Skully was good at doing two things at once. She nodded. Thatd have to be that Foster gals. Only one weve had all day we had to tow.’ Start em working, Mason told him. Just dont have them falling all over each other, or getting in each others way, but have them make inquiries, and really go to town. Im going, she said, and he heard the click of the telephone. Do that, I said. There were a couple of other chairs, a lamp or two, and in front of the sofa was a coffee table. On it was a phone, the black push-button kind. Next to the phone was a full cup of black coffee with a saucer and a spoon. He had burned through all his inheritance by then, and he had some personal scandals he was dealing with. Over twenty years ago, when Id only been an investigative journalist for a few years, I traced a meeting that Cowl had with some shady people in the Seychelles, but then the trail went cold. Then he dropped off the radar for about a year or so. He might have been in Asia or eastern Europe, at least those were my best guesses. Next, the man waltzes back into New York, buys and rehabs that skyscraper, starts his investment group, hires all sorts of pricey talent, suddenly has a clientlist that the biggest players on Wall Street would covet, and boom, hes the talk of the town. He wasnt even twenty-five years old. Its the optics, Devine. Im the head of a major investment house. I dont need that crap plastered over the trash press. Clients wouldn’t like it. They’ll think I’m reckless. They’ll think I’m demeaning to women. And ladies run some of our biggest clients. He added in a growl, And I talked to you before about that. Use your damn brain. On the way. Cause of death? How was he? One of usll get jealous in a minute, I said to her as I sat in an armchair across from them. There was an atonal quality to her voice. Almost as if shed been drugged. And maybe she had. The others murmured protest. How did the kids take the news about Sally? I said. Montgomery said,I thought there were, like, laws against that kind of stuff? The jury will, of course, be instructed to consider the newspaper clipping only for the purpose of showing the date at which the purse was dropped. But you know what a jury will do. Theyll eat that stuff up. Uh-huh, you know him. Its Ward Murfin. And then they put him in the hospital..