"Any good news, Nan?"
Nancy tipped her head back with a sigh as she heard her father's voice through her cell phone. She had managed to convince Humphrey to head back to the hotel by telling him she was going shopping, and that she didn't plan on being back until after dinner. He had wanted to continue their conversation, but she had flagged down a taxi and slipped inside, apologizing as she did.
She hadn't wanted to be around Humphrey, especially not after that last interview. While Humphrey did seem at least moderately oblivious to some cues, she didn't want him making any comment on her behavior around Nickerson. She was telling herself to forget it, and to make up for that strange spark between them by investigating him even more closely.
Before she did that, though, she was definitely going to need some new shoes.
"On the one hand, Humphrey's old friends with the brother of one of the suspects," she told her father. "On the other hand... I still don't know which one of them did it."
"Tell me your impressions," he invited her.
"Mostly negative. How did the grand jury appearance go?"
"It was delayed," Carson said with a heavy sigh. "One of those hurry-up-and-wait situations. I wish I could hop on a plane tonight, but I do trust your insight. Did any of them give you a particularly negative feeling?"
Nancy thought guiltily of the warmth that had swept over her when Nickerson had taken her hand. "Definitely, just for different reasons. Just so you know, though, your gold card and I are on the way to the department store..."
Carson chuckled. "Sounds like a business expense to me," he teased her. "Listen, I have a few things to finish up here. Mind if I call you back in a while?"
Nancy agreed, and checked her email as she hobbled into the department store. Carlton Gordon had responded to her emailed request for an interview. She had debated about whether to speak to him as Ann Mallory or as herself, and had decided that she would leave Humphrey to speak to the CFO in character as an investor, while she questioned Carlton Gordon without the persona. After all, Gordon had discovered his daughter's body, and she needed to know the circumstances and anything else he had noticed. Asking as Ann Mallory would seem incredibly crass, and approaching him as a reporter would likely end badly. Honesty seemed like the best policy, especially since she was trying to track down his daughter's killer.
Nancy had only brought the slingbacks because they matched her suit, so she bought a pair of slightly lower heels in the same color. She didn't have many businesslike outfits in her luggage, so she bought a pair of neutral pencil skirts and a few casual but professional tops. While she was walking to the checkout, gingerly to keep from further irritating her already-raw feet, she passed the formalwear department.
Well, she told herself, Bess wouldn't mind so much if Nancy found her something on sale. She flipped through a few of the sale and clearance racks, keeping Bess's size in mind, but she speculatively eyed a one-shoulder taupe gown without making a decision. Bess was the fashionista, the person Nancy always asked for advice, and she didn't want to buy Bess something that just made her roll her eyes in exasperation, even if it was from New York.
As she headed out, on the spur of the moment, Nancy decided to call her Aunt Eloise and see if she was free for dinner. When she responded that she would love to meet her niece in a few hours, Nancy headed back to the hotel to change and put on a pair of infinitely more comfortable sneakers. Her father called when she was just putting on her new heels and disgustedly throwing the slingbacks into the vacant shoebox. She had decided to throw them into the next batch of items meant for goodwill. Surely someone else could use them.
"So you were saying you haven't come to any conclusion yet."
"Yeah. Like you thought, this is going to take more than catching someone in a basic lie. Humphrey's idea about the conflict of interest sounds like a good one, even if he is totally awful in so many other ways."
"He hasn't done anything inappropriate, has he?"
Nancy decided to omit Humphrey's attempts to contribute to her underage drinking, and focused instead on his blind spots when it came to their suspects. She told her father that she would be interviewing Carlton Gordon the next day, and to let her know if he finished with the grand jury and was able to join her. After she promised to call him with any new developments and asked him to pass her love on to Hannah, she told him how much she missed him and hung up.
With her makeup off and her face scrubbed fresh and clean, Nancy felt a hundred times better. She dressed in a pair of straight-leg jeans and funky burgundy and pink sneakers, and a pink and grey button-down shirt. She put half her hair up and scrutinized her reflection for a moment in the mirror, then reached for a tube of lip gloss.
She looked much younger than she had as Ann Mallory, especially with the scattering of freckles across her nose and cheekbones exposed. Much less sophisticated, too. She would look like a total slob next to him...
She put Nickerson entirely out of her head as she took the taxi to meet her aunt. Nancy was always ready to try a new restaurant, and when the cab stopped in front of a Sichuan restaurant, she had to laugh. Eloise and her husband Seth were waiting outside, and her aunt greeted her with a warm hug. "It's so wonderful to see you again, Nancy," she said with a smile.
"I'm just happy you two were able to meet me," Nancy replied with her own smile, nodding at Seth. She had met him while he and her aunt were still dating, and even suspected that he might be guilty of a kidnapping—but her suspicions had proven entirely incorrect, happily.
Aunt Eloise couldn't resist the lure of Grand Marnier walnut prawns, and Seth ordered the duck breast confit in red wine citrus sauce with foie gras. Nancy opted for the house special of braised fish in a new-style Vietnamese sauce. As they ate, Nancy filled them in on the case she was investigating for her father, in broad, non-specific strokes. She was pretty sure that Seth wasn't acquainted with any of her suspects, but being cautious felt safer.
"Sounds like it could be dangerous," Seth commented.
"It could be," she agreed, but she had never lingered on such concerns for long. They never stopped her, anyway. "With the way things are going, though, I might be here for longer than I was expecting. So maybe we'll be able to meet again soon."
Then Eloise filled her in on her summer plans, while her schedule was much more relaxed. She paused after a bite of ice cream. "I heard that Sasha was doing well," she said, then looked over at Nancy.
Nancy smiled politely. "That's nice," she commented, and looked down at her own dessert.
She couldn't say that she had loved Sasha Petrov, the Russian ballet dancer she had met during a summer she spent visiting her aunt in the Hamptons, but she had definitely developed strong feelings for him. When the end of the summer had come and Sasha had told her that he would stay in the States for her instead of returning home if that was what she had wanted, she hadn't been able to give him the answer she had feared he wanted. He was exotic, very different from any other man she had met, but their lives were too different to sustain a real relationship. He had returned to Russia and his career had continued to improve, and Nancy didn't feel bitter or sad over it, just happy for him.
It had seemed kinder to fall out of touch with him. She didn't want to linger on what might have been between them, because nothing she could do would change the past, especially not now. He had the life he was meant to have, and so did she. She firmly believed that. It just so happened that that life wasn't meant to be together.
Even while she was still talking to her aunt and uncle, saying her goodbyes, Nancy's mind had turned back toward the case. She couldn't shake the feeling that the confidential deal the group had been discussing on the yacht had something to do with Kate Gordon's death, but she still didn't know how to find out what it was without directly asking someone—which seemed borderline impossible, given her cover persona. She decided to feel her way the next day during her meeting with Carlton Gordon, and if that didn't work, to see if her father had any more luck talking about it with Mark. Maybe, she reflected, her age had made him less confident in her abilities, or otherwise reluctant to discuss the matter.
Maybe she would have more luck seducing the matter out of Lionel Stallings. She couldn't hold back a dramatic shudder in the back of the taxicab, at that thought. Too bad Bess hadn't accompanied her...
Although Nancy had no doubt that Bess would have set her sights on a significantly more handsome suspect, if the goal was to seduce information out of anyone.
Back at the hotel, Nancy went by the front desk and asked for instructions on how to print in the business center, and how much that would cost. She retrieved her laptop and headed downstairs; she could print wirelessly and pick up the printed pages afterward, but she definitely didn't want anyone else seeing what she was working on. She also couldn't see the big picture as clearly just using computer files, and wanted to spread out the documents, to see if any patterns jumped out at her.
Nancy had been hard at work for a few hours, and was just considering finding the closest vending machine and buying something caffeinated, when she sensed someone in the doorway. Humphrey was standing there, and Nancy forced a conciliatory smile onto her face. He was going to handle interviewing the CFO for her, after all, and that was worth at least a smile.
"There you are! I was hoping you hadn't gone to bed for the night."
Nancy glanced back at her laptop screen, both wishing that he would get the hint and completely convinced that he wouldn't. "What's up?"
"Are you sure you don't want to do the CFO thing with me tomorrow? Afterward we could go get some sushi or something. Maybe brainstorm."
On the surface, what he was saying sounded good, but the glint in her eyes told her otherwise. "That might work," she told him. "The sushi and brainstorming thing. It really depends on when I finish interviewing Carlton Gordon." She paused for a moment. "It's just I'm not good at all with figures, and I'd be hopelessly lost if I went along while you were talking to the CFO." She stopped just short of pulling a red-gold strand of hair out of her ponytail and twining it around her fingers with her blue eyes opened wide, but it was a close call. She was a little afraid that doing so definitely would give him the wrong idea, and she didn't want to play the helpless female card and watch him leap gallantly to her defense—by demanding that she accompany him.
"I guess that makes sense," Humphrey said, glancing down. "Did you have a nice dinner?"
Nancy nodded. "I did. Caught up with my aunt and uncle."
"Hmm. I was hoping Vince would be able to have dinner with me, but he had to reschedule."
At the look on Humphrey's face, Nancy sighed internally. "Well, I guess we'll just have to have that sushi lunch tomorrow, then," she said lightly.
"And sake?"
Nancy shook her head, turning her attention back to her computer screen. "Don't push your luck. Goodnight, Humphrey."
He lingered in the doorway, though. "Are you sure you should be down here so late, alone? What if some guy gets drunk and comes in here and tries to start something..."
Nancy glanced up at the security camera in the business center, but decided not to mention it. "I'll be fine," she told him. "I was thinking about turning in soon anyway."
"Really? Because we could go upstairs, you know, get that drink you promised me...?"
At that Nancy very nearly snapped, but he looked both so harmless and so transparently, self-consciously smarmy that she just shook her head. "You and I both know I promised no such thing," she told him, glancing back down at her computer. "And if you keep trying this shit, I'll call my father."
The change in Humphrey's expression was instant. "Oh, come on, Nan, you wouldn't—"
"Don't—" call me that, Nancy started to say, but she didn't finish. After all, it had worked out pretty well when he had slipped in front of Cantoni, and she didn't see him often enough for him to become accustomed to calling her by the nickname. "Don't try me," she told him. "Get some rest. I think we'll both need it."
Humphrey resisted the urge to make another pickup attempt, for which Nancy was infinitely grateful. While the business center was open twenty-four hours, she didn't want to go upstairs with a ream of paper and fall immediately to sleep without looking it over, so she packed up her laptop and her research findings soon after Humphrey finally gave up and left her alone.
In her room, Nancy turned the television on low and changed into her pajamas, brushed her teeth, and let out a low sigh before she tackled the printouts. She arranged them on the desk, but when that proved too small a surface, she moved the armchair and used the floor in front of her balcony windows.
"Okay," she told the printouts. "Show me what you're hiding."
When Nancy woke the next morning, she was a little dismayed to find that her sarcastic comment to Humphrey had partially come true. Her head was swimming with figures, and try as she could, she couldn't figure out any real patterns. Maybe, she thought grudgingly, the sushi and brainstorming lunch wasn't such a bad idea. And maybe the key to finding Kate's killer wasn't in the figures at all; maybe she had been the victim of the rage of a jealous lover or ex-lover. Nancy made a mental note to see what she could discover on social media regarding Kate's life. Given her minor socialite status, thanks to her family's wealth, Nancy had a feeling that wouldn't be a difficult task.
In the meantime, Nancy dressed in a blouse and pencil skirt, and though her feet were still a little sore from the day before, her new heels were infinitely more comfortable. Keeping in mind that her youth might not necessarily inspire confidence in Carlton Gordon, and that she still didn't know for sure that he wasn't responsible for his daughter's death, Nancy applied her makeup carefully and checked her ensemble one last time before heading out to flag a cab. She checked her phone and found a text from Humphrey reminding her about their lunch date, and she put her phone back into her purse with a sigh, rolling her eyes.
God. She couldn't even imagine how much easier the case would be going if she liked the person assisting her. Bess and George were invaluable for that very reason, and once her father made it to New York, she was sure they would have it figured out in no time at all.
And then she would have no excuse to see Nickerson again.
Nancy shook her head, putting that thought out of her mind. Bess would get a kick out of hearing about him, and that was good for something, anyway.
Nancy was on her guard from the moment she entered Carlton Gordon's office, but that wasn't so unusual. He was a suspect, after all. She introduced herself and explained that she was assisting in the investigation into Kate's death, without specifying whose investigation she represented.
"Could you tell me about the night of the incident?" Nancy asked, a notebook on her lap and a pen in her hand. She had also activated the voice recorder on her cell phone, but she wanted to jot down her impressions while they spoke.
Carlton turned and glanced through one of the enormous windows, which offered an unparalleled view of the city. His office was spacious and tastefully decorated in shades of grey and black, and a large painting of a bold bright-red geometric design stood out against the otherwise bland, textured grey wallpaper. In MacIntosh's office, Nancy had noticed an extensive "ego wall"—photos of MacIntosh shaking hands with many wealthy people and celebrities. Stallings had had a similar wall, and Parker's desk had held a few framed photos of people Nancy assumed were family members. Other than diplomas in understated frames, Nancy saw only one other wall hanging in Gordon's office: a small black-and-white photo of Carlton, a woman approximately ten years younger than he, and a smiling younger woman between the two Nancy assumed was probably Kate. The only other photos Nancy had seen of the murdered woman were professional head shots.
Carlton had founded the group; he had the most experience of all of them, he was the oldest, but the detritus of those years hadn't accumulated around him. Bennett Group was his, a legacy he had announced every intention of passing along to his daughter. Now that dream had been ruined.
She let him gather his thoughts, glad that Humphrey hadn't come along. Wherever he was, he was doubtless impatient to finish his interview and make their sushi date. Nancy hoped for both their sakes that he was doing a thorough enough job that she wouldn't be forced to go back to interview again after him.
With a sigh, Mr. Gordon turned back to her, and Nancy sat expectantly, a sympathetic expression on her face. For a moment she thought of how her own father would feel in this situation. Nancy was her father's only child, and their relationship was so close that she couldn't imagine how deeply he would be hurt by her loss. Nancy only knew that she would be devastated by her own father's death.
"We were on the yacht to discuss a confidential matter," Carlton began, his gaze down, on the desk blotter.
"Can I ask—whose yacht?"
"Mine," he said. "Though I think I'll sell it now. I can't bear the thought of stepping foot on it ever again."
While Carlton didn't elaborate on what the matter up for discussion was, when Nancy asked specifically if any of the members of the group had dissented during the discussion, Carlton nodded.
"Armstruther—Mark did. He grew quite vehement. But we need only a simple majority vote to make a decision, and as I told the police—Mark wouldn't have had any financial motivation to attack my daughter. Not over what we were discussing that night."
"But there were other discussions?" Nancy asked, sensing an opening. "Other matters which might have been a catalyst?"
Carlton sighed again, shaking his head. "That was the only thing out of the ordinary that happened that night. If Mark doesn't care for the direction of the company's investments, he always has the right to..."
Then Carlton glanced up, realizing that he was thinking aloud, and his face became less open. "We aren't that kind of company," he said neutrally. "And Mark has many other investments, as do the other members of the group. Bennett Group is my primary concern." He shook his head. "Especially now," he murmured.
Nancy's instincts were telling her that Carlton's grief and sorrow were genuine. "You were there that night, though," she continued. "Did you get a sense that any of the other members could have been responsible? Any argument, disagreement, conflict? Any lingering hostility over maybe a bad investment or decision?"
Carlton was shaking his head impatiently before she was even finished. "No, no. Nothing like that. I didn't sense anything like that. But what I can't forget is that one of them, one of them, must have decided to hurt my daughter. And I can't help feeling that I should have done something to stop it. I'm afraid..." he swallowed hard. "I pray that this wasn't done as some sort of warning to me."
"A warning? How so?"
Carlton Gordon shook his head. "I wish I knew," he said quietly. "Because I would give anything to have her back."
After she took him quickly through an account of the discovery of Kate's body, which was clearly still difficult for him to discuss, Nancy left him with her cell number, a sincere apology for his loss, and an invitation to call her if he remembered anything else that could possibly be significant. She waited until she was back in another taxi to check her buzzing cell phone, but was disappointed to discover that it was only a message from Humphrey, not her father telling her that his long-delayed departure was imminent.
Ready for our brainstorming session, cutie?
"Shit," Nancy sighed under her breath, absently tilting her feet back on her heels to give them some relief. At this rate, Nancy would have preferred just hiring a damn CPA for the cover and letting Humphrey go back to Illinois, where he would be safely out of her hair.
When the cab pulled up in front of the restaurant Humphrey had selected for their lunch, Nancy was actually impressed. She had almost expected him to opt for some chain restaurant, but she remembered that he wanted to impress her, so of course he would select some venue meant for that purpose.
That realization wasn't disproven by anything she found inside. Humphrey waved her over to a table for two, which irritated her a little, but at least they would be close enough to hear each other if they spoke quietly, and she didn't want their conversation to be public knowledge.
The waitress arrived, and though she had told him repeatedly that she didn't want it, Humphrey ordered a bottle of sake with two cups. Nancy asked about the house special, and the waitress said it was a selection of the chef's choice of both sushi and sashimi. Humphrey immediately consulted his menu, and Nancy guessed that he hadn't known what sashimi was. His look of faint distaste told her he hadn't liked the answer.
He ordered three various sushi rolls with a bowl of warm noodle soup. Nancy, her face impassive, ordered the house special. She couldn't wait to see the look on Humphrey's face when it arrived.
"So did you find out anything during your interview?" Nancy asked as the waitress left with their orders. She unrolled her silverware and draped the napkin in her lap, determined to keep Humphrey on topic as much as she could.
"I had a hunch that maybe the company was in trouble," Humphrey said. "So I asked, off the record, about the payout on Kate's life insurance policy. Due to the circumstances of her death, until the investigation's complete, it won't pay out—and the named beneficiary is supposedly her father."
From their interview that morning, Nancy doubted that would prove much comfort for the man. "Good thinking," she told Humphrey, and his face lit up.
"So you think the dad's behind it?"
Nancy shook her head. "I don't," she admitted. "But I'm not eliminating him entirely from the suspect list yet. So is the company in trouble?"
"From everything I could see, no. Quite the opposite." Humphrey reached for an edamame pod as the waitress delivered their appetizer, his sake, and Nancy's water. "They're doing well."
"Well enough that they wouldn't desperately need whatever deal they were debating?"
Humphrey shrugged. "Well, that's the thing—I don't know. They want more money; of course they would. But then, that decision wasn't necessarily a deal. After all, were they there to vote on ousting someone from the company?"
"I haven't found out yet about the purpose of the meeting, just that it was confidential. Did you hear something?"
Humphrey shook his head. "But what if Kate was tired of waiting in her father's shadow and wanted to stage a hostile takeover? After all, the old man's apparently in good health, and probably isn't going to kick the bucket anytime soon. Maybe she decided to oust him, and he couldn't take the betrayal."
"And then shot her?" Nancy retorted, shaking her head. "Sounds farfetched."
Humphrey rolled his eyes at her. "But possible?"
"Of course it's possible." Nancy picked up an edamame pod. "Let's keep looking, though."
"You like him," Humphrey accused her, pouring himself a small cup of sake.
"I just don't get that kind of vibe off him. I don't know." She shrugged. "I'm sure everyone has something to hide, though."
When Nancy's entree arrived, right before Humphrey's, she was gratified to see his veiled expression of horror. The sushi was visually appealing enough, wrapped in seaweed and sticky rice, but the sashimi was simply sliced raw fish and other seafood. Nancy poured soy sauce into a small bowl and mixed some wasabi into it with her chopsticks, then glanced up at Humphrey just to find him staring at what she was doing. She deftly manipulated the wooden sticks around a portion of unadorned raw salmon.
"Want to try some?"
"No, no, I'm fine," Humphrey assured her, directing his gaze hurriedly back to his own plate.
Nancy was sure they had missed or overlooked something, but she wasn't sure what it was. If greed hadn't been the motivation in Kate's murder, and Nancy still wasn't sure that it hadn't been, but they hadn't yet found conclusive proof either way—she was inclined to set her investigation on the other common motivation: jealousy or revenge.
"I think that if anyone in the group knew what Kate was doing, who she was seeing, it would be someone near her own age," Nancy mused aloud toward the end of their meal. "And the best candidates would be your buddy and Nickerson."
"Probably," Humphrey said with a shrug. "I'll take Nickerson."
Nancy had to clamp down on her immediate objection, but apparently Humphrey could see it in her face. "What? You were saying that you wanted to interview Vince alone anyway," he pointed out. "Perfect opportunity."
She had to admit that was true. "And I still need to check and see if her social media profiles are locked down," she continued.
Humphrey tilted his head. "What, you're cool with swapping? After the way you were looking at that guy—"
Nancy reached for her water glass, damning the blush she could already feel rising in her cheeks. "It was nothing," she said. "You're right. It makes sense for you to go see him." Even though every fiber of her being wanted to object.
But, she reminded herself, at least Humphrey could be somewhat impartial where Nickerson's concerned—and you won't be swayed by knowing Cantoni's brother.
"It sure didn't look like nothing," Humphrey retorted, and Nancy was saved from replying when his phone went off. She took another, longer sip of water, hoping that it would help her cool down.
Humphrey's face lit up, but when he glanced back up at her, he looked almost sarcastic. "Guess you get your wish after all," he said. "Vince just asked if I wanted to play some racquetball."
"Sounds like a good opportunity to talk to him," Nancy replied. "Just remember, he's a suspect, okay?"
"Same to you," Humphrey replied, raising his eyebrows.
They split a cab back to the hotel so Humphrey could change for his meeting, and Nancy was hoping he would use the time to lose some of his sake buzz as well. She headed back to her own room, calling her father as soon as she was inside and able to kick off her heels.
"Still stuck here," he reported mournfully. "Any good leads?"
"A few," Nancy replied, filling him in on the life insurance angle, and Humphrey's theory about a hostile takeover. "One possibility he didn't consider, though, was that someone else could have been attempting a hostile takeover," she mused. "And maybe Kate was threatening to tell her father, and that was why she was killed."
"That does sound like a good theory," her father pointed out.
"Do you think you could ask Mark about it?" Nancy unfastened her pencil skirt and stepped out of it, then sat down at the edge of her bed, breathing a sigh of relief. She could already see the jean shorts she was about to put on.
"You don't want to?"
She explained her fear that Mark didn't trust her enough to talk about whatever the matter had been. "Maybe he'll open up to you, or at least give you some indication. In the meantime, though, I'm going to see if I can track down any of Kate's friends. Maybe one of them knows if she was seeing someone else in the group, or if she was worried about one of them in particular."
"Sounds good, Nan. Keep me posted, and I'll let you know as soon as I'm able to book a flight."
Nancy hung up and pulled the sheaf of papers representing her research to date out of her laptop bag, inspecting them carefully to make sure none of them looked like they were out of place or shuffled. She pulled on her shorts and fastened them, then glanced at her phone. Given his effect on her in person, maybe she could just interview Nickerson about Kate over the phone. She just wasn't sure how she was going to make it seem natural. Maybe, she considered, floating Humphrey's theory that Kate had been killed after an attempted hostile takeover...
But if that were true, then why wouldn't Mark have said he and Kate were the only dissenting voices?
Nancy sighed, wishing any of the theories they had come up with so far would work, and reached for her phone and Nickerson's business card. Almost immediately, her heart was beating traitorously fast.
The secretary—executive assistant, Nancy corrected herself with a sarcastic smile—who answered the call sounded businesslike and crisp. When Nancy asked if Mr. Nickerson had any time available that day or possibly the next, the assistant replied that he was out of the office and she was not sure when he would return, but she would pass along Nancy's request for an interview.
"Thank you. Please tell him it's a minor matter, and I would be happy to discuss it with him over the phone. He doesn't need to schedule any in-person time." Nancy hated how her heart sped up.
"I will."
Nancy took off her makeup and changed into a UC t-shirt, then sat down cross-legged on the bed. It took her a few minutes to locate Nickerson's biography in the stack.
He was seven years older than she, Nancy noticed immediately. According to an interview she had found on the Forbes website, in a section profiling promising young investors, Nickerson had been third in his class at Harvard. He came from a formerly wealthy family with connections—which made Nancy think, rather sourly, of Humphrey. However, from his answers and the sketch of his life so far, Nickerson seemed like a genuinely intelligent guy with a killer instinct for investing. Bennett Group was, as he had told her, only one of his many projects. The journalist who had interviewed him asked about a clean energy company, which had turned into one of his main projects. The thumbnail photo accompanying the article showed him posing with a few engineers, looking at schematics. The photo was grainy, but she traced his features again with a slow, discerning gaze.
Suspect, she reminded herself. Maybe even, possibly, Kate's jealous lover, or a spurned associate. You have no idea yet.
With a sigh, Nancy put his bio aside, then began to spread out her papers again. Humphrey had chastised her for wasting so many trees the night before, telling her proudly that he kept all his research digital. Nancy had felt a little guilty over the wastefulness, but a handful of URLs and PDFs just wasn't the same as seeing it all out in front of her, where she could make connections.
Nancy spent the next few hours going over interviews with her other suspects, transcribing her notes from her interview with Carlton Gordon, and checking social media for Kate's history. Many, many people had expressed their sympathy and condolences online after Kate's death, but Nancy was having some trouble discerning which ones were business associates, and which were close friends. Kate had kept her basic information available for public view, but of the nearly five hundred photos Nancy could see that Kate was tagged in, only those made at public events were viewable, those showing her smiling and shaking hands, drinking cocktails, posing with other investors and professionals. She needed to see the real Kate if she was going to be able to determine who had killed her.
Nancy checked her phone once her stomach started growling a little. Humphrey, amazingly, hadn't texted her to ask about dinner; presumably he had made plans with Vince. She finished her glass of water and stood, stretching with a quiet groan. She vaguely remembered seeing a room service menu, but it was probably on the research-covered desk. She didn't want to disturb her system, so she decided to just call the front desk and ask for something basic, like a chicken sandwich with fries.
Her hand was on the receiver when her cell phone rang, startling her a little. She reached for her cell, betting herself that Humphrey was calling to invite her to dinner, and she was already trying to mentally compose an excuse that wouldn't result in his saying they could order room service together.
The number showing on her caller ID had a New York area code, though.
"Hello?" Nancy answered cautiously.
"Ms. Mallory?"
"Yes," Nancy replied, pursing her lips as she glanced at her alarm clock. Business hours were over, but the voice sounded crisp and businesslike—
"I'm calling from Mr. Nickerson's office. He's ready for your interview."
"Oh," Nancy said. "Great. I'll hold."
"No... he's sending a car for you. It's at your hotel, in fact. Right now."