“No,” she said. “He had various interests in London but I’ve not been able to contact him since before Christmas.”
“Well, he just disappeared, and we have no forwarding address.”
“But you must have arranged the changeover of his apartment. There’s a new owner, a German gentleman.”
“Yes, he purchased the lease.”
“From you?”
“Yes, we handle the property, but we did the transaction with a lawyer acting on behalf of Mr. Moreno. All the documents were in order, so we had no reason to query the sale.”
“So Mr. Moreno never discussed leaving the apartment with you?”
“No. He left without notice, but that’s not unusual. The only thing unusual was…” He hesitated. Sylvia waited. “He left a lot of personal items, which we removed before the next tenant moved in. He seemed to have departed in quite a hurry.”
“Can you tell me what he left?”
“Clothing, stuff like that. We kept it weeks in storage. The new owner bought all the furniture and fittings.”
“He just bought everything?”
“Well, not everything. There were items like videos, books. He didn’t want those.”
“Who took all that?”
Martin gave an embarrassed shrug. There had actually been a hell of a lot that Mr. Goldberg had not purchased: the paintings, mirrors, ornaments, and so on. But after keeping them in storage for a short while, Martin and Dugdale had done a little filching for themselves. In fact, they had stripped the place of anything remotely valuable. Sylvia suspected this, but it was not why she was there. “Do you have the name of the lawyer who handled the transactions?” she asked.
Martin walked to a cabinet, flicked through a row of files, and withdrew the one with Moreno’s apartment number written on the front. “Mr. Philip Simmons. We have a phone number and”-he turned a page-“just a box number, which is unusual, and a further contact number for an address in the Hamptons.”
“Could you give me the number? I really would like to speak to him.”
Martin took one of his cards, copied down the number, and passed it to Sylvia. Then he walked back to the cabinet, still reading the file. He paused, frowning and turning pages. “I doubt you’ll have much luck. Seems we’ve attempted to contact him as various maintenance charges were left unpaid and we wanted to get the accounts settled. It was not a large amount, but our letters went unanswered.” He rested his elbow on top of the filing cabinet.
“Did you meet the lawyer?”
“No, I didn’t. This was all handled by the boss, Mr. Dugdale. You saw him as you left… Ah, forgive me, I did meet him just once, when he came to sign over the lease to Mr. Goldberg. He went into Mr. Dugdale’s office.”
“Could you describe him?”
“He was well dressed, elegant, I’d say, and tall. A big man, much taller than me and I’m almost six feet. He had reddish hair, and a mustache.”
Sylvia stood up and shook his hand. “Thank you so much for your time. I really do appreciate it.”
Sylvia returned to her hotel and called the number for Simmons. As she expected, it was no longer in use. Later she called Matheson, who agreed to meet her in the hotel bar at nine. She asked what he looked like.
“I’m small, nothing special. I’ll have a big red and black scarf round my neck, glasses and thinning hair.”
“I’m dark-haired, and I’m wearing a tweed suit with a white blouse and pearls,” she said primly.
Sylvia entered the reasonably full bar and peered around until she spotted the investigator. Then she threaded her way through the low tables to join him. “How do you do?”
“Miss Hewitt, it’s nice to put a face to the voice. Can I get you a drink?”
“White wine, please.”
He signaled to a waiter as she sat down on one of the low seats opposite him. The man came over, and Matheson ordered a beer for himself and a chilled Chablis for her.
“It’s so noisy here,” Sylvia said. “They even have music in the lifts.”
“You get used to it,” he said and drew his chair closer to her. “Can I just get something straight? I mean, I don’t wanna sound pushy, but this is my livelihood and I’ll charge my hourly rate for tonight’s meeting. How’s that suit you?”
She nodded. “Fine.”
He sat back as the waiter put down a bowl of nuts and their drinks. She raised her glass and sipped. “Well, I’m here, Mr. Matheson. You did say you had some developments, and I’ve come a long way to hear them in person, as you suggested.”
“Like I said on the phone, I met up with an old friend. I want you to know straight up, I wasn’t being unethical in discussing your business with him. It just came up in conversation. I never mentioned your name.”
“Who is he?”
“An ex-cop, like me, from way back. He’s about the same age, works mostly on security now. Been on tour with this rock group. In fact, he’s with them now.”
“What’s his name?”
“Donny Baron. Nice guy. He says to me that he’s fed up with schlepping all over the country. I ask him if he’s doing any private work, and he says he had an interesting gig a few months ago. He ran an ad in The New York Times and this guy made contact, wanted him to do a bit of ducking and diving around town, checking out a guy that had done a little Internet fraud. And I said to him, ‘That’s a coincidence. Guy’s not called Moreno, is he?’ So he looks at me and he laughs and says he is. Said he’d been checking out Moreno’s apartment for his client.”
“When was this?”
“Just after Christmas. So I ask him about his client and he tells me he was a Canadian, flew from Los Angeles on the red-eye. Paid him a nice whack and that was it.”
“Did he say what this man’s name was?”
“Well, he was a bit edgy about that, but in the end he said it was Philip Simmons. Same guy we discovered. Donny’s met him.”
“So he was an investor?”
“Could have been. He’s obviously more than just Moreno’s financial adviser. I mean, if he was Moreno’s financial adviser, why did he need to hire Donny to find him?”
Sylvia sipped her wine again, then placed it carefully on the table. “He’s been posing as his solicitor too.”
“Really? Well, Donny told me that this guy’s accent was strange, said he sounded more like a Brit, so that was why I contacted you. The contractor in the Hamptons, he said he thought he was Canadian. There’s obviously something funny going on with this guy.”
Sylvia sighed. “I was a small investor in Moreno’s company. I was told not to interfere by someone who had lost a considerable amount more than myself. In fact, three people I know of lost millions, and they all said they were handling it. They also refused to help me pay your wages. I thought that when I told them about your investigation they would have been eager for you to continue, but they weren’t.”
“Maybe they’re getting a cut from Simmons. Who knows what’s going on? I just reckoned you’d want to know about him cropping up again.” He toyed with his empty beer glass. “I reckon you should go out to the Hamptons and check it out.”
“How far is it?”
“Train would be about two hours. If you drive it’s around the same; out of season there won’t be much traffic. I can go out there with you if you want me to.” Matheson was pushing to be rehired, but Sylvia was not prepared to pay out any more than she had to. He wrote down the address and passed it to her, then suggested she stay at the Maidstone Arms Hotel.
“I’ll go alone tomorrow.” She looked at the address and slipped it into her purse.
Matheson went on. “You mind if I say something? This Philip Simmons is, by my reckoning, somebody you should tread carefully with. If, as you say, that property in the Hamptons is worth millions, he might just have…” He took a deep breath.
“What?”
“Murdered for it.”