The office was stuffy. Lowell opened the windows and turned on the overhead fan. He went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of sparkling water.
“Want anything?”
“No, thanks,” said Melinda. “So what do you think?
They hadn’t talked on the ride back from Riker’s.
He unscrewed the cap and took a long swig from the bottle. “I don’t know yet.”
“But you’re willing to look into it.”
“I promised you I would, and I will.”
Melinda walked over to the turtles and offered her finger. They both waddled toward her. “I feel badly that she has to stay in that awful place. It’s a dreadful thing to be locked up like that. Did you see how pale she was?”
“That could be her natural pallor for all we know.”
“I don’t think so. Besides, with her aggressive personality, I’m worried for her safety. Bail is set at one million dollars. There’s no way she can ever raise that kind of money.”
Lowell put the bottle down on his desk. “What would you like me to do, pay her bail?”
“Really, would you?”
“No.”
His daughter stood with her mouth partially open.
“You’d just let her sit…”
“For all we know she did kill Judge Winston.”
“You don’t believe that for a minute.”
He shrugged.
“You just don’t like her attitude. You’re such a snob.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, Dad…”
He smiled as he picked up the intercom.
“Sarah, would you bring in two coffees?”
“Sure, boss.”
***
As Sarah poured coffee into two mugs, a little spilled onto one of her shoes. She gasped audibly, took a napkin and bent down, holding her breath the whole time. These weren’t regular shoes that one would find in Macy’s. These were Italian, hand-made of the softest leather. And they cost Sarah much more than she could afford.
Luckily the coffee droplet came right up and left no stain. She let her breath out. She had a closet full of expensive footwear that she fawned over and treated as one would a pet or a child.
Sarah had a problem with shoes.
Relieved, she took the coffee cups by the handles in one hand, opened the door, and entered the inner sanctum.
“Hey, boss.”
She saw Melinda.
“Hi,” she said, in a friendly voice. “Nice to see you, Melinda. We didn’t get much of a chance to say hello before. How are things?”
“Not bad. How are you, Sarah?”
“Well, we had some excitement in the past month or so. But I’m sure you know.” She handed Melinda a cup and then Lowell.
“Yes, I heard a little about it.”
“Sarah,” said Lowell, “I want you to do an errand for me.”
“Sure, what can I do?”
Lowell pulled out his wallet.
“You’re a bit of a gambler. I want you to go to the deli on the corner and buy me some scratch-off tickets.”
“Boss?”
“It’s for a case.”
“Okay. What kind?”
“I don’t know, is there more than one variety?”
“Dozens,” replied Sarah.
“Well,” he handed her two one hundred-dollar bills, “just pick up a nice selection.”
“Okay.”
She took the money and left.
Melinda was feeding the turtles. “What’s next?”
“Let me get Mort in here to do a little research for me.” He picked up the intercom phone and pushed #1. A faint buzz came through the wall. “Let’s see if he’s in. I never know the hours he keeps.”
“He’s really good, isn’t he?” asked Melinda.
“One of the best hackers in the business. In fact, Mort was asked to leave MIT after he used their computer to hack into secret government files. It would have been too embarrassing to prosecute him, so the government offered him a job in their computer section, which he turned down, and now he works for the Starlight Detective Agency.”
“He seems like such a nice man to be doing such unusual things.”
Lowell laughed. “He’s unusual enough. I’ve known him since my days on Wall Street, when we both lived in Battery Park City. He was eking out a living giving psychic readings when we met.”
“Was he any good?”
“Actually, yes. I find his predictions about the future to be amazingly accurate at times. Although like most good psychics, he has difficulty with timing things. And he does have an uncanny ability to read people’s emotions.”
“Can he read yours?”
“What do you think?”
“I think if he could, you wouldn’t have hired him. You’re much too private a person.”
Lowell swiveled in his chair to face his daughter.
“Seeing anyone special?”
“Not really.”
“Whatever happened with, uh…”
“Peter. His name is Peter. I dated him for almost two years. You could at least remember his name.”
“Right, Peter. Whatever happened with him?”
“You mean the same Peter that neither you nor mother ever spent a second talking to? Is that the Peter you’re asking about?”
“Well, I…”
“We broke up.”
“Ah.”
“Are you happy about it?”
“No, why should I be happy about it? I only want what’s best for you and makes you happy.”
“You know, that’s almost word-for-word what Mom said.”
“Even if we’re not together we often see eye to eye on things.”
The door opened and Mort entered.
“Good morning, David, what’s up? Melinda, what a nice surprise.”
He walked over to Melinda and kissed her on the cheek.
“How’s Peter?”
“At least someone remembers his name.”
Mort stepped back. “You broke up. I’m sorry.”
Melinda smiled. “You’re very right,” she told the psychic. “Good call.”
He curled his face into a most unnatural scowl, wrinkling his nose and puckering his brow, as he did whenever he made a prediction. “It was the right thing to do. You’re going to find someone else very soon. Someone much better for you. I feel a “B” or a “V” in the name.”
She smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Thank you, I needed to hear that.”
“Is this a social visit?” he asked, relaxing his face.
“I’m afraid not. I have a client in need of your firm’s rather unique skills.”
“Always glad to help anyone you feel deserves our attention. Okay, what can I do?”
Lowell pulled several pieces of paper from his printer tray and handed them to Mort. “You can begin by telling me everything you can find out about these people. The first is the victim, a judge from debtor’s court. The second is our client, a bartender. Get deep into her background and tell me everything. I want to know if there was any connection between her and the victim, besides what we were told. Anything hidden or that the client might not even be aware of, no matter how trivial.”
“Sure, I’ll bring you a report later today.” Mort took the pages and headed out the door.
A moment later the door opened again and Mort stuck his head back in.
“You neglected to tell me how she was killed. An explosion, wasn’t it?”
Melinda laughed. “Geez, don’t either of you read the papers? Right you are. Someone blew her up in her car.”
Mort nodded.
He turned to leave just as Sarah returned from her lottery ticket run. He grinned widely at her and winked. “Hello beautiful.”
She smiled. Mort always made her smile. He was a strange looking man whose arms and legs seemed somehow almost unattached and were disproportionately long compared to the rest of his body. Sarah always thought of R. Crumb’s famous Keep on Truckin’ Doo-Dah Man whenever she saw him.
He opened the door wider, allowing her to pass, and bowed theatrically before exiting.
Sarah dumped the contents of a small paper bag onto David’s desk. “Here you are. Compliments of New York State.”
Lowell scooped up a handful and shuffled through each one as if they were playing cards. They were colorful and quite eye-catching, each very different. Win for Life, Lucky Sevens, Manhattan Millionaires, and on and on.
“So how do these things work?” he asked.
“Are you kidding?” asked Sarah. “You’ve never played one of these?”
“Good God, no.”
“You take a coin and scratch off these boxes, like this, and try to match the numbers to the winning numbers.”
“On this one,” she picked up another, “you try to get three sevens in a row, like tick-tac-toe.”
“Marvelous. Let’s play.”
The three sat in a circle around the coffee table and each took a pile of tickets.
“They really are messy, aren’t they?” Lowell began to make little piles of scratch-off stuff. “Put the shavings on this plate.”
He pushed a small candy dish into the middle of his desk.
For almost half an hour they scratched off the tickets. Some cost one dollar, some two, five, ten, and even twenty dollars. If someone had a winner they announced it and put it in a separate pile. When they were done Lowell picked up the winners and counted.
“Thirty-eight dollars,” he announced, “from two hundred dollars worth of tickets. Is that common?” he asked Sarah.
“I don’t know, but it’s not the kind of game real gamblers like to play.”
Lowell turned to the computer and went to the New York State Lottery website. He hit scratch-offs and then odds of winning.
“Well, this can’t be right,” he said, after scrolling through the website.
“What is it?” asked Melinda.
“These odds, they can’t be right. How could they get away with this?”
“What’s the problem?”
“Well, for example. The odds against winning fifty dollars on a two-dollar ticket are 5,040 to one. How can that be?”
He scrolled down a bit more.
“Here’s one where the odds against winning one hundred dollars are 12,600 to one. And a five-hundred-dollar winner on this five-dollar Win for Life is 50,000 to one. If it was an even-money bet it would pay two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Instead it pays five hundred. My God, with odds like that, you can’t even call this gambling.”
“What would you call it?” asked his daughter.
“Theft.”