Now You See Her Linda Howard(66)

"I'll get a patrolman to take you home," Detective Ritenour offered.

"Thanks, that isn't necessary I'll catch a cab." Calling Edward to pick him up would be a waste of time; by the time Edward got here, he could be home.

Leaving the precinct, he walked down to the corner to catch a cab, but traffic seemed to be light on that street. Two blocks over was a busier street, so he kept walking. The tension in him was building.

Home. In less than thirty minutes now he would be home. He would talk to Sweeney. He thought about taking the cab directly to her place, but caution kept him from it. Any direct contact with her now could bring unwanted attention down on her. The detectives would probably find out about her anyway, eventually—depending on whom Candra had told about seeing Richard and Sweeney together—but every minute he could hold off the inevitable was important. She might paint the killer's face tonight, and then he would have a direction in which to steer the detectives.



He needed to shower and shave and go to the Plaza, to see Helene and Charles. Respect and common courtesy demanded that he do so, but he didn't know if he had any common courtesy left in him. He was tired, and relations between them would be awkward because of the divorce. When people were grieving, they could lash out, trying to ease their pain by placing the blame on someone or something, and he could easily see Helene making a tearful charge that if only Candra had still been living with him, this wouldn't have happened, because she wouldn't have been coming home alone. He didn't have the patience to deal with that right now. He would call them, after he talked to Sweeney, and tell them he would be over first thing in the morning.



But Sweeney came first. Until he knew she was all right, he couldn't think of anything else.

"Son of a bitch," Detective Joseph Aquino said, tiredly closing a folder and leaning back in his chair.

He was actually the more impatient, rougher-edged of the two detectives, but his looks inclined people to trust him, so Ritenour usually played the hard-ass. "Nine times outta ten, it's gonna be the estranged husband kills his wife. This looked like a perfect setup, but what have we got?"

"We've got 'jack shit, is what we've got." Ritenour ticked the points off on his fingers. They both knew the points, but saying them out loud always helped. "Worth is the one who wanted the divorce. He has a prenup agreement protecting all his assets, so he doesn't have to worry about that. She had been giving him a hard time about the settlement, but she had an appointment today to sign the papers, so that wasn't an issue. He was on his computer last night at the time we estimate she got home from the party, and the M.E.'s preliminary time of death puts the murder roughly at that same time. You know the first thing a woman does when she walks in the door? She kicks off the spike heels. Mrs. Worth still had on her shoes."

"You ever run across a customer that cool, though?" Aquino rubbed his eyes. He had taken the call for the Worth murder a little before seven that morning, and had been working nonstop since. "Nothing got to him. He showed, us only what he wanted us to see."

"Joey," Ritenour said. "He didn't do it."

"The scene looked fishy, though. It looks like she surprised a burglar, but—"

"But it looks like someone wanted it to look that way."

"Yeah. The place wasn't messed up much. And those scratches on the lock. Looks like they were deliberately made. They sure as hell didn't have anything to do with popping the lock."

"Another point in Mr. Worth's favor," Ritenour said. "Don't get me wrong; I'm not suggestin' this as something he could have done. But he struck me as the kinda guy, if he wanted to make a scene look like a burglary, then it would look like a fucking burglary."

"Yeah, I know. But whoever it was knew her, and was pissed as hell. A burglar wouldn't have hacked her up like that. " Aquino drew a preliminary report to him. "He got her three times in the back, so she was running from him. Defense wounds on her arm; she was trying to fight him off. Then when she was down, he kept stabbing her."

"No signs of sexual assault. Underwear was in place; prelim shows no semen present. Her friends say she left the party last night unusually early, so the timing couldn't have been planned. She left alone."

Ritenour yawned, bleary eyes focused on his notes. "The knife was from a set in her kitchen and was left at the scene. No prints. We have a lot of smears on the doorknob, a partial of Mrs. Worth's right thumb, and a good set of the housekeeper's prints."

"Doesn't look like a disgruntled boyfriend, either. She spread her joy around. There were a lot of men, but no one in particular."



"But maybe one of them wanted to be particular. You know, the sour grapes thing. If I can't have you, blah blah blah. Anybody on that list she was seeing regularly, then stopped seeing?" Ritenour doodled on his pad. Like all detectives, he and Joe kicked things back and forth between them. The give-and-take sometimes triggered a new insight.

"Nobody that recent." Aquino paused. "Senator McMillan's name on that list was interesting, but while he might not want his wife to know about it, I don't think he'd kill to keep it secret."

"Not to mention he doesn't know this list exists."

"Not to mention. Has the insurance company come through with a list of the jewelry she had insured, so we can tell what's missing?"