Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 (11 page)

Of course, that kind of interviewing also has a secondary effect. It turns contacts into real people for
the interviewer. I learned about Burton’s older sister, who had raised him after his mother died. (The quick blinking back of tears when he told about her funeral last May.) He collected stamps and raised tropical fish.
(“They have so much personality, just like people.”)
The stress of temping.
(“God, you never know what will happen, and they always blame the temp!”)

I opened my purse, rather ostentatiously dropped my pen and notepad inside, and settled back in a relaxed fashion.
(“The better to eat you, my dear,”)
“What’s it like, working for Chase Prescott?”

He smiled falsely. “Oh, it’s fascinating. Always something new and different. Mr. Prescott is brilliant. He’s always two steps ahead of everyone.”

Poor little guy. It was easy to imagine what kind of hell it could be to try to satisfy the demands of a man who thought himself to be very special indeed.

I waited. Most people can’t stand silence.

Burton shifted restlessly in Chase’s big chair. “People who don’t understand him think he’s bad-tempered. It isn’t that at all.” Cautious pale eyes blinked nervously. “He’s impatient. You see, his mind works so quickly, and he expects everyone to be as smart as he is.”

Actually, I didn’t recall that of Chase. Rather, I felt Chase prided himself on being smarter than anyone around him. Not, really, an attractive quality on his part.

“Are you as smart as Mr. Prescott?” This wasn’t, of course, a fair question. But skewering through defenses isn’t a pretty exercise.

He flushed. “Are you making fun of me, Mrs. Collins?”

“No.”

“If I was as smart as Mr. Prescott, I wouldn’t be a secretary. I do the best I can.”

“I suspect Chase is more fortunate than he knows to have a secretary like you.” I should have been ashamed of myself.

He looked at me warily, unaccustomed to praise.

“In fact, I’ll make it a point to tell Chase how outstanding I think you are. He can trust you—which is certainly more than can be said of some of the other people in this house.”

I had him eating out of the palm of my hand. His suspicions tumbled over each other.

“Listen, Mrs. Collins, I know it’s Roger who spilled that awful stuff about the family to the writer … He tries to pretend he likes his father, but it’s a lie, a lie…. Roger loathes him, I know he does … Never made any money on his own. Why, he just barely makes a living … Miranda’s been acting funny the last few weeks … I see her up at night walking around … Lyle Stedman thinks he’s already as big a deal as Mr. Prescott just because he’s been picked to be CEO. I think that’s making Mr. Prescott kind of mad…. Butter won’t melt in that lawyer’s mouth. I don’t trust him. I tried to tell Mr. Prescott once, but he wouldn’t listen…. That snotty Haskell Lee treats me like I’m dirt. Asks me to get him things, like I’m some kind of servant … I might as well not exist as far as Mrs. St. Vincent’s concerned. But she’d better watch how she acts …”

There was a lot of venom and resentment stored behind Burton’s obsequious facade. When he finally
ran down, I inquired mildly, “Who should I talk to next? Who do you think will be the most honest and open about Mr. Prescott?”

The secretary’s answer surprised me.

I suppose someday, should I ever make it to Eden, I’ll find it much like the sanitized, controlled garden of luxury that Chase had created on Prescott Island, with flowering shrubs and sea-soft air and tiny pockets of privacy at every hand.

As I walked up the shell path, I welcomed the shade from the willows that fenced off the jogging track from both the back gardens and the house. It was only midmorning, but the hot air flowed over me like melted caramel.

As befitted an earthly paradise, there were several comfortable webbed garden chairs beneath the shade of an arbor beside the track. I took a seat and watched Lyle Stedman jog. Lean and muscular, he had the easy grace of an accomplished athlete. His red hair was plastered limply to his skull. Unsmiling, breathing harshly, Lyle looked tough, absorbed, withdrawn. He slowed to a walk, still moving briskly.

His dossier revealed a young man in a hurry. Lyle Stedman started poor, the only son of a divorced secretary. He learned early that he was good at sports. It became his ticket to college, a track scholarship to the University of Mississippi. He was the house manager in his fraternity. He also played poker. Between the fraternity job, his scholarship, and cards, Stedman put together enough of a nest egg to pay his way to the Middle East. There he badgered every news bureau
for a job until he landed one, starting off as a stringer. Three years later Prescott Communications hired him full time. When the Gulf War began, Lyle’s stories caught the attention of Chase himself. Chase brought the young journalist back to the Atlanta office. Lyle Stedman outhustled his peers, and six months ago—at the tender age of twenty-seven—he was named Chase’s heir apparent.

I imagined he’d made enemies in his scramble to succeed. I doubted that he gave a damn.

Lyle’s stride checked. He hesitated, then came toward me, his expression impassive. He picked up a towel from a nearby chair, wiped off his face, then dropped into the chair across from me. Intelligent green eyes challenged me. He waited for me to speak.

I reached up and broke off a spray of honeysuckle. This time I didn’t try the dear-old-lady-writer-cozying-up-to-the-subject. Lyle Stedman was a far cry from Burton Andrews. “Having fun?” A South Carolina—size wasp buzzed a little too near.

“You’re the hotshot reporter. You tell me.”

“Sure. About as much fun as a root canal.” I would have guessed his last vacation had been in junior high school.

He did laugh at that. “Okay. Truce. The boss says you’re writing his life. Why?”

“Money, of course.” This is the kind of answer that usually embarrasses the asker enough to shut down further questions on the subject.

Not Lyle Stedman. He lifted one thick red eyebrow. “I know who you are. You’ve won every award there is. Covered the world. Then successfully made
the switch to big-time fiction. You don’t need money.”

I tried evasive action. “But Prescott Communications does need money. In a bad way. Want to tell me about it?”

“If the boss heard that, he’d can you on the spot.” Lyle leaned back in his chair and regarded me shrewdly. “I don’t get this. The party line at the office is: Everything’s swell, don’t ask stupid questions, the money will come in, Prescott Communications forever with a drum roll and a trumpet tattoo in the background. So what gives?”

I crushed the honeysuckle in my hand, savoring the sweet, thick summertime smell. “Do you think the money’s not coming in?”

“Goddamn. You’ve either got more guts than anybody I’ve ever met or you play it the way it lies. But in case you’re carrying tidbits back to Chase, no, I don’t think he’s delusional. If the boss says the money’s coming in, it will come. So I’m telling everybody to cool it. I’m telling everybody to concentrate on the job. Leave the high finance to the boss. It won’t be the first time he’s worked a miracle.”

Lyle was trying to convince himself, not me. But it gave me a nice opening, and I pounced on it. I learned a lot more that I didn’t know about Chase. Lyle got into the spirit of it, and I soon saw that this intelligent, impatient, ambitious young man was one of those rare creatures—a dispassionate observer. He was quick, yes, to say when he thought Chase was at fault—the celebrated unauthorized-biography libel case, for example—but just as quick to extol virtues,
painting a vivid picture of a man fanatically devoted to the company he had built from nothing, an impatient, quick-tempered man with an unerring eye for what popular taste craved and a fierce determination to be the first to satisfy that hunger.

“That, in sum, is why he’s richer than Croesus.” The heir apparent hunched forward in his chair, his voice admiring. I could read the rest of his thought. One of these days, he, too, was going to be just as rich. When it was his turn. “Yeah, the boss was one of the first to get the idea that the simple life was back in style. He started new sections in every paper and a segment in the morning talk show’s about back-to-basics, down with conspicuous consumption. People loved it. The letters poured in. Now everybody’s on the bandwagon.”

“The simple life.”

He flashed a surprisingly charming grin. “Just because it’s in his newspapers doesn’t mean
he’s
taken a vow of austerity. Here we are on Prescott Island, in a little grass shack for his buddies. But why the hell not?”

“So why did he ask you here this weekend?” My fingers felt sticky from the honeysuckle.

His smile slid away. “You heard the man at dinner last night. He knows I’ll lay it out straight. I do, you know. He’s fired me twice, but he always hires me back. I’m the only son of a bitch Chase knows who doesn’t stand at attention when he comes into the room.”

“But you’d rather be in Atlanta.” I waved away a wasp, tossed the crushed honeysuckle onto the grass.

“God, yes.” He twirled the towel into a taut line and snapped it twice. “Jesus, this is boring. No offense. But I want to be in the newsroom. I want to know what’s going on. And this goddamned island—we’re out here like it’s a century ago. What’s wrong with him? Maybe he’s getting old.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not it. But, for God’s sake, anything could happen in Russia. The damn Libyans could knock down another plane. Hell, we don’t know what’s happening! For a damn week! And those interest payments come due in October. What’s that? Five weeks? And here we sit twiddling our thumbs on this godforsaken island. So he says everything’s okay—why doesn’t he tell us what’s going
on?
The rumors out in the industry are bad.” He leaned back, visibly trying to relax. “But I’m not in charge.”

“When you are …”

“When I am? Lady, I’m going to bite and scratch and gouge and fight and someday Prescott Communications will be the biggest media outfit in the world. In the whole damned
world
.”

I knew as I looked at his glittering green eyes that the day he took over couldn’t possibly come, as far as he was concerned, soon enough.

Caesar said it best: “
Yond Cassius had a lean and hungry look
…”

I
was on my way to the tennis courts, hoping to find Miranda, when I took a detour.

The acrid, unmistakable scent of burning drew me to the incinerator. I touched the concrete blocks
lightly. They were still warm, though no smoke twined from the vents.

It was the first home incinerator I’d been around in forty years. Believe it or not, home incinerators were a given in Southern California not so long ago. A small shovel hung from a hook on one side, along with gloves. I slipped on the gloves and opened the door. I used the shovel to explore.

Books are hard to burn, as Nazis and others of their ilk have discovered through the years.

This book was blackened and smoldering. Still, it was far from destroyed. I held in my hand the missing copy of
The Man Who Picks Presidents
. I carefully sprinkled it with some sandy dirt, to extinguish even a lingering spark. Then I went to the trouble to empty out all the ashes to see if there was anything else not customarily consigned to incinerators.

All I got for my trouble was an ash in my right eye and a smear of carbon on my walking shorts.

I took the charred book back to my room. There I wrapped it in a quart-size plastic bag (I carry them when traveling for soiled clothing) and tucked it in the middle of the folder stack.

I brushed away most of the cinder smear on my shorts and hurried back outside, my goal again the tennis courts.

Why try to burn Chase’s biography?

Obviously, I could easily obtain a copy when back on the mainland. And, in fact, thanks to Burton Andrews, I’d have the book in hand by Monday afternoon.

Panic.

Whatever I’d sensed late last night when I called out and no one answered, it certainly hadn’t been panic. No, taking that book to the incinerator was not the point of extinguishing the lights.

I turned up the path to the tennis courts, brushing back some low-lying weeping willow fronds. But when I reached the courts, I was disappointed not to see Chase’s young wife. Trevor Dunnaway was zipping up his racket. He looked irritated.

“Where’s Miranda?”

“Decided she’d had enough. Quit in the middle of the set.” He must have realized he sounded pettish. He managed a smile and gestured toward a lavish wet bar beneath a canopy. “It
is
damned hot. Join me in a drink? Got ice out here and everything. Whiskey, beer, soda.”

“Love to.” Trevor was on my interview list, of course. Since he was a bird in hand, I’d defer my search for Miranda.

I took plain seltzer. Trevor uncapped a bottle of Dos Equis XXs. “Good and cold,” he said approvingly. He pulled two director’s chairs deeper into the shade for us. As we settled back, he looked toward the courts. “God, it’s fun to play on clay. But they take a lot of work.” With elegant timing, the court sprinklers came on at that moment. The aromatic smell of water hitting dry soil drifted to us. “Automatic, see,” he explained admiringly. “Kind of an electric eye in reverse. As long as someone’s playing, the water stays off. When there isn’t any movement for a set period, the sprinklers come on for a while and pretty soon the court’s perfect for the next game.
Isn’t that a hell of a deal?” He tilted the dark brown bottle and drank greedily.

He was certainly at home in this resort setting. As if to the manor born. But he hadn’t been. Trevor was that strange hybrid, a middle-class origin but an upper-middle-class background. Both parents were schoolteachers who immigrated to the U.S. from England. Trevor was an only child. They gave him every advantage. Private schools. Music lessons. Good clothes. But the money only stretched so far. He couldn’t afford skiing over spring break or jaunts to Europe or the expensive summer camps that cater to the rich. But Trevor brilliantly parlayed good looks and charm and an undeniable British accent, so appreciated by upper-middle-class Americans, into invitations to accompany his classmates’ families on vacations: snorkeling in Greece, pyramid climbing in Mexico, salmon fishing in Alaska. And now, as a corporate attorney, he enjoyed a top income and, as always, excelled at eliciting invitations to the mansions and estates of the wealthy.