Dead File (29 page)
“I have to call Skip,” Pete said. Detective Skip Henders.
When Maxi had gone to Pete in the morning for his okay to requisition the tape from Security Ops, she’d filled him in on the whole scenario of the suspected theft of Wendy’s manuscript, including both women’s suspicion of Sunday Trent. But this, the station’s longtime, revered anchorman as common thief—this was a cannon blast.
“Maybe there’s another way to deal with this,” Maxi offered halfheartedly.
“I don’t think so,” Pete said with a quick shake of his head.
“If you talked to him … ?” she persisted. But she knew she was making futile stabs. It was too late. Rob had taken it too far, getting his tossed-together version of Wendy’s book to a literary agent, who had already taken it to market.
“What happens now?” Wendy snuffled.
“The police get a warrant and search his condo, confiscate his hard drive, any pertinent correspondence—”
“And if we don’t go that route?” Wendy questioned. “If we
do
talk to him first?” Even Wendy wanted to spare the station this.
“Then he’ll deny it, he’ll make up a reason why he was hacking your files after the Eleven O’clock News, his computer will end up at the bottom of Lake Castaic, and there’ll be no case.”
“And my book?”
“Who knows?” Pete said.
“There’d be a cloud over its authorship,” Maxi put in. “That would probably make publishers back off it.”
“I gotta think about this,” Pete said.
P
ropped up against a mountain of plush, satin-covered pillows in the custom king-sized bed he had shared with his now dead wife for a decade, Carter Rose stretched luxuriously and sipped from his cut-crystal tumbler of Courvoisier. He had just sent the exotic Leilani Harwood, Miss Hawaii, back to her suite at the Bel Air Hotel in a limousine. Best of all possible worlds, he thought to himself, and smiled.
She’d whimpered a little, said she wanted so much to spend the night with him, but he explained that it wouldn’t look good when the help arrived in the morning, so soon after the death of his wife.
That was a crock. The fact was, not one of his household staff had much liked Gillian, to put it mildly. Especially Angie, their longtime housekeeper and cook who ran the house and the rest of the staff. A few years back Carter had had all he could do to keep Angie from walking out after Gillian had actually slapped her. For using cream instead of nonfat milk in the crepes. Other than Gillian’s personal driver, a young bodybuilder whom she’d rewarded with probably more than hefty yearly bonuses, none of the rest of the staff had attended his wife’s memorial service, nor had any of them offered him their condolences. After being told of her death they’d all just carried on, business as usual.
It was Angie who had tipped him off that Gillian was planning to divorce him. The first time she brought her suspicions to him, he didn’t believe it. You’re wrong, Angie dear, he’d told her. He and Gillian had a good marriage and a solid partnership. So he’d thought. But Angie told him what she suspected again, then again—and the third time she’d produced evidence.
Her first inkling came while Gillian was working in her office at home and Angie had brought in her lunch. Angie told Carter that she found his wife sitting at her computer printing out copies of some research on the Internet. Angie had idly glanced at the oversized screen and saw that the Web site Gillian was visiting was the California Bar Association’s, and the specific page she had opened up dealt with details regarding the state’s community property laws. Angie had gone through a painful divorce herself—she knew what she was looking at, she’d told Carter.
Carter had laughed. “Your imagination is working overtime,” he’d told Angie. He’d been well aware of Angie’s dislike of Gillian, and of her loyalty to him.
A few weeks later, Angie presented him with a sheaf of real estate brochures for multimillion-dollar, Upper West Side apartments in Manhattan. Gillian had just come back from a few days in New York, where she’d attended an industry trade show, and Angie had unpacked her luggage for her. And found the brochures. To Angie it was proof that Gillian intended to leave Carter and move to New York. To Carter, again, it was nothing; his wife had probably been gathering some New York real estate information for a friend. “Just leave the brochures on her desk,” he’d told Angie.
The third time produced what Carter finally had to admit was the smoking gun. While he was away in Chicago on a business trip, Gillian had had a visitor to their Carolwood home, Angie had reported. A short, middle-aged, balding man in black-rimmed glasses and a dark suit, carrying a briefcase. He and Gillian had disappeared into her home office and closed the door. And stayed in there for the better part of an afternoon. At one point, Gillian had called Angie in the kitchen and asked her to bring them a pitcher of iced tea. When she went into the office with the tray, their conversation immediately ceased. The two were seated on opposite couches, the coffee table between them strewn with a voluminous amount of papers and files. Neither spoke while Angie was there setting out the tea things. Later, after the man had left and Angie had gone into the office to tidy up, she saw a business card that had been left on the table. When Carter got home, she brought him the story, and the card.
It read: MORT MOROKO, ATTORNEY AT LAW.
Carter had called the number printed on the card. “Hello,” he’d said to the receptionist who answered the phone. “This is Solomon Greenberg. I’d like to speak to one of the attorneys handling the Gillian Rose divorce. I’m her accountant, and I’m working on some files for the case.”
“That would be Mr. Moroko,” she’d said. “I’ll transfer you to his office.”
Carter had hung up. There it was.
Now there would be no divorce.
F
riday morning in the newsroom at a little after nine o’clock, the final day of the final week of the long holiday break. Not many people would be working today, Maxi knew, as she listened to her phone messages. Then she heard the familiar voice of Dr. Elizabeth Riker on her Audix, early-bird pathologist from the L.A. County Morgue. Business as usual there.
“Hi, Maxi. Call me,” was all she’d said.
Maxi dialed the number and Dr. Riker answered. Must be her private line, Maxi realized and made a note of it while she said hello.
“It was selenium,” Riker said. “We took a set of electrolytes and found that Gillian Rose had a heightened selenium level.”
“And that would kill her?” Maxi asked.
“That
did
kill her,” Riker said soberly.
“Um—what exactly is selenium?”
“It’s a chemical element. Not a compound. It’s a crystalline nonmetal with semiconducting properties. In concentrated form, it’s used in some shampoos, paints, as a vulcanizing agent for rubber . . .”
Maxi flashed on the fact that the Penthe Group included a tire manufacturer. “Well, where could it have come from? In Gillian, I mean.”
“Selenium is a naturally occurring element in our diet,” Riker went on like the scientist she was. “We all maintain a certain level of it in our bodies. Selenium is sold as a dietary supplement in health stores, as needed to maintain normal levels. But a blood level of over two thousand micrograms per liter will definitely kill you, usually within twenty-four hours.”
“And that’s what Gillian’s blood showed?”
“Actually, we didn’t test her blood, though we do have frozen samples. We tested her hair, which is an accurate indicator. Gillian Rose’s selenium values were well into toxic range.”
“Could someone have poisoned her with selenium?”
“Someone would have
had
to. We’ve notified the LAPD.”
“Could someone have slipped enough of this selenium into a drink to kill her?”
“Absolutely. A gram and a half of sodium selenite would do it. I suggest that you call the detectives on the case and tell them what you know.”
“I will—”
“Or they’ll be calling you,” Dr. Riker added quickly. “We made a note of your connection to this matter in our report.”
K
endyl Scott sat stiffly in a small, dingy interrogation room on the third floor at Parker Center. Officer William Murchison, one of the detectives working the Sandie Schaeffer case, sat in a chair pulled up to a scarred wooden table but he had waved Kendyl away from the table, and positioned her uncomfortably on a metal folding chair against the wall.
Audiotape was rolling, and Dan Black, Murchison’s partner, sat behind the two-way mirrored wall opposite Kendyl, listening in. Also auditing the interview behind the glass were Sergeant Carlos Salinger and Officer Donald Barnett, the two primary detectives on the Gillian Rose case.
Kendyl had sobbed quietly as Murchison read her Miranda rights off a card, which was probably not necessary since defense attorney Robert Hanger, her newly hired high-powered criminal lawyer, sat beside her, but these days, in the world of legal technocrats like Johnnie Cochran et al., the police were operating under the mandate that they couldn’t be too cautious. Now, under the watchful eye and keen ear of her attorney, who stopped her at several points, Kendyl was outlining, for Murchison and his hidden colleagues, the broad strokes of exactly what had happened in the Rose building on the night Sandie Schaeffer was shot.
Hanger had already ascertained that a plea bargain would be structured for his client. The terms of the deal were as follows: Kendyl Scott would plead guilty in L.A. Superior Court to criminal charges of conspiracy to pose a physical threat and attempted involuntary manslaughter.
“What the hell is attempted involuntary manslaughter?” Hanger had bellowed in his private meeting at the district attorney’s office the day before.
“The victim isn’t out of the woods yet. If she dies, we strike ‘attempted,’ ” was the response he was given.
Bottom line, in return for having to serve no prison time, Kendyl Scott would give testimony that would lay the groundwork for the prosecution of Carter Rose in the shooting attack of Sandie Schaeffer in the early-morning hours of December 20.
And tying Rose to the attack on his wife’s assistant would give the DA’s office the opening they’d been looking for: It would justify revisiting the case of the death of the man’s wife and business partner, Gillian Rose.
M
axi was rolling across town to a lunch visit with Sandie Schaeffer as she’d promised yesterday. This time she’d brought with her a bouquet of sunny yellow daffodils that she’d picked up at a flower shop on Sunset Boulevard in the Palisades.
She’d also brought her mini tape recorder. It was in her purse, a loosely crocheted fabric purse through which a tape machine would pick up sound. A little bit illegal? she mused as she drove through the intersection at Bundy Drive. Hmmm. Was a little bit illegal like a little bit pregnant? she asked herself. Not in this case, because it was illegal only if she actually used what she secretly taped on the air, which she had no intention of doing. But if Sandie happened to say anything that was worth reporting on the news that night, Maxi wanted a verbatim record of her exact words.
She had had a conversation earlier this morning with Sergeant Carlos Salinger about her suspicions concerning Good-man Penthe, the man who had been alone with Gillian the night before she died, and about her subsequent conversations with Dr. Elizabeth Riker at the county morgue. Salinger said they were in touch with Mr. Penthe. Whatever that meant. He’d given her zero information, thanked her laconically, and hung up.
Oh, well, she had heeded Riker’s warning and done her civic duty. Which did absolutely nothing to further the story, as it happened. But which most definitely, she knew, stirred the pot.
She parked in front of the Schaeffer house, reached into her purse and turned on the tape recorder, got out of her car and locked it, and scurried up the walk. As expected, B.J. greeted her at the door. The nurse ushered her inside the house and exclaimed over the flowers.
“Just let me get a vase for these beauties,” she said. “Then lunch will be served. You poor girls,” B.J. said with a twinkle. “I’m not much of a cook. It’s chicken sandwiches and lemonade—a menu that even I can’t ruin, right?”
“Chicken sandwiches sound wonderful,” Maxi said.
The nurse chatted on. “Bill doesn’t seem to mind that I’m a less than competent cook. He says that’s why God invented gourmet delivery. He has dinner sent in almost every night for the three of us. Isn’t he the most wonderful man?”
Maxi noticed the rosy glow that lit the woman’s cheeks when she mentioned the name of her employer.
Interesting,
she thought.
She followed B.J. into the small kitchen and watched her arrange the daffodils in a vase. “I think I know why Sandie always asks for you,” the amiable nurse said then.
“Really?” Maxi asked as casually as she could muster. “Why?”
“Well, I think it’s because she watches television all day long and she sees you on the news. They kept the TV on when she was in the hospital in a coma—it’s a common technique, to try to break through to the patient’s unconscious. And now she sees you reporting Gillian’s story, and her own story. I think she reaches out to you because you could be a key to the part of her world that she’s trying to remember. Trying to put the pieces back together. And she feels that, somehow, you can help.”
Makes sense,
Maxi thought. She went with B.J. into the cheerful living room, where Sandie was sitting on the couch in a jogging outfit. This was the first time Maxi had seen her out of bed and dressed.
“Maxi is here, Sandie,” B.J. said. “She brought you some gorgeous flowers.” She set the vase of daffodils on the coffee table.
“Hi, Sandie,” Maxi said, as she took a seat a couple of feet away from her on the couch. She laid her purse down on the seat between them.
“Hello, Maxi,” Sandie said with a smile, and with strength in her voice.
“I’m going to serve lunch right here in the living room,” B.J. said, and she went off into the kitchen.
“Did you go on your walk today?” Maxi asked Sandie. “On the beach?”