Free Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4) by Annette Meyers Page A

with another headhunter? Which one?” Why did this always shock her? Get real , she told herself. They worked with other headhunters. Don’t take it personally. But she did.
    “What’s his face ... you know, Harold somethin’ or other. The one who works forTom Keegen, who used to work for you.”

13.
    S HE STOPPED AT Zabar’s for a couple of chocolate croissants and a pound of decaf Colombian beans, then made a beeline for her apartment building.
    After collecting her mail, she buzzed Roger Levine’s apartment from the downstairs intercom. “I’ll be upstairs salvaging what I can,” she told him.
    “Be careful. The ceiling in the bedroom could cave in anytime. I’ll be up to talk to you. How long will you be there?”
    “About an hour, maybe more.” She calculated that that should do it. She could park some bags in Smith’s apartment and pick them up afterward, take a cab back to the Village, change for dinner, and take a cab back up to Café des Artistes. Whew!
    She told Julio, the Sunday doorman, to send Smith up without announcing her.
    The Sunday Times lay on her doormat. She picked it up and unlocked her door, opening it tentatively. The scent of ammonia tainted with mildew assaulted her. Although the destruction was organized, thanks to Carlos’s Hazels, it was much worse than she’d remembered.
    Her carpets were gone, so the damage to her floors was exposed, white stains and buckled parquet. In the living room, her furniture had been piled under the only spot where the ceiling hadn’t puckered and cracked. Everything was neatly covered with plastic drop cloths.
    On her kitchen counter, tucked under a coffee mug, she found a cleaning ticket for the carpets. She made a pot of coffee before she ventured further.
    Plastic also shrouded her bedroom furniture, and here, too, the oak flooring had buckled. The cost of new flooring would be staggering.
    She pulled a worn suitcase and a huge canvas shopping bag from the hall closet, unloaded the old sheets and blankets stored there, and packed as much as she could fit of what remained of her clothing. A half-dozen pair of shoes went into the Zabar’s shopping bag along with what had been on top of her desk.
    The doorbell rang, and she squished back down the hall on sodden floorboards to let Roger in. He looked around glumly. “Ah ... Leslie ... the building, as you know, is insured when it’s our fault, but this is not—”
    “What is that supposed to mean?” She stood with her hands on her hips, not at all liking the way this conversation was going.
    “Well, it means we’ll help you work this out, Leslie, but it is between you and Mr. and Mrs. Muscat. And also, me and the Muscats. You and I seem to be the only ones affected. I’ve talked with them in Florida and they’ve agreed to assume responsibility, so that is something. And they do have an insurance policy. I think we can work it out satisfactorily, but my feeling is that we’ll have to get the work started and then bill them accordingly.”
    Why did lawyers talk so much? Somewhere buried in all that language was a warning; Wetzon was certain of it. “Listen, Roger, do you want to talk about what new oak flooring costs?”
    He shrugged.
    “Am I going to have to sue them? You’re the lawyer. Tell me the truth.”
    “I don’t know, and that’s the truth, Leslie.” He managed to look everywhere but at her. “After all, we have to live together here. We want to be good neighbors.”
    “That’s bullshit, Roger, and you know it. Being a good neighbor stops when your neighbor has damaged your property and made it unlivable. Okay, I’ll get some legal advice. And my insurance people have been notified. They’ll have someone up here tomorrow to look around.”
    “Oh, my Lord!”
    Wetzon spun around and Roger jumped. “Oh, my Lord,” he echoed.
    Smith stood in the doorway in a black stretch cat suit over a gold silk turtleneck, looking tall, sexy, and absolutely gorgeous. She had one of