Her frown tightened, but she motioned me to the door behind her, which she’d left half open.
Widermayer, like his assistant, was communing with his computers. He held up a hand, like a trainer ordering a dog to sit, without looking up from his three monitors. I sat in a chair that would have dug into my bones if I hadn’t had on so many layers of clothes.
Widermayer, as much as I could see of him, was built like an egg—not exactly overweight, but definitely rounder in the middle, narrower at the top. His head, bald except for a fringe of gray hair, looked egg-like, too. I began to feel hungry, longing for a fluffy omelet.
The boss’s office was just as spartan as the front room. Widermayer’s desk was handsomer, being made of some kind of wood instead of metal, but the blinds blocking the winter sun were bent and dusty, and nothing hung on the walls except a clock, which showed seconds slipping past us into eternity.
Widermayer kept his eyes on his monitors. I was getting bored.
“You have ten minutes for me, Mr. Widermayer,” I said, “so why don’t you let me know why Rodney Treffer is using your car to stalk artists in Chicago.”
Widermayer held up one of his pudgy white hands again. I got up and circled around his desk to look at the monitor he was studying. There I was on the screen, my profile in LifeStory, my own favorite subscription search engine.
“I don’t think you’ll find anything on Rodney Treffer in there,” I said. “Nor about your Mercedes sedan.”
“But it’s telling me you don’t have any legal standing to ask me questions.” His voice was deep and booming, unexpected from his flaccid body.
“You agreed to see me, Mr. Widermayer, and my business card explains that I’m a private investigator. I’ve been hired to discover who murdered Nadia Guaman. Rodney is a key suspect.”
“The police made an arrest. Rodney had nothing to do with it.”
“No one’s been convicted yet. And there’s compelling evidence that the guy in custody didn’t shoot Ms. Guaman.”
I leaned over his shoulder to read the details about me. Funny how I’d never bothered to test LifeStory’s accuracy by checking my own records. They had my outstanding mortgage correct, but they showed me still driving my old car.
I tapped the screen. “They show me owning an old TransAm, which was totaled a few years back. I signed over the title when I sold it for scrap. Makes you wonder how reliable their research is, doesn’t it?”
He clicked a key to bring up his screen saver and leaned back in his chair to look at me.
“What evidence?”
“I just told you, they’re listing the TransAm among my assets, when—”
“What evidence that Chad Vishneski didn’t murder that Mexican gal?”
“You’re sort of following this story, aren’t you? You know the name of the guy who’s been arrested, but, like LifeStory, you’re relying on poor sources. No Mexicans were killed.”
He opened a new window on his computer and called up the news reports on the shooting. “Nadia Guaman. Mexican gal. Killed outside some nightclub.”
“Nadia Guaman, woman, American. And you know darned well where she was killed because Rodney was there, so surely he told you about it. And a few nights ago he drove one of your cars to the club. If anything happens to Rivka Darling or Karen Buckley, or even me, Rodney will definitely be the first person the police will question. And then they’ll talk to you because you own the car he drives, and then they’ll talk to Anton Kystarnik because you lease your office from him.”
I was making up the last item—it just seemed like a reasonable assumption. Since Widermayer actually looked as startled as possible for a boiled egg, it must have been accurate.
“Tell me about the evidence. Then I’ll know whether it’s worth talking to Rodney.”
“My clients pay for confidentiality.”
“In other words, you’ve got a big fat zero.”
“I’ve been around too long to let someone goad me into revealing confidential information. I’ll tell you, in exchange for another fat zero, that the police are taking my results very seriously.” No one ever said it was wrong to lie to Anton Kystarnik’s accountant.
Widermayer pretended to yawn. I sat on the cheap deal credenza that held his tax and law books. It wobbled a bit, and I wondered if it might give way beneath me, but I liked the way it distracted his attention.