Someone to Watch Over Me

Chapter 68

* * *

McCord badged the doorman at Jane Sebring’s apartment building. “Have you seen Miss Sebring today?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. She left a few hours ago.”

“Could she have returned without you seeing her?”

“It’s not likely.”

“?‘Likely’ isn’t good enough,” McCord said, stalking into the building.

A security guard in a maroon uniform like the doorman’s was sitting at a desk in the lobby. McCord showed him his badge. “I need to get up to Miss Sebring’s apartment.”

“Apartment Twenty-four-A,” the security guard said, standing up quickly and walking over to the elevator with them. He put his key in the lock and the doors opened. “Get somebody with a key to Twenty-four-A up there right away,” McCord added as the elevator doors opened.

Sam walked inside with him, and her adrenaline level began to climb along with the elevator’s ascent, but her features were perfectly composed. She knew this drill: she’d done it before. She recognized the fear coiling in her stomach; she acknowledged it, and drew on it to keep herself focused. Reaching into her handbag, she unsnapped the holster on her nine-millimeter Glock and let her hand rest lightly on its grip.

No one answered McCord’s repeated knocks on the door of apartment 24A. He was pressing the buzzer yet again when the super got off the elevator carrying a key.

“Are you sure this is okay—for me to let you in, I mean?” the heavyset man asked.

“Would I lie to you?” McCord said, taking the man’s elbow and moving his arm toward the door’s lock.

The lock clicked open, and McCord pushed the man back and away from the door. “You stay over there,” he warned. Reaching inside his jacket, McCord unsnapped his shoulder holster and pulled out a Glock forty-caliber.

“Holy God!” the man mumbled. “What are you doing?” His gaze flew to Sam, as if he expected a well-dressed young woman in an expensive suede suit to bring sanity to the situation. Silently, she stepped out of her heels, pulled her Glock from her handbag, and raised it high, clamped between her hands.

“Ready?” McCord said softly, standing to one side of the door and reaching for the knob with his left hand. He looked at her without a trace of hesitation, as if he knew his life was safe in her hands.

Sam nodded a firm yes, and pressed back against the wall, bracing herself as McCord shoved hard on the door and sent it crashing against the opposite wall.

Pitch blackness and silence greeted them.

Keeping his body out of the line of fire, McCord reached inside, feeling the wall for a light switch.

Overhead lights came on, revealing a living room directly ahead and a dining room on the left. Nobody—alive or dead—was in evidence.

Silently, he signaled Sam to follow him to the right.

Room by room, they searched the apartment from one end to the other. “She must be at the theater,” McCord said, holstering his weapon. “Let’s go.”

“Take a look at this first,” Sam said, leading him to one of the closets she’d checked while he was checking another. With her foot, she nudged a long dressing robe aside and exposed a dark green bundle, rolled and tied. “The missing sleeping bag,” he said tightly.

He was already issuing instructions to the super while Sam hastily stepped into the suede high heels. “Stay in the lobby for fifteen minutes and if Miss Sebring shows up, don’t mention that we were here, but call me immediately. I’ll have a car out in front after that, and you can go on about your business.”

“Sure. Okay, Lieutenant,” the super said eagerly, taking McCord’s card. Like most civilians in similar circumstances, the super had reacted first with horror at the sight of drawn weapons, and then with fascination when the danger was over. “Listen, I don’t want to tell you how to do your jobs,” he said as they waited for the elevator, “but didn’t you two forget a little something when you took your guns out?”

“Like what?” McCord asked dryly, but Sam and he both knew exactly what the super was getting at.

“You know—like this—” He made a motion like someone grabbing the slide on the top of a semiautomatic weapon and racking a round into the chamber.

“That’s only in the movies,” McCord told him as the elevator arrived and they stepped into it.

“It sure looks good,” the super said.

“That’s why they do it,” replied Sam.

He looked disbelievingly at her, and she told him with a smile, “That motion you made sends a bullet into the chamber.” As if she were imparting a secret, she lowered her voice a little and told him, “In real life, we sort of like to have a bullet already in there when we take our weapons out.”

“No fooling!” he exclaimed.

At the front desk, McCord paused long enough to pass along the same instructions to the security guard that he’d given the super.

He was on his phone before they walked through the front doors, arranging to have the building entrance put under surveillance immediately.

Chapter 69

* * *

Jason Solomon was berating a stagehand when he saw Sam and McCord heading swiftly down the aisle toward him, and he turned his ire on them. “What the hell is the matter with you people?” he burst out, stalking toward the front of the stage. “Haven’t you ever heard of making an appointment? It’s polite, it’s—”

“Where is Jane Sebring?” McCord interrupted sharply.

“How the hell would I know? She’s probably at home.”

“She’s not at home. We just came from there. What time does she usually get here?”

“About now, usually, but I fired her this morning. God, what a day this is turning out to be! I’ve got sound problems and a curtain going up in an hour and a half.”

“Shut up and listen,” McCord snapped. “Where’s Sebring’s dressing room?”

“This way—” Solomon said, startled and resentful.

Sebring’s things were still in her dressing room, but she wasn’t there. “Was she upset when you fired her?” Sam asked. “I mean, did she expect it or did it surprise her?”

“?‘Upset’?” Jason repeated sarcastically. “She was demented. That is one lunatic woman,” he added, walking toward a tiny office at the end of the hall with Sam and McCord right beside him.

“Why did you fire her?” Sam persisted. “She had good reviews.”

“I fired her because Leigh Kendall wouldn’t appear on the same stage with her, and who can blame Leigh for that?”

“Did Jane Sebring know that was why you were firing her?” McCord asked impatiently.

“Yes, of course. I explained the situation to her agent on the phone this morning when I started negotiating the buyout on her contract. The guy’s a vulture; he—”

“If you fired her through her agent,” Sam interrupted, “how do you know she was ‘demented’ about it?”

“Because she showed up here today, right after Leigh left to go to Valente’s office and then home for a rest.” Solomon stopped in front of his desk and turned to face them as he added, “I told Jane to clear her stuff out of Leigh’s dressing room, but she left everything and ran out of here. The woman’s crazy.”

“What time was that?” McCord asked.

“What the hell difference does—” Solomon broke off and backed around his desk as McCord took one long step toward him. “Between three and four, I think.”

“Get Leigh Kendall on the phone,” McCord snapped. “Call her at whatever number you use to reach her.”

“Can’t you people just wait here until—”

McCord leaned across his desk, grabbed the telephone, and shoved it toward him. “Call her!”