I stormed out of my office to find Anita putting away her coat and purse in the hall closet.
“Anita, I have to go downstairs to Hardy’s office. If someone named Chris Knight calls me, come find me.”
“Of course. Hey, what happened to your face?” she asked.
I touched the spot where someone used my face for a stepstool. “Just a bruise. I fell down some stairs last night. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Chapter 18
I marched downstairs to Hardy’s office on the nineteenth floor. His assistant, a sixtyish woman with bleached blond hair, sat perched at her desk holding a small compact and tweezers and plucking hairs from her chin. Classy.
“Hey, is Hardy around?” I asked.
“Yeah, go on in.” She never looked up from her compact.
I tapped lightly on his door. “Hardy, you got a minute?”
“Hey!” Hardy’s thunderous greeting practically lifted him from his chair. “For the Legal Lady, absolutely.” Although I was in no mood for it, I knew the drill and submitted to the requisite bear hug. One of these days, I was going to have a heart-to-heart with Hardy about his office etiquette. “Let me just move this stuff outta the way,” he said.
Hardy’s office looked like a four-walled version of himself—cluttered, unorganized, and filled to capacity with information. His desk obligingly stood under the weight of papers, files, and miscellaneous binders and, by my count, two empty pizza boxes and three coffee mugs—two of them still half filled with black coffee. Hardy lifted a banker’s box and an empty Houghton water bottle from the guest chair in front of his desk and extended his hand toward the empty seat like a magician showing off a rabbit he’d just pulled from a hat.
“I need some information,” I said.
“I’m glad you stopped by. I wanted to talk to you, too.” Hardy closed the door. “Just between me and you?”
I nodded.
“That Detective . . . uh, Bradford, she called me. She said she can’t get Jonathan to return her calls.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“She said she’s called him, even dropped by his office a couple times, and she can’t track him down. She didn’t say as much, but I get the feeling Johnny Boy is avoiding her.”
“Why?”
Hardy walked behind his desk and planted himself in his chair with a loud whoosh.
“Again, between us and these four walls, I don’t trust Jonathan.”
“Why?”
Hardy leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his protruding girth. “The guy wears a twenty-five-thousand-dollar watch, but he’s trash. He walks around this building like he’s God’s gift to Houghton. Pisses me off, too, the way he tries to manipulate Nate. I suspect he’s siphoning cash off Nate’s family legacy. But I got nothing to back that up. Just an instinct, you know? I’m gonna put a couple feelers out. Try to find out why he’s so cagey with the police.”
“Sounds like you’re not a card-carrying member of the Jonathan Everett fan club. Is that why you ran off so fast at Nate’s party?”
“Remember the whole budget fiasco three years back?” Hardy asked with a smirk. “That asswipe cut my budget to the bone. I had to lay off some of my best guys. But his staff has been fat and happy for years. Anyways, you’d think the guy would be more helpful to the police considering one of his colleagues was killed.”
“Speaking of helping the police, did you give the police security camera footage? Without telling me?”
“Yeah, about that . . . look, I’m sorry. One of my guys was tryin’ to be a hotshot. Passed the security footage without clearing it through me first. As a matter of course, we try to help the police whenever we can.” Hardy ran a couple meaty fingers through his graying head. “I only found out about the badge thing after my guy released the footage. I woulda given you a heads-up. I just didn’t know. That detective has been pressing me about the loopholes in security around the company. I’m sorry.”
“Look, Hardy, tell your guys just don’t release anything else outside the company unless we talk first, okay?”
Hardy lowered his head. “Of course. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. I just mean, we ought to coordinate on this thing, okay?” It was like talking to a four-year-old.
“Nope, you’re right. You’re our new GC, I should have alerted you, even after I found out. I promise it won’t happen again. So do you know him?”