I told him what little I knew. “You might want to check the stairwell door for prints. I think the killer left that way.”
“You got a weapon, Al?”
“It’s back on my desk. I grabbed it when I heard the shots.”
He walked back with me while his men set to work on the crime scene. He picked up the.38 revolver and sniffed the barrel, then opened the cylinder and spun it to see that it was fully loaded. “I didn’t think anyone still carried these things. You should get yourself a Glock or one of the other nine-millimeter automatics.”
“I’d hate to tell you the last time I fired a gun. Mike has a nine-millimeter and I borrow it once in a while, but this’ll do me nicely. I’m getting too old for gunplay.”
“You came close tonight.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about the victim.”
“Not much to tell. Name’s Rich Santillo. He rented the office about six months ago but he wasn’t around much. Came in at night sometimes, like tonight. He has one employee, a young woman named Stacy Cline, who’s there during office hours.”
“Know her address?”
“No idea. It might be in the desk somewhere, in an address book.”
“Did you hear any voices, sounds of an argument?”
“I heard him open the door, but that was all. There may have been voices. I wasn’t paying attention until I heard the shots.”
“You didn’t chase after the killer?”
“It seemed more important to tend to Santillo. He died within seconds, but by then it was too late to go after anyone. Our building doesn’t have any lobby security.”
“And he said nothing?”
“Not a word.”
I tried reaching Mike at home but Marla said he’d gone to the Lily Lake concert. By the time he arrived at the office the next morning he knew all about the murder from the TV news. I told him what had happened, what little I knew.
“You might have been killed,” he told me.
“The killer probably didn’t realize there was anyone else on the floor.”
“Has Stacy been in yet?”
I shook my head. “There’s no job for her anyway. Didn’t you see the crime-scene tape across the door?”
But she did show up, just after ten. “I was down at police headquarters making a statement,” she said, settling into her favorite chair. “How about some coffee?”
“So you’re out of a job,” Mike said, pouring her a cup. “We might be able to use you part-time.”
“Mike—” I began.
“We’ll talk about it,” he said, backtracking a bit. “It wouldn’t be much. Leave us your cell-phone number.”
“Thanks, I might need the job.” She jotted down the number on our notepad.
“How long did you work for Santillo?” I asked.
“Since he opened the office here. Six, seven months? He was always an odd sort of guy, never around much. Sometimes I suspected the office was a front for something, but I couldn’t figure out what. I told that to Sergeant Ramous, but he seems to think I know more than I’m telling.”
“Whatever happened last night, it’s a good thing you weren’t here,” Mike said. “The killer might have shot you, too.”
“Were you here?”
“Just Al. I was over at the Lily Lake concert. It started at eight, just about the time of the killing.”
Stacy nodded. “She’s great. I’d like to catch tonight’s performance if I can get a ticket.”
I was a bit old to be a fan of Lily Lake, the latest teen queen who’d come out of nowhere to captivate TV and the music business two years earlier. Mike Trapper was a bit old, for that matter, but his interest was strictly business. Lily Lake was hot stuff in the tabloids, especially now that she’d apparently hooked up with Sly Morgan. “I’ve got an extra you can have,” Mike told her. “I bought them for both nights in case I couldn’t get to last night’s concert.”
“Wow! Thanks, but let me pay you for it.”
He handed her the ticket and waved away the offer of money. “It’s on me. You need cheering up after what happened.”
“My boss was even a Lily Lake fan, can you believe that? He had a whole file drawer full of her clippings and stuff.”
“Did she have a policy with him?” I asked.
“No. I asked him once and he said he was just a fan. It wasn’t only her. He had clippings on other celebs, too.” She took a sip of coffee and remembered something else. “When I first started working for him he took me to dinner once with some guy from one of those tabloid papers.”
Mike Trapper perked up at her words. “He did? Do you remember the man’s name?”
“Vance something.”
“Vance Oberline?”
“That’s him.”
Mike was trying not to show it, but I could see the news upset him. After Stacy Cline finished her coffee and went on her way, I asked what was up. “I don’t know, Al, but I intend to find out. Oberline’s a stringer for a couple of the big tabloids, and a couple of times lately he turned down items from me because he already had them. Now I find that he’s friendly with the guy in the next office. That’s too big a coincidence.”
“It sure is.” I walked over to the wall that separated the two offices. “Let’s move this filing cabinet out a few inches.”
We found it almost at once. A tiny hole had been drilled through the wall to accommodate a cord and miniature microphone. “He could hear everything we said in this office,” Mike said, his anger building.
“You can bet it doesn’t stop here. He may have tapped our phone lines and even bugged your computer.”
“What for? Just to sell a few items to the tabloids?”
“Maybe, or to find out what you were working on.”
“We’d better tell Ramous about this.”
I hesitated. “We tell the police and it gives you a motive for killing him.”
“What? You think I shot him?”
“Calm down, Mike. I’m just suggesting we wait awhile before telling Sergeant Ramous anything. Meanwhile, you might want to speak with your friend Vance Oberline about all this.”
“Yeah. My friend!”
As it happened he didn’t have to go searching for Oberline. The man showed up at our office before noon, expressing shock at Rich Santillo’s murder. “I didn’t realize he had the office next to yours,” he said without much conviction. Then, as if noticing my presence for the first time, he asked, “This your partner?”
“I’m Al Darlan,” I told him. “I’m the one who tries to keep us honest around here.”
He gave me a smirk, which went well with the rest of his dried-up face. “And he’s the one who makes the money, right?”
“I’m not making much when you undercut me by buying items from Santillo,” Mike told him, his anger brimming over.
“Forget Santillo. That’s a dead issue.”
“In more ways than one. You know why he rented the office next to ours? So he could eavesdrop on me and steal items for your tabloids.”
Oberline’s smirk turned into a sneer and I decided I was liking the man less every minute. “He was after bigger game than that. He told me he was on the verge of the story of the century, one that would sell five million extra copies.”
“What was that about?”
“I don’t know, but he wanted to make sure you didn’t get it first.”
I remembered Santillo’s night visits, when he was probably in there listening to audiotapes and seeing what he could get off our computers. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mike told him, “but if I thought you had anything to do with bugging this office I’d kick your ass through that window! Now get out of here. You and I are finished.”
“We’re not finished if you have a story to sell. Find out what Santillo was working on and it’ll bring big bucks.”