“Mrs. Silvestri-”

She looked up at him, surprised he knew her name. “It’s Miss.”

She had clear green eyes, unclouded by age. Eyes that probably didn’t miss much.

“I was wondering if you’d be willing to answer a few questions,” Louis began.

“About what?”

“Your boss.”

Something shifted in her expression. Then, suddenly, she teared up. She yanked a Kleenex from the box on her desk.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No need to apologize,” Louis said.

She blew her nose. “What did you want to ask me?”

He wanted to ask her about finding Duvall’s body, what the scene had looked like, but that was out of the question for the moment. “That elevator,” he said, pointing out the glass doors. “Is it locked after hours?”

“No, the building is filled with attorneys and they come and go at all hours. The downstairs lobby is always open too.”

“Did Mr. Duvall normally work late?”

She smiled wanly. “A man doesn’t become a legend working a mere forty hours.”

“Besides Jack Cade, did Mr. Duvall receive any threats recently? Maybe from dissatisfied clients?”

The secretary shook her head slowly. “The police already asked me that, and that woman defense attorney.”

“What can you tell me about the relationship between Mr. Duvall and Mr. Bernhardt? How did they meet?”

“In law school at Tallahassee, I think. But they didn’t become partners until 1968.” She sighed. “It was just Mr. Duvall and me in the beginning. It was very hard in those days, let me tell you. Mr. Duvall did all his own investigative work. He was very good at it, better than Matlock, I think. Some weeks I didn’t get paid. We both ate a lot of baloney sandwiches.” She fell silent again, lost in memories.

“But business picked up,” Louis prodded.

She smiled slightly. “Oh yes. Mr. Duvall was very, very good at what he did. Word got out, especially after the Cade case.”

She teared up again.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen now,” she said softly, staring off at the rooftops. “I mean, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

She hadn’t said it, but he could see it there in her eyes. She meant she didn’t know what she was going to do.

“Miss Silvestri,” Louis said gently, “are you going to lose your job here?”

She grabbed another Kleenex. Louis felt like kicking himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was-”

She waved a hand. “No, it’s all right. Fact is, I’m an old dinosaur here. Lyle will let enough time go by to look decent, then he’ll hire some young thing with big boobs.” She grimaced. “Lyle is big on appearances.”

He noticed she had switched to calling Bernhardt by his first name. “And Spencer Duvall wasn’t?” Louis asked.

She smiled slightly as she shook her head. “Not at all. I mean, even after the money started coming in, Mr. Duvall didn’t change. He was born and raised here. He never got the sand out of his shoes.”

Her eyes drifted to the hallway, toward Lyle Bernhardt’s closed door. “Come with me,” she said.

“Where?”

“You said you wanted to see Mr. Duvall’s office.”

He followed her down the hall, passing Lyle Bernhardt’s door. At the end of the corridor, she slipped a key from her pocket and unlocked the door. She ushered Louis quickly inside, shutting the door behind them.

The office was larger than Bernhardt’s, but it couldn’t have looked more different. A massive old cherry desk dominated the room, with a pair of well-worn wing chairs and a small round table facing it. The floor had been left uncarpeted and the rich oak planks were covered with a softly faded Persian carpet. The lamps were brass, the walls a sun-bleached moss green paper. On the wall behind the desk, there was a framed degree from Florida State School of Law. On the wall opposite the desk was a group of old photographs of Fort Myers street scenes and a Victorian beach house. There was a scarred wood glass-front bookcase, its shelves filled not with books but with carefully displayed conch shells. The place looked more like the den of somebody’s eccentric old uncle than a law office.

“Nice,” Louis said, turning.

Ellie Silvestri was staring at the room. “My God,” she said softly.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve never seen it this. . clean.” She came forward, scanning the old furniture and walls. “Mr. Duvall was a pack rat and he hated it when I tried to tidy up. He didn’t even like the cleaning lady coming in here.”

Ellie moved to the desk. It was clean; the crime scene technicians had taken everything. She was looking at the powder smudges.

“That’s from the fingerprint techs,” Louis said, feeling the need to explain.

Ellie nodded slightly, her eyes still scanning the room. Again, Louis wondered what Ellie Silvestri had seen that morning when she walked in.

He glanced behind the desk, trying to visualize the scene. There was an old credenza, marked with smudges. The chair was gone; the police probably had it.

The newspaper article said only that Duvall had been shot in the head. A big chunk of the Persian rug under the desk had been cut away, a bloodstain probably. Louis looked at the desk. He spotted something dark in a crack and bent down for a closer look. It was blood. Which meant Duvall probably had fallen forward.

“Damn,” he said under his breath. There was nothing here to see, nothing to give him a sense of what had happened.

He smelled smoke. He turned and was surprised to see Ellie Silvestri lighting a cigarette.

“I’m sorry, do you mind?” she asked softly. “Lyle doesn’t let me smoke in the office. Mr. Duvall never cared. He always let me come in here when I needed my fix.”

“Go right ahead.”

She drew on the cigarette, her eyes wandering over the office. Louis went to the window and pushed back the curtain. The view was of a dilapidated building next door. At least you could see the river from the lobby window. There was nothing to look at from here. But maybe that’s the way Duvall wanted it; some driven people worked better with nothing pretty to distract them.

“Miss Silvestri, can we talk about the night Spencer Duvall was killed?” Louis asked, letting the curtain fall.

She looked at him beseechingly. “I already told the police. .”

“I know. But sometimes things can be missed.” Or at least he hoped so, in this case.

“You were here when Jack Cade came in for his appointment that morning?” Louis asked.

She nodded, her eyes darkening. “It was just before lunch. It was so strange seeing him. I mean, I hadn’t seen that man in twenty years. He looked so different. His hair was longer. And his face had changed so much.”

“Did you hear anything that was said?”

“Spencer’s door was ajar so-” She paused. Louis was amazed to see her blush. Then he realized it was the first time she had called Duvall by his first name.

She pulled in a deep breath. “Jack Cade was furious. I heard him say he was going to sue Spencer for legal malpractice.”

“How did Mr. Duvall react?”

“I couldn’t really hear what Spencer told him because Spencer didn’t raise his voice at all. Which was unusual because he could bellow back on occasion. But Spencer was quiet.”

“Then what happened?”

“Cade got louder, so I went in and asked Spencer if he wanted me to call security.”

“Did you?”

“I didn’t have to. Jack Cade started to leave.” She paused, tears springing to her eyes. “But he stopped and looked back at Spencer and said, ‘I’ll get you, Duvall, one way or the other.’ Then he was gone.”

She snuffed her cigarette out in the ashtray on the small round table.

“What happened after Cade left?”

“Nothing really. We all went back to work.”

“No one else came to see him?”

“He had one appointment after Jack Cade left, but he told me to cancel it. Spencer was in here with his door closed the rest of the day. We were preparing for the Osborne case and I figured that’s why Spencer didn’t come out. I stayed late to finish typing the brief.”