“Oh, I see,” the receptionist said. “Well, you’re welcome to, but you should know that most of his things have been cleared out. His wife and some movers took care of most of it today.”
Ava was discouraged at first but then figured they could just pay a visit to Mrs. Perkins. For all they knew, she may know a bit about any involvement her husband might have had with other individuals taking part in the Race to the Sky.
“Thank you,” Ava said, already turning back for the doors.
“I’m not sure what you’re looking for, but there were a few things left behind at the request of Mr. White,” the receptionist said. “Things concerning current projects still in process, and contacts of certain clients. If you’re looking for recent business-related items, it’s likely still here.”
“Is it still in his office?”
“Yes,” the receptionist said. She then reached down below the counter and opened up a drawer. Seconds later, she retrieved a key and handed it to Ava.
Both Ava and Pawlowski gave their thanks and head directly for the stairs. As they climbed then, Pawlowski said, “What do you know? We actually caught a break.”
“Not only that,” Ava said, “but the bulk of the digging has already been done. Anything recent and related to current projects means that anything related to the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building is going to be in the things that were left behind.”
They made their way to the fourth-floor hallway, making a direct course for Perkins’s office. The door had been left open, but everything except the desk and a single bookshelf had been removed. The only exception was a small box sitting on the desk. When Ava looked inside, she found a series of papers that looked to have all been clipped together. Among the papers were a few notebooks and a smaller, leather book.
Ava’s attention went to the leather book right away, merely because it looked more important and official than anything else. A childish impulse at its core, it proved to pay off almost right away. When she opened it up, she found that it was Alfred Perkins’s planner. When she opened it to the first page, she saw that it started a little over eight months ago, at the start of the year.
“His planner,” she said, scanning through the pages and coming to a stop when she reached the days from several weeks ago.
Many of the notes were very brief and written in a way that seemed almost like code but was likely just Perkins’s own shorthand way of saving time and space on the pages.Mtg w Deringer, 2. Bank apt w Herber Bros, 11.She did see two entries from six weeks ago that read:Mtg w Albrecht, 3:30 – CB.
Albrecht,Ava thought.Albrecht, CB. That clearly stands for Chrysler Building, given Albrecht’s association with it.As she scanned through them, a few dates from three weeks ago caught her eye. There were two entries within the same week and then another listing one week prior to his death.
The listings read:Lunch – Fairfax – ESB.The third listing was exactly the same, only it ended with an underlined question mark.
“ESB,” Ava said. “That could be an abbreviation for Empire State Building, right?”
Pawlowski was thumbing through one of the notebooks that had been left behind. She nodded her agreement, but it was clear that her attention was on whatever she was looking at.
“Could be,” she said. “But hey, I think this is something sort of like a contacts list. They’re sort of scrawled all over the place. Some of them have little notes that seem to be when he first met them—or when he last met them. I’m not sure.”
“That’s excellent” Ava said. “See if you can find the name Fairfax. I’ve got an entry in his schedule—several of them actually—where he was supposed to meet someone by the name of Fairfax. And they’re denoted withESB.”
Pawlowski did as she was asked and within just a few seconds, she nodded and placed the notebook on the desk. “Right there,” she said. “Henry Fairfax. And beside his name is one interesting word.”
Ava looked at the listing and saw what Pawlowski was talking about. Written by Fairfax’s name was the wordEmpire.
“And there’s the connection to the Empire State Building,” Ava said.
Pawlowski picked up the notebook with the phone numbers and started for the door. “The way I see it, we have a name and a phone number. I say we call and meet with him now.”
Ava agreed one hundred percent, reminding herself that they had a man in an interrogation room that, while he had indeed pointed a gun at her, was not at all guilty of the murder they were investigating.
They made their way back downstairs, back to the receptionist. For the second time in the past two days, Ava asked to borrow the phone. The woman behind the desk handed it over eagerly, her wide and excited eyes indicating that she could sense the urgency behind the call Ava was about to make.
While Pawlowski thanked the woman, Ava found the number listed for Fairfax and placed the call. It was answered on the third ring by a woman that had a rather rough, haggard voice.
“Mr. Fairfax’s office.”
“This is Detective Ava Gold with the NYPD,” she said. “I need to speak with Mr. Fairfax, please.”
“He’s not in the office right now. Might I ask what this is about?”
Ava figured there was no sense in tipping a potential suspect off as to why the police might want to speak to him, so she decided to make a cover story on the fly. Not only a story to cover her backside, but to perhaps entice Fairfax to speak with them and to have his secretary make sure she did her best to connect them.
“I’ve been tasked with looking into a recent suicide at an investment firm,” she said. “It seems that when this man took his own life, he owed many people some money—something to do with construction contracts and investments. The details are quite murky. But we do have a list of people that he owed money to. His employers are adamant that we make sure every penny is paid, but needed the police to sort of look over it to make sure everything was done by the book. And it just so happens that Mr. Fairfax’s name is on that list.”