It was Jennifer Guidry’s first full day off in two weeks. Between testifying and running point for the Ethan Macintosh trial and working the arson investigation with the fire department, she had racked up enough overtime to cover all her Christmas shopping for the year, but she was ready for a break. Amy couldn’t take a day off from the bank, but in truth, Guidry was downright giddy about having an entire day to herself.
She was on her third cup of coffee at Babette’s, treating herself to the salmon omelet—extra scallions—and a leisurely browse of all the papers. Her ritual was to start local with the East Hampton Star, then to Newsday for the rest of Long Island, then on to the New York Times for the national stuff. She was relieved to see that not one of the papers had yet figured out what she and the fire department already knew: the blaze at the $40 million oceanfront mansion of an A-list director had been intentional. The director himself had hired a special effects guy to make it look like an electric fire. Absent a leak from the investigative team, the news wouldn’t become public until the director was picked up on a warrant in Los Angeles later on tonight.
“Top off?” It was Ivy the waitress, offering even more coffee. Guidry happened to know that Ivy had originally been hired just for the season, needing a job of her own while her boyfriend had a gig doing private security for a party club out in Montauk. She didn’t press charges after police responded to a Labor Day weekend 911 call at their summer rental, but she did move out. Now she had joined Guidry and countless others who had come out to the East End to hang on the beach for one young summer, only to start a whole new life.
“Better not, or I’ll never make it through my beach walk without a bathroom break.” Fall was Guidry’s favorite time of year. The summer crowd was gone, the leaves had turned, and the waves were roaring. She knew Amy, for all her strengths as a girlfriend, never gave Cosmo a proper walk, and she was looking forward to seeing her beautiful boxer gallop unleashed along Maidstone.
While she waited for the check, she flipped through the one untouched section of the Times, the business section, in the interest of completeness. “Gentry Reports FBI Investigation.”
Something about the company name sounded familiar. It was described as a “publicly traded powerhouse in the energy, health-care, and industry sectors,” not exactly the crime and political news that Guidry tended to follow. But then she came to a quote from the company’s lawyer, Jake Summer of the New York City law firm Rives & Braddock: “The Gentry Group is conducting an internal investigation and also plans to cooperate with all investigative agencies.”
The Gentry Group was the company Chloe Taylor kept mentioning when she was trying to figure out where Adam Macintosh had spent the last two days of his life. Guidry had done the legwork of reaching out to Uber, but she hadn’t learned anything beyond what Chloe already knew—that he’d been dropped off and picked up at the Kew Gardens train station. Once the investigation pointed to his son, Ethan, she had dropped the inquiry.
The year before, Guidry had been a small part of a big mail theft case that sprawled from Queens to Brooklyn and through Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The defendants had washed and forged millions of dollars in checks. When Guidry drove to the FBI regional office handling the investigation, she had parked next to the Kew Gardens train station.
She was still thinking about that when she was about to start the engine of her CRV. It’s one phone call, she thought. What’s the harm?
She searched her old emails, trying to remember the agent’s name. How could she have forgotten? He was a nice guy. Cute, too, and had asked her to dinner. She still felt a little guilty for not telling him the real reason she didn’t accept the offer.
Damon Katz. There it was. She tapped the phone number in his email signature line to make the call and got his voice mail after three rings.
“Agent Katz, this is Detective Jennifer Guidry from Suffolk County Police. I think you’ll remember me from that Tobin and DeLaglio investigation a couple of years ago. I’m hoping you can help me out with something. Any chance your office had any contacts with Adam Macintosh last spring? Perhaps something to do with a company called the Gentry Group—I’m wondering if he might have been at your offices on two specific days in May. Give me a call when you can.”
By the time she pulled out onto Newtown, she’d told herself he’d never call back. There was no way the FBI was going to call some Long Island detective about a pending case. She didn’t even know why she was curious. Ethan Macintosh was their guy. She had called it, almost from the start.