The Trials of Nikki Hill by Dick Lochte, Christopher Darden Page B

around, Mr. Lydon,” Goodman said. “Tell us what you think.”
    The young man took a step forward. “Let’s just stay here,” Goodman cautioned.
    Lydon’s eyes flitted around the room, finally setting on the filing cabinet. “It’s a dreadful mess, of course,” he said. “And someone’s pried open that cabinet drawer.”
    “Not very professional,” Nikki said.
    “That’s odd,” Goodman said. “The lab folks haven’t hit here yet, but I coulda sworn that drawer was open only a few inches last time I looked.”
    He moved past Lydon, putting on his thin rubber gloves. He used one finger to push the drawer open even more.
    “What did your boss keep in there?” Nikki asked Lydon.
    “I don’t know. This room was off limits.”
    “Folders,” Goodman said, staring into the drawer. “Folders labeled with nicknames. ‘Hummer.’ ‘Jailbird.’ ‘Porn Pop.’ ‘Team Player.’ ‘Booty-Bandit.’ ”
    He joined them, rolling off the gloves. “When was the last time you were up here, Mr. Lydon?”
    “Yesterday afternoon. Maddie summoned me to say I could leave early.” “You usually work on Sunday?” Nikki asked.
    Lyndon nodded. “Prepping for Monday’s show.” “But yesterday she sent you home early,” Goodman said. “Every now and then she would do that. Other times she’d ask me to stay late. It evened out.”
    “Why do you suppose she wanted you out of here yester
    day?” Nikki asked.
    The young man shrugged. “She expecting a boyfriend?” Nikki asked.
    “I imagine she told me to go so I wouldn’t know what she
    was expecting.”
    “Could she have done all this damage?” Goodman asked. “Maddie had her paper-tossing moods. But she wouldn’t pry open a cabinet.”
    “Did you know about those files?” Goodman asked.
    “When I first started working here five years ago, Maddie made it very clear that this room was private. I was to enter
    it only at her request.”
    “Didn’t that seem a little weird?” Nikki asked. “Maddie’s business was secrets. So, no, I didn’t think it weird.”
    He paused, raised an eyebrow. “I wonder . . .” he began. “What?” Goodman asked.
    “I assume you think that whoever...killed Maddie also
    broke into the cabinet?”
    “Possible,” Goodman said.
    Lydon took a step into the room. Goodman’s shout to hold it stopped him in his tracks.
    “Sorry, I just wanted to check...There’s a hand-carved wooden box on the desk you might find interesting.”
    Goodman took a few steps to the desk. “Yeah. I see it.” He lifted the box’s lid very gingerly.
    “Key to . . .” Goodman blinked and squinted. “. . . Bank of... Beverly.”
    “One afternoon,” Lydon said, “while I was standing at her desk waiting for her to finish a phone call, I happened to notice that key in the box. She’d forgotten to close the top. She saw me looking at it and went a little postal. Slammed down the receiver. Called me a sneak and ordered me out of the house. Before I got to the front door, she’d calmed down. She felt so bad she gave me her tickets to a Liza concert. Maddie was like that. Big temper, big heart.”
    Before Lydon got too misty-eyed, Goodman said, “There’s something else I want to show you.”
    They all moved downstairs to the room with the dark green walls. “Anything unusual?” the detective asked.
    “The rug’s gone,” Lydon exclaimed. “Why would anyone want to steal that?”
    “Why wouldn’t they?” Goodman asked.
    “It was just a modern Romanian copy of a Kashan. Couldn’t have been worth more than six or seven hundred dollars.”
    “Could you describe it?” Nikki asked.
    “Like I say, a copy of a Kashan. Basically red, with yellow and blue triangles around the edges.”
    “How big?”
    “It was in the center of the room. I’d say eight feet by twelve.”
    “Anything like that in Deschamps’s place?” Goodman asked Morales.
    “Closest thing to a rug was the food on the guy’s kitchen floor.”
    Nikki asked Lydon,