“Is that a bad thing?” Nessa asked.
“No,” Harriett admitted. “It’s an interesting thing.”
“You wanna know what’s funny, though?” Nessa looked back down and scrolled through all the articles she’d found. “I can’t figure out what Leonard used to do for a living.”
“He didn’t do anything,” Harriett said. “He was in finance. He just moved money around. Speaking of which, you remember Antoine Marchand?”
Nessa began to type. “Antoine with an e?”
“Do you really not recognize the name?” Harriett asked. “He ran one of the biggest Ponzi schemes of the nineties. Madoff stole his thunder a decade later, but Marchand was the OG.”
“I was in nursing school in the nineties. I didn’t have time for the news.”
“Must have been a nursing school on Mars if you missed the Marchand story. He jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. A crew filming a movie caught it all on camera. The video was one of the internet’s first viral sensations.”
“I remember a man jumping off the bridge, but why are we talking about him now?”
“Antoine Marchand is our new BFF Claude’s dad.”
“So her father committed suicide?” Nessa asked. “How sad.”
“He stole hundreds of millions of dollars,” Harriett said. “If I recall correctly, poor Claude had been kept in the dark, and she ended up broke after he died. I imagine that must have screwed with her head a bit. Now look up Spencer Harding, and you’ll get a sense of our cast of characters.”
Nessa spent a few minutes perusing the results. “There are plenty of articles about paintings he’s sold, but there’s not much online about Harding himself. Lot of stuff about his wife, though. She hasn’t been seen in public much since they married, and people aren’t happy about it. Do you think she’s really addicted to painkillers?”
“I think an addiction to painkillers is an excellent excuse for keeping your wife under house arrest.”
Nessa glanced up. “You know the girl in blue died of a fentanyl overdose,” she said. “That’s a painkiller.”
“That fact hasn’t escaped me,” Harriett said.
“So Spencer Harding keeps his wife under surveillance, has his bodyguard threaten anyone who gets close to her, and sends you flowers to show he knows where you live? Sounds like he might be our guy.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Harriett said. “Either way, he’s a threat to our kind, and he needs to be dealt with. I’m rooting for his wife to save me the trouble and kill him herself.”
Nessa hadn’t been listening. “Is he this good-looking in real life?” She handed her phone to Harriett.
The photo was an old one, and the man on the screen had black hair trimmed with gray. His eyes, which stared straight out at the camera, were unusually light. He wore a beautifully cut navy suit and a hostile expression. He seemed to resent having his photo taken.
“Yes, he’s handsome.” Harriett took another drag off her blunt. “But your friend the cop is hotter. It’s more fun screwing people with souls. Speaking of Franklin, we should tell him to come over so we can give him the 411.”
Nessa reached for her phone, and Harriett sat up to hand it back. “I sent Franklin a text thirty minutes ago,” Nessa said, scrolling through her messages. “I don’t know why he hasn’t gotten back to me.”
“Relax.” Harriett spread her long body out on the sofa again. “He will.”
Nessa sensed what would come next and suddenly wished Jo hadn’t gone home. When they were alone, Harriett could make Nessa spill beans she’d rather keep in their can.