I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [55]
“Zan, don’t repeat that to the cops. They’ll turn that kind of talk against you in a heartbeat,” Josh implored.
The intercom phone rang. Josh picked up the receiver. It was the service manager of the building. “Shipment arriving for you. It’s a large load and pretty heavy.”
Ten minutes later twenty long rolls of fabric were delivered to the office. Zan and Josh had to push the desk to one side and pile the chairs in the back room in order to make room for it. When the delivery men left, Josh opened the statement that was attached to one of the rolls and read it aloud. “One hundred yards of discontinued fabric at one hundred and twenty-five dollars a yard. Special arrangement nonrefundable purchase agreement. Full payment due within ten days. Total including tax, thirteen thousand eight hundred and seventy-four dollars.”
He looked at Zan. “We have forty thousand dollars in the bank and sixteen thousand in accounts receivable. You’ve been concentrating so much on the model apartments, you haven’t done anything on at least four of the smaller jobs we have lined up. The rent is due next week and so is the payment on the start-up loan you got to open this place, to say nothing of the usual overhead and our salaries.”
The phone rang again. This time Josh made no effort to answer, and Zan hurried to pick it up. It was Ted. His voice bitter and angry, he snarled, “Zan, I’m on my way to meet Detective Collins. I have rights as Matthew’s father, rights that you have willfully taken from me. I am going to insist that they arrest you immediately, and I’ll move heaven and earth to make you tell me what you have done with my son.”
37
Toby Grissom pushed open the door of the 13th Precinct in Manhattan and, ignoring the comings and goings in the busy reception area, approached the sergeant behind the desk.
“I’m Toby Grissom,” he began timidly, but there was nothing timid in his voice when he added, “My daughter is missing and I think some big shot interior decorator may be the reason for it.”
The sergeant looked at him. “How old is your daughter?”
“Thirty last month.”
The sergeant did not show the relief he felt. He’d been afraid that it might be another case of a young teenage runaway who sometimes gets picked up by a pimp and ends up a hooker or disappearing for good. “Mr. Grissom, if you’ll just take a seat, I’ll ask one of our detectives to take down the information.”
There were a couple of benches in the area near the desk. Toby, his wool cap in hand, a manila envelope under his arm, sat on one of them and watched with detached curiosity as uniformed cops went in and out of the building, sometimes accompanying people in handcuffs.
Fifteen minutes later, a large-framed man in his midthirties with thinning blond hair and a quiet manner approached Toby. “Mr. Grissom, I’m Detective Wally Johnson. Sorry to keep you waiting. If you’ll follow me to my desk, we can talk.”
Obediently Toby stood up. “I’m used to waiting,” he said. “Seems to me I’ve been waiting for one thing or another most of my life.”
“I think we all have times when we feel like that,” Wally Johnson agreed. “It’s this way.”
The detective’s desk was one of many in a large, cluttered room. Most of the desks were empty, but the files strewn on them suggested that each of the missing occupants was actively working cases.
“We got lucky,” Johnson said as, arriving at his desk, he pulled up a chair beside it. “I not only got promoted to being next to the window with the view, such as it is, but it’s one of the quieter spots in the whole