“Where is the note?” Morton asked.
“In the trash basket next to my bed, where I threw it after I read it.”
“Where is this Billy Bob guy?”
“The note said he had gone to Omaha. He’s doing some kind of deal with Warren Buffett.”
“How do you know that?” Dino asked.
“First, he told me so; second, he’s had two phone calls from Buffett, on successive days. I checked out the first one, and it originated from Buffett’s residence in Omaha.”
“You check it out, too,” Dino said to the two detectives. “And talk to Buffett. We got a time of death, yet?”
“The ME is upstairs working on it,” Weiss said.
As if on cue, the ME came into the room, and he didn’t waste any time. “Preliminary conc
lusions, death by strangulation, between nine and eleven, last night.”
Stone breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where were you between nine and eleven?” Morton asked.
“At Elaine’s.” He pointed at Dino. “He can confirm.”
“I can confirm,” Dino said. “I got there a little before nine, and he was already there; I left a little before eleven, and he was still there.”
“I didn’t leave until about eleven forty-five,” Stone said. “Elaine or the headwater, Gianni, can confirm that.”
Weiss had left the room, and he came back with Billy Bob’s note, holding it by a corner in his rubber-gloved fingers. “It’s on your stationery,” he said to Stone.
“I keep it on my desk in the bedroom, and in a pigeonhole over there.” He pointed at a bookcase in the corner. “I guess Billy Bob found it when he was looking for something to write the note on.”
A young man came into the room. “No prints,” he said.
“Whadaya mean, no prints?” Dino demanded.
“No prints anywhere in the bedroom or bathroom, not even the corpse’s. It’s been wiped clean, the whole area.”
“I like your purse,” Dino said, nodding at the bag hanging on the young man’s arm.
“It’s the corpse’s. Her name is Hilda Marlene Beckenheim, lives in Chelsea. There’s credit cards, a Pennsylvania driver’s license, a thing of birth-control pills and enough condoms to start a whorehouse.”
“Hooker,” Dino said.
“I’m so glad her name isn’t Tiffany,” Stone said.
“What?”
“Billy Bob introduced her to me at breakfast, yesterday, as Tiffany. One Tiffany in my life is enough.”
“Had you ever met her before that?”
“No, but I saw her at a party at the Four Seasons the night before last. Somewhere there’s a photograph of her with Billy Bob. Oh, yes, and with the mayor.”
“The mayor?” Weiss asked.
“Don’t worry, it’s not a scandal; it’s just a party photograph.”