Free 1 Runaway Man by David Handler Page B

personal call to Police Commissioner Dante Feldman. His direct extension number is—”
    “That won’t be necessary, ma’am,” Battalino assured her, all four paws up in the air now. He wanted his furry belly rubbed. Like he had a prayer.
    “And Peter Seymour will acknowledge that he retained our services,” she added. “It so happens that I tape recorded our meeting. I’ll be happy to make the tape available to you should it become necessary, although I doubt it will. We’re all on the same side. We all want Bruce Weiner’s killer brought to justice.”
    “That we do, ma’am,” Battalino acknowledged.
    “You weren’t planning to detain my investigator overnight, were you?”
    “No, ma’am, we were just about—”
    “Do you have all of the information you need for the time being?”
    “Yes, I believe that we’re—”
    “In that case we’ll say good night now. It’s late and we have a long drive home. Come on, Benji, let’s blow this pop stand.”
    And with that we were out of there.
    Like I said, Mom knows how to handle men.
    *   *   *
    THE TEMPERATURE HAD FALLEN into the teens there in the hills of Litchfield. An arctic wind was howling.
    “How did you get out here?” I asked her, shivering as we started across the parking lot toward the Brougham.
    “Wally rented me that green Toyota over there.” Wally managed the garage where we kept the Caddy. He did a profitable side business renting out gently used cars. “I asked him if anybody’s been hanging around our car lately. He said an exterminator was putting down rat poison a couple of days ago. Told Wally the building hired him. I’ve got Doug the techie coming in first thing tomorrow morning to sweep our office and apartments for bugs. Rita’s installing new firewalls in case they’ve hacked into our computers—which we have to assume they have. And I got us some prepaid cell phones.” She dug into her purse and handed me one. “Lose yours.”
    I tossed my phone in a nearby trash can. It touched bottom with a loud clank. In Connecticut they actually empty their public trash cans from time to time. Imagine that.
    “Now tell me what you didn’t tell those stateys,” Mom commanded me.
    “Like what?”
    “Like who would want to kill that kid.”
    “My money’s on the Canterbury board of trustees. I’m guessing the college’s finances are even worse than they’ve owned up to. They desperately need to ride Charles Willingham all of the way to the Final Four and they can’t have a gay sex scandal messing things up. Word must have leaked out somehow about Charles and Bruce. Seymour was approached by someone on the board to take care of it, quietly and discreetly. He hired us to find Bruce. And the Leetes people have been shadowing us every step of the way.”
    “It explains a lot,” Mom conceded, hands burrowed in her coat pockets. “Except for why Seymour walked in our door peddling that inheritance yarn.”
    “A cover story. He made it up.”
    “That’s not how men like Peter Seymour operate. They shade the truth. They blur it, bend it, stand it on its ear. But they don’t introduce anything that constitutes an outright lie.”
    “So do you think this is about an inheritance?”
    “Maybe so. Maybe Seymour’s client wanted Bruce found and eliminated because he, or she, stood to gain from it.”
    “If that’s the case then we’ll have one hell of a time getting to the truth. In fact,” I added glumly, “I doubt we’ll ever know for sure what just happened.”
    “You sound down, Bunny. Are you okay?”
    “I’m not even close to okay.”
    “I’m not either. That bastard made fools out of us. But we’ll get even with him. Nobody scams the Goldens and gets away with it.” She dug her keys out of her purse and unlocked the Toyota. “You lead the way home. I’ll follow you.”
    “Whatever you say, boss.”
    “And don’t call me boss.”
    I got onto Interstate 84 and steered us back through the darkness