His upper lip curled in disgust. “Of course not. Is this how you spend your time? Making obscene suggestions?”
I smiled. Once the opponent was angry you had the upper hand. “A better detective than I’ll ever be said you have to start an investigation by eliminating the impossible. It may be obscene to imagine how two girls as enterprising as Arielle and Nia got a grown man to lie passively on his back, but it isn’t impossible. Do you think your daughter killed him to protect Arielle?”
“Also not impossible.” He had recovered his equilibrium. Years of practice at high-stakes poker.
“And it’s possible you killed him yourself.”
He nodded. “More possible than my daughter or granddaughter, certainly. Why do you think this man Wuchnik was murdered?”
“I have no idea. Because of something he was working on? Because his wife was furious that he was sleeping with someone else? Because he was spying on your granddaughter and a mugger came on him randomly?”
“Was he sleeping with another woman?” Salanter asked the question a shade too eagerly.
“I don’t know if he was gay or straight, married, divorced, or had a steady partner. I’m just tossing out possibilities. Why do you think he was murdered? Because of your family?”
“Like you, I have no idea. How many of your possibilities are the police likely to follow?”
“All of them,” I said. “The detective in charge is one of the most competent investigators on the force.”
“So you will leave the matter in his hands, then.”
“What is it you’re afraid will come out, Mr. Salanter?”
“Merely I want to protect my family from further harassment.”
The waiter brought my coffee, which was bitter and caramelly; it had sat on a warming coil all evening. “Did your daughter tell you I harassed her yesterday? It was she who summoned me, just as you did today. Truth to tell, I’m starting to feel a mite bit harassed by the Salanter family.”
The thick black brows went up in a skeptical line. “I promise you we won’t bother you anymore if you leave the investigation to this most competent of police detectives.”
I tried again to think like Leydon. What could I do that the police—with their evidence technicians, their thirteen-thousand-strong force, their forensics lab, and the power of the law—could not?
Detective Finchley was not just an inspired investigator, he was beyond corruption. But he was also part of a military-style organization with an inviolable chain of command. Salanter, and some of the other parents in Petra’s book group, had connections in the mayor’s office. If the word came from the mayor through the superintendent to leave the Salanters alone, or to put the Wuchnik murder on a back burner, then Finchley would have to obey it.
But if I wanted to ask questions, I would do so. I have been known to ignore threats, orders, and attempts on my life, and someone may have told Salanter that.
I saw him on the catafalque, Leydon had scribbled. Was it Miles Wuchnik she’d been referring to? She surely hadn’t been in Mount Moriah cemetery Saturday night—in her manic state she wouldn’t have been able to keep her presence a secret. She’d seen his picture in the newspaper or on TV, then. But why did she care? She had something that was “hot,” she’d said. What could she know about Wuchnik?
And then, the German organist had heard Leydon arguing with a man this afternoon. Maybe she’d had evidence that led her to Wuchnik’s murderer, and the man, whoever he was, had tossed her over the balustrade onto the chapel floor.
I was staring at the congealed blood on my plate, not seeing it. I had a duty to Leydon, and I had a duty to my cousin and her book group. I didn’t agree with the billionaire: I tied this afternoon’s mob at his foundation to the exploitation of Wuchnik’s murder.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Salanter, but I agreed earlier today to look into Miles Wuchnik’s activities. I don’t think they have anything to do with—”
“Who hired you?”
I shook my head. “If I don’t respect the confidentiality of my clients, in a short while I won’t have any clients.”
“Whoever your client is, if you only agreed to do the work this afternoon, you can’t have had time to start. I’ll pay double whatever you’re charging this other person to leave the investigation alone.”
I couldn’t help smiling, since twice zero is still zero, but I was annoyed all the same. “I don’t work that way. I drop investigations very rarely, and then only if they are futile, or if the client has been lying to me. I don’t send my investigations out to bid.”
Salanter pressed his hands together with the forefingers steepled against his lips. The gesture apparently helped him think, or at least kept him from blurting out the first thing that came to mind.
“I’d like to hire you to report your findings to me before you make them public,” he said at length.