By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A longtime friend of Linda Stein said her personal assistant answered the celebrity realtor's cell phone on the day of her murder and insisted Stein was "out taking a walk." Prosecutors believe Stein was bludgeoned to death shortly before the call.
Mark Benecke, who was a doorman at the famed Studio 54 nightclub he said Stein frequented, was calling her on Oct. 30, 2007 to invite her to a champagne toast to celebrate her birthday.
Prosecutors argue Natavia Lowery, 28, beat her boss to death between noon and 1 p.m. that day and then took her belongings, including her cell phone and handbag before leaving Stein's Fifth Avenue apartment.
Lowery then answered Stein's calls and paid off $30,000 of American Express credit card charges with Stein's money, according to prosecutors.
Benecke said he spent the previous night at Stein's apartment for dinner and watch Monday Night Football.
Stein seemed concerned that someone had been stealing from her, Bernecke said Friday.
"[Stein] said to me, 'Mark, what would you say if you thought that someone was stealing from you and not doing right by you?' " he testified.
In another purported step to mask her crime, Lowery left a note for her boss at her real estate office Douglas-Elliman before leaving for the day.
"I waited for you to come back from your run but you never came to the office," Lowery wrote. "I guess you didn't want to run or the others to see you in your workout clothes."
Stein's other daughter Mandy, who was the first witness to testify last week, said her mother, a recovering breast cancer patient, would go for walks in Central Park but would never run.
