New York Dead

Chapter 13

A woman answered Harkness’s phone, a voice Stone didn’t recognize.

“Barron Harkness, please. My name is Barrington; he knows me.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Barrington, Mr. Harkness is in a meeting. May I have him return the call?”

“Let me speak with Cary Hilliard, please.”

“Ms. Hilliard is in the same meeting.”

Stone tried not to sound annoyed. “Please take a note to Mr. Harkness. Tell him Detective Stone Barrington would like to speak with him at once, and that it’s important.”

“I’m sorry, but-”

“Please do it now. This is police business.”

The woman hesitated. “All right,” she said finally. “What is your number?”

“I’ll hold.”

An irritating minute passed, then: “Barron Harkness.”

“Mr. Harkness, this is Stone Barrington. I’m at your apartment building, and I want your permission to enter Sasha Nijinsky’s apartment. The doorman insists on speaking with you before allowing entry.”

“But why?” Harkness asked. “Sasha never moved into the apartment; there’s nothing there. Legally, she didn’t even own the apartment; she was supposed to have closed on it the morning after she…”

“It appears that a moving company followed instructions she gave before her disappearance and moved her belongings into the apartment. The doorman let them in.”

Harkness hesitated, then spoke. “I’ll be right over there,” he said, and hung up before Stone could speak further.

Stone replaced the receiver and turned to Dino. “Harkness is coming over here.”

“Why?” Dino asked.

“Who knows? Maybe he’s being protective of his building’s reputation.”

The doorman spoke up. “That sounds like Mr. Harkness,” he said. “He and the board are very picky about what goes on here. That’s why I wouldn’t let you in. It woudda been my job, y’know.”

Stone nodded, then joined Dino on a sofa in the lobby to wait for Harkness.

They didn’t have to wait long. A black Lincoln Town Car pulled up at the curb, and Harkness strode into the building. He shook hands with Stone and was introduced to Dino. “All right,” he said, “let’s get this over with. I’ve got to get back to the office.”

“We don’t really need you for this,” Stone said, “if you’d like to go back now.”

Harkness fished a letter from an inside pocket and handed it to Stone. It was from a midtown law firm.

“You’re her executor?” Stone asked. “But we don’t even know that she’s dead.”

“I got the letter this morning; it was the first I’d heard of it.” He shrugged. “I guess I’m representing Sasha in this,” he said, “so, unless you want to get a search warrant, I’m going to have to go into that apartment with you.”

“All right,” Stone said.

“Eddie,” Harkness said to the doorman, “I’ll use my pass-key. We won’t need you.”

On the elevator, Stone turned to Harkness. “You say you didn’t know that Ms. Nijinsky had appointed you executor of her will?”

“Didn’t have a clue,” Harkness replied. “I was astonished, to tell you the truth.”

“Mr. Harkness, did you and Sasha Nijinsky ever have a romantic relationship?”

Harkness looked him in the eye. “Stone, I haven’t the slightest intention of answering that.”

The elevator door opened, and they stepped into a vestibule; only two apartments opened onto it, 10-J and 10-K. Harkness opened the door to 10-J and led the way in. There was an entrance hall, then a large living room. Furniture had been dumped here and there, as if the moving men had no instructions, and the boxes Stone had seen at Sasha’s old apartment were piled in the middle of the floor. Every one of them had been opened, and the woman’s belongings were strewn across the floor.

“Now that’s interesting,” Dino said.

Stone picked up a yellow movers’ receipt from the floor and handed it to Dino. “See if there’s a working phone; if not, go down and use the doorman’s. Get hold of the movers’ supervisor and ask him what the hell went on here.”

Dino took the receipt and went in search of a phone. “The one in the kitchen is working,” he called out.

“Do you have any idea who might have opened these boxes?” Stone asked Harkness.

“Not a clue,” Harkness replied. “As I said earlier, she didn’t even own the apartment yet. It would have been like Sasha, though, to have her stuff moved at the moment she would have been closing the sale. She wasn’t a woman who liked to be kept waiting.”

“I want to go through her belongings,” Stone said, “and I may want to remove some things for evidence. Have I your permission to do that?”

Harkness hesitated. “I think maybe I should talk to a lawyer, first. I want to do the right thing, here.”

“Look, Barron,” Stone said, “Sasha trusted you enough to put you in charge of her estate. There may be something here that will help us find out what happened to her, and we’re going to need your cooperation.”

Dino returned from the kitchen. “The supervisor at the movers’ says his guys didn’t open any boxes. I called the doorman on the house phone, and he confirms that they were sealed when he signed the receipt and let the movers out.”

“So,” said Stone, turning to Harkness, “somebody has been in here since the movers left.”

“Don’t look at me,” Harkness said.

“You’ve got a passkey, right?”

“I’m chairman of the cooperative board. Look, I thought the apartment was empty. Why would I want to come in here?”

“Who else besides the doorman has a key to this apartment?”

“The owners would, the people who were selling to Sasha. They live in Connecticut; I’ll get the phone number for you.”

“Who lives in the other apartment across the vestibule, number 10-K?”

“My assistant, Cary Hilliard. You met her the other night.”

Stone nodded. “And would she have a key?”

“No.”

“Did she know that Sasha was moving in here?”

“No. Sasha wanted her change of address kept quiet until she had moved. She liked to control what people knew about her.”

“Where do you normally keep your passkey?”

Harkness held up a gold key ring. “Here, with my other keys. They’re always in my pocket. Always. I lost some keys once, and it was such a pain in the ass that I’ve had a thing about it ever since.”

“Who else knew that Sasha was buying the apartment?”

“The owners; the board of directors, four other people besides me – they had to approve the buyer – the doorman, and, of course, anybody Sasha might have felt like telling.”

Stone remembered Sasha’s change-of-address cards, unmailed. “I want to go through this stuff. Are you going to cooperate, or am I going to have to go to the trouble of getting a search warrant?”

“All right” – Harkness sighed – “do what you have to do, but I’m going to be here while you’re doing it.” He walked across the room and settled his large frame in a chair. “Have at it,” he said.

Nearly two hours later, Stone wrote a receipt and handed it to Harkness. “I want her checkbook and her other financial records – these two boxes here.”

“When do I get them back?”

“When I’ve had a chance to go over them thoroughly, or when Sasha turns up alive, whichever comes first.”

Harkness stared at the two boxes.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Stone asked.

“No,” Harkness replied. “If it will help to find out what happened to Sasha, you’re welcome to the records.”

They parted at the front door of the building, and the detectives lifted the two boxes into the trunk of their car. As they got in, Dino spoke up. “If Harkness keeps his keys in his pocket all the time, then his wife might have gotten to them when he was asleep. If he was fucking Sasha, the lady might have taken an interest in her moving into the building.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Stone said. “I don’t even know if Harkness has a wife.”

“He’s a big guy, isn’t he? Wouldn’t have much trouble tossing a lady off a balcony, he felt like it.”

“I thought of that,” Stone said.