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THE PHONE HAD BEEN RINGING regularly while Sheila was there. When she left, Hilda brought in the phone messages she’d taken, and Leigh leafed through them. Among the calls were two that Leigh felt she needed to return: one was from Michael Valente; the other was from Jason.
The woman who answered Michael Valente’s phone had an attitude that verged on abrasive. Besides being coldly formal, she was needlessly inquisitive and noticeably mistrustful of the answers Leigh gave to her questions. She not only insisted on knowing what Leigh’s call was in regard to, she insisted that Leigh give her phone number and address, and then she abruptly put the call on hold and left it there. Since Leigh’s name had been plastered all over the news for nearly a week, and linked with Valente’s since yesterday, it seemed a little difficult to believe any of those questions were really necessary. If the woman was his housekeeper, then she was under an iron edict to screen all his calls thoroughly and without exception. If the woman was his live-in girlfriend, then she had a whole lot of jealous insecurities about any female who called him. Either way, Leigh realized that Michael Valente must be a very difficult man to reach.
She was left on hold for so long that she was growing weary and exasperated and was about to hang up when he finally picked up the phone. “Leigh?”
For some reason, Leigh’s nervous system reacted with a jolt to the sound of his voice and his familiar use of her first name. There was something very . . . distracting . . . about it.
“Leigh?” he said again into the silence.
“Yes, I’m here. I’m sorry, I was—distracted.”
“Thank you for putting up with the inquisition and waiting for me to answer your call,” he said. “My secretary thought you were another reporter who’d dreamed up a fresh angle to bring me to the phone. When I called you earlier, I was preoccupied with something else or I’d have given you my private phone number, which is what I meant to do. Have you had any word about Logan?”
“No, nothing,” she said, wondering if he was always under siege from the media or if—God forbid—his situation at the office was the result of his kindness to her. She had an awful feeling it was the latter.
“Leigh?”
She gave a shaky sigh. “I’m sorry. You must feel like you’re talking to a dead phone. I was hoping you always got plagued by the press, and that I’m not the reason for what’s happening today.” As soon as she said it, she realized her hope was absurd, and—worse—she’d just rudely referred to his unsavory reputation with the law and the media. She put her forehead in her hand and closed her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered bleakly. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he said, but his tone turned brisk and chilly. “I was wondering if I could stop by tomorrow sometime and pick up the documents I need from Logan’s office. In the rush yesterday, I forgot about them.”
In “the rush yesterday,” he’d canceled his own schedule, located his pilot, put up with O’Hara’s argument, lent her his helicopter, stayed with her in the freezing cold, tolerated humiliation from the police, and carried her back and forth through the snow at the cabin. In her weakened emotional state, Leigh couldn’t seem to get over her seeming lack of gratitude, or ignore his reaction. “I’m just . . . so sorry,” she said again, tearfully.
“For what?” he said wryly. “For reading about me in the newspapers? Or for believing what you’ve read?”
Leigh lifted her head, her brows furrowing, something niggling at the back of her mind. Something troubling. “For everything,” she said absently.
“What time would be convenient for me to stop by tomorrow?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll be here all day unless I hear something about Logan.”
When she hung up, Leigh looked at the phone for a moment, trying to focus on the cause of her uneasiness. Something about his voice. Voices without faces . . . A man’s voice, pleasant at the time, but associated in her mind with uneasiness later, with danger . . . Excuse me, you dropped this . . .
Leigh shook off the thought of the man outside Saks. That wasn’t Valente. That couldn’t have been Valente. That was an insane notion—proof that she was teetering on the brink of mental and physical overload.
She decided to return Jason’s phone call, and found herself cheered by his familiar, frenetic energy and genuine concern. “You can keep telling me you’re fine,” he proclaimed at the end of their call, “but I want to see you with my own eyes, darling. What time shall I be there tomorrow?”
“Jason, I’m really not very good company.”
“But I am always good company, and I am going to share it with you tomorrow. Shall we say noon?”
Leigh accepted that he was going to be on her doorstep whether he was wanted or not, but she also realized she’d actually be glad to see him. She was dying of solitude and loneliness. “Noon is fine,” she said.
Chapter 19
* * *
Located on East Seventy-second Street, on the Upper East Side, the Eighteenth Precinct had the swankiest address of any of Manhattan’s twenty-three precincts.
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p; In an effort to keep the exterior from looking like a blight on the fancy neighborhood, the building had a pair of heavy, ornate front doors flanked on both sides by antique gas lanterns. Inside, however, the place was as unappealing and overcrowded as any other NYPD precinct.
Shrader was already waiting outside Captain Holland’s office when Sam arrived at noon on Saturday. He looked tired, disheveled, and moody. “Damn,” he said with a yawn, “I was hoping to get a day or two off while CSU went over the cabin. It felt good to sleep in my own bed last night. What time did Holland call you this morning and tell you to come in?”
“A little before eight,” Sam replied.
“The man doesn’t sleep. He’s always here. He lives for his job,” Shrader said.
In Sam’s opinion, Thomas Holland was more likely living for his next job. Everyone knew there was going to be an opening for a deputy commissioner, and the rumor was that Thomas Holland was a top candidate.
“Steve Womack is coming back to work on Monday/’ Shrader added with another yawn. “He says his shoulder has healed up fine after the surgery, and he can’t stand another day at home.”
The news that Shrader’s regular partner was returning meant that Sam would be assigned to someone else, and her heart sank at the thought of being pulled off the Manning investigation. “I guess that’s why I’m here then—” she said aloud, “Captain Holland wants a verbal report from both of us and then he’ll reassign me.”
Shrader grinned. “You’d better put on a happy face, Littleton, or I’ll get the impression you’re gonna miss me.”
Sam neither confirmed nor denied it. “I’m going to miss being on the Manning case,” she told him instead, “—assuming there is a case.”
The door to Holland’s office opened suddenly, and he gestured them inside. “Thanks for coming in on your day off,” he said, closing the door behind them. “I have to sign some papers, and then well talk. Have a seat,” he added, nodding toward the two chairs in front of his desk as he walked behind it and picked up his pen.
