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

hung up, the phone rang. Probably Smith calling back with some lawyer questions. “Hello!”
    “Wetzon, this is Louie. I heard you come in. I took a delivery for you this afternoon.”
    “A delivery?”
    “Yes. Go stand at the elevator and I’ll send it up.”
    “It?” But Louie was gone.
    She put on her robe and opened her door. The door to the elevator opened noisily on the floor below, then it closed and started upward. When the door opened again, there was a padded book mailer on the floor. She grabbed it as the door started to close. “Got it, thanks,” she called down the shaft.
    Inside, she looked at the package. She didn’t recognize the handwriting—printing, rather. Who was sending her a book? She squeezed it. It felt like a book, not a bomb. Well, dummy, what does a bomb feel like? There was no return address. She pried the staples up with a kitchen knife and opened the flap.
    “Good God!” She almost dropped the package. She opened it, looked again, then reached in and pulled out Tabitha’s missing diary.

41.
    J OAN B OLEY: STOCKBROKER , heavy smoker, fading suntan, leathery skin, thick blond hair with shoulder ends flipped up, teased and sprayed, looked like an aging Sandra Dee. She was average height, ten pounds overweight, divorced and remarried, with a son at the U. of Colorado studying to be a vet.
    She turned to Wetzon. “I promised Morty I’d stop smoking, and I can’t.” She put a cigarette between her lips; her nails were long, oval, and French manicured.
    “We’re in nonsmoking,” Wetzon said. She blended the yogurt, fruit, and granola.
    Joan looked cornered. “Shit!” She put the cigarette back in the pack, the pack in her purse.
    “Have some coffee.” The Crystal Fountain at the Hyatt offered a nice, calm breakfast, but Joan wasn’t buying into it. She’d broken up her toasted—“burn it”—bagel in small chunks and lathered on the cream cheese.
    “Wetzon, I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
    Wetzon put down her spoon. This required her undivided attention. “Tell me about it.” Make my day , she thought.
    “Well, you know there are very few women at SMQ. I noticed that right away; they assured me it’s not a chauvinistic place.”
    “That’s like saying women have equality in Saudi Arabia.”
    “Wetzon, we both know that Wall Street is a male enclave, but you wouldn’t believe these guys. I was invited to a priority luncheon yesterday; senior management, the top people in the firm were all there. I was introduced as their most recent acquisition, and then they proceeded to tell jokes and stories that demean women. Worse, they didn’t even know they were doing it.”
    “I believe it. What would you like to do?” That’s cool, Wetzon , she congratulated herself.
    “Do you think Fred would put his offer back on the table?” Joan chewed nervously on a piece of her bagel. A smudge of cream cheese clung to her lower lip.
    “If you’re serious. I wouldn’t want to get his hopes up and have you knock them down again.”
    “My clients are going to think I’m crazy. The accounts are just starting to come over, and now they’ll be getting more transfer forms—”
    “Talk to them, explain. But first you have to think it over carefully.” Wetzon signaled for the check. “Meantime, I’ll talk to Fred, but only to feel him out. I’ll let you know, and we can go forward or not.” She dropped her Gold Card on the bill that had just been presented.
    “Can you give me something to put this in?” Joan asked the waiter. She pointed to the remains of her bagel.
    When the waiter returned with a square of foil, Joan neatly wrapped up the pieces and put the package into her briefcase.
    Forty-second Street and Lexington Avenue was a gridlock of early-morning traffic. Cars and trucks cheated across the walk lines when the lights were a mere yellow. Pedestrians snaked around halted traffic where bumper didn’t touch bumper. Commuter buses, cabs, and city buses all vied for a piece of the street.
    “It’s not over till it’s over,” Wetzon commented to the Greybar Building. “And even when it’s over, it’s not over.” She breezed up Lexington and east on Forty-ninth Street toward her office, feeling light of foot. And what was particularly delicious was the knowledge that Tom Keegen, who had certainly placed Joan at SMQ, would lose a juicy commission, just when he could taste it.
    In front of Sondheim’s town house a determined young man in a