Page 21 of Velvet Vaughn

“It’s his handwriting. I’ve seen it on a dozen contracts over the years. It’s shakier than I remember, but I’m relatively confident it’s his.”

“You’re a lawyer. You read people on paper for a living. If this were a document in a contract dispute, would you say the man who wrote it believed what he was writing?”

Leo didn’t answer right away. He considered his coffee, then her. “Yes. The phrasing’s too specific. The apology at the bottom is too human. He wrote it expecting to die.”

“Okay.” She tapped the island twice with a finger. “Walk me through the steakhouse. Every detail. What Vic was wearing. Where he sat. What he ordered. What he didn’t eat. Who else was in the room.”

“Anja—”

“I know it feels like I’m digging. That’s because I am. Memory diminishes in about seventy-two hours, and we’re already past forty-eight. If Vic revealed something that mattered, I need it out of your head and into mine before it goes.”

He nodded once, closed his eyes, and started talking.

It was Tony’s on Tuesday night, late seating. Vic had been in the back corner booth closest to the kitchen door wearing a navy suit jacket, no tie, and a collar that was too loose. He’d held an untouched bourbon and pushed a ribeye around the plate instead of cutting it. He’d lost weight.

Leo had taken a stool at the bar. Vic had come over anyway and sat down uninvited. “I know we’re not friends, De Luca, but I need you to remember I asked you something.” He’d made Leo promise that if something happened, he wouldn’t believe the first version of the story.

Then Vic’s phone buzzed on the bar. Vic had glanced down at it, and something in his face had gone flat. He’d slid off the stool and walked out without finishing his bourbon.

Anja held up a hand. “Stop. The phone. Did you see the screen?”

Leo opened his eyes. “No. It was face down until he picked it up.”

“Did he say anything when he saw it?”

“No. His face did, though. All the color drained away. I wouldn’t classify it as scared. Tired, maybe. Or resigned. Whatever was on the screen was something he’d been expecting.”

“Did he leave cash on the bar?”

Leo paused. “Yes. A fifty under his glass. He hadn’t run a tab.”

She filed that. Cash meant Vic had walked into Tony’s planning not to be there long enough to settle a bill.

“One more question about the steakhouse. Did you notice anyone else paying attention to your conversation?”

Leo paused. “There was a man at the bar two stools down. Late fifties, brown suit, reading something on his phone. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. He was still there when Vic left and when I left.”

“Describe him. Hair, build, face, hands.”

“Medium height. Solid build. Gray at the temples. Clean-shaven. He had a tumbler of something clear in front of him, but I never saw him drink from it.”

Nobody sits at a bar for forty-five minutes not drinking, Anja thought, unless they’re working.

She kept her face neutral. “Okay. Excellent memory. That’s useful.”

“How? I can’t tell you his name or anything else about him.”

“You clocked him without realizing it, and that means your instincts were working even when your brain wasn’t. Don’t discount it.” She picked up her coffee and took a swallow.

“Did Vic call you? Text? Reach out any other way besides the mailer?”

“He left me a voicemail.”

“When?”

“Thursday. Late. I didn’t see it until I got home last night.” He pushed up from the stool and crossed to the credenza without being asked this time, and she let him. He came back with his phone in one hand and a folded sheet of printer paper in the other. “I transcribed it, then printed it.” He thumbed the screen open, pulled up the voicemail, and turned the phone toward her. “Here.”

“You didn’t think to mention a dead man called you the night he died?”