Chapter 30

NEXT MORNING, I had already showered and was mostly dressed for the day in an oversized periwinkle blue cashmere sweater and black jeans. As I was pulling on my favorite pair of black suede ankle boots, Penny called out from the bathroom, “Do you have an extra toothbrush somewhere?”

“Guest brushes to the left of the sink, in the bottom drawer,” I said.

Penny appeared in the doorway holding a large handful of new toothbrushes, tied together with a red ribbon. “Which one should I use?”

“Take any one. They were a present from my friend Nancy, when I moved in. She said she wanted me to be prepared with ‘guest amenities’ for when I was ‘ready to date.’ Those were her euphemisms.”

“How many toothbrushes did she give you?”

“A dozen.”

Penny counted them quickly. “They’re all still in their wrappings.”

“I haven’t been ready.”

While Penny was brushing, I called a neighborhood glazier and arranged to have my living room window replaced. A few minutes later I was in the kitchen making coffee. When the doorbell rang, I assumed it was Matt Phoenix coming to make sure I hadn’t let anything terrible happen to Penny. When I opened the door I saw that—as G.G. Flynn might have put it—I was “wrong-o.”

Chet Thompson was on the other side of the threshold.

Hefting a grocery bag, from which came the unmistakable aroma of fresh-made bagels, he said, “Breakfast. Fresh orange juice, bagels and cream cheese. I didn’t know if you preferred smoked salmon or sturgeon, so I brought both.”

“Come on in,” I said, starting to salivate. “I like it all.”

I stepped aside, just as I heard the distinctive ping of the main elevator. I saw the ornate door slide open, and had mixed emotions about what I saw next.

“I hope you brought enough bagels for five,” I said to Chet.

Chet turned around to follow my gaze. Detectives Phoenix and Flynn were approaching my front door. Flynn pulled out a folded paper from his inside jacket pocket. I noticed it was the same jacket he was wearing the night I met him at the hospital, but the missing button had been replaced and his tie was knotted correctly. Mrs. Detective Flynn, the lady Penny had described as “terrific,” must have inspected him before he left home this morning.

Phoenix said, “Good morning, Morgan. And Thompson.” When he said Chet’s last name, his tone was icy enough to chill the orange juice.

“Good morning to you, Detectives,” I said. To Phoenix, I added, “Penny’s getting dressed.”

I stepped back so that everyone could enter.

As soon as I closed my door, Flynn said, “We got a warrant.” He indicated the folded piece of paper.

“Shall I get you a lawyer?” Chet asked me.

“She’s not under arrest,” said Phoenix.

“Please don’t refer to me in the third person,” I told Phoenix. Then I turned to Chet. “I have a lawyer,” I said. “The gorgeous blonde supermodel you noticed at the funeral, remember?”

“Your lawyer’s a supermodel?” Flynn asked. “She ever been in one of the swimsuit issues?”

I ignored that as, from the corner of my eye, I saw Penny coming down the hall toward us.

“What’s the warrant for?” I asked Phoenix.

“You’ve got a nine-millimeter Glock,” he said. “We want to see it.”

“What model?” Chet asked.

“Nineteen.”

“Good piece,” he said, impressed. “The safe-action trigger system’s got the fastest accurate first shot on the market.”

“That’s the shot that counts,” I said.

As Chet and I discussed the virtues of the Glock, Flynn was swinging his eyes back and forth between us like a fan at a tennis match.

Penny’s eyes were wide with surprise. “You have a gun?” she asked me.

“A pistol, yes, and I have a valid permit to have it here for protection.”

“We’re not questioning your permit,” Phoenix said. “Maybe your sanity,” he added in a low mutter.

“Why do you want to see my pistol?” I asked.

“The bullet that was in Radford’s head,” Phoenix said, “came from a nine millimeter.”

Penny gaped. “You mean that man who was pushed over the balcony—he was shot, too?”

Chet was also surprised to hear about the bullet. “This case gets more and more interesting,” he said.

“The Glock is in my bedroom,” I said. “Follow me.”

Phoenix and Flynn refused to let Chet accompany us, so he went to the kitchen with Penny as I led the way. When I opened my bedroom door, I saw that Penny had made the bed. Judging from the fresh pillowcases, she had also changed the linens. Moreover, she had managed to collapse the inflatable mattress and put it back into its carrying case. Glancing into the bathroom through the open door, I noticed she had replaced my almost-empty roll of toilet tissue with a fresh roll, and had folded the first square into a perfect triangle.

I was in awe of Penny Cavanaugh.

“Where do you keep it?” Flynn asked.

“Here,” I said. I opened the top drawer in the night table and took out my semiautomatic pistol. The Glock’s overall length of seven and a quarter inches (four and a half of those inches were the barrel) was the right size to be comfortable in my hand. It’s a light weapon, about a pound and a half with a full magazine. The stock grip is made of a single piece of injection-molded plastic.

I handed the pistol to Phoenix, who sniffed the barrel.

“It hasn’t been fired in at least a year,” I said.

“You should keep it locked up,” Phoenix said. “A child might find it.”

“I don’t even know any children.”

Phoenix removed the magazine, saw that it was full. “Where did you get this?” he asked as he passed the pistol to Flynn for his examination.

“My husband gave it to me. In Africa. We were in dangerous places sometimes.”

“This baby couldn’t stop an elephant,” Flynn said. He tested the grip in his large hand.

“I didn’t need protection from elephants.”

“How did you get it into the country?” Phoenix asked.

“In my carry-on. I was very upset when I came back to New York; I didn’t remember that I’d packed it. Security must have been careless because it wasn’t spotted. Anyway, it’s registered now,” I told them. “And it’s completely legal.”

“That’s how we found out you had it,” Flynn said. “You didn’t tell us you had a piece.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

Phoenix wanted to know where I had fired the Glock last.

“About a year ago I went up to practice at the shooting range. Targets, it’s in Spring Valley.”

“I know where it is,” Phoenix said. “How good are you?”

“I’m okay,” I said. Actually, I’m a lot better than okay. “I used to go up there once a month to shoot with my old boss, Harrison Landers. Before his stroke. I don’t much enjoy going alone.”

I instantly felt uncomfortable. I had just told them Harrison had a pistol, too. As though he read my mind, Phoenix said, “We know about Landers’s nine-millimeter Beretta. He had a residence permit. According to our records, he reported it stolen two years ago.”

I was relieved. “Two years ago . . . someone must have taken it while he was in the hospital,” I said. Detective Flynn had been scribbling something on a piece of paper. Now he handed it to me. “This is a receipt for the Glock,” he said.

“You’re taking it with you?”

“You’ll get it back when the lab finishes with it,” Phoenix told me.

“If you get it back,” Detective Flynn added.

He put my pistol in a clear plastic evidence bag, signed his name on the label and shoved the bag into an outside pocket of his jacket. Then, his nose quivering, Flynn followed me to the kitchen from whence wafted the enticing aroma of fresh-brewed coffee and toasting bagels. Detective Phoenix brought up the rear. The expression on his face could have been used to define “grim.”

Our party of three entered the kitchen to find Penny arranging the items Chet had brought for breakfast. Chet was standing next to the sink, slicing tomatoes and sweet onions.

“Thank you, Penny, but you shouldn’t have changed the linens,” I told her. “You’re supposed to be the guest.”

She was smiling as she took the slices of onions and tomatoes from Chet and added them—artfully—to the platter of smoked salmon and sturgeon on the center of the kitchen table. “It wasn’t any trouble,” she said. “Matthew says I’m a compulsive nester.”

The Windsor chair with the tapestry cushion from the dining room had been added to the four plain oak chairs around my kitchen table. I was sure it was Chet who had done the lifting. Penny Cavanaugh was not the kind of woman men allowed to carry things. I made a mental note to find out how she did that.

As I watched Chet pouring orange juice into glasses, it occurred to me that he was being very helpful to Penny. She was only a few years older than he was, and lovely, like those Italian actresses of a certain age who always end up with the leading men in foreign films. It wasn’t inconceivable Chet might be attracted to her. Was I glad Penny was convinced she was still a married woman?

“Let’s have breakfast,” Penny said.

She indicated where each of us should sit. She assigned the elegant dining room chair to Chet. “I thought it would be fun, and a little different, to have a candlelight breakfast,” she said, “but I couldn’t find your candles, Morgan.”

“I don’t have any candles,” I admitted.

“That’s all right,” she assured me. “You’re very busy creating.”

I made a mental note to buy some candles.

Everybody consumed the smoked salmon, cream cheese, sturgeon, bagels, sliced tomatoes, orange juice and coffee. Only Detective Flynn ate the onions. Everything was cordial, until Chet and Phoenix got into an argument over who was going to drive Penny to work. I thought they might come to blows, but was spared from having Penny teach me how to clean blood off floor tiles when Phoenix’s pager buzzed. The two detectives were called to a crime scene. Chet got to drive Penny to Natasha’s.

SINCE THE GLAZIER was coming, I worked in my apartment. I used the dining room table as a desk while I edited two scripts and roughed out three new Cody and Kira scenes to be inserted into existing scripts. When I finished, it was eleven-thirty, time to leave for GBN, and the glazier hadn’t arrived yet. Typical.

I asked Luke, the chief of maintenance, to let the glazier in. I slipped Luke a twenty to stay with the glazier while he was in my apartment. I realized I wasn’t as trusting as I used to be. Getting shot at will do that to you. The window could be replaced; it wasn’t as easy to restore my sense of safety in my own home.

I resented whoever shot at me for blasting that away.