“You’re going to that recital,” I said. “We’ll look at Moore’s proposal tonight and then see what Tull thinks of it in the morning.”
“Sounds like a plan,” John said, looking relieved.
“Willow has to come first,” I said. “Always.”
“Glad to be reminded, Alex.”
Sampson’s phone rang. He answered, listened, frowned, said, “Black Porsche? And he says we’ve met? I’ve never heard of the guy. Can you send over a photo of his driver’s license? Thanks.”
He hung up as we left the bridge and headed toward my house. “Some guy got arrested last night speeding in a black Porsche on the Rock Creek Parkway. He’s got four outstanding warrants in Texas.”
“Same guy who raced Tull?”
“Dunno, but he says he knows things we should know about Tull.”
We were almost to my home on Fifth when Sampson’s phone buzzed with a text.
He opened it, used two fingers to magnify the screen, stared, and, after a moment, said, “Son of a bitch.”
I glanced over at a Texas driver’s license with a grainy picture of a bald guy in his forties. “James Kenilworth? Who’s that?”
CHAPTER 96
AFTER CALLING ADDIE WELLS and asking the editor to forward the book proposal to both her and Alex, Bree tried to convince herself it was time to head to the train station and home. But she’d had only a few hours of sleep the night before and events had been moving so fast, she was suddenly and overwhelmingly tired.
She lay down on her bed in Luster’s guest room, told herself she’d nap for an hour and then regroup.
When her phone began to ring, Bree felt dragged from an almost drugged state, sure that she’d been asleep less than fifteen minutes. When she picked up the phone, however, she saw two full hours had passed.
“Hello?” she said, aware of how groggy she sounded.
“Chief Stone? This is Simon Thompson.”
“Oh, hi, Detective,” she said. “How are you?”
“Like I said earlier, happy my partner’s alive,” Thompson said. “Listen, Rosella wanted me to call you. You asked about a company named Paladin doing work for the hedge fund that invested in Duchaine.”
“Okay?”
“They did use Paladin,” he said. “But, you know, turns out all sorts of companies and law enforcement agencies are using them. NYPD even has a contract.”
“Does it? What about the Duchaine company itself?”
“Uh, I don’t know that. Let me ask and get back to you.”
“Thanks, Detective.”
“Back at you, Chief.”
Bree got up, put her shoes on, and freshened up in the bathroom. As she was leaving the bedroom, she heard keys jangle and dead bolts thrown down the hall.
Phillip Henry Luster came in and saw her. “Still here?”
“I’m so sorry, Phillip,” she said. “I never intended to stay even overnight.”
“Nonsense, I’m thrilled,” he said with genuine enthusiasm. “We’ll order in. Can I do the honors?”
“Please,” she said, following him into the kitchen.
“Chardonnay?”
“Double please,” she said. “Who was Frances Duchaine’s head of marketing?”
Luster pulled the cork from a chilled bottle of chardonnay. “That would be Nellie Ray. She’s an old friend of mine and she’s assured me up and down that she had no idea whatsoever about the human-trafficking allegations.”
“You’ve spoken recently?”
“A few days ago. Why?” he asked, pouring wine into their glasses.
“I’d like to talk to her.”
“About?”
“A tech company outside Boston that I suspect Duchaine used.”
The fashion designer pursed his lips, then dug out his phone. A few thumb taps later, he put the phone on speaker and set it between them on the counter.
“Phillip?”
“Hello, Nellie. I’d meant to call earlier.”
“Didn’t we all?” Ray said, her speech sounding a little slurred. “I can’t count the number of people I’ve called since I heard. It’s a nightmare!”
“It is.”
“You were cochair of the gala, weren’t you?”
Luster said, “I was.”
After a long pause, Bree heard ice clinking in a glass. Ray said, “I know it wasn’t your fault, Phillip. But I can’t help thinking the security should have been better, you know?”
That annoyed Luster. “Nellie, I am standing here with one of the women who fought the Russians after they shot Frances.”
Bree leaned over the phone. “Hi, Nellie. My name is Bree Stone, and I agree with you. Frances Duchaine should have had tighter security around her, given what happened at Paula Watkins’s party.”
“Thank you.”
“But that was largely Frances’s call, as I understand it,” Bree said. “She had her two guards and felt comfortable with the level of security.”
Luster said, “That is correct, Nellie.”
“Then I need another stiff drink,” Ray said. “And why not? Frances is dead. Paula is dead. And a once great company is …” She broke down crying.
Luster said, “It’s going to be all right, Nellie.”
“No, it’s not, Phillip,” she cried. “I’m forty-six. Who will hire me?”
“Tess Jackson would in a heartbeat,” he said. “She’d be crazy not to.”
After a snuffle and a hiccup, she said in a meek voice, “You think so, Phillip?”
“I’ll talk to her in the morning,” Luster promised. “But before we let you go, Bree has a question for you.”
Ray sighed. “Thank you, Phillip. What’s your question, Bree?”
“To your knowledge did Duchaine, the company, ever use the services of a Massachusetts firm called Paladin?”
Duchaine’s director of marketing laughed. “Paladin. One of the dumber moves we made in the past few years.”
“How’s that?” Bree said.
Ray told her that Frances Duchaine and Paula Watkins had followed the advice of hedge-fund manager Ari Bernstein and hired Paladin to mine hard data to determine where to put new stores as the company expanded. “The demographics they came up with from their algorithms were solid on paper—proximity to wealthy towns, reasonable rent and overhead, things like that,” Ray said. “But they didn’t account for how devastating e-commerce was going to be for the fashion-to-wholesale-to-physical-retail business, which was our business model.”
Bree said, “Should Paladin have predicted it?”
“Ryan Malcomb’s supposed to be the big genius, spotter of trends, right?”
“You’ve met him?”
“Five or six times,” she replied as Bree’s own cell phone rang. “He, uh, em, uh … well, I think he uses the whole muscular dystrophy thing to his advantage.”
“Hold that thought,” Bree said, seeing who was calling her. She answered it as she walked from the kitchen. “Detective Thompson?”
“The docs say they’re going to bring Volkov out of his coma tomorrow evening,” Salazar’s partner said. “But they don’t think he’ll be coherent enough to answer questions until the following day. If you’re available, Rosella wants you there when we question him.”