Dead File (7 page)
She stretched down on the floor to get a better grasp on it. Wedging her thumbnail under the tape, she loosened it, then tugged at the paper beneath until she pulled it free. Bringing it out into the light, she saw immediately that it was indeed the envelope she was looking for. She didn’t need to open it; she knew what was inside.
Sandie pulled herself up and reached for her purse on top of Gillian’s desk. Taking a Kleenex out of it, she brushed away a layer of dust on the envelope, carefully stripped off the masking tape clinging to it and tossed it in the trash can, then tucked the envelope inside her big Fendi purse.
She was about to leave Gillian’s office when, to her astonishment, the door opened. Sandie looked up aghast to see a person in a black ski mask wearing a tan trench coat that hung almost to the floor, pointing a gun at her.
“Who are you?”
she demanded, with more bravado than she felt.
The person in the doorway said nothing.
Her heart thudding, Sandie gazed at the intruder. Something about the figure holding the gun seemed familiar. Just as she put it together and gasped a name aloud, she heard a shot, became aware of a stab of pain, grabbed at her wrist, and felt blood. That’s the last she remembered.
M
ax, hi. Where are you?” It was Wendy Harris on Maxi’s cell phone.
“Ventura Freeway just east of Coldwater, on the way in,” Maxi told her. She checked her watch: 8:43
A.M.
“I’ll be there by nine. What’s up?”
“Listen, don’t come in to the station,” Wendy said. “Go right downtown to the Rose building—your crew’s on the way. A woman was attacked there, sometime overnight. On the penthouse floor.”
“Who?”
“Her name is Sandie Schaeffer. She was Gillian Rose’s assistant. Shot in the head and left unconscious. One of the guards found her this morning when he was making rounds.”
“I know Sandie—I’ve met her several times with Gillian. … Shot in the
head?
Is she going to be okay?”
“Don’t know.”
“Read me the wire copy.”
“Hold on a sec. Okay, ready? Here’s the AP:
Rose International employee Sandra Blaine Schaeffer, thirty-one, was found severely wounded this morning at the Rose building in downtown Los Angeles. Paramedics transported her to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for treatment—her condition at this time is unknown. Preliminary reports say Ms. Schaeffer was shot by an unknown assailant. Police declined to speculate on how a gunman could have got inside the building. A spokesperson for Rose International said the building has tight security after business hours; only card-carrying staffers have access.
Schaeffer has been employed by the Rose company since its beginning, holding the same position throughout her tenure, that of executive assistant to co-founder and CEO Gillian Rose, who, herself, was found dead on the afternoon of December sixteenth.…
“And blah, blah, blah, all about Gillian, now,” Wendy went on.
“Okay,” Maxi said, sliding over into the right lanes and onto the Hollywood Freeway southbound, heading for downtown Los Angeles. “Skip down to the when, where, who found her, all that.”
“Umm … discovered at eighty-twenty-two this morning when a guard was checking the penthouse level … on the floor, inside one of the executive suites … apparently comatose. … The ME is quoted saying she was shot once in the head. That same bullet grazed her left wrist … the theory being she might have raised an arm in self-defense.”
“Anything else?”
“Nope. No witnesses. No clues mentioned in the wire story—doesn’t say if there was an exit wound, or if the bullet was found. Schaeffer worked for Gillian Rose for eight years, and in her family’s pharmacy in Westwood before that. A Los Angeles native. No husband. Father alive, mother deceased. No siblings. Investigation ongoing . . .”
“Robbery-Homicide Division?”
“I’d think so, because of the Gillian Rose case. A Detective Bill Murchison, LAPD, is quoted. I’ll make some calls.”
“Who’s my crew?”
“Lemke.”
“Bummer.” Cameraman Alan Lemke was as lazy as he was arrogant, and seemed to care more about when he’d be sprung for lunch than getting the story.
“Yeah. Luck of the draw.”
“If you find out anything else, call me on my cell.”
“You got it, Max.” They both disconnected.
She was southbound on the Harbor Freeway now, coming up on Wilshire Boulevard. She could see the Rose building rising over the trees at the bottom of the off-ramp. Déjà vu. It had been just four days ago that she’d approached Rose International on the Gillian Rose story. Now Gillian’s personal assistant, shot. Maxi punched up Pete Capra’s private number on her cell phone.
“Capra,” came the abrupt response.
“Hi, boss. It’s Maxi. I’m at the Rose building, just pulling up. So I guess the Roses and company are back on the docket as a bona fide news story, huh?”
“Looks like it. Sorry you got Lemke. Push him.”
“Yeah. I’ll check in with you later.” Maxi stabbed the END button as she pulled into the parking structure beneath the building.
The union that covered camera personnel was so strong that once a person was in, after the ninety-day trial period, there had to be impossibly strong grounds for termination. For instance, habitual drug or alcohol use did not constitute grounds. For that, the company was obligated to pay for rehab—once, then again, if the employee relapsed. Peddling drugs on the company premises—and there had been those who did that—didn’t qualify for termination either. That was a transgression grouped with using. Stealing or embezzling was something that had to be proven by a union committee in order to warrant firing, unless there was a conviction in the courts. So a bad attitude definitely didn’t qualify. And although almost all of the more than three hundred Channel Six News staffers made up a highly dedicated team, there were always a few who complained mightily about anything and everything while smugly expecting a free ride. Alan Lemke fit into that small group.
Maxi parked her car, then went off toward the front of the building in search of him. Knowing Lemke, she figured he wouldn’t bother to get anything on tape until she got there. Even if Tom Cruise materialized at the scene, stood on a soapbox in front of the building, and publicly confessed that he did it, Lemke wouldn’t shoot it.
She found him in the Channel Six News van, parked at the curb on Wilshire—he was sitting behind the wheel, stomach protruding from a stained gray T-shirt, one foot up on the front seat, hand resting on his knee, reading the
L.A. Times
sports section.
“Anything going on?” Maxi asked him. Not that he’d have noticed, she thought with chagrin.
“Nope. Whaddaya want to do?”
How about cover the damn story?
“You get exteriors, and any relevant comings and goings. I’ll run inside and see if I can find out anything.”
“The vic’s long gone.”
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
“Damn. Did you get the shots?”
“Nope.”
“Uhh … why not, Al?”
“Didn’t see ’em rolling out till it was too late. I wasn’t set up.”
Why the hell weren’t you set up? Why aren’t you set up now?
Useless to ask, Maxi knew—she’d been there before with this cameraman. “Okay,” she said. “Set up now. Please. I’ll be back in ten.”
Damn,
Maxi thought. The media was out in force around the building; every station but theirs would have shots of the paramedics coming out the front doors and rolling Sandie Schaeffer into the ambulance, and she could count on Capra to hit the ceiling. Now there was probably nothing visual left of the story, except for the inevitable talking heads at the press briefing.
Maxi scooted back inside the parking structure. Might as well snag the bullet elevator to the penthouse again, she reasoned.
This time she made it no farther than two steps onto the penthouse floor. A tall, burly, African American uniformed police officer stood outside the elevator, facing the doors, both hands gripping the ends of his baton.
“Hello, I’m Maxi Poole from Channel Six,” she offered.
“You can’t come in here, Ms. Poole. This is a crime scene,” the officer said with firmness and finality. Then he added, “They’re planning to hold a media briefing downstairs outside the main entrance when the detectives finish up here.”
Maxi checked his nameplate. “Officer Downey,” she said, “I’m a friend of Carter Rose. I’m actually here to see him. No camera,” she added, raising both arms, palms up.
“Is he expecting you?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“Hold on … I’ll check,” he said, and he moved toward the nearest desk with a phone on it. LAPD patrol officers didn’t carry cell phones.
The officer’s response told Maxi that Carter Rose was in the building. She followed him, fingers mentally crossed, hoping that Rose would okay her to go in.
A hollow
ding
sounded, and the express elevator doors slid open again. Maxi and the officer turned in unison to see three people emerge, two men and a woman, all of them dressed in business garb. Maxi recognized the woman; she’d seen her a couple of times with Gillian Rose—a public relations exec, she seemed to remember. The workday was beginning—she figured the men to also be executives who worked on this floor. Officer Downey stepped quickly over to the three and asked to see ID cards.
Maxi took the opportunity to slip around one of the broad pillars in the reception area and stride briskly across the marble floor, expecting a heavy hand to fall on her shoulder at any second. Reaching the door marked CARTER ROSE, she opened it and ducked inside.
She found herself in a room done completely in cool shades of celadon green, from the carpeting to the plush upholstered furniture to the decorative mini-blinds at the six broad windows. A tall green vase of calla lilies was the only accent piece on an oval, celadon-green acrylic coffee table. On the matching translucent polymer desk there was a computer, a telephone, a mod halogen reading lamp, and a pale green Lucite nameplate that spelled out KENDYL SCOTT. Behind the desk sat a stunning mulatto woman in a chic, charcoal gray pin-striped gabardine suit, whom Maxi assumed was the so-labeled Ms. Scott herself.
Gillian’s assistant Sandie Schaeffer’s office was a mirror image of this one, down to the exact acrylic furniture and upholstered pieces, but all in shades of rusty orange. And continuing the contemporary theme, Gillian’s huge inner office was decorated in rich woods with clean black slate surfaces. Maxi had never seen this side, Carter Rose’s suite. Rose’s assistant was looking at her now, her face devoid of expression.
“Hello, I’d like to see Mr. Rose,” Maxi offered.
“Because … ?”
“I’m Maxi Poole, from Channel Six. He knows me.”
“I know who you are. I don’t know how you got in here. He’s not seeing press.”
Stone city. “Would you tell him I’m here,” she said, more a statement than a question.
“He can’t be disturbed.”
Maxi pulled her cell phone out of her purse. “Tell you what,” she said to the beautiful, icy Ms. Scott. “I’ll call him, and you let him know I’m on the line.”
“Really, Ms. Poole . . .”
But Maxi was already dialing, and a line on Kendyl Scott’s phone lit up. With an air of peevish resignation, the woman punched the intercom button. “There’s a reporter out here in my office, Maxi Poole from Channel—”
She stopped. Listened. And from the hard look in her dark, winter eyes, Maxi knew that she highly disapproved of what her boss was telling her. “Go in,” she said then, without bothering to look up.
“Thank you, Ms. Scott. I appreciate it,” Maxi returned brightly. No point in alienating this woman any further; she might need her later. But Carter Rose picked himself an icicle, she mused. She opened the door to the CEO’s office.
Quelle surprise! Mr.
Rose’s office was a throwback to the twenties. Caramel-colored buttoned leather couches and plush club chairs; an old Green & Green onyx-studded coffee table; a bank of four-drawer oak file cabinets against a side wall—the real thing, Maxi noted, not reproductions; green Case lighting fixtures in the ceiling and authentic Tiffany lamps on surfaces; lush Oriental rugs throughout; and an outsized oak roll-top desk with a leather-padded oak desk chair, in which sat the man himself.
Maxi took in the ambience. “Wow!” she uttered before she said hello. “
This
is a retreat,” was all she could manage.
“Hi, Maxi,” Carter Rose said, getting up to greet her. “Sit down.” He indicated the seating area, and they sat on opposite couches. “Coffee?” he asked.
“Umm … do you have tea?”
“Of course.” He punched the intercom. “Kendyl, would you order us a pot of coffee and some tea?” And to Maxi, “Is Earl Grey all right?”
“Wonderful,” Maxi said. She was still nonplussed by the surroundings: original Louis Icart paintings on the walls, old leather-bound volumes in glass-fronted barrister cases, collectibles from the early past century everywhere, all of it arranged in a sort of artistically organized clutter. With Christmas five days away, she’d seen no holiday decorations in other parts of the building, but Carter Rose had a little Christmas tree set up on an oak side table, complete with lights, ornaments, and presents underneath.
“I can’t get over your office,” Maxi said when he turned his attention to her.
“Yeah, it’s a hundred and eighty degrees from the rest of the nine floors. My wife and I didn’t agree on decor.”
“I see that,” Maxi murmured. She wondered what else the Roses didn’t agree on.
K
endyl Scott picked up the phone and pressed the speed-dial number for the cafeteria on the ground floor.
“Dennis? It’s Kendyl.”
“Hi, Ken-doll.” The counterman’s pet name for her. “What can we send up?” She ordered for Carter. And for the pushy blonde who was with him.
“It’ll be just a few minutes,” Dennis told her.
It was a good system. Someone on staff would hustle the order together and Dennis would send a waiter up on the express elevator with it. Kendyl had long since let Carter know that she didn’t make coffee. Or lunch, or snacks, or drinks, or any of it, even though there was a full stainless-steel built-in kitchen between the adjoining executive suites.