Mistress of Justice

eight or nine. He gave me bags and bags of these green plastic guys. He gave me a B-52 too so I nuked most of them and went back to Barbie and Pooh. You have other things, too? Like cannons and catapults?”
    “Everything. Soldiers, horses, cannons, and caissons …”
    She sipped the wine and was thinking: Sometimes in life this craziness falls right on top of you and you find yourself almost floating up and away from your body like a guru or psychic, looking down at yourself, and all you can say is, Shit a brick, this is
so
weird. I mean, here I am, Alice in Wonderland, in a fab loft, next to a handsome man I’m playing detective with, drinking hundred-dollar wine and talking toy soldiers.
    Taylor told herself not, under any circumstances, to get drunk.
    Reece played with some of the figures. “I have a British Square. I made it when I was sixteen.”
    “Like a park? Like Trafalgar Square?”
    Reece was laughing. “Taylor, British Square? A fighting formation? You know, Gunga Din.”
    “Kipling,” she said.
    He nodded. “The ranks divided into two lines. One stood and reloaded, the other knelt and fired. The fuzzy-wuzzies were the only warriors to break through the square.”
    “The, uh …”
    “Zulus. African tribal warriors.”
    “Ah. Boer War.”
    “That was twenty years later.”
    “Oh, sure,” she said seriously, nodding in recognition.
    “You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?”
    She shook her head but couldn’t keep a straight face and said through the grin, “Definitely.”
    He hit her playfully on the arm and let his hand pause on the thin cotton of her blouse for a moment.
    He put on some music jazz.
    “Any word about your demo tapes?”
    “The responses ain’t been jim-dandy.”
    “It only takes one record company.”
    She shrugged. And glanced at an antique clock. Eight-thirty She could smell nothing simmering. Well, scratch one: He can’t cook. Maybe they were going out. But—
    The door buzzer sounded.
    “Excuse me.”
    He let a young man into the loft. He nodded politely to Taylor and, from a large shopping bag, took out plates wrapped in stippled foil. Reece set the table with bone china plates, silver and a candlestick.
    The portable butler said, “Would you like me to pour the wine, Mr. Reece?”
    “No, thank you anyway, Robert.” Reece signed the proffered slip of paper. A bill changed hands.
    “Then good night, sir.”

     
    Dinner turned out to be blini with beluga caviar and sour cream, veal medallions with slivers of fresh truffles in a marsala sauce, braised endive and cold marinated green beans.
    No fake burgers and sprouts for this boy …
    They sat at the table and began to eat. Reece said, “Now, tell me what you’ve found out about the note.”
    Taylor organized her thoughts. “First, somebody got into the computer and erased all the disbursements, expenses and phone call logs for Saturday and Sunday.”
    “All of them?” He winced.
    She nodded. “All last week, actually. Everything that’d link a particular person to the firm—except the door card keys and the time sheets.”
    “Okay.” He nodded, taking this in. “Who can get into the system?”
    “It’s not that hard. You need an access card but it’d beeasy to steal one.” More of the wonderful wine—he’d opened a second bottle. “Let me go through the suspects. First, Thom Sebastian.”
    He nodded. “Go ahead.”
    “Well, I fingerprinted your safe and found his on the top and side.”
    He laughed. “You did what?”
    “I got a private-eye kit—deerstalker cap and decoder ring, the works. I dusted the scene of the crime and came up with twenty-five latents—that’s prints, to you. Fifteen completely unrecognizable. The other ten, most were partials but seven seem to be the same person—you, I’m pretty sure. I dusted your coffee cup—I owe you a new one, by the way; the powder didn’t come off too well. I threw it out.”
    “I wondered what happened to it.”
    “And three others. A couple of prints are unidentified but there are a dozen or so that’re smooth smudges, as if somebody’d worn gloves. Thom’s’re pretty clear.”
    “Thom?” Reece frowned. “Son of a bitch.”
    She said, “I don’t think he actually broke into the safe; from the position on the metal it looks like the guy who did that was the one wearing the gloves—the pro. But Sebastian may have checked it out before—or tried to open it that night and when he couldn’t called in an expert. Is