Mindbenders, the agency at which Betsy had worked as creative director, was housed in a sleek but small building on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village. I wondered whether her death would have caused the agency to close, but that wasn’t the case. It was open for business.
I’d become expert at coming up with reasons for, as Seth usually put it, my “snooping.” In this case, I convinced myself that I was simply going there to give Kevin Prendergast my condolences. But when I asked for him at the reception desk in the building’s lobby, I was told that he was not expected in that afternoon. It was not surprising. Perhaps he knew Betsy’s family in Canada—Matt Miller had said she was from Toronto—and had gone to offer his sympathies, or to help arrange for her funeral, which was undoubtedly premature. The medical examiner’s office would not have released her body yet, not in an ongoing murder investigation.
I thought about leaving, but when the receptionist turned away to pick up the phone, I took advantage of her distraction to join a group of people waiting for the elevator. I rode it to the third floor and looked out over the white pods, their black-clad office bees pecking away at their black laptops. I walked down the side of the pods, observing their occupants. No one seemed upset, nor did anyone respond to my presence. They were all working with great concentration. Halfway to the conference room where last week’s meeting had been held, I spotted what might have been the only sign of mourning. Someone had left a black rose on one of the tables between a sofa and a chair.
I picked up the flower and twirled its stem between my thumb and index finger.
“That’s mine!” someone exclaimed.
I looked up. It was the young man whose work Betsy had praised the last time I was there.
“Kip, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I left that rose for Betsy. No one here wants to make a fuss. They all want to go on with business as usual. It’s disgusting. They’re afraid if they acknowledge that she isn’t here any longer, clients will start looking for a new agency.”
I sat on the black felt sofa and returned the rose to where Kip had left it. “Business can be very cold,” I said. “I barely knew Betsy, but I’m so sorry that she died. You must feel a terrible sense of loss.”
“Yeah, I really do. Not that it means anything to them.” He glanced over his shoulder at the other people hard at work.
“Sometimes people have difficulty expressing what they feel,” I said. “And I imagine Betsy could be stern at times. But you seem to have had a good relationship with her. I wish I’d known her better. Can you tell me a little about her?”
He perched gingerly on the canvas chair. “Sure,” he said, swallowing, his Adam’s apple prominent in his thin neck. “She wasn’t as tough as everyone says she was. She was pretty nice to me.”
“No one is ever as bad as people make them out to be,” I said. “How long have you worked at Mindbenders?”
“About a year.”
“Do you know everyone here?” I indicated the expansive space with my hand.
“It’s hard to know everyone. Some people only come in every once in a while. The teams, the ones you work with, those are the people you get to know, but everyone else . . .” He hesitated, then finished, “It’s a fairly big agency.”
“Did you work directly for Betsy?”
“Heck, no. I’m mean, she’s the creative director. She’s everyone’s boss, everyone on the creative side, at least. Not the account managers. But come to think of it, sometimes she told them what to do, too.”
“What is it that you do exactly, Kip?”
“I’m an assistant art director. That’s low man on the totem pole. I’m not even up to junior art director yet. But Betsy gave me an opportunity to work on a new business project instead of just doing all the scut work that the art directors don’t want to bother with. Of course I have to do that stuff, too. But she was very encouraging.”
“Is that what you showed her last week when I was here?” I asked. “Something for a new business project?”
Kip nodded. “You saw that? Actually, it’s kind of secret. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“Not even now?”
He winced. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. No reason to be quiet about it now that Betsy’s no longer here. It’ll never get used anyway.”
“What will never get used?”
“Her logo. I designed a special logo for her.”
“Yes, I remember it now. It was very striking, very powerful. Did one of the
A
s stand for ‘Archibald’?”
“Right. It’s for a new agency she was planning. Like I said, no one was supposed to know about it, real hush-hush.” He gave a short snort. “None of it matters now.”
“I’d love to see it again,” I said.
He went to a wall of file cabinets, unlocked one drawer, and withdrew the board I had seen him showing Betsy. He sat next to me on the sofa and laid it on his lap, carefully lifting the vellum cover sheet. Kip had designed two intertwining letters, capital
A
s, in a scrolling font, and beneath them in small block letters, it said ARCHIBALD ADVERTISING.
“I did another one with three
A
s, in case she wanted to add the word ‘agency,’ but she liked this one better.”
“She was going into business for herself ?”
“She never said, but if I had to guess, I’d say yes. It doesn’t make much sense for her to create a separate agency within Mindbenders, but sometimes agencies will do that to specialize in something, like digital ads, or public relations, or whatever. But Betsy was, you know, kind of independent.”
“Maybe she was planning to buy Mindbenders and change its name.”
He sighed. “That would have been so cool. I could’ve come to work every day and seen my design on the door.” He lowered the cover sheet. “I don’t think so, but it’s a nice idea.”
“Why don’t you think so? Because she gave the work to you?”
A rueful laugh escaped his lips. “Sure. If she was doing something for Mindbenders, she would have given the project to one of our big-shot art directors, not an assistant like me. Besides, I happen to know there’s nothing in the files about it. I looked. Any papers she had on this she took home with her.” He stood. “Anyway, thanks for looking at my work. I was pretty proud of it.”
“You have a lot of talent, Kip. I’m sure another creative director will notice it, just as Betsy did.”
He smiled. “You sound like my mom,” he said. “I guess I’d better put this away and get back to work.”
“Nice talking with you,” I said.
“Same here.”
Interesting
, I thought as I left the building and looked for another taxi. Was Betsy secretly planning to leave Mindbenders to establish her own advertising agency? I didn’t know how the ad business worked, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether she intended to woo away clients from Mindbenders. Like Permezzo.
Had that been what Antonio Tedeschi was talking about at lunch yesterday—was it only yesterday?—when he’d muttered to himself that perhaps he shouldn’t go with her? By “go with her,” had he meant transfer his business to Betsy’s new agency?
Betsy wasn’t the nicest person I’d ever met. She was short-tempered, hard-driving, and probably manipulative. But would someone kill her just because she was nasty? There had to be something more at work, something in her background perhaps, something not easily seen on the surface—or something like planning to desert Mindbenders and take clients with her.
If Betsy was trying to steal away her current employer’s biggest client, that could make some people at Mindbenders very angry. Angry enough to pick up a nail gun and pull the trigger? It was a potential motive.
I consulted the home address I had for Betsy from the package of materials we’d been given for the shoot, and gave it to a cabdriver. It wasn’t far from Mindbenders’ offices; we were there in less than ten minutes. My driver drew up next to a fire hydrant, the only space unoccupied by a car on the narrow, one-way block.
“I got too much traffic behind me to stop in front of the building,” he announced. “They don’t give you a break in this city. They press on the horn till you move. Drives me crazy.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said, groping in my bag for my wallet.
“See where that girl is coming out of the building over there?” he said. “That’s it.”
My gaze followed his pointed finger to the front of a four-story, modern building. It looked to me as though someone had taken an older building in that space and applied a new facade to it, presumably renovating the inside, too. The girl to whom the driver referred was wearing jeans and a pink, zip-front sweatshirt with the hood pulled far forward. All I could see of her head was a pair of oversized sunglasses, which covered half her face, and a fringe of red hair on her forehead. She jogged down the stairs, her arms wrapped around a manila envelope. I studied her back for a moment as she walked quickly up the block in the other direction.
“Something wrong, lady?”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. What is it I owe you again?”
“It’s right there on the meter.”
I settled with the driver and exited the cab, taking a moment to admire the peaceful tree-lined street. The cabbie’s complaints about other drivers notwithstanding, this was a quiet section of the city, at least at this time of day.
I walked to Betsy’s building and debated with myself about being there. I’d come to New York on other business, and wound up taking part in a commercial for a credit card. That someone had been murdered during the production was tragic, to be sure, but no one had asked for my input. Not that that had ever stopped me before.
I climbed the front steps and perused the names and numbers on the building’s directory of residents, finding the name b. ARCHIBALD next to apartment 4A. Because there was only one name, I felt safe in assuming that she lived alone, which meant that no one would be home to answer the buzzer. Instead, I looked in vain for a button for the building’s superintendent. As I did, a mailman on his way out opened the door.
“Do you know which apartment is the superintendent’s?” I asked.
“One C,” he said, and held the door, allowing me to pass him to enter the vestibule.
The door closed with a loud
thunk
, leaving me standing alone on the black-and-white-checkerboard marble floor. A superstitious person might have said that I was meant to be there, that the mailman’s timely appearance was a sign that it was all right to pursue Betsy’s murderer, and that I was justified in coming here to try to learn more about her. But much as I’d like to believe that divine intervention had enabled me to gain access to the building, I couldn’t fool myself. It had simply been a piece of luck. Had the mailman not arrived, I would have pushed a few buttons until someone answered and allowed me to enter.
Apartment 1C was ahead on the right. Across the way were the building’s mailboxes, and beyond them an open staircase. The lobby was as sleek and modern as the exterior. I went to the elevator. A handwritten sign was taped to it: OUT OF Order UNTIL SIX.
I walked swiftly past the super’s apartment and took the stairs, grateful for my regular exercise routine. By the time I arrived at the fourth landing, I was only slightly winded.
My heels echoed off the marble floor as I wandered down the hall, looking for a door marked 4A. I still intended to speak with the super, but first I would see if any of Betsy’s neighbors were home and would be willing to share information about her. At the end of the hall, I found 4A, and was surprised to see that the door was slightly ajar. I used my bag to give it a push and it swung inward with a moan.
“She always meant to get that fixed,” a voice behind me said.
I swung around to see an old woman standing in the doorway opposite Betsy’s.
“My goodness, but you gave me a start,” I said.
She had gray curly hair and wore glasses as thick as the bottoms of soda bottles. With one hand, she leaned on a cane. With the other, she tugged at the sleeve of a designer cardigan in a floral pattern of red and yellow. A Hermès scarf was expertly tied at her neck.
“What did Betsy mean to get fixed?” I asked.
“That squeaky door. I told her I always know when she gets home by that sound. Did she want me to know her business that much? She laughed and said she’d get it fixed, but she never did. Did you do that?”
“Did I do what?” I asked.
“Make that mess.” She pointed at Betsy’s open door with her cane.
I turned to see what she indicated. Someone had turned Betsy’s apartment upside down. Clothes were strewn everywhere on the green patterned carpet, drawers left open. Books had been thrown off their shelf. The door to the bedroom was ajar. Through it I could see that the comforter had been stripped back and the mattress was tilted on the bed.
“Was Betsy a messy person?” I asked.
“Just the opposite. As fastidious as they come. Always wiping off the doorknobs, straightening the pictures. Neat as a pin, too. A snappy dresser, they used to say. She was a little thing, but she did like her clothes. Looked like she stepped out of the pages of a high-fashion magazine.”
From the way she referred to Betsy in the past tense, I was confident that she already knew Betsy was dead. If I was wrong, I didn’t want to be the one to give her the bad news.
She confirmed that she knew before I said anything else. “Cops all over the place here last night,” she said, “making a racket. They knocked on every door, asking what we knew about Betsy. She wouldn’t have liked it. She liked her privacy.”
“Did Betsy’s apartment look like this when the police arrived?”
“Nope. I was standing right here like I am talking to you when Mike—that’s the super—opened the door and they went into her place. Looked like it always did.”
I took a tentative step into Betsy’s apartment and her neighbor followed. We stood quietly, looking at the damage someone had done to Betsy’s belongings.