"A blouse. A very nice blouse."
"From this closet?"
The super nodded.
"Was it in a wrapper from the cleaners?"
"No. Miz Peltier must have taken it off."
Finn could believe Portia Kane would make her PR rep pick up her dry cleaning. And he could believe Kane's family would send someone to retrieve it after her death, worried their daughter's employee might "forget" to return a valuable item. But for Peltier to put it into her closet with her own clothing after removing the dry-cleaning wrapper?
Finn took out his notebook. "Could I get a description of Ms. Kane's cousin?"
The super looked alarmed. "She asked the officers. They said it was okay. And she was a very nice girl - "
"I'm sure she was and I'm sure she did speak to them. But I need to make a record of it, and you probably got a better look at her than they did."
He jotted down the information. Why would anyone lie to get into Peltier's apartment? If Peltier was holed up with a friend, Finn could imagine that friend sneaking in to get her some clothing. But a single shirt? Or was it something about the shirt? He tried to recall what witnesses said Peltier had been wearing that night. A dress, the one found at Judd Archer's.
He told the super he'd check with the officers and get their details, and ask them not to let anyone else in without an escort. The super got the message: don't open this apartment door again.
Finn's "Persons Of Interest" list for the Portia Kane case was starting to look like a roster of ghosts. Phantoms, at least.
As he sus
pected, no young woman had asked the stakeout officers for access, so he had one more nameless description to add to his list, along with Peltier's Indo American friend, her boyfriend and the red-haired teenage boy. Not to mention the most elusive ghost of all - Peltier herself.
Next the team met for another update so Finn could report to brass. When the meeting finished, Finn gathered his papers and headed for the coffee room. It was more of a closet than a room, barely big enough for the tiny table with the coffeemaker. Someone had made good use of the space, though, covering the walls in the safety posters the department was required to post.
He laid the pages on the table, facedown, and reached for a Styrofoam cup. Beside the stack, the ancient drip machine hissed. The quarter-filled pot was so stained it looked as if they'd misread the "auto-stop" feature as "auto-clean," and hadn't so much as rinsed it since buying it.
Finn lifted the pot and swirled the contents.
"Please tell me you aren't going to drink that," Damon said.
Finn sniffed the opening, judging the degree of burning by both the smell and the quantity of floating flakes. He filled his cup halfway.
"Oh, man. Please. There's got to be a coffee shop around."
"Block away. Two bucks a cup." He added creamer. Sniffed. Added more. "Got two hits for Peltier's friend."
Damon stopped eyeing the coffee cup and went very still.
"The one she was at Bane with Thursday night," Finn continued. "I called a buddy at the Times. He came up with two journalists matching the description." Finn picked up his pages and showed the top one to Damon. "One's a photojournalist with the Times. The other's a copyeditor at La Opinion."
Finn waited. It took almost a minute.
"Neither of those is the woman you're looking for," Damon said finally. "Her name is Hope Adams. She's a reporter with True News."
* * *
ROBYN
Like any couple, Damon and Robyn each had interests the other hadn't shared. Damon loved detective shows; Robyn couldn't see the attraction, but had watched them with him anyway. If someone had asked her whether she'd learned anything from them, she would have laughed and said she barely paid any attention, usually using the time to mentally plan her week's schedule. In the last couple of days, though, she discovered that even if she hadn't been actively watching, obviously she'd learned something.
Today's lesson? Stalking 101.
For three blocks she'd been following the man who'd stopped at her motel door and she'd come to a matching number of conclusions.