Hedging (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery)

diamonds.”
    “Why not? You did hide them away.”
    “I don’t remember doing it and when we had an inkling of where they were, I got them and gave them to you.”
    “And we thank you for being a good citizen.”
    “Where is Laura Lee?”
    “She’s with McLaughlin.”
    “Where is McLaughlin?”
    “Somewhere in Germany. Ms. Day was able to get a call to us. It won’t be long now.”
    Clo said, “Who blew up the plane?”
    “We have nothing certain.”
    “Is it possible that your delivery person had other ideas about the diamonds?” Clo said.
    “It’s possible. But we’ll never know.”
    “How can that be? I thought the FBI has its ways,” Clo said.
    Wetzon roused herself. She’d been only half listening as she tried to peel away the missing layers of her memory. It came to her as clear as the diamonds themselves. The parsimonious Agent Blue gave nothing away. But Wetzon knew. He’d been holding a black box.
    “It was Bill Veeder who delivered the diamonds,” she said.

49
    W HAT DID they have on Bill, Wetzon wondered as she took a short cut to the East Side through Central Park. The park was wakening after winter. You could smell it. The sun was brilliant. And if you looked hard enough, you saw little green shoots sprouting on the trees. Bikers were everywhere, and on the bridle path joggers in their shorts and tees were pretending April was already here.
    She veered east to the Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street exit, where stable smells persisted because of the horse carriages usually lined up along Central Park South. It was a crisp, clear March day, and tourists—there were always tourists—were taking the opportunity to ride in the horse carriages through Central Park.
    No question now, Bill had saved her life in the advent of the explosion, this complex, shrouded man who’d been her lover, and yes, whom she had loved. The coat he’d thrown over her was the coat Marty Lawler had described, the one she’d worn on the NJ Transit bus.
    So where had the diamonds come from? For certain, the Krispy Kreme bag would not have withstood the explosion. But, then, and this was becoming obvious, neither had the black box that Bill had been holding. Slivers of memory surfaced and faded. She could not be sure what was real, and what came from her fertile imagination.
    She walked down Fifth Avenue, only subliminally aware of the stunning shop windows and turned east on Forty-ninth Street, with no impulse to cruise through Saks as she would have in the past.
    What she was feeling was an undefinable urgency, an apprehension. The story was incomplete.
    Had the diamonds, released from their container, been strewn every which way? Could she, Leslie Wetzon, in the aftermath, have picked diamond daisies and thrust them into the pocket of the black cashmere coat?
    Of course, if it had been Smith, that theory would be a foregone conclusion ... Face it, she told herself, maybe she was just as attracted to diamonds as—
    Approaching Second Avenue, she saw coming up on her right, Steve Sondheim’s house. In front of his house, as she always did, she swept off her beret, clutched it to her breast, and bowed. Her tribute to his genius.
    When she straightened she saw that two strolling, mink wrapped women across the street had stopped to stare. Obviously, they were not New Yorkers.
    It was almost noon when she opened the outside door and stepped into the office. She was starving.
    “Good morning,” she called to Cheryl, who was on the phone.
    Cheryl replied by jerking her hand up several exaggerated times.
    Sean came out and drew a finger across his throat. Wetzon nodded, headed for the stairs. She recognized the signs: Smith was manic.
    “Someone from the NYPD came to check our phones this morning,” Cheryl said. “He said Silvestri sent him.”
    “I forgot to warn you. I’m sorry.”
    “What was he looking for?” Sean said.
    “A bug. Did he find anything?”
    “I don’t know, but he kept grunting and growling and talking to himself.”
    Cheryl said, “He asked me if someone had been in recently to fix the phones.”
    “Had someone?”
    “Verizon was in last week to put in new wiring.” Cheryl frowned. “They said the wires were frayed and could cause a short.”
    “Had Smith called them?”
    “She never mentioned it to us,” Sean said.
    “I think we should probably not let anyone in to work on anything unless either Smith or I know about it.” She started up the stairs. “Any more calls