Now You See Her Linda Howard(67)

"Not yet. They're supposed to fax it over in the morning."

"Let's walk through this."

"We've walked through it twice already, Joe."

"Humor me." Aquino leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. "Guy breaks in. He's already got the jewelry. Maybe he plans on taking the television and stereo, too, but it's just one guy, so I doubt it. He's in the kitchen, looking in the refrigerator. Lot of people hide stuff in their refrigerators and freezers; they think it's an original hiding place, so of course a good thief always checks the fridge."

Ritenour picked up the narrative. "When she comes in, catches him, he panics. He grabs one of the knives. But he already has the jewelry, and he's stronger than she is; he can get away any time he wants. There wasn't any reason to kill her, unless she knew him."

"Like an acquaintance trying to feed a drug habit? That might fly, except for the overkill. The punk enjoyed it. That brings me back to the setup. I think the murder was deliberate, and the rest of it is just stage setting. I don't think there was a burglar."

"Then the guys on this list are our best possibilities." Sourly, Ritenour surveyed the names. "Jesus, the lady saw a lot of action. The problem is, I don't think any of these names are on the security log."

"What, you think a guy planning to commit murder is going to sign his real name for the guard?"

238

"Then how did he get in? Somebody would have to okay him, or the guard wouldn't let him go up. So he would have had to use his real name."

"Or somebody in the building was in on it with him." Glumly they stared at each other. They were getting into wild territory with a conspiracy theory, and they knew it. The murder had been too personal. So they were left with the puzzle of how the killer got into an upscale apartment building with round-the-clock security. They kept staring at each other. Ritenour arched his eyebrows. "We need a list of recent tenants."

"Yeah, we sure as hell do."



"The name won't be right, but we'll be looking for a single man, and odds are if we get photos of all the guys on this list, the guards will be able to match one of them to the new tenant."

Suddenly energized, they hit the phones. The late hour was working against them, though. There was no one in the office of the apartment building to give them a list of recent applicants. Getting photos of the men on the list would also take time; the photos of the ones who had driver's licenses could be got from the DMV, but a lot of people who lived in the city didn't drive because owning a car was such a bitch of a hassle. There was also the possibility that the guy could live across the river in New Jersey, or in Connecticut. Both were easy commutes.

"Jesus," Aquino muttered, looking at the list of Mrs. Worth's lovers. "This could take the rest of the year. Have you counted how many guys are here? The woman must have had the brains of a flea, what with AIDS and everything. Look at this. I count twenty-three new guys in the past year; then there were all the repeaters. She was in the sack with somebody at least twice a week, on average."

"My love life should be so active," Ritenour said mournfully.

"The strain would kill you. Ah, hell, we aren't going to get anything accomplished tonight." Aquino stood and stretched. "I'm going home. See ya in the morning."

"Going home's the best idea you've had all day." Following suit, Ritenour grabbed his coat. "You wanna stop off for a couple of beers?"

"Nah, you go on. I'm whacked." They were both divorced, and all either of them had waiting for them at home was laundry. The beers sounded tempting. But something was nibbling at Aquino, and he couldn't quite figure out what it was. Something about Richard Worth. It wasn't that he thought Worth was the killer; the man had no motive, and no opportunity. But he was too controlled; there hadn't been any shakes, any fidgeting, any show of temper, no visible emotion when he identified his wife's body—okay, soon-to-be ex-wife, and considering the abortion thing and all the other men, he could understand why Worth wouldn't give a damn—nothing. No sign he had a single nerve in his body. He had been patient and helpful, giving them access to his records so they could get the information a lot faster than if they had to go through legal channels. Aquino knew he had no reason to be suspicious of Worth, and he wasn't, not really. It was just a gut feeling that the guy was hiding something, that there was some loose end that needed to be secured.

He waved a careless good-bye to Ritenour, then slid his bulk behind the wheel of the nondescript tan sedan the city provided for his use. On impulse, he decided to drive by Richard Worth's town house, just to see what he could see. Hell, he might even park and keep an eye on the place for a while. In a detective, a little healthy curiosity was a good thing.

Richard gave the cabdriver a twenty and didn't wait for the change, just bounded up the steps to the town house. When he renovated the bottom floor for his offices, he had added a separate entrance for them tucked under the steps that went up to the main part of the house. The office floor was half underground, with the windows at street level protected by steel bars. He entered into a foyer, a ten-by-ten square laid with imported slate tiles. The rug centered on the tiles was a two-hundred-year-old Turkish rug so tightly woven it didn't depress under his weight as he strode across it.