“You may be fooling James, but you’re not fooling me,” Delphi said, clearing away the orange juice glasses.
Isobel stared reflectively at the apartment door. “I’m not fooling James, either.” She sighed and swept her hair up, securing her ponytail with the black rubber band that lived on her wrist. “We’re just going to have to agree to disagree.”
“That’s not exactly how you left it,” Delphi observed wryly. She leaned against the refrigerator and snapped the dish towel at Isobel. “So, what are you going to do?”
Isobel shrugged. “Don’t know yet.”
“Not to keep harping on it, but I really don’t understand why you think there’s more to find out.”
With a burst of restless energy, Isobel began to prowl the room, collecting scattered articles of clothing, sheets of music, and empty chip bags. She wished she could give Delphi—and herself—a satisfactory answer. It wasn’t stubbornness, willful meddling, or a penchant for drama. Something was nibbling at her subconscious, but she couldn’t identify it. She scooped up a sports bra with her toes and tossed it, catching it in her hand. The place really was a mess. What must James have thought? She didn’t particularly care for the turquoise-and-brown decor, but at least his place was spare and neat, an adult haven. She suddenly felt like a ten-year-old on a sleepover.
“Do I get an answer to my question? Here, I’ll take that.” Delphi held out her hand for the bra, which she stuffed into a laundry bag hanging on the closet doorknob.
“There’s some detail…some little thing… I can’t put my finger on it.” Isobel knelt down and reached for the dirty socks that fanned out in every direction like spokes on a wheel. “We should keep this place neater.”
“So when guys drop in unexpectedly we don’t embarrass ourselves by revealing that we occasionally resort to shapewear?”
“No, because clutter makes a small place look smaller.”
Delphi grumbled in response but pitched in anyway, and in about twenty minutes the room was improved, if not exactly transformed. Isobel collapsed onto her neatly made air mattress and surveyed their accomplishment.
“All it needs now is a little attention with a dust rag and vacuum.” She waved at Delphi, who was lying diagonally across her bed, her tumbled curls cascading down the side. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your—holy shit!”
Delphi pulled herself up and clutched her curls fearfully. “What? Is it my roots?”
“I know what’s bugging me.” Isobel catapulted to her feet in a smooth motion, her hands waving wildly. “At The Hostelry when Harrison said, ‘What the hell is he doing here?’ Andrew wasn’t there! Remember? We couldn’t find him. He was MIA for that whole first part of the evening. And Peter didn’t do the cocktail hour. Harrison must have seen someone else.”
“Someone he sent to the camp?”
“Who else could it be? Presumably everyone else there was a friend or colleague. The point is it was someone he was not happy to see, someone he didn’t expect to see, and it wasn’t Andrew.” Isobel strode over to the kitchen counter, where she’d left her laptop, and began typing. “Here’s the other thing,” she went on. “It explains why Candy didn’t say anything about Andrew being there. She didn’t see him either.”
“And if she did see whoever Harrison saw, she either didn’t recognize him or wasn’t surprised.”
“Right. Now I really want that list. Did you deposit Peter’s check yet?”
“No, why?”
“Let me see it.”
Delphi easily located the check on her now neatly organized dresser.
Isobel glanced at the imprinted address. “He’s not far from Sarah’s office.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going over there.”
Isobel closed the laptop and reached for her phone. She saw all the missed calls from James, plus two from Hugh. “Thanks to James, I see the value of the ambush, so yes.” As she dialed into her voicemail, she briefly wondered why Hugh hadn’t troubled to show up at her door.
“I’m coming with you,” Delphi declared.
Isobel made the universal “hold on a moment” sign and listened to Hugh’s messages.
“Hey, sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been holed up in auditions all day and coaching every night. Anyway, the coast is clear for a bit. Call me.”
She looked at the date stamp. It was from the weekend. How had she missed that? She pressed the second message. “Hope you got my last message. Don’t be cross—I was really tied up, and not in the fun way. Right. Do you want to catch a movie tonight? Whoever picks the movie, the other picks dinner.”
Isobel guiltily set the phone on the counter. It was bad enough she hadn’t clocked his first message, but the truth was she’d been so caught up with everything else that she hadn’t even noticed they’d been out of touch.
“Bad news?” Delphi asked.
“No, just…never mind.” She slid off the stool and stuffed her phone into her pocket. “Anyway, you don’t have to come with me.”
“Yes, I do. The man owns firearms.”
Isobel placed an affectionate hand on Delphi’s shoulder. “You’d take a bullet for me? That’s sweet.”
Delphi shook her off. “I’d run for help. But I’m not letting you go alone. If you don’t want me, get James back or call Hugh.”
“Okay, you win. Let’s go.”
Isobel locked the door and followed Delphi down the stairs, wondering what show Hugh had been playing auditions for and why he hadn’t told her about it—which reminded her of the Sousa musical. She hadn’t asked him to play for her audition yet. She reached for her phone, but changed her mind. It didn’t feel right to return two days of messages just because she was looking for a favor. Instead, she went into hyper-chatty mode, which, to her surprise, Delphi tolerated. It wasn’t until they crossed Park Avenue at 39th Street that Isobel spotted the telltale white earbuds.
Delphi removed them and pointed. “That’s it.”
Isobel looked at the apartment building, made of the postwar white brick that was ubiquitous on the East Side. “He must work from home. Hope we’re not catching him out of the tub or anything.”
She held the buzzer until a voice came over the intercom.
“Who is it?”
“Isobel and Delphi. We need to talk to you. It’s urgent.”
“Who?”
“Isobel and Delphi. From The Hostelry gig.”
“Just a sec.”
Delphi gave a mock sigh. “How quickly they forget.”
A few moments later, they were buzzed in and took the elevator to the fourth floor, where the official-sounding Suite 4A did indeed turn out to be the homey apartment 4A. Peter was waiting for them in the doorway.
“What’s this about?”
Isobel cleared her throat. “We want to talk to you about Empire State Youth Camp.”
For a moment he didn’t move. Then he opened the door wider. “You’d better come in. I’m not talking about this in the hallway.”
They followed him into a modular living room with blond parquet floors, chrome-framed furniture, and bookshelves straining under the weight of legal tomes. He led them past a galley kitchen and a closed door to what Isobel figured was the bedroom, and gestured for them to sit on two high-backed chairs across from a surprisingly neat desk. Given his sloppiness as a producer, Isobel had expected disarray.
“What do you know about Empire State?” he asked.
“We know you defended a lot of the kids Harrison sent there.”
Peter clenched his fists. “For all the good it did. I can count on one hand the kids I got off. The whole thing is a fucking travesty.”
“We also know about Andrew,” Delphi said.
Peter’s face seemed to close. “Know what?”
“That he’s Harrison’s son, and he’s been arrested for the murder,” Delphi answered.
“You were protecting him that night,” Isobel said. “You didn’t tell the police he was there, although obviously they found out somehow. So why did you put him on the gig in the first place?” Isobel leaned back in her chair, though she noticed Delphi sat forward with her hands on her knees as if poised for flight or an impromptu karate chop.
“It seems like a strange thing to do,” Isobel went on, “unless he had a particular reason to be there, and I don’t mean raising a glass to his father in honor of a successful career.”
Peter flexed his fingers. “I didn’t know who the gig was for. It never occurred to me that it was Harrison. He was described as a well-respected judge.” He gave a grim smile. “As you can imagine, I don’t think of him that way.”
“So you’re saying you didn’t know it was for Harrison until you got there?” Delphi asked, unable to hide her disbelief.
Peter nodded. “And then I was stuck having to rehearse you guys and worry about how I was going to tell Andrew. I finally did, and that’s when he started disappearing.” He gave a hollow laugh. “I’m surprised he didn’t run off then and there.”
Isobel looked Peter squarely in the eye. “Did he kill his father?”
Peter took a deep breath and put his face in his hands for a moment. When he looked up, he seemed tired and resigned but also somehow sharper and more focused. He strode to the bedroom door, knocked, and turned to Isobel and Delphi.
“Ask him yourself.”