9:16 a.m.
“CAN I help you, miss?”
“I’m sorry, could you please just hold this?”
Veena Lion was awkwardly juggling her phone, a legal pad, a fine-tipped black marker, a large cup of coffee from La Colombe, and a mixed bunch of gerbera daisies she’d picked up at a stand on Eighteenth Street.
The overload was intentional. She had just stepped inside the swank lobby of 10 Rittenhouse, and the doorman was trained to help. This would make them instant collaborators. Possibly even allies.
The doorman carefully stabilized the coffee, then held the bouquet of flowers as Veena organized the rest of her supplies. The nervous energy radiating from her movements made the doorman all the more eager to put her at ease.
“It’s okay, miss,” he purred. “Take your time.”
“Thank you so much…Curt,” she said, reading his name tag.
“No worries at all, we’ve all had those days,” Curt replied. “Who are you here to see?”
“My friend Yvette Rivera,” Veena half lied. “I thought I’d surprise her with flowers and a Fishtown medium roast.”
Veena did have a friend—well, a former client—who lived at 10 Rittenhouse, an ex-lawyer who was a coffee junkie and loved houseplants, even though none of them lasted long in her care.
“Oh, gosh, Ms. Yvette is out of the country at the moment! Though I know she’d appreciate those gifts.”
“Oh,” Veena said, pretending to be completely flustered by this information. In fact, she knew Yvette Rivera was in the Caribbean for the month; Janie Hall had double-checked. “Do you, by any chance, like Fishtown medium roast?”
“Never had it, but a hot cup sounds really good right now.”
“With my compliments,” she said, gesturing to the cup already in his hand. “The flowers too. I’m actually allergic.”
“Wow, really? Thanks, Miss…”
“Veena Lion, and it’s my pleasure. My father worked in a building like this many years ago.” Veena’s father had done no such thing. “The people you must see…”
Curt the doorman was sipping the hot coffee and nodding along. Within two minutes, a friendship had been cemented. Now they were just two friends chatting.
“You’d better believe it,” Curt said. “Fanciest address in town.”
“Yvette told me she’d seen everybody—Patti LaBelle, M. Night, even Kobe now and again.”
Curt made an awkward sign of the cross, coffee cup in hand. “God rest his soul.” But then he got an impish gleam in his eye. “And speaking of, you know who else I saw a lot of not too long ago?”
Veena leaned forward as if ready to receive nuclear secrets. “Who?”
“Archie Hughes.”
“Really,” Veena said, feigning astonishment. “Oh my God. That’s incredible.”
“I know! Look, I’m not supposed to talk about the comings and goings of residents or their guests, but he’s pretty hard to forget. Especially with what’s going on right now. You been following the news?”
“Such a shame. That family’s already been through a lot.”
Some sources required a team of horses to drag even basic information from their mouths. Curt was not that kind of source. He was positively gushing, and it was clear he had been dying to tell someone, anyone, about his personal connection to the murdered football legend. This segued into a story about the last time he’d seen Archie Hughes play at the Linc and what they’d cooked at the tailgate party outside the stadium, but Veena was here only for confirmation that Archie Hughes had regularly visited 10 Rittenhouse—a luxury residence well out of the financial reach of most nannies.
As Curt held forth on how to cook beer brats on a portable grill without drying them out, Veena scanned the control desk of the lobby. She finally found what she’d been looking for.
“I hate to ask you this, Curt, but would it be okay if I used the ladies’?”
Of course it was not a problem. They were friends, weren’t they?