NO COLDER PLACE (Bill SmithLydia Chin novels Book 4) by SJ Rozan

Author:SJ Rozan [Rozan, SJ]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

twelve

my next goal was back uptown. I headed for the subway, a block over and a block down; but first I stopped at a pay phone, to call Lydia.

I dialed the construction trailer number. A voice answered that could only be a cop’s.

“Who wants her?” he demanded, as though any call to anyone in the trailer might be a major break in the case.

“The plumber,” I said. “I’m in her house. I got the leak stopped, but I gotta know what she wants me to do about the valve.”

“Well, she’s gone,” he told me. “Left about half an hour ago. Probably on her way there now.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.” Hell, I thought as I dialed Lydia’s office. I would have been interested to know what had gone on in the trailer this morning, what the cops and Lydia and Chuck and Dan Crowell, Sr. had found to pass the time with. I left a message on her machine and took the subway back to upper Broadway.

The two-story white Armstrong Properties building looked just as handsome in the gleaming afternoon sunlight as it had yesterday in the deep overcast after the rain. The freckled secretary, Dana, looked at me just as coolly and professionally as yesterday, too, when I walked in.

“I want to see Mrs. Armstrong,” I said.

“No, I don’t think so,” Dana said calmly. “Yesterday she threw you out of here. I don’t think she’s expecting you back.” She made no move toward the phone.

“Yesterday I pretended to be a reporter. Today I called one who’s a friend of mine. He was interested in this whole setup.” I let that linger, vague and unpleasant.

Hesitation blinked in her eyes; that was enough. “Buzz the boss,” I suggested. “Ask if she’ll see me.”

She did that, in a brief, low conversation. She rose, frostily, and showed me into the office in the back.

Denise Armstrong stood in the center of the room, lips in a tight line. The sunlight picking out a square of courtyard in the window behind her was warmer, more golden, than yesterday, but my reception was the same.

Dana, with an angry look at me, left us, and the door closed behind me.

“Why are you back?” Mrs. Armstrong asked icily as the door clicked shut. “Didn’t I make my point yesterday?”

I turned to look at the door. “Did she lock that?”

“Not this time. I have no reason to keep you here today. In fact, I had no reason to let you in at all, except to ask why you keep trying to lie your way in.”

“I told her the truth: I wanted to see you.”

“You told her you’d spoken to a reporter. That was a lie.”

I shrugged. The movement made my shoulder ache, sore where the rebar had caught it. “I thought it was better than pushing past her and charging in here.”

Her eyes flashed. “Are you telling me I should be grateful you didn’t use force? You’re out of your league, Mr. Smith. Get out of here.”

“I’m trying to help you.

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