Free The Shanghai Moon by S. J. Rozan Page A

didn’t like the looks of Bill. Bill can clean up well, but in general he’s not a Waldorf kind of guy. Nevertheless, a call from the desk to Alice’s room got us an invitation up to a floor where the corridor was plushly carpeted and the walls layered in molding. I clinked a little brass knocker; the door opened right away.
    “Oh, Lydia!” Alice pressed my hands in quick sympathy. “This is so terrible. I’m so sorry about Joel.”
    “Thank you. Alice, this is a colleague of mine, Bill Smith. Bill, Alice Fairchild.”
    They shook hands. Alice asked Bill, “Did you know Joel?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then my condolences on your loss, too. Sit down, please. Coffee and tea are on the way. Or would you like something stronger?”
    “Aren’t we going to the precinct?” I asked.
    “The detective’s coming here.”
    “Mulgrew?”
    “You sound surprised.”
    “At him, for being so accommodating.”
    “I think he thinks I’m a delicate lady of a certain age who might get rattled in a police station. Where he got that idea, I have no clue.” Her eyes twinkled. “But I’m sure it’s more comfortable here than there.”
    The room was populated by carved furniture, brass lampswith pleated shades, botanical prints on striped wallpaper. Street sounds drifted up, muffled by glass and the soft purr of air-conditioning. I sat in a flowered armchair, but Bill leaned near a window, where he could look both into the room and out over New York.
    “Tell me what happened,” Alice said.
    I gave as clinical an account of Joel’s death as I could manage. Her hand went to her mouth when she heard I was the one who’d found him.
    “That’s horrible! Oh, Lydia, I’m so sorry.”
    “He called me. He said something was fishy. He told me to rush up there.”
    “Fishy? What was it?”
    “I don’t know. I never found out. But if I’d done what he said—”
    Bill shifted on his perch, about to break in and give me a hard time for giving myself a hard time, but Alice spoke first. “It’s so natural,” she sighed. “To blame ourselves when something terrible happens. I think it’s comforting in a way. It makes us feel there’s something we could have done if we’d been smarter, or faster, or whatever it is. Sometimes thinking we’ve failed is less frightening than admitting we were helpless.”
    My face burned. I felt like I’d caught sight of myself in a mirror, and I didn’t look so good.
    “But Lydia,” Alice went on gently, “you say the police think it was random, a robbery. Couldn’t that be true?”
    “Yes, of course,” I sighed. “Trying to make it part of this case may just be me. An odd kind of wishful thinking.”
    The door knocker clinked. Bill checked the peepholeand let in a waiter rolling a room service cart. By the time Alice signed for it and sat down, I was ready to be all business again. I wasn’t at all sure she was right about failure being better than helplessness, but obviously best by far was to put up with neither.
    “Alice, you said you spoke to Joel this morning. Did you call him, or did he call you?”
    “He called me.” She handed me a cup of tea, milk, no sugar, and just the right amount of milk, too. She poured coffee for Bill, who took it back to his windowsill. “He knew I’d be in meetings today. He just wanted to touch base before I was unavailable.”
    “Did he say anything was wrong?”
    “No, nothing. He said you were both proceeding along the lines you’d started yesterday, and he’d check back later.”
    “Did he mention anyone he was planning to talk to?”
    “No. I’m sorry. That’s not very useful, is it?”
    “Anything that fills in the gaps is useful,” I said, more to make her feel better than because it was true. “Before Mulgrew gets here I want to ask you something else, though. Have you ever heard of a piece of jewelry called the Shanghai Moon?”
    “No, I don’t think so. What is it?”
    “Apparently, Rosalie Gilder was married in Shanghai. To a