“What happened next?” asked Nadine.
Wes made the mistake of looking into her eyes and immediately lost his train of thought. He knew the mechanics of a crush. The embarrassed excitement. The increasingly fantastical mental scenarios where you ended up kissing at the top of a volcano or something. He also knew they eventually dulled and were forgotten.
Whatever he was feeling showed no signs of fading, and this morning had not helped. But Monica was talking, and he needed to pay attention.
“He told me if I didn’t, he’d have no choice but to let me go without a reference because I exaggerated on my résumé. He knew I needed that job, right? My husband had left a few months before, and it was hard to make ends meet with my kids and all.”
“Yes,” said Nadine in sympathy.
“I also don’t like being bullied, so I told that son of a bitch to go fuck himself. How dare he threaten me. You know what kind of man he is?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll tell you what kind of man he is. He’d make me order catering for meetings from Peter and Co., the most expensive racket in town, and then he wouldn’t let me put the leftovers in the employee lunchroom. Bastard insisted it all be thrown away. The cookies were even individually wrapped. Individually wrapped! It’s like he didn’t think we were good enough to eat them.”
Wes despised the man on principle because of this.
“What happened after you said no?” asked Nadine to get them back on track.
“He fired me, and my lawyer said I didn’t have a chance in hell because I had exaggerated slightly on my résumélike everyone does, and I didn’t have any proof of his threat. So I say to myself, the hell with that, and I go by theHeraldto talk to a reporter. Next thing I know, I’m getting smeared in national media and accused of blackmail. I never blackmailed nobody.”
“What happened to Ian?” asked Wes.
“I gave him a heads-up, and he quit to work in tech.”
“Who was the reporter you talked to at theHerald?” asked Nadine.
The answer was prompt. “Irina Skoll. She said without proof, she couldn’t do much, but she must have blabbed to someone if Wilson was ready to take me down before I told my story.”
“Was there anything else about John Wilson we should know?” asked Nadine.
There was a pause. “A lot of stuff that added up to shadiness. He always had meetings that were off his calendar. Once, I heard a woman crying in his office late at night when I’d forgotten my wallet and had to come back. He took fancy vacations he wouldn’t let me book although I booked all his other stuff. Also, like I said, he’s a worm.”
After she disconnected with Monica, Nadine looked at Wes andcounted off on her fingers. “Fancy vacations, blackmail, and off-the-book meetings.”
“Don’t forget overall worminess.” Wes tapped his leg as he thought, taking comfort in the rhythm. “Not looking good for the senator.”
“We should go over what we have in detail,” Nadine said. “This might help us figure this out.”
Wes shivered with nervous anticipation. “We’ve gone from a rumor that one of Dot’s books was based on a politician to the possibility that a senator is potentially blackmailing people.” He thought it over. “It could be big, especially given John Wilson’s influence over the years. He was considered a rainmaker despite losing that leadership bid that could have made him prime minister.”
She nudged him. “Big but good?”
“Yes.” He kept theas long as I’m working with youto himself.
Thirty
Nadine reorganized the table of clues as she waited. There came a point in any investigation where she liked to sift through all the available data, and she was looking forward to doing it with Wes. He was smart, and his memory left her awestruck when she wasn’t being envious.
Wes came in, and she admired the clean lines of his body against the light in the doorway. He was just tall enough and broad enough and everything enough to make her want to leap over the table, but she would have to save those impulses until tonight. “Brent called,” he said. “No floor plans.”
“Damn.” That basement door would be the death of her.
He blew his breath out in frustration. “It has to be somewhere. The house isn’t that huge. I’m starting to wonder if we suffered a joint hallucination.” He walked over to the dumbwaiter and slid the door open. “No, we didn’t.”
Nadine shared his incredulity that they were being defeated by a door but did her best to put it aside. “Well, we can’t find the door, but maybe we can make some headway with the clues we’ve found so far.”
He came over to the table. “Where do you want to start?”
“Here.” Nadine pointed to the Abigail Spencer obit he’d found inThirty Pieces of Silver. “This woman doesn’t seem to have any connection to Dot, so I put it aside.”
“There must be something. Otherwise, why is it there?”
