Dead File (23 page)
Kendyl had bought the story. The two had systematically pored through Gillian’s files until nearly midnight, stopping only to eat some sandwiches Carter had asked her to order up from the cafeteria earlier in the afternoon and store in the fridge. For convenience, he’d told her, so they wouldn’t have to take the time to go out to eat, and they’d finish sooner.
His real reason was different. In case they had to stay late, he hadn’t wanted the guards to see them going out to dinner, then coming back into the building; better to keep a low profile, he’d figured.
Turned out that plan paid off, too. After the bloody mess with Sandie Schaeffer, he and Kendyl hid out the rest of the night in his office suite. They got some fitful sleep on the two sofas in his office, not knowing whether the woman in the next suite was alive or dead. They rose early, freshened up as best they could in his executive washroom, and changed—Carter always left clothes at the office, a couple of suits, fresh shirts, golf togs. And Kendyl kept a few outfits in her own office closet as well, in case she needed a quick change for evening outings.
Carter got himself into a different suit, shirt, and tie, and Kendyl put on a short black sheath and dressed it down with a jacket and scarf. They both took up positions at their respective desks as if they’d just come in to work. As if they’d each hopped on the express elevator, avoiding notice of the guards, which the owner of the company and his assistant routinely did. Carter was usually in his office by seven-thirty, and Kendyl in hers before eight. They’d made a show of getting on with their day’s work.
Until Sandie Schaeffer was discovered in the locked suite next door.
N
ew Year’s Eve tonight, Maxi mused, sitting in her office. She’d turned down all invites. On New Year’s Eve you were supposed to kiss somebody at midnight. Somebody you really loved. There was nobody she really loved, and she certainly didn’t want to kiss just anybody to usher in another year. Somebody once said that meant a year of bad luck. No sense risking that, she thought with a smile.
Mentally, she riffled through the half dozen party invitations she’d received and imagined the respective guest lists. And what likely candidate would be kissing her at midnight at each of them. At Laurel Baker’s party it would be some newsie she worked with, someone like her who had no mate. At Pete Capra’s house it would be some shaggy old pal of Pete’s who’d be drunk by midnight and smell of booze and cigarettes. Her attorney’s bash would be uptown Beverly Hills elegant—at that one it would be some corporate type in a suit with an expensive haircut who would talk about the stock market tumble. And on down the list.
She could always leave a party before midnight and avoid the kissing portion of the evening, she knew, but what was the point of going to a New Year’s Eve party if you didn’t see the new year in? So she’d opted to stay home with the tube and a glass of wine and watch the ball drop in Times Square, live on cable, three hours early. Back home in New York. Where Richard was. Who would
he
be kissing at midnight?
She sighed. She’d be kissing Yukon.
Clicking on the Six O’clock rundown, she started writing today’s update on the Gillian Rose story. It was a great get—everybody would lead with the disclosure that Goodman Penthe was with Gillian Rose just hours before she died, but Maxi had Penthe’s own account, as told to her exclusively. She would run the man’s taped voice over pictures of the Peninsula Hotel where they’d had dinner, the Rose building where they’d holed up later, and file footage from the day they’d found Gillian Rose dead.
Her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID on the readout. A string of viewers had been phoning to wish her Happy New Year. Sweet, but if she paused to chat with each one of them she wouldn’t get any work done. The caller was William Schaeffer. She snatched up the receiver.
“Hi, Bill,” she said. “You got my brain waves—I was just thinking about you.”
“Happy New Year, Maxi. To what do I owe your valuable thoughts directed at me?”
“Question: Do you know what exactly Gillian Rose had planned to do with your glaucoma formula, Bill?”
“Well, I assume she intended to market it to be used for glaucoma relief. That’s what it was for. What else would she do with it?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. What else
could
she do with it?”
“She never talked about doing anything with it other than what it was intended for. I can’t even imagine it used for anything else. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. I can’t help thinking there must be more to it. That it must represent more of a cash cow than a glaucoma medication would. And again, the Rose company was never interested in pharmaceuticals.”
“I told you, Gillian was developing it to market under a new company she was going to form. Rose International isn’t licensed to develop or distribute drugs, prescription or over-the-counter.”
“But … can you think of any other possible application for your formula?”
Schaeffer paused for a moment. “No,” he said then. “No, I really can’t.”
“Hmmm. Well anyway, Happy New Year to you, too. How’s Sandie doing?”
“She’s getting stronger every day. That’s why I’m calling you. I’m sure you have New Year’s Eve plans, but I wondered if you could drop by the house for a bit. We’d love you to have a glass of wine with us.”
“Your daughter’s not drinking wine!” Maxi exclaimed.
Schaeffer laughed. “No, no. I meant you could have a glass of wine with me, to celebrate the new year. In Sandie’s room. I like to carry on the normal stuff of life in her presence. I know she understands it. And Maxi, she still asks for you.”
“Um, okay,” Maxi said. “I can duck out right after the Six O’clock News tonight. I can be there a little after seven. Would that work for you?”
“That’d be perfect. I’ll be home from the store on my dinner hour.” Schaeffer gave her his address in Pacific Palisades.
Wendy came into Maxi’s office and dropped down on the couch, looking visibly distressed. “What?” Maxi asked her friend, seeing the beginning of tears behind her eyes.
“It
is
my book. Robin says it
has
to be my book. And it’s out there.”
“What do you mean, out there?
Where
out there? What—”
“Robin called some of her literary-agent friends, and found out it’s being handled by an agent in TriBeCa. The book is called
Short Sighted,
by one Sophia LeGrande, and she’s … short. And there’s going to be an auction next week.”
“Well … so . . .” Maxi stammered, horrified, “what the hell are we going to do about it?”
“She says there’s nothing much we
can
do about it.”
“But … that’s ridiculous. We can prove—”
“That’s just it,” Wendy broke in. “We can’t really prove anything.”
“But your files are all dated. You’ve been writing
DBD
for more than a year. This Sophia person can’t get away with this.”
“Her name isn’t really Sophia LeGrande, the agent told Robin.”
“Hah. Why am I not surprised?” Maxi threw out.
“Anyway, she asked him for a copy of the manuscript. He said sure, it was all over New York anyway, and he sent it over to her office.”
“Did she tell him what she suspected?”
“No. She said if she’d told him the truth he’d never have sent it to her. She made up a reason, said she worked with a producer in L.A. who might be interested in making a movie of it, kind of like
Bridget Jones’s Diary.
”
“So she’s seen it.”
“She’s seen it.”
“And … ?”
“And Robin says the manuscript is just different enough to not qualify as plagiarism. She says most of the concepts are the same, but there’s no verbatim text. This is a nightmare, Maxi.”
“Could it possibly be a legitimate manuscript?”
“No way, Robin says. This book follows the same road map as mine. She says it’s a jumbled-up version of my book, all right, but she’s convinced that no lawyer would take the case.”
The two women looked at each other. They knew they were thinking the same thing. Sunday Trent had been spending long hours on
DBD.
And Sunday Trent was smart and creative. Was she also a thief?
“Listen, Wendy,” Maxi said, “if they can’t do anything about this in New York, we’ll do it here. That makes more sense anyway. This is where the perpetrator has to be, right?”
“Where do we start?” Wendy ventured. They both knew the answer.
M
axi mellowed out with classic rock on the winding drive west on Sunset to Pacific Palisades. Rolling down her window to let in the bracing salt air, she looked down at her reporter’s notebook where she’d written the address William Schaeffer had given her. She found Napoli Drive, and the pretty peach-colored Mediterranean cottage with the street number she was looking for posted on the mailbox.
She’d stopped in Palisades center and picked up two novels: Sue Grafton again. Sandie’s nurse, or her father, could read to her a little, Maxi thought. Something light, fun, contemporary. Even if Sandie didn’t completely understand the text, being read to might be soothing. And stimulating. It was a known fact that just like muscles, using brain cells strengthened them. Maybe the input would trigger memories. If nothing else, she mused, Sandie’s nurse would get a kick out of Kinsey Millhone.
She parked out front, went up the curving stone walk edged with a profusion of multicolored winter geraniums, and rang the bell.
Bill Schaeffer, in a red sweater and tan corduroy pants, came to the door in his wheelchair. “Maxi, we’re so glad you could visit,” he said.
We
again. Sandie was very fortunate to have a dad so devoted to getting his daughter well. That might just be half the battle for her.
“Come in, come in,” he welcomed. “Can you believe it’s another year already?”
“No. I never can,” Maxi responded, reaching down to take his hand.
She followed him as he wheeled across the foyer and through a cheerful, high-ceilinged living room with Mexican terra-cotta pavers on the floor, colorful overlapping Bristol rib rugs, comfortable overstuffed furniture, and plants everywhere. Schaeffer led her down a hall and into a bright, spacious bedroom.
Sandie was sitting up in a hospital bed. She smiled tentatively when she saw Maxi come into the room behind her father and said, “Hello, Maxi Poole.”
“Sandie, you look wonderful,” Maxi ventured. “It’s going to be a very good new year. I feel it, don’t you? Happy New Year.”
Sandie’s expression, with the small, fixed smile, didn’t change, though her gaze shifted from Maxi to her father and back again. “Happy New Year,” she said in slowly drawn out tones.
Maxi put the books down on a side table by the bed, and explained her intention with them to Bill Schaeffer.
“We’re already reading to her,” Schaeffer said with a smile, pulling his chair up to bedside. “Thanks for adding to our trove of books.”
Maxi scanned the room. A cushy, flowered love seat nestled beneath a broad, paned-glass window, and drawn up close to the bed were two ample matching chairs. A waxed-pine lowboy stood against the wall, its surface spread with more books, a casual arrangement of yellow tulips, and several framed pictures of what Maxi assumed were family. She saw what she thought to be the touch of a woman in this house, and she remembered reading on the wires that Schaeffer’s wife—Sandie’s mother—had died just three years ago. How sad for this little family of two, both of them challenged now, to be without the woman Maxi imagined had lovingly created and kept this home.
Four large foil-wrapped pots of red poinsettias were set on the floor around the room, a paean to the holiday season, and a lush ficus tree stood in a corner, adorned with tiny white lights and Christmas ornaments.
The table on the far side of Sandie’s bed bore the usual: a pitcher of water, a glass with a curved straw, a square box of tissues—and makeup. Lipsticks, pencils, brushes, pots of foundation, powders, and creams spread out on top. And a hairbrush, a comb, a hand mirror.
Schaeffer’s eyes had followed Maxi’s. “She asked for her makeup. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
“That’s a
great
sign,” Maxi allowed, noticing the bulging leopard-skin Gale Hayman Beverly Hills makeup kit on the table. “When we’re coming out of the woods, that’s the first thing we ask for after our toothbrush. Sometimes
before
our toothbrush,” Maxi said with a grin, directing her chat at Sandie. The patient didn’t seem to register all that was being said, but she did signal a hint of excitement in her eyes.
Maxi dropped into one of the plush chairs by the bed as a nurse in a crisp white pantsuit came in carrying a tray with a bottle of wine, glasses, and canapes, and set it down on the night-stand near Maxi and Bill Schaeffer. She handed Schaeffer the bottle of wine.
“Ahh,” he said, examining the label. “Au Bon Climat, ’ninety-two—a wonderful Pinot Noir. Perfect for a New Year’s toast. Go ahead and open it, Barbara Jean. And say hello to Maxi Poole.”
“I watch you all the time,” the woman said to Maxi. “Call me B.J.” She took the bottle from Schaeffer, wielded the corkscrew, poured two glasses, and handed them to Maxi and Schaeffer.
“Join us for a toast, B.J.,” Schaeffer said. “It’s New Year’s Eve.”
“Never on duty, Mr. Schaeffer, but I’m with you in spirit,” she said; then she let out a cheery laugh at her unintended pun.
Schaeffer smiled at the nurse, then raised a toast to his daughter, whose eyes seemed to light up at the attention. “To my girl,” he said. “May the new year bring complete health and abundant happiness for you, dear, light of my life.”
Maxi bent and touched her glass to his, and they drank. Then nibbled, and talked, to each other and to Sandie, who made her father glow with joy each time she responded.
C
arter Rose sat alone in his den in the Carolwood mansion. In fact he was alone in the house. He’d had an early supper; before she went home, Angie had prepared a honey-baked ham glazed with pineapple and cloves, an endive salad, and her special butternut squash with caramelized onions. He’d given the entire staff the night off. It was New Year’s Eve; they had lives.