Hedging (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery)

looked down at her notes. “You said your friend’s name is Laura Lee Day? Laura ... Lee ... Lorelei.”
    “Laura Lee ... Lorelei! Of course. My God, all the brilliant people around me, and we never considered—”
    “What’s the first thing you remember?”
    “Waking up in Mount Sinai Psychiatric as a Jane Doe.” She went on to tell Clo about the man who claimed to be her uncle, identified her as Mary Lou Salinger and was coming back for her, how she ran away, was taken in by Zoey, how Silvestri found her after his friend Metzger had spotted her with Zoey’s mime troupe. “Sounds like a soap opera, doesn’t it?”
    “Just a bit convoluted. You never saw this so-called uncle again?”
    “Once more. In front of Zoey’s building the night before she was murdered.” Wetzon swallowed hard several times trying to ease the lump in her throat. “They were looking for me and they killed her.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Me too.” She sighed. “Things began to come back, my life previous to the leave of absence has come back. Well, most of it. But the FBI—an agent named Judy Blue—thinks I’m hiding diamonds, and that I was involved in the explosion of that hedge fund manager’s plane last month.”
    “Ah, yes. Jason McLaughlin. This has something to do with him?”
    “So it appears. I have this odd feeling that I may have been working for the FBI, though it seems crazy. Why me?”
    “We’ll find out. I’m going to call Special Agent Judy Blue in the morning and set up a meeting. Okay?”
    “Okay. But there’s more. A retired cop named Marty Lawler, who was hurt in a shooting in the Port Authority and was in Bellevue recovering from surgery, heard about me from the television reports and called the police. He said he’d been on a New Jersey bus with me and that I was terrified and swore people were trying to kill me.”
    “You don’t remember this?”
    “A blank. Silvestri took me to see him. He has macular degeneration and is legally blind. His seeing eye dog knew me and I knew the dog. And Marty recognized my voice. He said a man shot him and dragged me off.”
    “But you got away.”
    “Somehow. They said I was found in that big snowstorm, half-dressed, semi-conscious, delirious, babbling about the woman on the cliff.”
    “Your friend Laura Lee.”
    “Yes. Look, Clo, people died on that plane, Bill died, and McLaughlin is missing, I’ll bet with tons of investors’ money, and then there are the diamonds—” Her hands shook and she folded her fingers tight to stop it.
    Clo went back to her desk and took a small unopened bottle of Evian from a drawer, broke the seal and handed it to Wetzon. Wetzon took a long, slow drink.
    Seated again, Clo asked, “What did Bill Veeder have to do with this?”
    “They said on tv that he was representing McLaughlin. But Bill was in L.A., on trial. What the hell would he be doing in Teterboro ...? And there’s one more thing—Marty, the cop, found a key card with the things the hospital returned to him when he was discharged. It wasn’t his. Silvestri said it was a locker keycard from the P.A. Marty and Silvestri think I slipped it into Marty’s pocket before he was shot. Silvestri is late because when we went to open the locker, we spotted the FBI, so we split up.”
    On perfect cue, a buzzer went off. “Stay here, Leslie,” Clo said. She opened the door and stepped out.
    Wetzon standing, heard: “For crissakes, Xenia, what the hell are you doing here?” Silvestri didn’t like surprises and even on a good day had no patience for Smith’s antics.
    Smith’s response was muffled.
    “Is she here?” Wetzon heard him ask.
    “Yes,” Clo said, leading him into her office and closing the door. He had no suitcase, no backpack. Nothing. So what had been in the locker?
    Wetzon went to him and he held her. “I hate this,” he said into her hair.
    “Me, too.”
    “Gelber’s downstairs. I told him to go home, that you’re talking to a lawyer.”
    “Who’s Gelber?” Clo asked.
    “FBI.”
    “Well, we’re going to deal with them tomorrow as soon as I reach this Judy Blue person. Have a seat, and tell us what you found in the locker.”
    “You told her?”
    “Yes,” Wetzon said.
    “Okay,” Silvestri said, “Here’s the thing.” He was tense and somber. He took a crumpled Krispy Kreme bag from his pocket and set it on the coffee table in front of the leather sofa. “I’m a cop doing a personal favor for a friend. I don’t want