Hedging (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery)

card, the locker at the Port Authority.
    “What was in the locker?” Agent Blue asked. “Stale doughnuts?”
    “Why don’t you have a look?” Clo picked up the crumpled Krispy Kreme bag, spread the mouth, and offered it to Agent Blue.
    Gelber came over from the door.
    “So you had the diamonds all along,” Judy Blue said. “You have a handkerchief, Gelber?” He drew a folded, white linen one from his breast pocket and handed it over.
    She opened in on the coffee table, then poured the sugared diamonds onto the handkerchief. “Count them,” she told Gelber.
    “I do not remember anything about these diamonds,” Wetzon said. “I don’t remember putting them in the locker. I don’t remember Marty Lawler getting shot. I don’t remember Marty Lawler at all. He said a man dragged me away and that’s the last he knew of me until he woke up in the hospital and heard the story about someone named Mary Lou Salinger being missing.”
    “Now I think it’s time to tell us, was my client working for you?” Clo said.
    “We had someone on the inside. Actually, she went in on her own and then notified us.”
    “Inside?” Clo said. “Inside what?”
    “The Jason McLaughlin financial empire.”
    “My God,” Wetzon said. “Laura Lee.”
    “Yes. Ms. Day was feeding us information, but suddenly it stopped. She may have been compromised. We couldn’t get her out without jeopardizing the investigation.”
    “Which was more important than her life?” Wetzon said.
    “It was her choice. She was trying to save a family member from being defrauded.”
    “Her Uncle Weaver.” Wetzon shook her head. “But how did I get involved?”
    “She called you, as if responding to a personal ad you’d placed an ad in the Village Voice —”
    “I placed a personal ad in the Voice ?”
    “You told us you hadn’t, but that’s how McLaughlin found women to work for him. He placed some and responded to others.”
    “Hold on now,” Clo said. “How did the FBI get involved with Leslie?”
    “We were talking to all of Ms. Day’s friends, and happened to speak to Ms. Wetzon only hours after she’d received the strange call from Ms. Day. After speaking with us, she agreed to interview with McLaughlin.”
    “It sounds to me as if Laura Lee was in trouble.”
    “We thought so,” Judy Blue agreed, focusing a beady eye on Wetzon. “You don’t remember any of this?”
    “Do you want me to take a lie detector test?” Wetzon said borrowing Smith’s most steely voice.
    “That will not be necessary,” Clo said. “Just tell us what happened once Leslie joined the McLaughlin enterprise.”
    “He had a fortified mansion in Deal, with guest houses, every room wired for sound, armed guards, electric fences, armored cars, the works. His paranoia kept his eighteen employees on the grounds. We arranged with Ms. Wetzon to make calls to her mother in Queens—”
    “I don’t have a mother—”
    “I acted the part. We routed the calls to Federal Plaza. The best we could do was keep track of you and we gleaned that Ms. Day was okay, just not able to call out without compromising herself. You called the day of the explosion saying that you were going away for a while but would try to call me from the airport before you left.”
    “Okay,” Wetzon said. “I—or someone—was bolting.”
    “Exactly. We knew McLaughlin kept his private jet at Teterboro, but we got there too late.”
    “Can we talk about the diamonds?” Leslie asked. “Why did you think I had them? And who did they belong to?”
    “McLaughlin’s empire was imploding. He arranged for fifteen million dollars worth of diamonds to be delivered to him at Teterboro.”
    She was bewildered. “You’re saying I was the bag man.”
    “No. That is not what I’m saying.” Agent Blue hoisted herself up out of the sofa. “I think we’ve gone as far as we can go at this time. You have the count?” she asked Gelber.
    “There are thirteen missing,” he said.
    “You know how many there were?” Wetzon asked.
    Agent Blue shrugged. “We have our ways.”
    “That’s a joke, right?” Wetzon said.
    Agent Blue’s face was impassive. She jerked her head to Gelber and he knotted his handkerchief around the pile of diamonds.
    “You leaned on someone, either the jeweler or the person who delivered the diamonds,” Clo said. “Who would that be?”
    Judy Blue smiled. “Thank you for coming clean.”
    “Bullshit,” Wetzon said. “You can’t think I was stealing