Killer Deal (13 page)

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Authors: Sheryl J. Anderson

BOOK: Killer Deal
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She started to shrug, then stopped with her shoulders drawn up so she looked, for a moment, as though she were drawing herself up to lunge at me. I held my ground and her gaze as solidly as I could.
Her eyes got huge and wounded and wet. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. Not that I’m saying anything to begin with. I came to ask you your advice, how to handle this, not to have you think terrible things about him. I love Uncle Ronnie.”
“Of course you do or you wouldn’t be here trying to find a way to help him,” I answered quickly. “You want to protect him, right?”
“He didn’t do anything bad.” Tears coursed down her cheeks, dragging rivulets of mascara behind them. “I came here to find out how to keep him out of trouble, not get him into it.”
I tried to ease her back into her fake perspective again and give her a chance to catch her breath. “But suppose there’s someone he knows, someone he used to be close to, who did do something. And now he’s getting close to her again. I can see why you might get worried.”
The tears continued to flow as Kimberly tried to process the thought that Gwen Lincoln could have committed murder for dear old Uncle Ronnie. I squeezed her hand. “It’s nothing you put in my head,” I assured her, “I’d wondered it before.” She’d just helped me solidify the motive, but I couldn’t tell her that. Poor kid was upset enough already. “If you wrote me a letter, I’d tell you to keep the communication lines open with this man and make sure he knows that you want to help him. Don’t press him, just let him know you’re on his side. And stay away from her.”
“When did you start giving relationship advice in the flesh, Molly, and what’s your going rate? Shouldn’t your clients pay the magazine directly?” Eileen had appeared in the conference room doorway, not unlike the monster swinging suddenly into view in
Alien
: You knew she was around here somewhere, but you tried to forget about her until she blocked your way out.
“Excuse me, I’m just taking a moment to speak with a friend,” I told her, squeezing Kimberly’s hand again in reassurance.
“Spend all the time you want with her. You’ve got more free time than you know what to do with because I’m killing the article.” She turned her icy grimace of a smile to Kimberly for a moment. “Waterproof mascara, dear. It’s not a new invention.” And she slithered out of sight again.
Much as I would have liked to leave Kimberly there in the conference room and tackle Eileen in the hallway, I forced myself to be a grown-up and a professional and see Kimberly to the elevator, by way of my desk so she could grab some tissues and Carlos could give her his card. I made her promise she’d call me if she needed to talk about this again and I made her promise she wouldn’t talk to anyone else about it. “There are people who would use this against Ronnie,” I whispered.
“You won’t?”
“I won’t,” I promised, readjusting my theory to feature Gwen in a big fat solo.
The moment the elevator doors closed, I flew back to Eileen’s office as fast as my kate spades could carry me. Suzanne made a noble effort to get up and bar my way—more for the martyrdom points than out of any genuine affection for Eileen—but I didn’t slow at all and Suzanne, smaller and less committed than I, ducked back out of the way and let me barge into Eileen’s office. She even closed the door behind me as I proclaimed, “Eileen, I just got started!”
“And look at what you’ve already done!” Eileen grabbed
her bony hips with her bony hands and stood her ground. I pulled up before I ran her down.
“I’ve been interviewing people. And they’re the ones that keep bringing up the murder, not me,” I said, wanting her to appreciate the effort it was taking on my part to play by her rules. “As a matter of fact, someone just gave me a very tasty tidbit and I’d like to get to work at pursuing it because it’ll have a major impact on the article.”
“There’s no rush, since it’s canceled.”
“Eileen, please don’t do this.”
Eileen shook her head in frustration, sending her chandelier earrings swinging madly. “I told you I didn’t want you turning this into something involving people charging into the office with guns.”
I took a fraction of a moment to plug in those new coordinates. But now that I understood what her real issue was, we could fight more fairly. “The Jack Douglass incident was unfortunate. But I’m fine, thank you very much for asking. More importantly, I had nothing to do with his appearance this morning and he didn’t come here.”
“No, but this could be his next stop.”
“I don’t think he could care less about the two of us or even pick us out of a lineup. The really crucial thing here—I don’t think he’s involved in Garth’s death.”
“That’s not what Ronnie Willis says.”
Of course not. If Ronnie was covering for his lover Gwen, Jack made a very handy scapegoat. “When did you talk to him?”
“He called me. Hysterical. Gwen told him about the whole drama and he thinks he’s next on some sort of corporate hit list.”
Of course she did and of course he did. “Which, other than telling me a lot about Gwen and Ronnie’s relationship for the article, doesn’t have anything to do with our happy little group here at
Zeitgeist.
”
“On the contrary. Ronnie wants Emile to cancel the gala and we cannot let that happen.”
If I had to reset my coordinates one more time, I was going to fall off the map. Right over the edge where it says:
Here there be dragons.
And they draw a little picture of Eileen. Belching smoke.
“Why not? It could be an intriguing development to include in the article on Gwen—the impact of scrapping the gala on the perfume’s launch, her new business profile, her relationship with Emile. It’s pretty interesting. And beyond maybe having to delay an ad for Success for one issue, we don’t have any investment in the gala anyway.”
“Speak for yourself, you selfish girl.”
Oh, yes. How foolish of me not to have Eileen’s debut as a runway model in the forefront of my mind where she believed it belonged. I once heard a story about an actor who played the doctor who escorts Blanche to the sanitarium at the end of
A Streetcar Named Desire
; legend has it he told friends the play was about a dedicated doctor who rescues a troubled young woman after she has a breakdown. The heart of the story all depends on where you’re standing on the stage. And where would Eileen ever be but front and center?
But what was getting lost in Eileen’s solipsistic tantrum was what Ronnie thought canceling the gala would accomplish—for him, Gwen, and/or Emile. Ronnie apparently thought he’d be presenting himself as a glittering target to Jack Douglass or anyone else in on the grand conspiracy if he went out in public. But canceling was such a mistake for Gwen and Ronnie’s ascendancy to running the agency and hurtful for Emile, as one of their prized clients. “How could killing the article help that?”
“He wants to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Let sleeping-around bitches get away with murder, more like it.” Didn’t Gwen and Ronnie realize that canceling the gala would draw more attention, not less, to them? It would look like guilty consciences rather than prudent management. “Besides, I’m not the only one talking to these people. Peter Mulcahey’s doing a piece that’s supposed to be the cover article for the premiere issue of Quinn Harriman’s new magazine.”
I now have a pretty good idea of the look on Catherine the Great’s face right as the horse fell. “Quinn Harriman?!” Eileen shrieked. “That rat bastard thinks he’s going to muscle in on
my
story?!”
There were so many follow-up questions to ask—whose story was it, why shouldn’t he, and why specifically was he a rat bastard—but I didn’t want to risk killing the momentum that was oh so tenuously shifting back in my direction. “Listen, this is your call. If you want to pull me off the story and just cede the territory to Peter and Quinn—”
“Do you think I got where I am by rolling over for self-important men?”
Rolling over, sitting up, and begging all came to mind, but, in an impressive feat of self-restraint, not to mouth. “All I’m saying is, personal safety carries a lot of weight with me and I understand if you’re too concerned about Jack Douglass to pursue this story. I’m sure Peter and Quinn will do a great job with it. Let them take the hit.”
“I’m not going to let them take anything that should be mine.”
“Are we talking about the hit or the story?”
“The story, of course. Aren’t you paying attention? Do you still suspect Gwen Lincoln?”
“As the bumper stickers used to say, ‘Now more than ever.’”
“You are a child of the suburbs, aren’t you.”
“I’d like the opportunity to pursue the theory that Gwen Lincoln killed Garth Henderson knowing that she would get half the agency, which she would then run with her lover, Ronnie Willis.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve never heard a word about the two of them being together and no one in Manhattan is that discreet. It’s impossible. There’s always a doorman or a stylist or a maitre d’ who gets the ball rolling.”
“All the better to scoop them with, my dear.”
“Can you prove this?”
“Not if you kill the story and chain me to my desk.”
“Then go forth and verify.” She flicked her fingers in the direction of the door and I happily scooted that way. Only to have her command my departing back, “And while you’re at it, fill a table for the gala.”
“Excuse me?” I faltered in the doorway.
“Don’t worry, I’m not expecting you to buy the tickets, just make sure there are smart, beautiful, interesting bodies in each chair.”
A cheering section for her turn on the catwalk, no doubt. “The assistants never get to go to that sort of thing—”
“For good reason. Who wants to spend an entire evening with them? This table is your responsibility. You must have a few presentable friends. I think I’ve met one. So bring them along. Eight seats.”
This wasn’t the time to protest that I hadn’t planned to attend, that Kyle hated this sort of thing, or any of the other objections that bubbled to the surface. This was the time to grab my barely saved story and run.
Looking back, this was probably also the time to quit the magazine and save myself, but you know what they say: Never look back, something may be gaining on you. And besides, those slacks don’t look as good from behind as you think.
NOW THAT MOST OF THE American blood supply is 50 percent caffeine anyway, Starbucks needs to team up with the Red Cross and put some of those blood donation chairs in their corner cafés, so you can recline slightly and have the java of your choice pumped straight into your veins through an IV, while you chat or make inappropriate phone calls or write angry poetry on your laptop.
In the absence of such technological advances, I was left to gulp down a vanilla cappuccino as fast as its scalding temperature permitted and hope I’d reach the saturation point quickly. Tricia watched me with great concern, sipping slowly at her chai tea latte to let me know her sense of harmony was a little less precarious than mine. She’d been in the neighborhood, dropping off fabric swatches with a client, and had, with her marvelously instinctive sense of timing, called me to see if I could sneak out for a coffee break. While she’d been very sympathetic about the day’s craziness thus far, she had told the barista to ignore my request for an extra espresso shot in my cappuccino.
“Why are the things we want most the things that turn out to make us the most crazy?” I asked.
“I believe it’s tied to original sin,” she answered. “The whole Tree of Knowledge thing. ‘Careful what you wish for’ and all that.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not what the serpent says.”
“Much suffers in translation.”
“I want to get this right, Tricia.”
“I know you do. And I know you will. You just need to be patient. You’ve got an awful lot of people with their own agendas cluttering up the path, but you’ll clear them away.”
“Which would you kill for, love or money?”
“Does it have to be an either/or?” asked the woman I couldn’t imagine killing anyone.
“Just seems to me that if Gwen killed Garth for the company, Ronnie knows about it. If she killed him for love, Ronnie probably wasn’t in on it. It was more spur of the moment.”
“How ‘spur of the moment’ is it to visit your soon-to-be-ex in a hotel with a pistol in your handbag?”
“Maybe she carries it with her all the time. And totes an RPG instead of an umbrella.”
“That, you’d think the hotel staff would’ve picked up on.”
Either a new idea or the first dose of caffeine hit me. Sitting up a little straighter, I asked, “What do you suppose they did pick up on? The initial reports said the police didn’t find anything helpful on the lobby video.”
“You haven’t been to the hotel yet?”
“I talked to the VP of operations and confirmed that their video hadn’t turned up anything and that the cardkey readout said no one had opened the door but Garth. Doesn’t hurt or help Gwen.”
“You need to go over there and nose around.”
“And how do I explain that in terms of a profile of Gwen?”
“What did I tell you about telling the truth? Stop it!” Tricia exclaimed.
“I thought the nicest thing about being official would be that I didn’t have to lie anymore,” I said as we settled into the back of a cab and headed for the Carlyle Hotel.
“It’s not so much lying as selectively representing the truth,” Tricia said firmly.
“Still, I want to be proud of what I am, what I’m doing, and not slink around and pretend I’m something else.”
“But you slink so well,” Tricia said, with a mocking purr to her voice, “which is one of the things I love most about you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I love you, too.”
A loud sniff from the front of the cab startled us. Our cabbie, an immense, ruddy Irishman with unruly red hair struggling to break free of a Notre Dame baseball cap, gazed at us by way of the rearview mirror and wiped away a tear. “You should be proud of what you are,” he told us, “and don’t lie to yourself or to the world. You love each other and that’s all that really matters. ’Cause without that, what is the world but a vast and lonely place?”
Tricia started to explain his error, but I squeezed her arm and told him, “You’re so right. People in love get so silly, don’t they?”
He nodded. “You can go ahead and kiss her. I don’t mind.” He grinned. “I don’t mind at all.”
“We’re a very private couple,” Tricia said, “and we’d prefer you keep your eyes on the road.”
I winked at him in the mirror and took Tricia’s hand. She tried to pull her hand away, but I wouldn’t let go. She looked out the window so she didn’t have to look at me and, probably, crack up, and we rode that way all the way to the hotel, where our cabbie tearfully wished us a long and happy life together. I threatened to hold Tricia’s hand on the way into the hotel, but she was ready to move on to a new game. The question was, which game would give us the bigger prize?
After a few scouting patrols around the magnificent lobby, its floors so shiny I felt like I was walking through a stream, we acquired our target. A lanky young bellman, either the soul of industry or the poster boy for ADHD, was zipping around, straightening cushions and flower arrangements when he wasn’t taking guests and their bags upstairs. I felt very Holmesian when I pointed him out to Tricia and remarked that such an eager young man might be open to earning a little something extra for helping us in our quest.
After a brief, quiet consultation on method, we made our approach. As he fussed with a flower arrangement that was nearly as tall as he was, Tricia said, “Excuse me. You look very busy, but I hoped you had a moment.”
He nearly snapped to attention, but the effect was more a high school drum major than the military bearing he was trying to convey. “Yes, ma’am, I’m Jimmy. How can I be of service?”
“This is a little awkward,” she said quietly enough that he had to lean in to hear her. I dipped my head in, too, and we stood clustered like three kittens around a bowl of milk.
“Would you like me to get the concierge?” Jimmy asked, equally quietly.
“No, we’d like to be less official,” Tricia told him and his pimply forehead creased thoughtfully.
“We’re trying to get into a secret society,” I whispered, “and all we can tell you about the initiation is that part of it requires visiting famous Manhattan crime scenes.”
“Oh, sure,” our young friend said, seeming completely familiar with a group I could’ve sworn I’d made up. “You want the suite where the councilman got arrested with all the blow and the chicks, or the one where that rock singer almost drowned his girlfriend in the tub?”
I paused a moment in appreciation of the complex lives people lead. “Actually, the one where Garth Henderson was killed.” Jimmy frowned more deeply than before, so I elucidated. “The ad guy who got shot in the head and the lap.”
“Oh, sure,” he said again, as though remembering a beloved teacher from grade school. “That one’s new, haven’t gotten so many requests yet. So you two wanna get in and, ya know, spend some quality time together in there?” He winked at us and I tried to figure out just what it was about the way Tricia and I were carrying ourselves that had everyone assuming we were a couple. But if it was helping, fine, let him think it.
“Can you really get us in there?” Tricia asked.
“If it’s not occupied, no problem. If it is, takes a little work.”
“How much work?” I asked, knowing I hadn’t been to the ATM in a while and trying to remember what, if anything, I had in my wallet.
Tricia was faster than I and was already slipping him a twenty. “See if it’s occupied and then we’ll talk.”
Jimmy bowed to her slightly and strode off in search of information. “How did you get so good at that?” I asked.
“Making men do what I want?”
“I’m always impressed by the power you have to cloud men’s minds but actually, I was referring to the elegant slippage of cash.”
“My mother raised us with a twenty in one hand and a martini glass in the other. She still insists that what you cannot sway with one, you can sway with the other.”
“And yet, you turned out remarkably well.”
“Good nannies.”
“I owe you twenty bucks.”
“The meter’s running and the adventure’s young, dear heart.” She looked at me with sudden sharpness. “Have you talked to Cassady today?”
“She called in the midst of the Douglass madness so I had to ask if I could call her back, but every time I’ve tried, I only get voice mail. And I’m not even sure why she called.”
“Not like her.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I haven’t had any luck either. Maybe she’s in court and forgot to tell us. Also not like her, but understandable.”
“When do we start worrying?”
“I never cease to worry about either of you,” Tricia said, pleased with herself. “When do we go track her down and confront her face to face about her delinquent return of our phone calls so we’re reassured that she’s not lying dead in some wretched alley, you mean?”
“I was hoping to keep the hysteria level a little south of that but, yes.”
Tricia glanced at her watch, then pointed to Jimmy, who was rapidly returning. “Let’s see how long it takes us to finish up here.”
Jimmy hustled back, sweeping us up and moving us to the elevators in his enthusiasm. “We have a small window of opportunity during which a friend of mine is on that very floor with a housekeeping cart and a passkey.” He punched the elevator button, smiling expectantly.
I was already digging my wallet out of my handbag. It lacked the subtlety of Tricia’s palming bills, but we seemed safely past the point where subtlety was required. “Were you working the night it happened?” I asked, impressed I actually had cash. Usually, my wallet’s filled with credit card receipts, business cards, and Post-it notes. I started with two more twenties, not wanting to inflate the market needlessly. He took them graciously and allowed us to enter the elevator ahead of him.
As the doors closed and he pushed “7,” he said, “Yeah, I was there that night. First big shitfest since I started here. Place was crawling with cops like you wouldn’t believe and the guests are getting all hysterical, the ones that aren’t grabbing their cell phones and cameras, ya know, and we all had to talk to the cops which is always hard’cause people got secrets and all, so things were buzzing around here for quite a few days after.”
“People have secrets?” Tricia asked.
“Some of my fellow staff members have business deals with certain people who come and visit the hotel that they’d rather not have to discuss with the cops, ya know?”
“So other than call girls and dealers, were there any other interesting people sighted that night?” I asked.
The elevator doors opened with a “shush” and the bellboy’s voice dropped in response as he ushered us out onto the seventh floor. “That’s the weird thing. Nobody remembered seeing anybody out of the ordinary. Or anybody at all. Mr. Henderson had lots of people come see him and those babes who work for him, they were in and outta here all the time. But that night, nothing. Not until the wife shows up and raises a ruckus and the assistant manager opens the door and—boom, there it is.”
I wasn’t sure if he was referring to Garth’s body or to the door to room 734, before which we now stood. He rapped on the door with a knuckle arpeggio and before I could ask another question, the door opened.
“This is Rhonda,” Jimmy explained.
His playmate was not the giggly young lady I’d imagined, but a large, damp, and unsmiling woman who plucked the proffered twenties from my hand without meeting my eye. “Don’t sit on the beds, don’t touch the flowers, and for God’s sake, don’t use the toilet.” She coughed tubercularly. “And no smoking.”
She lumbered away and Jimmy grinned at her. “She’s a riot. But she’s right, ya gotta be quick.”
We walked into the beautifully appointed room and I tried not to gape. Before I came to New York, the Holiday Inn was the top tier of my hotel experience, so I still tend to be awed by the sheer lushness of a luxury room. This one was no exception, though I felt some disappointment in how perfect the room was again, how every trace of the crime that had occurred here had been erased. Not that I’d expected anything to be left, with the hotel anxious for people to forget about their association to the incident, but it still seemed sad that such an awful thing could happen to someone and then simply be scrubbed away.
Jimmy pointed to the writing table and armchair in front of the window. “He was in that chair when they found him. Well, not that exact chair ’cause the original one was trashed on account of all the blood and all. The housekeeping girls were pretty worked up about making sure they got the blood outta everything else—there was big talk about having to pull up the carpet, things like that. But they did a nice job, you can’t hardly see nothing. Hope that doesn’t kill the experience for you.”
“No, not at all,” I assured him, “it’s really more about just being in the space.” Tricia and I moved around the room as though inspecting it, but the room didn’t matter at all, it had been scrubbed raw since the murder and had nothing left to
tell us. It was the color commentary from the bellboy we’d come for. “So you and the other bellmen were on babe watch with Mr. Henderson and his employees?”

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