56
Brenner turned to leave, but had nowhere to go. Cars were racing by on either side.
“I have an armed ex–police officer in that van, so don’t even think about hurting us,” Laurie said.
He held up both of his hands. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s a huge misunderstanding. I’m a private investigator. I don’t hurt people, let alone kill them.”
“I have definitive evidence that you were hired by Daniel Longfellow and gathered proof of an affair between his wife and Martin Bell. Then Longfellow instructed you to disclose that proof to Kendra.”
He shrugged. “Even if that’s true, so what? That’s what private eyes do all the time.”
“Except you never told Kendra about the affair, did you? You saw a chance for a payday. After you got her on tape saying she wanted to be free of her husband, you killed him and have been blackmailing Kendra ever since.”
“You’re crazy. I’m the good guy. I never gave Kendra the pictures of her husband with another woman because she was nuts already. There’s no telling what she might have done.”
As he offered what sounded like an innocent explanation, Brenner’s face softened and his voice sounded less icy. He seemed like a completely different person than when he had been speaking to Kendra alone a few minutes earlier. “Everyone knows Kendra was hanging by a thread.”
“So you grabbed the chance to blackmail her!”
“Listen to me, lady. That’s not how it happened.”
“Why did you record her when she was venting about her marriage?”
He removed a small digital recorder from his jacket pocket and held it up. She saw a red light on the front. “Because I’m a private eye. I record everything. I erase the stuff I don’t need. But then when the doc was killed, I figured Kendra did it. She had a husband who wanted to dump her. The doc and his parents wanted to take away her kids. They would have left her high and dry with nothing.”
“If you thought Kendra was guilty,” Laurie asked, “why didn’t you come forward with the tapes?”
“Because I know how trials work. It wouldn’t give the police what they needed to make a case. She couldn’t have been the one who pulled the trigger. She was inside the house when it happened. That means someone did it for her. They would have pointed the finger at me—just like you are—and I’d have had to explain why I got payments from Kendra. I was only trying to help. Plus it would’ve meant exposing Leigh Ann Longfellow’s affair, and that would have killed me with my clients in Albany. I was looking out for myself, but I’m no murderer.”
“No, but you’re a blackmailer.”
He looked around nervously. “You’ve got it all backwards, lady.”
“We just got you on camera, Brenner. I’ll let you know when it’s time for the next payment? What’s that, if not blackmail? And you’ve been following me, too. Once the police start investigating you, they’ll find out where you were on Monday night. You pushed me in front of a taxi and robbed me. That’s at least two other felony charges.”
When there was a gap in the traffic, he said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, lady. I’m done with you.” He turned his back to the production van, jogged across Bowery, and began walking south. When he reached the corner, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and appeared to be making a call.
“He didn’t confess,” Kendra said.
“We knew it was a long shot,” Laurie replied. “Trust me: overall, the footage is going to help you. And we have him dead to rights for blackmail.”
“Now what?”
Laurie watched Brenner, still on the phone. She wasn’t ready to let him go. She pulled out her own phone and called Jerry, who was parked on 5th Street. “Pull up to Bowery, take a right, and then turn on Sixth. Hang tight.”
She still had eyes on Brenner. She called Leo. “He’s contacting someone. I want to see where he goes next. We can’t follow him in the van, but he didn’t spot our second car. I’m going to tail him with Jerry.”
“Not without me,” Leo said.
They dashed across Bowery and made their way to 6th Street, where Jerry was idling at the curb. A pair of binoculars dangled from a rope around his neck. As she reached to open the back door, she saw that the rear seats were folded forward to make room for all the boxes and bags filling the small hatchback.
“Sorry, Laurie. I was planning to move some stuff out to Fire Island once we were done.”
Laurie could feel Brenner slipping away. She had to make a quick decision. Jerry wasn’t going to like this, but if she could choose only one person to go with her, she knew it made more sense to bring an armed former police officer than her assistant producer.
“So . . . can we borrow your car? And let me have those,” she said, pointing to the binoculars.