Wilks’ face flushed and he jumped to his feet.
“Get out,” he roared. “I don’t have to listen to this from you.”
Alex didn’t move.
“But you will have to listen to the police,” he said. “Right now they don’t know that you told Van der Waller not to call them. I’m sure they’d find that fact interesting enough to come down here and talk to you.”
Wilks turned a greenish color and he sat down.
“I didn’t have anything to do with any beating,” he said. “I already told you how I work. I don’t go after the thieves, I let them come to my contacts.”
“Maybe you got tired of waiting.”
“I never heard of any Jerry Penballer—”
“Pemberton.”
“Whoever,” Wilks barked. “I never heard of him, and I certainly didn’t kill him.”
Alex hated to admit it, but he believed Wilks. Firstly, Wilks would have waited a few days, at least, for his fences to hear something. Killing Pemberton had been an act of desperation, perpetrated by someone motivated to get their hands on the missing stones. Wilks, on the other hand, was like a spider in a web, just waiting for the thieves to come to him.
“All right,” Alex said, flipping his notebook closed. “I take it, you haven’t heard anything from your people about the stones?”
“No,” Wilks said. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out an oblong book, opening the cover and turning it around so Alex could read it. It was a checkbook with a draft written out to James Van der Waller in the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was dated yesterday.
“If I haven’t heard anything by the end of today, I’ll take this check over to James myself.” He fixed Alex with a hard stare. “I may be a bit rough around the edges compared to the rest of the stiffs who work here, but I’m legit.” He closed the book and put it away. “Callahan Brothers Property always pay our claims.”
Alex stood up, putting his notebook away.
“Good to know,” he said. “Thank you for your time.”
“I’m sure you can find your way out,” Wilks sneered, not rising from his desk.
It was a long elevator ride back to the ground floor. Everything seemed to point to Callahan Brothers, but now Alex wanted them to be his insurance company. Not that Wilks would take his business.
A row of phone booths encased in polished wood lined the wall in the building’s elaborate lobby. Alex should have called Danny, but he wasn’t ready to admit he had nothing, so he dialed his office number instead. Leslie picked up after the third ring and she sounded harried.
“There you are,” she said when she heard his voice. “Everyone’s called for you this morning. It’s like Grand Central in here.”
“What have you got?” Alex sighed.
“Danny called twice wanting to know how you made out at the insurance company. Then Doctor Bell called, said he’s over at the University and wanted you to join him. He said to follow the police cars and you’d find him.”
That didn’t sound good.
“Lastly Miss Rockwell called, wanting to know if you’d made any progress finding out what happened to her brother. She, at least, was polite.”
Alex closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “All right,” he said. “Sounds like I’d better go see what Iggy wants.”
Leslie snorted. She didn’t approve of Alex calling a septuagenarian doctor Iggy.
“If Danny or Evelyn call back, tell them I’ll call them as soon as I can.”
Leslie promised that she would and wished him luck.
The university was south, past the core, near Washington Square Park. It would take close to half an hour to get there by crawler and he hadn’t eaten all day. His stomach growled at him, but Iggy’s mention of police cars meant something important was happening. He pushed his hunger aside and headed south.
The campus of New York University covered a few city blocks, but Alex had no trouble figuring out which building he needed to visit. As Iggy had predicted, half a dozen police cruisers were parked along the street beside a four-story building made of yellow brick. All sorts of horrors paraded through his mind as he approached. Maybe Dr. Halverson had accidentally infected someone in the lab and now they were all dead. Maybe Iggy had been there.
No. Leslie had just talked to Iggy, and he told her about the police cars. Alex took a deep breath and tried to focus. What he needed was a sandwich and a cigarette.
When he reached the entrance, there was no uniformed officer there, another good sign, but his gut was telling him something was wrong. It wasn’t until he saw the tall, blond man in the gray pinstriped suit loitering in the hall that Alex realized what form the danger had taken. He plastered a smile on his face and kept his pace steady.
“Agent Warner,” he said, when he reached the young FBI man. “If you’re looking for old books, I hear the University’s library has a few.”
Warner’s eyes narrowed at the sight of Alex.
“Shouldn’t you be helping some little girl find her lost balloon?”
Alex chuckled and clapped Warner on the shoulder. “That’s what I love about you FBI types,” Alex said. “You’re all so witty.”
Warner snarled and batted Alex’s hand away.
“You’d better mind your manners, scribbler,” he snarled. “The boss lady may want to handle you with kid gloves, but that doesn’t mean I have to.”
“I think,” a new voice cut in, “that what Agent Warner meant to ask is, what are you doing here, Mr. Lockerby?”
Alex turned to find Agent Davis emerging from a door with the word Pathology panted on it.
“I’m here to see Dr. Halverson,” Alex said, putting on an easy smile.
Davis’s smile looked just as insincere as Alex’s. “What business do you have with the Doc?” he asked.
Alex took a deep breath and kept his smile in place. These two were really beginning to get on his nerves, which, when he thought about it, was probably just what they were trying to do. If he gave them any excuse, they’d arrest him and throw him in a holding cell for as long as they could get away with. Some other time it might have been fun to force their hand, but not today.
Too many people were depending on him today.
“Doctor Bell called me,” he said. “Asked me to come down right away, so here I am.”
“Who’s Bell?” Warner asked Davis. The elder FBI man checked his notes.
“The consultant,” he said after a moment. The two of them exchanged a long look, then Davis stepped away from the door so Alex could enter.
The room beyond was crammed with lab equipment, workbenches, burners, and beakers of every description — and policemen. Alex saw Lieutenant Callahan standing next to a gray-bearded man with immensely thick spectacles who wore a white lab coat. Alex ventured a guess that he was the famous Dr. Halverson. He seemed to be explaining something highly technical, since Callahan and his detectives kept stopping him every few seconds to write in their notebooks.
“Well, well,” a honeyed female voice washed over him. “You do turn up in the strangest places, Mr. Lockerby.”
Alex looked toward the back of the room and found Sorsha Kincaid leaning against a lab table with the air of someone who was waiting for something to happen. Unlike when she came to his office, she wore a dress with a white jacket over the top. The dress was pale blue to match her eyes, and it clung to her slender form in a very appealing manner. To Alex’s surprise, Iggy stood next to her with a warm smile on his face.
“Why, Miss Kincaid,” Alex said, slapping his poker face back in place. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
She smiled a warm, genuine smile and shook her head.
“Not for me,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you for some time. It was very rude of you to keep me waiting.”