SEVENTY
MIKE
MIKE Quinn thought the interior of Sandcastle was grand enough, but cold and impersonal. There was no warmth in Owen Wimmer’s handshake, either, which Mike conceded was typically lawyerlike—cautious and noncommittal.
Despite his casual Hamptons attire, Wimmer came off as intense rather than relaxed. In Mike’s experience, that was lawyerlike, too. He wore his horn-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose, making him appear as if he’d just finished perusing texts on jurisprudence; and his thin, reedy voice struck Mike as perfectly capable of delivering legal threats in a nonthreatening tone.
Unlike most lawyers Mike knew, however, Owen Wimmer was full of surprises.
“You’re here about Mrs. Brewster, I assume?” Wimmer said. “Are there any new developments?”
“That depends,” Mike replied carefully. “What are you doing at Sandcastle, Mr. Wimmer? With the owner of the hotel and your client missing, shouldn’t you be in Manhattan?”
“I’m doing the same thing you are, Detective. I’m looking for leads and evidence.”
“Leads concerning Annette Brewster’s abduction?”
“Of course!” Wimmer said. “As I recently told your colleagues in Manhattan, I believe Harlan Brewster was murdered, and it’s likely the same party took Annette. Now that I’m finishing up my digging out here, I believe I can point to several more suspects, as well.”
“That would be very helpful, Mr. Wimmer.”
With a self-satisfied smile, the diminutive lawyer turned on his heels. “Please follow me, Detective Quinn, and I’ll show you what I’ve discovered.”
OWEN Wimmer led Mike to a study that might have been orderly once, but now looked as though it had been ransacked.
Drawers were pulled out of desks and credenzas, their contents dumped into separate piles on the hardwood floor. Stacks of papers covered the surface of an antique table, with many ending up on the floor around it.
Mike noticed a pair of white cotton gloves—the kind Crime Scene Unit techs used to gather evidence without smearing fingerprints. Beside them was a thin stack of clear Mylar bags, each containing a sheet of paper and an envelope.
“Harlan was obsessive about keeping correspondence, but not so conscientious about filing it,” Owen complained. “I found locked drawers stuffed with mail going back a decade. But it’s the letters Harlan received in the months before his death that most concern me.”
Owen reached for that stack of Mylar-sheathed correspondence.
“Like this one,” he said, passing it to Mike.
The envelope was postmarked three months before Harlan’s demise, and was mailed at the Old Chelsea Station on West 18th Street. There was no return address.
The single-page missive appeared to be produced by a standard computer printer, and the message was simple:
What you stole from me I can never get back.
But I will kill you before you do it to another woman.
Owen took back the letter and handed Mike a handwritten message this time. The writing was frantically scrawled on yellow notebook paper in bright red ink. The author was so full of rage, pen holes were torn in the cheap stock.
The threats included “hope you die in a car crash” along with a string of free-associated obscenities that even caused the hardened cop to wince.
“That one is especially ugly and perhaps prophetic,” Wimmer said. “And the threats didn’t all come from the United States. The next one arrived from overseas.”
Sent airmail from Rouen, France, the note was printed on thin white stationery. Its message was short and as menacing as the others:
I paid you the money. Where is the evidence?
Send it immediately or harm will come to you.
“It’s not signed, of course. None of them are.”
“There are more like these?”
“At Victoria Holbrook’s request, I’ve been searching everywhere I can think of, including this property. I’m almost finished. I’ll bag up everything I find here and turn it over to the NYPD on Monday for forensic analysis.”
“That’s good, Mr. Wimmer. Good work.”
“Thank you.”
Mike’s sharp eyes noticed a second pile—not swathed in Mylar, but neatly stacked, unlike the messiness surrounding them. The top correspondence bore a law firm’s letterhead.
“What are these?”
“Legal matters, which I believe are also pertinent to the case.”
The first was a cease-and-desist letter ordering Harlan Brewster to stop “demanding additional recompense” from their client “beyond what has already been paid.” The client, Mike noted, was a first-string tackle on an NFL team.
The second letter, from a Beverly Hills, California, law firm, made a similar demand. There was also a demand “for any and all copies of the recording (or) recordings.” Mike recognized the client’s name, too. He’d seen her many times on the big screen.
The third was also a cease-and-desist order, and the client represented was a well-known politician, a name Quinn could have sold to the tabloids for a tidy sum.
“I’ve already given the NYPD a few similar threatening letters to follow up on—the ones I found among Harlan’s papers in Manhattan. I hate doing this, Detective. The Brewsters deserve their privacy. But in the cause of full disclosure, I’m turning over whatever I discover.”
“These communications appear to implicate Harlan Brewster’s involvement in criminal activity.”
Owen Wimmer nodded grimly. “We’re past worrying about Harlan’s reputation now. Annette is missing, her life may be in danger, and we’ve got to find out what happened to her, no matter where that investigation might lead.”