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

have to talk to you. I’m being a good citizen.”
    “Good citizen!”
    “Cool it, Bobby, will you?” Peiser was sitting on the edge of her chair, leaning across the table. “This Jerry Gordon, he’s an M.D.?”
    Bobby? Wetzon thought, shifting her eyes from Peiser to Ferrante and back. “I don’t think so. I never asked to see his CV. That’s a résumé, Detective. He has a call-in program on a Connecticut radio station, ‘Ask Dr. Jerry.’ What he really is, I think, is some kind of guru, or group therapist. They all went to him.”
    “All?”
    “Rona, Brian, Tabitha, Penny Ann, her late husband Wilson, and God knows who else.”
    Ferrante stood up again and started prowling, into the living room, back to the kitchen, back to the living room.
    Peiser nodded. Her hand shook over her notebook. Well, Ferrante would make anyone crazy. “What did you do about finding Tabitha?”
    “We thought we knew where she was. Brian’s apartment. We’d gone up there that Friday to find out why he hadn’t started at Loeb Dawkins—we didn’t know he was dead—and we ran into someone we thought at the time was the maid. After we talked to Rona et al., we realized it must have been Tabitha, but when Smith went back to the apartment, there was no sign of her.”
    From the middle of the living room, Ferrante yelled, “You’re talking about that place on West Seventy-ninth Street?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he plowed right on. “You cleaned it out, didn’t you? What did you take? Is that where you got the diary? Christ, no wonder there was nothing there. These bimbos have their hands all over everything.”
    “We didn’t take anything.”
    “I’ll bet.”
    “Then what?” Peiser interrupted, throwing Ferrante a beseeching look.
    “Then Penny Ann made her fake confession, probably to cover for her daughter.”
    Peiser and Ferrante made eye contact for a fraction of a second.
    “It wasn’t real, was it?”
    “Go on,” Ferrante said.
    “I just want to mention the twenty thousand dollars.”
    “See what I mean?” Ferrante gestured to Peiser.
    “Simon Loveman, Brian’s manager-to-be, advanced Brian twenty thousand to pay off his debt at Bliss Norderman.”
    “Okay,” Peiser said, making a note. “Let’s stick with what you were telling us about—”
    “Their conspiracy to obstruct justice.” Ferrante was roaming the living room again.
    Wetzon turned her back on him. “Jerry Gordon called a meeting at his office in the Park Royale, and Richard Hartmann came in with Penny Ann, who immediately collapsed. Jerry put her on the chaise in his consulting room and went to get her some tea, while I stayed with her. I opened the closet looking for a blanket, found one on an overhead shelf, but I knocked down a hatbox by mistake. When I picked it up to put it back, the lid came off, and I saw all these letters and financial statements. I thought they might be the missing papers, but then I heard Jerry coming back, so I put the box on the shelf.”
    “Did you mention it to anyone?” Peiser bit her lip and moved restlessly in her chair, taking quick glances at Ferrante.
    “Only to Smith.”
    “I’m not clear on how you got the phone call about meeting Tabitha at Lincoln Center,” Peiser said. “You told Detective Walters ...”
    “I didn’t tell him everything,” Wetzon said. Ferrante made a rude noise. “I couldn’t get the papers out of my mind. I knew that Smith and the Gordons, at least Jerry, were going to watch Hartmann do his summation. I decided to drop by and see if I could get into the apartment.”
    “You broke in?” Ferrante looked as if he were ready to clap her in irons. “Or did Dr. Gordon give you a key?”
    “I borrowed a key from housekeeping.” She looked at Peiser.
    “Bull!” burst from Ferrante. “She’s in it up to her—”
    “Am I in trouble for this, Ms. Peiser?”
    “For B and E, no. For obstruction of justice, maybe.”
    “And maybe more.” Ferrante was standing at the table.
    “Wait a minute, Ferrante. Why are you always trying to make me look worse than I am?” Wetzon rose. “I’ll be right back.” She went into the bedroom. The suit she’d worn that night was on the chair. She hadn’t had a chance to take it to the cleaners. In the pocket was the housekeeping master key. She returned with it and handed it to Ferrante. “Maybe you’d like to return it for me.”
    Ferrante growled.
    “Forget it, Bobby,” Peiser said. There she went