“Now what?” Darien asked as Waters dismissed the woman.

“What do you think?”

Darien knew he was testing her. She wasn’t a fool, she knew some people thought she’d sailed into this position over the heads of others who had more right to it than she had. She’d thought about refusing it for that reason, but Tony had talked her out of it, pointing out they might decide she didn’t want the job badly enough and she’d never get another chance. Her ex-husband was good for that, twisting the point of view to make you see the other side. It was one of the things she loved about him although it didn’t outweigh the reasons she couldn’t live with him.

But now she had to focus on what was happening here. Patrol officers had thankfully already done a canvas of the immediate neighbors, with minimal results, not surprising given the separation between the penthouse and the rest of the building.

“We need to interview the family, but while we’re still here and he’s primed…the super?” she asked.

“ Benton already talked to him this morning when they got the call. Think we need to bother him again?”

She weighed that one for a moment, then went with her gut. “We’re going to be who he sees from now on, he might as well get used to our faces.”

Waters grinned suddenly. It lit up those amber eyes, and Darien felt as if the sun had come out on this blustery March day. “His place is on the ground floor. Let’s go,” he said.

On the way down in the elevator, Waters leaned against the wall and looked around at the expensive marble and carved wood. He gave a slight shake of his head as he mused aloud. “Looks, power, wealth, charisma. He had it all, didn’t he?”

“For all the good it did him,” Darien said.

“There is that,” Waters agreed, and Darien knew he was thinking, as she was, that all the wealth in the world couldn’t help the man who now lay on a slab in the morgue.

She was doing okay, Colin thought. Wilson had picked right up on the cue he’d given her when the building superintendent’s wife had launched into a tirade about the arrogance of Franklin Gardner, not letting the super himself get a word in edgewise.

“Is he in trouble with the police? Good,” the woman had snapped. “Some kind of financial fraud, I’ll bet. That’s what it always is with his kind.”

It was then Colin had tried to signal Darien Wilson with a flick of his eyes. She caught it and smoothly took the woman’s arm, using body language and tone of voice to invite the woman for a nice, long venting session.

“It seems that way, doesn’t it? Perhaps you can help with the investigation, I’m sure an observant citizen like yourself must have noticed some things.”

The woman smiled, clearly pleased as she was led away. “Oh, I have all right, I could tell you…”

Relieved to have her removed, Colin turned back to Carter. The man gave him a look that was both sheepish and wary. “I didn’t tell her he’d been killed. The detective last night, he said I shouldn’t talk about it to anyone. Since she can’t keep anything secret, I figured that included her.”

“You made the right choice.”

“I’ll remember that when she chews me out for keeping such big news from her.”

As jarring as it was to have a murder reduced to such cold terms, Colin knew it was true; the death of a Gardner was just that, big news.

“I’ll need a list of all the tenants from you.”

The man grimaced. “They’re not going to like that. They pay a lot of money to live here, and they expect their privacy.”

“So did Franklin Gardner,” Colin pointed out.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. But, do I need to see like a search warrant or something?”

Rescue me from sidewalk lawyers, Colin thought. “I can get you a subpoena for the records, if you want,” he said easily, pulling a notepad out of his jacket pocket. “I’ll just need to verify all your identifying information for the court records, in case they need you to testify about the delay.”

It worked, as he had guessed it would. The only thing the average citizen disliked more than getting involved was having to appear in court to explain why.

“We’ve already talked to many of them,” Colin said. “It won’t come as any surprise to them when we go to follow up.”

“I’ll get the list,” Carter grumbled. He turned and disappeared through a doorway that led to a bedroom he apparently used as an office.

The apartment itself, although smaller, was as elegant as the others Colin had seen in this building. But there the resemblance stopped; Carter might be the super of one of the fanciest buildings on the Gold Coast, but obviously they didn’t pay him enough to match the other residents in decor.

Or maybe his tastes are just more like mine, Colin thought ruefully; his own furnishings ran to whatever was comfortable and things he could put his feet up on. After four years of marriage to a woman who kept the living room for company only, he’d sworn he’d never have a room he couldn’t live in.

He continued his cursory inspection, looking for anything that jumped out at him, anything out of tune. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. There were afghans tossed over every chair and the couch, and someone living here was obviously the source, judging by the large basket full of yarn festooned with scissors and what he guessed were knitting needles. There were some amateurish oil paintings on the walls, of floral arrangements and bowls of lopsided fruit, and he wondered if they were by the same hand. The upholstery was floral, much like the things his mother had preferred, which probably explained why he felt more at home here; he might not like all the fussy details but he’d grown up with the stuff, unlike the marble and leather of the late Franklin Gardner’s abode.

Carter came back with the list of tenants. “Must have been tough,” Colin said, pretending to scan the list while in fact he was watching Carter with his excellent peripheral vision, “to have your wife dislike your star tenant so much.”

“She’s that way about anybody with that kind of money, not that we’re doing all that bad. I mean, we live in this building, after all. Anyway, I just try…tried to keep her out of his way.”

“Hmm,” Colin said, wondering just how deep Mrs. Carter’s dislike of the penthouse tenant had gone. It seemed unlikely a woman could take him. Gardner had been a strong, healthy, athletically built man, but the element of surprise could turn any situation on its head.

“Who were the regular visitors to the penthouse that you knew about?”

Carter thought for a moment. “Ladies, of course. He had lots of those. And he held a lot of business meetings and dinners up there. He and Mr. Reicher.”

Hmm. Second time that name had popped up. “What was he like? Mr. Reicher.”

“Oh, he’s much worse than Mr. Gardner. Mr. Reicher wasn’t very pleasant at all. Very cold, my wife says.”

Colin asked a few more routine questions, gave the man his card and told him to call if he thought of anything that might be useful.

“What’s your take on the wife?” he asked his new partner as they left the apartment.

“Bored out of her mind, so she minds everyone else’s business,” she answered.

“Social climber? Aspires to the Gardner level?”

She thought about that one. “I don’t think so. She doesn’t really like them enough to want to be one. It’s not envy, she seems to view them more as an affliction.”

“To be eliminated?”

She stared at him. “You’re thinking of her as a suspect?”

He shrugged. “Just curious about her attitude. And thinking those knitting needles in there could leave a wound a lot like an ice pick.”

Quickly she glanced back over her shoulder as if she could still see into the apartment they’d just left. When she looked back at him there was acknowledgment in her eyes, he supposed for seeing something she’d missed.