OLIVIA HEWITT HAD said something to me about having a good woman in her life. Now she was letting herself into Natalie’s building with her own key.
“Oh, ho,” I said.
I WAITED A few minutes and then locked my car and walked to the front door of the building and pressed the speaker button and waited.
“Who is it?” Natalie said.
“Sunny Randall,” I said.
“Go away,” she said.
“I think not.”
“We have nothing further to say to each other,” she said.
“But I have much I want to say to you,” I said. “And Olivia. And if you don’t invite me in, I will stay right where I am and call your ex-husband and ask him why he thinks one of his top managers is hanging around with you.”
Five seconds later the door clicked open. In I went. I really was everything a good neighbor should be, including being well-armed.
“I SHOULD HAVE shot you a long time ago when I had the chance,” Natalie said.
“This might sound as if I’m splitting hairs,” I said. “But I don’t recall you ever really having the chance.”
Natalie and Olivia sat next to each other on the couch. Olivia was wearing a black sleeveless dress that I was not entirely certain fit the season. I couldn’t help but notice that her upper arms were extremely well toned, for a woman of a certain age.
Natalie wore tight gray jeans and a white pullover. Everything about the air around them, and the energy, told me they were a couple. There was a bottle of white wine in an ice bucket on the table, and two full glasses in front of them.
I sat in the same chair in which I’d sat on my previous visit.
I nodded at Olivia and said, “You’ve apparently switched sides.”
She smiled, almost imperceptibly. I knew I was being catty, being fixed on the work she’d obviously had done. Normally I wouldn’t stoop to that level, but it had been a rough couple weeks.
“Are you referring to my sexual preference?” she said. “Because this one has always been mine.”
“I meant professionally,” I said.
“Did you follow me here?” Olivia said.
“I was watching Natalie’s building, actually,” I said.
“Why?” Natalie said.
“I was hoping I might stumble upon something resembling a clue,” I said. “And, apparently, I have.”
Natalie and I stared at each other. Olivia stared at Natalie. Neither offered me any wine.
“Are you going to tell Tony?” Olivia said. “If you do, he’ll kill me, too.”
“‘Too’?” I said.
“Like Lisa and Callie,” she said.
“I’m still trying to determine who killed Lisa and Callie,” I said.
“It had to be Tony who had it done,” Natalie said. “Lisa knew too much. And Callie must have known at least some of it.”
“Then why hire me?” I said.
“Ask him,” Natalie said. “He’s your client.”
“I’m actually my own client these days,” I said.
“Only one would have you,” Natalie said.
She placed her glass on the table and took Olivia’s hand.
“What I’d like to know,” I said, “is how the two of you being together fits with what’s going on between Tony and Gabriel Jabari.”
I looked at Olivia. “Did you tell Gabriel Jabari which establishments like your own the cops could hit?”
“I don’t have to answer that,” she said.
“No,” I said, “you don’t. But somebody certainly had an insider’s knowledge about clients, and teenage girls.”
Olivia simply shook her head and drank some wine.
I was aware of music playing in the background. It sounded like some kind of violin sonata. If I wasn’t talking about a couple of pimps with a madame and ex-hooker, and didn’t have a gun in my purse, the scene couldn’t have been more civilized.
“Clearly you have us at a disadvantage,” Natalie said.
“Boy,” I said, “you can say that again.”
“If you tell Tony,” Olivia said, “he might kill us both.”
“Natalie won’t believe this,” I said. “But I mean neither of you any harm.”
Olivia Hewitt drank more wine. Her hand shook slightly, but she managed not to spill what was left in her glass.
“Tony is slipping, that’s just my view,” Olivia Hewitt said. “If it’s not Gabriel, it will be someone else.”
“The devil you know,” I said.
Olivia looked at Natalie again. Natalie nodded, as if encouraging her to keep going.
“I told Natalie a few weeks ago,” Olivia said, “that I wonder sometimes if Tony is even totally in charge of his own operation any longer. This was even before Lisa left. It’s as if, I don’t know how to put it, he’s being run somehow.”
So Lisa wasn’t the only one who thought that.
“Was this something you just intuited?”
Natalie smiled. “‘Intuited,’” she said. “You always did have the words.”
Olivia said, “I’d ask him about making some changes with our online advertising. In the old days, he’d say yes or no, thumbs-up or down, right away. Now he’d tell me he had to get back to me. I told him that in light of what was happening around the country, even hiring young girls for some of the brothels was far too risky. He told me I was right, that he was going to close them down. But then a couple of days later he changed his mind. Then he changed the subject and told me that everybody in the whole business was getting younger except him, and that he needed to adapt.”
“Just not for long,” Natalie said.
“Gabriel is going to take over eventually?” I said.
“Gabriel, me, Olivia,” Natalie said.
“Can I ask you something?” I said to her. “Why doesn’t Jabari just kill him and be done with it?”
“Too easy,” Natalie said. “He wants to torture him first.”
“Sounds like he’s waited a long time to get even,” I said.
“Long as me,” Natalie said.
Without being asked, Natalie told me that she and Olivia had come up together on the streets. By the time Tony and Natalie had been married and divorced, Olivia was in New York City working for Patricia Utley at a brothel near the Museum of Natural History, with an eye on working in management herself someday.
“So you were willing to return to Boston and go back to work for Tony?” I said.
“Only in the short term,” Olivia said. “Patricia joked that it was like giving me an out-of-town tryout before I came back to New York.” She shrugged. “But then one day I ran into Natalie at Max Mara. On Newbury Street? We’ve been together ever since. And I’ve stayed with Tony longer than I ever intended.”
“Then Gabriel came back to town,” Natalie said. “That just accelerated things.”
“So you all really are in this together,” I said.
Olivia said, “What Tony didn’t know was that I was using him. As a way of getting us where, and what, we want.”
“Which we’re close to getting,” Natalie said.
“Unless Ms. Randall here gets in the way,” Olivia said.
“I don’t think she will,” Natalie said.
“Why would you possibly trust her?” Olivia said.
The two of them were suddenly talking about me as if I weren’t there. I smiled at them, just to give myself something to do.
“She usually does what she says she’s going to do,” Natalie said to Olivia. “On top of that, she has to know that if she does anything to jam us up, I’ll tell Gabriel to kill her.”
“He says he’s not a killer,” I said.
Natalie smiled. “First time for everything,” she said.
She stood then and walked across the room and opened the door. I walked through it and down the steps and out onto Revere Street. Before I walked to my car I looked back up at the apartment. The two of them were standing in the front window, staring down at me. I resisted the urge to wave. Instead I got into my car and drove home, wondering just how much sisterhood a sister could handle these days.