could come clean about her encounters with Kelman, not yet anyway. She had no proof of anything to offer them, just a story about her meeting more than once with a murder suspect. She might very well implicate herself.

The safest strategy, she decided, would be to volunteer the bare minimum and answer their questions carefully, keeping certain details under wraps for now.

Dara was still at the table when Kit returned, staring listlessly across the room, a pad and pen lying in front of her. Kit walked over and set a hand on Dara’s shoulder to comfort her.

“How are you doing?”

“It’s just so awful. She’s probably been lying there since last night, right?”

“I assume so. People on the top two floors never use the stairs unless the elevator’s out, so clearly no one came across the body.”

“What
happened
, Kit? Did she trip, do you think?” From Dara’s anguished tone Kit knew she was really asking what Kit had wondered, too: Could she have been pushed?

“I just don’t know. Maybe we’ll have a better sense after the police come.”

Dara reached up with her hand and rubbed a tear away. “Even though you were standing right next to me, for a split second I felt like I was looking at
you
at the bottom of the stairs. It was horrible.”

So she had been struck by it as well. The resemblance.

“I know. She—”

Kit’s words were cut off by the scream of a siren, and then the sound of a car lurching to a stop in front of the building. Kim looked down from the window and saw a patrol car below.

“It’s the police,” Kit said. “I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you at some point, but why don’t you just sit here for now and I’ll meet them.”

Her buzzer rang and she told the police to come up. Steeling herself, she opened the office door and waited. A short time later, two female patrol cops stepped off the elevator.

“Someone’s injured?” one of them said.

“We—we thought she might still be alive, but she isn’t,” Kit said, her voice catching. She pointed to the door down the hall. “She’s in the stairwell. Her name’s Avery. Avery Howe.”