Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

the warmth from the jacket. It was as if Silvestri were here. Did detectives all smell the same, of summer and smoke?
    Walters signaled up a uniform who looked as if he were still in high school and wearing a costume. “Cohen, let’s see if we can get some coffee over here. There’s an all-nighter over on Broadway.” He looked down at Wetzon. “Shove over, Miss ...”
    “Wetzon. Decaf for me, please,” she said to Cohen.
    “Yeah.” Walters sat down next to her, radiating heat. “You saw it happen? Right?”
    “No. Wrong. I found her.”
    “Security guard says you knew her name.”
    “I think she’s Tabitha Ann Boyd.”
    Conley pulled a glassine bag from his pocket. Inside was a very shiny, fat wallet. “On the nose,” he said.
    “I was meeting her there ... at the fountain.” Wetzon pointed to the main plaza. What about Rona? What had happened to her? “But she never showed up. I thought I’d just walk around the pool once and go home—”
    “You knew where to look, didn’t you.” Walters frowned. It wasn’t a question.
    “Don’t do that. I didn’t kill her.”
    “Okay. Go on.”
    “At first I thought she was part of the sculpture.”
    “Do you own a gun, Miss Wetzon?” This from Conley.
    “No, I do not.” She was firm. It was not her gun.
    “How do you know her?”
    “I didn’t really. I never met her. I saw a photograph of her. Her mother— They had a fight and Tabitha ran away from home.”
    Conley dangled the bag with the wallet at her. “Redding ... Connecticut.”
    “Yes. But she wasn’t on the streets. She was staying with a man named Tony Maglia and his wife. I think so, anyway.”
    “Spell it.” Walters nodded at Conley, who dropped the bag containing the wallet into his coat pocket and took out a notepad.
    “M-a-g-l-i-a. He’s the manager of the Bliss Norderman office in midtown.”
    “How come you were meeting her?”
    “It’s a long story.”
    “We have all night.” Walters looked up. “Good. Here we go.” Cohen carried an open cardboard box full of coffee containers.
    “This here’s the decaf.” He handed it to Wetzon. Conley and Walters each took a cup and Cohen brought the rest to the gang around the pool, some of whom were methodically stringing glossy yellow crime-scene tape, blocking the steps to Sixty-fifth Street.
    Wooden horses were put up between the Philharmonic and the pool. More tape was strung.
    The M.E. in black leather came toward them carrying her bag. She signaled to a couple of aides with a gurney.
    “So whadja find, Doc?” Walters asked, getting up and moving away slightly.
    “One gunshot wound in the throat. Hit an artery.”
    “Did it kill her outright?”
    “Might have, but don’t think so. I’m guessing by the look of her, it was contained in the neck and she probably died of compression. I won’t know for sure till I open her up. It was quick either way.”
    Wetzon warmed her hands on the cup. The steam rose and mingled with the night. A dog barked. Reporters queried the cops on the barricade; the rubberneckers kept up a steady stream of comments. The entire scene was underscored by the staccato blare of the police dispatcher.
    “Anything else?”
    “Found this in her hands.” The M.E. held out a glassine bag.
    “What’s this?” Walters shook it, and what was inside danced. He popped it open and poured its contents into his hand. “What the hell is this?”
    “Sequins,” Wetzon said.

31.
    H ARLEQUINS OF SEQUINS discoed in Wetzon’s head. Sequins on costumes. Sequins on evening dresses. Sequined scarves. She herself had once owned a sequined cloche, and somewhere in some box with her winter hats was a sexy red sequined beret. And there was Carlos’s sequined bow tie. Smith had just bought a smashing little white sequined sheath, a stretchy bit of business that came to midthigh.
    “Which side, miss?” Officer Cohen broke into her meditation on sequins.
    “Over on the left, please.” When she leaned forward in her seat, her back sent up such a strong protest she was left gasping.
    In the loft, she went around closing the blinds, then turned up the heat. The pantry closet yielded a can of gourmet cream of mushroom soup—whatever that was—which she opened, poured into a saucepan, and set on a low heat while she got out of her clothes and into her terry robe. Chilled to the bone, hands shaking, knees quivering, she lowered herself slowly to the floor and lay on her back, hugging her knees. Breathing