Someone to Watch Over Me by Judith McNaught
“It’s money laundering with a ‘cute’ twist. The only problem is the IRS just announced they’re going to start auditing taxpayers with credit cards from offshore banks, so Manning will show up on their radar screen.”
“Did you find any irregularities in Leigh Manning’s finances?”
“No, but Broadway stars don’t make nearly as much as I thought. Under her contract with Solomon, she gets twelve thousand dollars a week or five percent of whatever the box office takes in, whichever is greater. Based on my calculations, Blind Spot is taking in about five hundred thousand dollars a week at the box office, which means Leigh Manning should actually earn about twenty-five thousand a week, or one point three million per year. I checked with an agent over at William Morris, and he said those figures are about average for a Broadway star in a nonmusical role, although he thought the five percent was a little low for someone like Leigh Manning. Now, if she had an established Hollywood name, then her percentage of the box office would be bigger.”
Everyone was silent for several moments, processing the unexpected discovery that a socially prominent, “upright citizen” like Manning had evidently been getting his hands on illegal cash somewhere. How he had been doing this was a whole new question, and whom he had been doing it with was just as interesting. Valente, with his unsavory history of money-related indictments and charges, was the first known associate of Manning’s to come to Sam’s mind. McCord was clearly thinking along those lines, because the next question he asked the auditor was, “Did you turn up any business connection anywhere between Manning and Valente?”
“Not a one,” he declared. “But I turned up something else that may be of even more interest to you. In fact, I may have saved the best discovery for last. You gave me some miscellaneous documents and correspondence of Manning’s that you wanted me to look into, along with your notes on each subject.”
“Right,” McCord said when the auditor paused.
“Everything checked out, except one thing: According to your notes, Manning invested two hundred thousand dollars in Solomon’s play. The file you gave me contains duly executed agreements between Manning and Solomon that indicate two hundred thousand dollars did, in fact, change hands. But you know what I can’t find?”
McCord nodded slowly and emphatically, his lips drawing into a hard line. “You can’t find a check for two hundred thousand.”
“You guessed it. Manning must have given Solomon cash in exchange for a share in the play’s profits.”
“And,” McCord finished for him, “Solomon undoubtedly takes in plenty of cash at the box office during the run of a play, so Solomon would be able to take Manning’s cash and deposit it into his own bank without raising an eyebrow at the IRS.”
The auditor nodded. “My guess is that, knowingly or unknowingly, Solomon laundered two hundred thousand dollars for Manning.”
McCord looked at Sam, his brows raised in a silent question. You were there when we interviewed Solomon. What do you think?
After a moment’s contemplation, Sam answered him aloud. “I suppose it’s possible. On the surface, Solomon is a brilliant, talented . . . flake, but there’s more to him than that. He got pretty tough with you when he realized we were thinking of Leigh Manning as a suspect.”
“He’s no flake. He has enough business acumen to produce the plays he writes, line up his own backers, and maintain control over the production. According to what I’ve heard, that’s not the norm.”
Absently, Sam ran her hand around her nape, thinking; then she shook her head. “Solomon fancies himself a renegade, and I doubt he’d have a moral dilemma about laundering a little money for a friend, but at the same time, I don’t know if he’d do anything for anyone that would put him in jeopardy of going to prison.”
Instead of agreeing or disagreeing, McCord looked at Shrader and Womack. “You’ve already run a background check on Solomon, but now I want all three of you to start compiling complete files on him and his lover. Don’t stop until you can tell me their life stories with all the details, right down to which one of them wears the pajama bottoms, and which one wears the top.”
A prolonged silence followed the auditor’s departure while all four of them automatically focused on the new, pressing question about the source of Manning’s cash.
McCord walked around his desk and sat down across from her. Sam lost her concentration on the money issue, and her unruly mind focused instead on him. He looked preoccupied and distant—his brows drawn together, his hard jaw set with iron determination as he contemplated the game of human chess they were playing.
He’d invited Sam out to dinner a week ago, and somehow she’d gathered enough strength to decline. By then, her attraction to him had grown so powerful that she actually had to concentrate on breathing evenly when he was nearby. If she looked at his mouth, she wondered how it would feel to have those sculpted male lips on hers. If he was within arm’s reach, she had an insane impulse to trace her fingertip over the scar on his tanned cheek—and then lean forward and press her lips to it. If he wasn’t within reach—she wanted him to be.
The day he asked her to have dinner with him, they’d been in his office, combing through boxes of files and records subpoenaed from Manning’s apartment. Before Sam had finished quietly saying, “I think that would be a mistake for both of us,” she was already wishing she could take the words back. She felt much better when he said with a slight smile. “I’m sure it would have been.” And then—inexplicably—she felt much worse.
He had a wary, sardonic charm that captivated and disarmed her, and to make everything more complicated, she genuinely liked and admired every single thing about him. He wasn’t like any male she’d ever known before; he was smarter than she was, and she was very smart. He was wiser than she was, and she was pretty wise. He was stronger, tougher, and more astute than she was—and she loved the fact that he was those things. And she particularly loved that, unlike her brothers, McCord never felt a need to demonstrate that he was stronger, tougher, and more astute.
The telephone on his desk rang, and Sam watched his long fingers grasp the receiver and pick it up. He had beautiful, strong hands with well-shaped fingers—hands that would unerringly seek out every vulnerable spot on her body if she gave him a chance. But she wasn’t going to give him one.
He hadn’t repeated the dinner invitation or referred to it again. In fact, it was as if he’d never made the suggestion at all. He treated Sam exactly as he had before he’d asked and she’d refused him. No displays of wounded masculine ego. No subtle retaliations in any form. He still smiled at her when the occasion warranted, and he still frowned impatiently from time to time.
He was a splendid male in every way, Sam thought wistfully—a male who actually lived up to the fullest meaning of the word “manly.” He was what men were supposed to be and rarely were. He had principles and ethics. He dominated without ever being domineering; he taught without lecturing; he guided but never shoved—although he nudged sometimes.
He was a born leader—a natural, gifted leader. But she was not a follower. She could never let herself be that.
He was tough as granite and soft as a whisper—or he would be, she was certain, if he were properly matched with the right woman.
But she was not that woman.
To allow a relationship to blossom between them would have been pure folly for them both.
She jumped when she realized he’d hung up the phone and was talking to them. “As I started to explain a few minutes ago—” he said with his gaze leveled on Sam, silently prodding her to snap out of it and pay attention, “we’re going to be entertaining an uninvited guest this morning. Actually, this is an historic occasion, because this particular guest has made it a lifelong habit to throw our invitations into his lawyer’s trash can whenever we’ve urged him to drop by for a chat.”
“What?” Sam said with a chuckle at McCord’s unprecedented lapse into lengthy metaphor when he was usually so crisp and
“This morning, Valente’s lawyer called and invited us to a tête-à-tête at his client’s office,” McCord clarified, and Sam realized it was helpless frustration that was making McCord avoid stating the simple truth. “I, of course, declined. Buchanan then suggested we meet here, instead. I declined again. However, after he warned me of the tiresome legal papers he’d file if I didn’t invite him over here, I graciously agreed.” He glanced at his watch and said abruptly and with distaste, “They’ll be here soon.”
“Did Buchanan say what the hell he wants?” Womack put in suddenly, wiping off the lenses of his bifocals. He was so quiet at times that Sam would almost forget he was there, but when he spoke, he was surprisingly forceful and frequently caustic.
“He said,” McCord sardonically replied, “that he believes his client is the subject of our murder investigation and he wishes to spare all of us here the needless inconvenience and expense of pursuing a senseless theory.”
“I wonder what brought that on,” Womack said, his brows drawn together.
“For one thing, Valente knows he’s being tailed. He shook off the tail last night as soon as Mrs. Manning finished ‘chatting’ with the reporters and got into his car. However,” he continued with grim amusement, “one of our cruisers happened to spot Valente’s Bentley down at a restaurant on Great Jones Street. Guess which restaurant he took her to?”
“His aunt’s place,” Shrader put in.
“Angelini’s,” McCord confirmed with a nod. “She also spent the night with him last night.” Leaning back in his chair, he picked up a pencil, and flipped back through the pages of his tablet. “I can’t believe we haven’t been able to connect Valente and Leigh Manning prior to that opening night party.”
He read from his notes, ticking off each item as he covered it with them: “We’ve checked all of Valente’s phone records and the Mannings’ phone records as well. The only calls made to Valente were a few from Logan Manning’s office placed during the month before he died. The only call made to Valente from the Manning residence was on the day before he disappeared, when Mrs. Manning was at the theater getting ready for opening night.”
He glanced up briefly to see if anyone had anything to add. “We’ve checked with the doormen at both their residences, and we’ve checked with waiters at every restaurant and bar where Valente’s used a credit card in the last year. Nobody has ever seen them together, except at that party on the night before Manning disappeared. Now, of course, they’re inseparable and they phone each other regularly.”
Tossing his pencil on his desk, he leaned back in his chair. “We know from Valente’s note to her that they were pretending they didn’t know each other that night, but how in the hell have they been keeping in touch? How can two people carry on an affair, let alone plan a murder, without leaving a trace of their association? When did they first get together, how long has this been going on?”
Sam suddenly stiffened. “What street did you say Angelini’s is on?”
“Great Jones Street. You were the one who knew all about that restaurant,” he reminded her, frowning in puzzlement at her question and her sudden, avid interest.
“Yes, but I’ve never been there. What’s the address on Great Jones Street?”
“The street is only a few blocks long. What difference does it make?”
Sam burst out laughing and stood up. “They’ve known each other forever!” Without another word, she turned and headed for her desk, where she’d left Leigh Manning’s file.
Chapter 54
* * *
Several minutes later, Sam triumphantly placed Leigh Manning’s open file in front of McCord and pointed to an old New York City address. For Shrader and Womack’s benefit, she said aloud, “Leigh Manning moved to Great Jones Street while she was still attending NYU.”
McCord glanced at the address in the file as he reached into his desk drawer and yanked out a phone book.
“I already checked,” Sam said, returning to her chair. “There’s an Angelini’s Restaurant and an Angelini’s Market listed, and I called there a moment ago. The market has been at that same address for forty-five years, and it’s just down the block from Leigh Manning’s old address. I also checked the early employment records in Valente’s file—he worked there on and off during the same period Leigh Manning lived down the street.”
Shrader sent Sam an approving, paternal nod for her discovery; then he turned businesslike. “Exactly how long ago did she live near the market?”
When Sam told him, he tipped his head back and stared up at the ceiling, his eyes narrowed in thought. “So by the time she met Valente, he’d already done time for manslaughter . . .” In the pause that followed, no one attempted to confirm his statement, because they were all so familiar with Valente’s life history by then that any one of them could have written his biography.
“Let’s consider a different scenario for Valente and Leigh Manning and see if this one plays,” Shrader said. “Valente meets Leigh Kendall when she lives down the street from the market where he works, and they have a fling. Naturally, he tells her the story of his life, and since Valente’s a tough bastard and proud of it, he includes his stint in prison for manslaughter. After the fling is over, she goes her way and marries Manning, and Valente goes his way. Valente and Leigh Manning don’t see each other after that. I mean, they never really had anything in common in the first place, right?”
“Right,” Womack said. “Go on, I’m with you.”
“Fourteen years go by,” Shrader continued; “then one day, Leigh Manning finds out her husband is cheating on her, or laundering illegal money—or whatever—and she decides she wants to get rid of him, permanently. Now, who would she call to advise her about doing something like that? Who does she know who has firsthand experience with murder?”
“She’d call her old friend from Great Jones Street,” Womack agreed aloud.
“Exactly. She calls him from a pay phone, and he picks her up in his car, and they talk there. They meet the same way another time or two to make their plans, but that’s all they do. That would explain why we can’t dig up any evidence they were having an affair—because they weren’t having one.”
He paused, his brow furrowing again. “When I think about it, it’s just as likely that she didn’t call Valente out of the blue with her problem. Manning’s secretary said Manning had been making some business overtures to Valente in the weeks before he died. Maybe Manning brought up Valente to his wife, and that’s when she realized how helpful her old pal could be in disposing of her husband. Doesn’t matter,” he said, giving his big head a shake. “Anyway, on the night before they plan to off old Logan, he suddenly decides he could make some points with his potential business investor by inviting him to Leigh’s fancy party. Mrs. Manning’s secretary—Brenna something—specifically told me Manning added Valente to the guest list himself, at the last minute.”
Womack looked impressed. “So Valente goes to the party, but for obvious reasons, he and Mrs. Manning carefully pretend not to know each other.” He looked at Sam, who was frowning in thought. “You got problems with this theory?”
“I was thinking about the pears he sent her in the hospital,” Sam replied. “I’ve always assumed he knew she liked pears for breakfast because they’d had a lot of cozy breakfasts together, but it’s perfectly possible that Valente simply remembered her shopping habits at his aunt’s market, and in a nostalgic moment, he sent her the pears in the hospital.”
Satisfied, Shrader turned to McCord. “How does this sound to you, Lieutenant?”
The phone on McCord’s desk had started ringing before Shrader finished the question. McCord answered it, listened for a moment, and then said curtly. “Put them in an interview room and tell them to wait there.”
When he hung up, he said, “Valente and Buchanan are here”; then he unhurriedly considered Shrader’s question. “I have one major problem with your theory, and it’s this: The Feds call Valente the Ic
Womack immediately came up with a viable possibility: “Maybe she offered him her husband’s dirty money. She doesn’t strike me as the type to try to launder it herself.”
“That’s an inducement that would appeal to Valente, as long as there’s a truckload of money involved,” McCord agreed. “Evidently Mrs. Manning also sweetened the deal by offering him herself, because there is definitely something sexual going on between them now.”
In the silence that followed, Sam reluctantly shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t buy any of this.”
“What do you mean you can’t buy any of it?” McCord said sharply, frowning at her. “It explains things that have bothered me for weeks about their relationship. It makes perfect sense.”
“But only up to a point. It explains why and how two guilty conspirators kept their acquaintance a complete secret while they planned to murder Manning. But what it doesn’t explain is why they abandoned all caution, even before his body was discovered. Why would Valente be stupid enough to fly her in his helicopter to a place he knew would be crawling with cops? Why are they flaunting their relationship now, when they need to look innocent?”