their mouth, but they got no problem sucking down the martini it came with.” He turned to his partner. “You want me to secure the scene. Right, Mike?”
“Bag up Ms. Purcell’s personal effects and all the prescription bottles you can find. We’ll check them for residue. Prints. I’ll get back to you soon. I’m going to get Ms. Cosi out of here and swing by the Sixth for notification.”
“I hate that part.” Sully’s light mood suddenly vanished. “Okay, Mike, I’ll cover things here.”
As we left Monica’s office and walked down the hall, I touched Quinn’s arm. “What’s notification?”
Quinn stared straight ahead. “When I tell the next of kin what happened to their loved one, that’s notification.”
“Oh.”
The reception room was nearly empty now and eerily still. Two uniformed police officers stood at the front desk. The magazine’s art director was sitting behind it. The tall East Indian woman with long dark hair was sobbing into a handkerchief.
As we moved to exit through the glass doors, one of the uniforms called out, “Lieutenant? A word.”
Quinn looked at me. “I need a few minutes.”
“Go. I’ll wait.”
The glass doors opened a moment later, and Matt walked in. “Hey! Clare! What a morning I had! You won’t believe it!”
I blinked.
“Just look at me,” he said. “I’m dripping wet.”
Dark stains marred his white cotton button-down.
“It happened right outside, at Columbus Circle.” Matt threw up his hands. “Thea Van Harben walked up to me and assaulted me with her Starbucks—insult to injury, huh? I’m lucky I didn’t get second-degree burns.”
I closed my eyes. “What did you do now, Matt?”
“Nothing! I swear! Thea just said, ‘You threw your wedding plans in my face, so I’m throwing this into yours.’ And she let me have it. But, Clare, I swear I never mentioned my wedding plans to her. I haven’t even seen the woman since . . .” he shrugged. “You know? I can’t even remember.”
“Matt, something’s happened here—”
Before I could finish, he’d already looked past me and seen the policemen. His face went from perplexed amusement to stricken in less than a second.
“What’s going on? Why is Petra crying? Is Breanne all right?”
He moved to get around me, but I caught his arm. “It’s Monica Purcell, Breanne’s former assistant. She overdosed on prescription medication, Matt. She’s dead.”
“My God, what about Bree? Is she okay? Where is she?”
“She’s not here. She’s working at home this morning. Didn’t she tell you?”
“No. She told me she had a dermatology appointment.”
Dermatology? That sounded odd to me until the light went on. Breanne had said something to Roman in Fen’s fitting room about having “work done” before the wedding.
“I’ve got to find Breanne,” Matt said.
I noticed Quinn walking toward us. He nodded stiffly. “Allegro.”
Matt’s greeting was about as warm. “Quinn.”
“Matt,” I said, “before you bolt to find your bride, we all need to talk.”
“About what?”
I gestured to the uniformed police and the sobbing Petra. “Not out here.”
Matt nodded. “There’s a conference room we can use. I know where it is. Come on . . .”
As Matt led Quinn and me past a line of cubicles to a glass door, he pulled out his cell phone and rang Breanne to make sure she was okay. It was a short call, and he quickly signed off. I noticed he hadn’t informed her about Monica. Before I could ask, he volunteered, “I’m not telling Bree over the phone. After we’re done here, I’ll head straight for her place.”
I nodded, pleased to hear Matteo Allegro was going to take care of the woman he was about to marry—but then my ex always had been a very loving man. (That was his problem, really, he loved women a little too much.)
“She’s bound to be pretty upset,” I said.
“I know.”
The meeting room was large, with buff leather executive chairs, a huge conference table, and a panoramic view of the city skyline. Quinn put his back to the view. I sat down across from him, and Matt shut the door.
“Okay. What’s going on?” Matt demanded.
He crossed to take the chair at the head of the conference table, and I brought him up to speed, telling him about the attempted theft of Nunzio’s rings and the suspicious-looking man who’d popped up two times in two days, looking out of place, the second time shortly before Monica Purcell’s body was found. I told him about Winslow and the possible connections between Monica’s drug habit, her interest in the wedding rings, and the questionable timing of her death.