Mistress of Justice (26 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Well, look at this.

Mitchell Reece could’ve been a professional interior designer.

Taylor would have thought he’d have no time for decor—or interest in the subject. So when he opened his door and ushered her into the huge loft, she exhaled a sharp, surprised laugh.

She was looking at a single room, probably twenty-five hundred square feet. There was a separate elevated sleeping area with a brass railing around it, containing an oak armoire and a matching dresser—and a bed, which caught her attention immediately. It was dark mahogany, with a massive headboard that would have dwarfed any smaller space. The headboard was carved in a Gothic style and the characters cut into the wood were cracked and worn. She couldn’t tell exactly what they were—perhaps gargoyles and dragons.

She thought of the mythical creature in
Through the Looking-Glass
.

Around the loft were plants, sculpture, antiques, tall bookshelves, tapestries. Pin spots shot focused streams of light onto small statues and paintings, many of which looked ugly enough to be very valuable. The walls were brick and plaster, painted mottled white and gray and pink. The floors were oak, stained white.

If this boy cooks, she joked to herself, I may just reconsider my baby-by-mail plan and marry him.

“You did this just to impress me, I know.”

He laughed. “Let me take your coat.” Reece wore baggy pants and a blousy white shirt. Sockless slippers. His hair was still damp from a shower.

Taylor had chosen noncommittal vamp. Black stockings but shoes with low, functional heels. A black Carolina Herrera dress, tight but high-necked. (Cleavage? A roommate had once bluntly assessed,
Forget boobs, Taylor: Avoid low-cut. But the rest of your bod—it’s to die for. Wear short and tight. Remember that. Short and tight.
)

Taylor noted the sweep of Reece’s eyes all along her body. He was subtle, but not subtle enough; she caught him in reflection in one of the mirrors near the Jabberwock bed.

Okay, Ms. Westchester, she thought to Reece’s mysterious girlfriend, can
you
shoehorn into a dress like this?

She followed him across an oriental rug. The dinner table had feet, and on the side, carved faces of the sun. They were solemn.

“Your table looks unhappy.”

“He gets bored. I don’t have much company. He’ll be happy tonight.”

As Reece took the wine she’d brought she looked at him carefully and decided he wasn’t very happy either. His eyes were still bloodshot and he seemed to be forcing himself to relax, to push the intruding distractions of the law firm away.

He walked into the kitchen area and put the chardonnay
into a refrigerator. She looked inside; it contained nothing but wine. “You should try groceries sometime,” she said. “Lettuce, oranges. You can even get chicken, I’m told, ready to cook.”

“Wine cellar,” Reece said, laughing. He pulled out a bottle of white, a Puligny-Montrachet. Her father’s favorite Burgundy, Taylor recalled. Reece added, “The fridge’s over there.” He pointed to a tall Sub-Zero then took two crystal goblets in one hand and carried the wine and a ceramic cooler out into the living area.

Man, she thought, he’s really slick at this.

He poured and they touched glasses. “To winning.”

Taylor held his eye for a moment and repeated the toast. The wine was rich and sour-sweet, more like a food than a drink. The goblet was heavy in her hand.

They sat and he told her how he’d found the loft. It was raw space when he’d moved in and he’d had it finished himself. The project had taken nearly a year because he’d had three full-fledged trials that year and had been unable to meet with the contractors. “I slept in sawdust a lot,” he explained. “But I won the cases.”

“Have you ever lost a trial?” she asked.

“Of course. Everybody loses trials. I seem to win a few more than most people. But that’s not magic. Or luck. Preparation is the key. And will to win.”

“Preparation and Will. That could be your motto.”

“Maybe I should get a crest. I wonder what it’d be in Latin.”

Taylor rose and walked toward a long wooden shelf. “My mother,” she said, “would call this a knickknack shelf. I used to think ‘knickknack’ was French for ‘small, ugly ceramic poodle.’ ” He laughed.

She found herself looking at an army of metal soldiers.

“I collect them,” Reece said. “Winston Churchill probably had the biggest collection in the world and Malcolm Forbes’s wasn’t too shabby either. I’ve only been at it for twenty years or so.”

“What are they, tin?”

“Lead.”

Taylor said, “One year my father got the idea that I should get soldiers, not dolls, for Christmas. I must’ve been eight or nine. He gave me bags and bags of these green plastic guys. He gave me a B-52 too so I nuked most of them and went back to Barbie and Pooh. You have other things, too? Like cannons and catapults?”

“Everything. Soldiers, horses, cannons, and caissons …”

She sipped the wine and was thinking: Sometimes in life this craziness falls right on top of you and you find yourself almost floating up and away from your body like a guru or psychic, looking down at yourself, and all you can say is, Shit a brick, this is
so
weird. I mean, here I am, Alice in Wonderland, in a fab loft, next to a handsome man I’m playing detective with, drinking hundred-dollar wine and talking toy soldiers.

Taylor told herself not, under any circumstances, to get drunk.

Reece played with some of the figures. “I have a British Square. I made it when I was sixteen.”

“Like a park? Like Trafalgar Square?”

Reece was laughing. “Taylor, British Square? A fighting formation? You know, Gunga Din.”

“Kipling,” she said.

He nodded. “The ranks divided into two lines. One stood and reloaded, the other knelt and fired. The fuzzy-wuzzies were the only warriors to break through the square.”

“The, uh …”

“Zulus. African tribal warriors.”

“Ah. Boer War.”

“That was twenty years later.”

“Oh, sure,” she said seriously, nodding in recognition.

“You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?”

She shook her head but couldn’t keep a straight face and said through the grin, “Definitely.”

He hit her playfully on the arm and let his hand pause on the thin cotton of her blouse for a moment.

He put on some music jazz.

“Any word about your demo tapes?”

“The responses ain’t been jim-dandy.”

“It only takes one record company.”

She shrugged. And glanced at an antique clock. Eight-thirty She could smell nothing simmering. Well, scratch one: He can’t cook. Maybe they were going out. But—

The door buzzer sounded.

“Excuse me.”

He let a young man into the loft. He nodded politely to Taylor and, from a large shopping bag, took out plates wrapped in stippled foil. Reece set the table with bone china plates, silver and a candlestick.

The portable butler said, “Would you like me to pour the wine, Mr. Reece?”

“No, thank you anyway, Robert.” Reece signed the proffered slip of paper. A bill changed hands.

“Then good night, sir.”

Dinner turned out to be blini with beluga caviar and sour cream, veal medallions with slivers of fresh truffles in a marsala sauce, braised endive and cold marinated green beans.

No fake burgers and sprouts for this boy …

They sat at the table and began to eat. Reece said, “Now, tell me what you’ve found out about the note.”

Taylor organized her thoughts. “First, somebody got into the computer and erased all the disbursements, expenses and phone call logs for Saturday and Sunday.”

“All of them?” He winced.

She nodded. “All last week, actually. Everything that’d link a particular person to the firm—except the door card keys and the time sheets.”

“Okay.” He nodded, taking this in. “Who can get into the system?”

“It’s not that hard. You need an access card but it’d be
easy to steal one.” More of the wonderful wine—he’d opened a second bottle. “Let me go through the suspects. First, Thom Sebastian.”

He nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Well, I fingerprinted your safe and found his on the top and side.”

He laughed. “You did what?”

“I got a private-eye kit—deerstalker cap and decoder ring, the works. I dusted the scene of the crime and came up with twenty-five latents—that’s prints, to you. Fifteen completely unrecognizable. The other ten, most were partials but seven seem to be the same person—you, I’m pretty sure. I dusted your coffee cup—I owe you a new one, by the way; the powder didn’t come off too well. I threw it out.”

“I wondered what happened to it.”

“And three others. A couple of prints are unidentified but there are a dozen or so that’re smooth smudges, as if somebody’d worn gloves. Thom’s’re pretty clear.”

“Thom?” Reece frowned. “Son of a bitch.”

She said, “I don’t think he actually broke into the safe; from the position on the metal it looks like the guy who did that was the one wearing the gloves—the pro. But Sebastian may have checked it out before—or tried to open it that night and when he couldn’t called in an expert. Is there any reason why he’d’ve been going through your files?”

“He’s worked for New Amsterdam in the past though not on the Hanover & Stiver deal—not that I’ve
heard
about. Anyway, he’d have no business going through anybody’s office without asking.” He laughed and looked at her admiringly. “Fingerprints … That never occurred to me.”

She continued, explaining to him that Sebastian had lied about how late he’d stayed at the club on Saturday night and that she’d confirmed he was in fact in the firm. She told him too about Bosk and Dennis Callaghan. How they’d talked about stealing something from the firm and how they were going to spend their money.

She asked, “You ever hear the name Callaghan in connection with the Hanover & Stiver case?”

“No.” Reece shook his head. “But what about Sebastian’s motive? He’s risking prison just to get even with the firm?”

“Why not? The firm was his entire life. Besides, he’s got a dark side to him. He was a process server in Brooklyn and Queens.”

Reece nodded. “Yeah, those guys are tough.”

Sebastian’s implicit threat echoed in her mind again.

She said, “I think he wants revenge. But mostly I think he looks at the money Hanover’d pay him to lose the note as something the firm owes him—for not getting made partner. Think about it: He’s a product of Hubbard, White—which’s been training him for six or seven years to go for the throat, look only at the bottom line. He’s also been checking me out.”

“You?”

She nodded. “He’s got a little dossier on me.”

“Why?”

“Know your enemy?” She then continued, “Remember I mentioned Dudley? Well, are you ready for this?”

She told him about Junie and the West Side Art and Photography Club.

“Whoa,” Reece blurted. “That little girl’s a hooker? Dudley’s mad. They’ll put him away forever for that. Statutory rape, contributing to the delinquency.”