Dead File (17 page)
“Strictly business, Ms. Poole. I happen to think that Carter Rose murdered his wife. Maybe he found out that she was planning to leave him—if she was conveniently dead, he wouldn’t have to split his assets. In any case, if Carter was facing prison, the price of the stock would plummet even farther.”
“And the company would go cheaper,” she said.
“Rock bottom. And I happen to be in the post position. We have a stock sale purchase agreement in place, pending due diligence.”
“Then wouldn’t you be locked in to that stock price?”
“We have contingencies. Wall Street would certainly pay attention to a CEO who murdered his wife and business partner. Don’t you think a consumer who’s up on the news would think twice before picking up a bottle of Rose multivitamins in a health-food store?”
“Okay, so sales would dry up and the stock would plummet. Then what good would the company be to you, at any price? It could be years before—”
She stopped herself, the answer to that becoming suddenly clear. The
formula,
again! Whatever this mystery formula is, Penthe thought it was worth putting money into a fatally damaged company to get his hands on it. And evidently he thought he could get it.
Whether Penthe saw enlightenment dawn on Maxi’s face or had no intention of answering that question anyway, he put both hands on the table in a we’re-finished-here gesture.
And how do you know I won’t run to Carter Rose with this?
Maxi thought, knowing she would if it moved the story forward. She owed no loyalty to either of them. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked, just to clear the air on that point.
“Because the meter is running. I want Gillian Rose’s murder solved, and Carter Rose put away.”
“Does Mr. Rose know you feel this way?”
“There’s no reason why he should. And I would prefer that he didn’t know my theories. That said, if he finds out, it changes nothing between us. It’s only business.”
No wonder Carter Rose had seemed afraid of him, Maxi thought. It occurred to her that she wouldn’t want this man for an enemy. He had ice water for blood.
“And you think I can help. Why?” she asked.
She already knew the answer to that one, too. Why would somebody like the inscrutable Goodman Penthe suddenly become Mr. Loquacious in the Channel Six conference room? Why would this business magnate personally come into the station two days after Christmas to tell her his story? Why did most strangers tell her their stories? To influence what she put on the air, of course, in the second-largest news market in the nation.
“Because the police aren’t doing anything,” was his answer.
“Have you told them any of this?”
“I tried. Couldn’t get their attention.”
“Carter Rose thinks Gillian was murdered too. And he wants to find the killer.”
“Tell him to look in the mirror.”
Maxi said nothing.
“It’s a helluva story for you, Ms. Poole,” Penthe summed up. And with that—no good-bye, no nice to see you, no happy New Year, no go to hell—he got up and exited the conference room.
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass,
Maxi thought as she watched his back sail out of there. Creep.
And with Gillian Rose dead, you’ve got the inside track for a shot at William Schaeffer’s solid-gold formula, whatever it is.
“What was
that
about?” Wendy asked Maxi after, as she put it, an abbreviated dervish blasted out of the conference room, stormed across the newsroom, and slammed out the door.
“A man who isn’t used to people not toadying up to him: Goodman Penthe,” Maxi told her. She’d stopped over at Wendy’s desk and pulled up a chair beside her.
“Oh, I heard Riley paging you that he was here. So what did your nervous visitor have to say?”
“He said he’s convinced that Gillian Rose was murdered, and that Carter Rose did the deed. He says he told the detectives but they didn’t care.”
“So he probably has nothing to back up the yarn he’s peddling. Does he have any reason to want Carter Rose to go down?”
“Bingo. It has to do with grabbing up Rose International cheap. This guy is a consummate conglomerate shark.”
“Did he give you anything that moves the story forward?”
“Nothing he’d go on the record with. But some anecdotal stuff that’s maybe worth a little digging into. What have we got archived on the Rose story?”
“Let’s look,” Wendy said, and she clicked over her computer keys to call up the directory of all tapes that were slugged ROSE.
“Umm, a bunch of news conferences: one with Carter Rose, one with the ME, several with the Robbery-Homicide detectives, one with the LAPD on Sandie Schaeffer. Your updates on Schaeffer’s attempts to speak in the hospital. Some tape featuring exteriors of the Rose building, including an aerial from the chopper. Also, Carter Rose at LAX, and your quickie with him in the Rose International conference room on the morning of the Sandie Schaeffer attack. Plus the illegal stuff Harbaugh shot inside Gillian’s office the day she died—that’s in the dead file.”
“I forgot about that tape in the dead file. Might be worth revisiting. Can you print out a shot list on that footage? If Pete okays it, I’ll do a scan.”
“You got it.” Wendy clicked on the PRINT button and her printer served up the shot sheet. “Want me to look at that tape with you?”
“That’d be great. And let’s ask Capra to view it with us. He’s got a great nose.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“Yeah, I suppose so. If we find anything that might actually be something, we’ll bring it to him.”
“Good plan. I have to write a couple of readers for the Noon, then I’ve got some time.”
“Then you’ve got your lunch hour, you mean.”
“Who eats lunch?”
“Good point. I’ll reserve us an edit room. Oh,” Maxi said, lowering her voice as her eyes drifted across the aisle to Sunday Trent hunched over a computer terminal. “How’s Sunday doing on the book rewrites?”
“Really good,” Wendy said. “I can’t believe she’s working so hard on the project, and doing such a great job. She’s become invaluable, doing legwork I don’t have time to do. She’s researched and analyzed all the new menu ingredients, interviewed Dr. Balthasar on audiotape, transcribed everything, pulled the pertinent quotes. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“What’s she doing here on a Friday morning? Isn’t she in school?”
“Christmas break.”
“Oh, right. Well, shouldn’t she be on a ski trip with her boyfriend? Going to Fort Lauderdale with friends? Visiting her family in Chicago? Something?”
“You’d think so. Gorgeous young person … go figure. She’s here day and night, between her internship hours and my project.”
“Odd,” Maxi commented. “Okay, I’m going to get Capra to give me a release on this tape,” she said, gesturing with the shot-sheet printout from the dead file. “Then I’ll nail down an editor. See you in a bit.”
S
ome hot-looking babe,” Pete Capra commented.
Wendy and Maxi exchanged disgusted glances. “She’s dead, boss,” Wendy said flatly. The three were sitting in an edit bay—the body of Gillian Rose was up in freeze-frame on four screens.
“Is now the time to have that women-to-man talk with Pete?” Maxi asked Wendy.
“Seems so.”
“Pete,” Maxi followed up, “you’re sexist. And it’s going to get you in big trouble.”
“I’m not sexist,” Capra said. “I’m Italian.”
“You can’t behave like that in today’s business world,” Wendy put in.
“Behave like what?” Pete asked, with an innocent look.
“You can’t call Gillian Rose a hot-looking babe, whether she’s dead or alive,” Wendy answered, exuding exasperation.
“But she
is
a hot-looking babe, dead or alive,” he said.
Wendy looked at Maxi. “I give up,” she said.
“Don’t give up. It’s just going to take longer than we thought.”
“And we’ve only booked this edit machine for a half hour,” from Wendy.
“So, getting back to business,” Maxi said, “what color are Gillian’s eyes?”
“They’re—”
“No, no, Wendy, not you,” Maxi cut her off. “Of course you know what color Gillian Rose’s eyes are—you’re a woman. Pete, let me ask you, what color are Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes?”
“How the hell do I know?” Pete tossed out.
“What about Paul Newman’s legendary eyes?”
“What kind of a test is this?”
“See what I mean, Wendy? Women know that Liz Taylor’s eyes are violet and Paul Newman’s eyes are blue. And we know what color Gillian Rose’s eyes are, because they’re just as famous. Okay, Pete, you take a look at Gillian’s eyes in this frame. Can you see what color they are?”
“No,” Pete said.
“Can we enhance?” she asked Jack Worth, their editor. “Just the eyes.”
“Sure,” the editor said, and he isolated the eyes of Gillian Rose with an electronic white dotted line, then started pushing buttons. The pixels zoomed in, the image getting larger with each click.
“Hold it right there,” Pete Capra said. “Okay. So her eyes are brown. With black flecks. So what?”
Wendy was staring at the image in astonishment. It was well known that Gillian Rose had famously brilliant blue eyes.
Maxi was staring too.
This is what I saw the day she died,
she thought to herself.
And it has to have something to do with William Schaeffer’s formula for glaucoma medication.
Maxi called Richard on her cell phone. He told her he’d be right down. She was waiting in her car in front of his apartment building in Marina del Rey. It was a glossy, needle high-rise occupied predominantly by upscale singles, with a brilliant view of the Marina: inlets with hundreds of colorful boats at their moorings, and still more boats bobbing brightly on the blue Pacific. Idly she watched the Southern California “beautiful people” coming and going.
When Richard pushed out of the bronze front doors of the building—tall, angular, in tweed sports coat and chinos, sandy hair blowing, suitcase in hand, laptop bag slung over his shoulder, topcoat on his arm—her heart skipped a beat.
He spotted her Corvette and his face lit up. “Hey,” he said. “Hey,” she said back. He opened the passenger door, pulled the seat forward, tossed his bags and his coat into the hatch, and settled himself inside. Maxi started the car and headed for the airport.
“That’s all you’re bringing for what could be a long war?” she asked him.
“What do I need? A few clothes, toothbrush, razor, camera, laptop.”
Maxi chuckled, thinking about what a woman would pack. “It’s freezing in New York,” she said.
“Got my coat. I’ll pick up a pair of gloves there.”
“Do you have clothes at your mother’s?”
“No. After I got back from college and got settled in an apartment there, I called my mom to tell her I was coming by to pick up my stuff. She said I didn’t have any stuff. I said of course I had stuff, everybody has stuff. What stuff? she asked. And actually, I couldn’t think of any.”
“Simple needs,” Maxi said.
“Uhh … about last night—”
“Yes?” Maxi interrupted, glancing over at him.
“Well . . .”
“I had a good time. Did you?”
“Uhh … ya, but . . .”
“Ya, but, that’s all. You’re going to war, remember?”
“Maxi—”
She put a hand on his arm to stop him. “It’s okay, Richard.
Don’t worry about it. Please.” Then she added, “And don’t tell anybody.”
They both understood that last night was a subject better left alone, and they tacitly agreed to agree on that.
“So,” Maxi said, “you’ve got good flying weather.” She gave his arm a squeeze, then put both hands back on the wheel and focused on her driving.
M
axi headed back from the airport as the afternoon crush on the 405 was building. Traffic was the worst on Friday afternoons.
Her car felt empty. So did her love life. But the specific logistics of the situation happened to be a blessing. She told herself again that a full-on relationship with a colleague was not possible, period. In fact, last night would definitely never have happened if Richard hadn’t been going away today—far away, and for a long time. Funny, she thought, the “going off to war” analogy they’d joked about wasn’t far from the truth.
She wondered what Richard was thinking, strapped into his seat in a 767 waiting to take off. Same thing, she guessed. She’d asked him if there was anything he wanted her to take care of for him while he was gone. The nurturing woman part of her, actually craving the connection. She knew the answer in advance, and didn’t really expect or want a different one.
His mail would be forwarded to his business manager this time, he’d said, to be sorted, dealt with, or shipped to him if necessary. Beyond that, he didn’t really need anything, and his inference was that he liked it that way. This morning he had given his four house plants to the woman next door. Mindy something, a lawyer. She said she’d take care of them until he got back. He told her to just enjoy them. Meaning he couldn’t be sure they would ever have a home with him again. He canceled his cleaning lady. What’s to clean? he’d said. And besides, he was more comfortable knowing that nobody would be going inside his place. When he got back she’d come in and dust. Simple needs.
Then Maxi thought about him in bed with her last night. Was it really just last night? It seemed like a long time ago. She shook it off. What was there to think about? Except, she reflected, allowing herself a slight smile as she maneuvered up the crowded freeway on her way back to the station, except it was delicious.
She pulled her cell phone out of her purse, asked Information to connect her to Schaeffer Pharmacy in Westwood, got Mr. Schaeffer on the line, and asked him if he could meet her after the Six O’clock News. He suggested that she come to Cedars, to the ICU. Sandie was talking a lot now, and he was spending as much time with her as he could. Maxi said she’d be there.
Midafternoon on Friday. Kendyl Scott was back at her desk at work. And Carter Rose was in Maui. She’d returned his call yesterday, told him that she forgave him. That was a joke. Forgive him for a huge wasted chunk of her life? But she needed to work this out from inside the castle walls. From her long-held, front-row-center seat to his life. He wanted to appease her, and she knew why. She resolved to use her leverage. She’d either get him for good or she’d make him pay.