Death Benefits (5 page)

Chapter Five

“Mr. Anderson was a perfect gentleman to work for,” Nancy Winslow explained. “He certainly wasn't a lecher, like you know who,” she said with a jerk of her head toward the doorway, where Reed St. Germain had stood just moments ago. He had poked his head in to tell me that it would take several hours to gather all of the documents I had requested because most of Stoddard Anderson's files had been sent to storage. The documents would be there by late afternoon along with the boxed contents of his office.

“Is St. Germain hassling you?”

Nancy pushed back her long red hair. “Nothing I can't handle.”

“You don't have to put up with it.”

“Oh, I know that.”

“You have rights.”

She winked. “The girls and I feel safe when you're around.”

“I don't get it.”

“That big lawsuit you won in Chicago.”

“Oh.” Last winter I had obtained a $250,000 jury award for my client in a sexual harassment lawsuit against a senior partner in a prominent Chicago law firm. My client had been his secretary. The story of the trial was featured in a
National Law Journal
special report on sexual harassment litigation.

“All the girls read about that case,” Nancy said.

“Let's hope the men did, too,” I said.

She laughed. “We made sure they did. Most of us gave our bosses a copy of the article.”

“Including St. Germain?”

She snorted in disgust. “He's got a wife and two kids. Almost three. She's about eight months pregnant. He's been cheating on her for years. He had an affair with one of the secretaries from his old firm. And when that ended, he started sleeping with one of the paralegals here. Until Mr. Anderson found out.”

“What happened?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I know he called Reed into his office and closed the door. They were in there for about an hour. When Reed came out he looked like he'd seen a ghost. As far as I could tell, he kept his hands off the girls for a while after that. But that was six months ago.” She shook her head in disgust.

“You're not one of his biggest fans.”

“He moved into Mr. Anderson's office the day after the funeral. Couldn't wait to get in there, Rachel. He was horning in before anyone even knew that Mr. Anderson was dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“On the second day after Mr. Anderson disappeared, I found Reed in that office going through Mr. Anderson's papers. He told me—ordered me—to bring in Mr. Anderson's calendar.”

“Why?”

“He said he had to make sure that Mr. Anderson didn't have any important meetings scheduled. For the next week or so, all mail addressed to Mr. Anderson had to go to Reed. Same reason. ‘A law firm is like a Broadway play,' he told me. ‘The show must go on.'”

“He's probably right.”

She sighed. “I know. I guess that's the kind of man you want to have in charge of things. It was the coldness that got me so upset.”

“Does he still get all of Mr. Anderson's mail?”

“No. That stopped after a couple weeks.”

“What happens now?”

“I forward the client correspondence to the attorneys assigned to the matters. All the rest—the personal bills, periodicals, junk mail—I've been saving it in a box near my desk. I guess I should be shipping it out to Mrs. Anderson pretty soon.”

“Tell me about Stoddard Anderson,” I asked. “What was he like to work for?”

“Oh, it was very exciting sometimes. He knew a lot of really important people. You wouldn't believe some of the names on my Rolodex. I used to place calls to senators, to the governor, the mayor, you name it. I bet there've been ten times at least that I picked up the phone and the girl on the other end said, ‘This is the White House calling for Mr. Anderson.' Can you believe it?” She placed her hand on her chest. “Let me tell you, first time that happened this was one South County girl you could have knocked over with a feather.”

I smiled, studying her. Age seems to enhance the beauty of some women in their forties, as if experience or wisdom somehow adds that last clarifying touch. Not so for Nancy Winslow. Her two most striking features—thick red hair and dark green eyes—remained strong, but twenty extra pounds and the steady pull of gravity had blurred what must have once been cover-of
-Vogue
beauty.

“What kind of things did you do for him?” I asked her.

“The usual. Took dictation, kept track of his schedules, set up appointments, set up meetings. That kind of stuff. I screened all of his incoming calls, placed all of his outgoing calls. Of course, there was always his filing to keep up with.” She shook her head in wonder. “Let me tell you, that man used to get mail by the truckload.”

She didn't recall anything unusual about his business travel during the last several months. He had made several trips to Chicago for meetings at the main office of Abbott & Windsor. As for other trips, she promised to get me his travel logs.

“What was he like?” I asked. “Was he cheerful, friendly, aloof?”

Nancy pressed her index finger against her chin as she thought it over. “I liked him okay,” she finally said. “He was kind of formal with me. Proper. Like, I always called him Mr. Anderson. He was different in real life than he was on the phone.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was always upbeat on the phone, real charming—like a game show host. But when he hung up, that personality would vanish, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “He wouldn't get mean or anything. He'd just get real businesslike, real serious. He was—well, he was a boss.”

“How about the last week?” I asked. “Did you notice anything different?”

“He seemed—well, sort of moody,” she said.

“How so?”

“Sort of out of it. Ordinarily, he'd be on the phone almost eight hours straight. Some days that phone never stopped ringing. He'd get fifty calls a day. But those last couple days he had me hold
all
of his calls. All of them.”

“What was he doing?”

“I don't know. Sometimes he had the door closed. When it was closed he was sometimes on the phone. I could tell because his line lit up on my phone. That was odd, too. He usually didn't place his own calls.”

“And when he wasn't on the phone?”

“I don't know. When the door was open, he'd either be sitting at his desk doodling or staring out the window.”-

“Did you ask him if anything was wrong?”

She shrugged. “Mr. Anderson didn't have personal conversations with me.”

“Anything else odd that last week?”

She mulled it over. “Now that you mention it, yeah. Little things. He had this strict rule that if a lawyer was out of the office, he had to tell his secretary exactly where he was going and where he could be reached at all times. But a couple times that last week Mr. Anderson just up and walked out of the office without telling anyone where he was going. That was odd. You know what else? He didn't do his time sheets for the last three days.”

“That was unusual for him?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely. That's another rule at Abbott and Windsor. Attorneys have to hand in their time sheets every day, no exceptions. If you're more than two days late, you get fined twenty dollars a day. Mr. Anderson really enforced that rule. Since he was managing partner, he made sure he did his own daily. But that last week, well, he didn't do any. None. I asked him one of those days if he had his time sheets for me, 'cause it just really wasn't like him.”

“What did he say?”

She shrugged. “He mumbled something about how he'd get around to it.”

“He'd never done that before?”

“No, I take that back. Once. About five months ago, there was about a one-week gap in his time sheets. I asked him about it back then. He told me to bill the whole week to vacation. Which was odd, since he was in the office some of those days.”

“How about the day he disappeared. What was he like that morning?”

She shook her head sadly. “He was in his office with the door closed when I arrived that morning. He made at least one phone call, 'cause I remember his phone light lit up around ten o'clock.”

“Just one call?”

“I think so. At least I didn't notice any others. Of course, I was holding all his incoming calls. He didn't take any of them. Anyway, around eleven-fifteen I knocked on the door and opened it to remind him of his lunch date at the St. Louis Club. He was standing at the window, just staring out at the Old Courthouse. I had to say his name three times before he turned around. ‘Mr. Anderson—Mr. Anderson—MR. ANDERSON.' I told him about his lunch appointment but he just kind of stared at me, or through me. So I repeated it to make sure he heard.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Just turned back to the window. He was leaning his head against the window when I closed the door. I felt real bad for him. I figured he must have heard some bad news or something. He really seemed kind of—well, stunned.”

“What happened next?”

“He walked out of his office about twenty minutes later. I was sitting at my terminal when he walked past. He was gone for maybe five minutes before I realized he'd left without his suit jacket on. I went into his office and found it still hanging on the hook in back of his door. Well, that was a problem.”

“Why?”

“His lunch meeting was at the St. Louis Club. You have to wear a jacket out there or they won't let you in. So I got the firm's messenger and gave him the jacket and told him to race like the devil out to Clayton to give it to Mr. Anderson. Then I called the club to tell them that Mr. Anderson had forgotten his jacket but that we were sending it out by messenger. I first started to worry when our messenger reached the club before Mr. Anderson. But then I thought that maybe he remembered about his jacket on his way to the club and had turned back to the office to get it. I stayed by my phone through lunch, waiting to hear from my boss.” She sighed. “I never heard from him. Ever.” She shook her head, her eyes watering. “God, it seems so stupid.”

“What does?”

“That damn jacket. I'm telling you, I was in a panic. I was worried sick about that stupid jacket. He obviously couldn't have cared less about it.”

I waited as she pulled a Kleenex out of the box on my desk and blew her nose.

“Did you handle his bank accounts?” I asked. Many older partners have their secretaries handle routine deposits and withdrawals. Some have their secretaries write checks and pay all their personal bills, from credit cards to home mortgage payments.

“Mrs. Anderson handled their personal bills. I kept track of his bank statements, deposited his draw checks, and moved money from one account to another when he told me to. I didn't write any checks.”

She recalled that he had cashed in several large certificates of deposit back in January and February because of some capital calls on two of his real estate limited partnerships, but told me that Reed St. Germain would be a better source of information about Stoddard Anderson's financial conditions. “He's handling Mr. Anderson's estate,” she said. “He had me turn over all the bank statements, checkbooks, and other stuff.”

“During the last couple weeks of his life,” I said, reaching for my legal pad, “was he working on anything unusual?”

She frowned in thought and then shook her head. She recalled no new clients or unusual matters.

“Do any clients stand out in your memory?”

“Three.”

“Who?”

“They're all regular clients of the firm. And they stand out because of the people involved. Especially the Missing Link.” She gave a shiver of disgust.

“The Missing Link?”

“Salvatore Donalli. President of Donalli Construction Company.”

“He's the Missing Link?”

“Yes. The most disgusting man I've ever met. I always felt like washing my phone whenever I got a call from him. Do you know what he once did? He made his secretary give him a blow job, and then, while that poor girl was down on her knees with his thing in her mouth, he called Mr. Anderson and told him.”

“You're kidding.”

She shook her head. “I was in Mr. Anderson's office once taking dictation when Donalli called. Mr. Anderson put him on the speaker phone but forgot to tell him I was in the room. ‘What's up, Sal?' Mr. Anderson asked him. ‘My cock,' he says. ‘In Lurleen's mouth. She gives the best head in town.' And then that disgusting man made Lurleen say hello to Mr. Anderson. Well, by then Mr. Anderson had him off the speaker box.”

“Was he upset?”

“Upset? Mr. Anderson was furious, what with me being in the room and hearing it. He really let that horrible man have it.”

I had jotted down: Salvatore Donalli—Donalli Construction Co.—Missing Link. “And you say Mr. Anderson was in contact with this man before he died.”

She nodded. “Oh, yes. A lot.”

I groaned. “It sounds like I may need to meet the Missing Link.”

“Then put on an extra pair of pantyhose before you go over there.”

“And keep my mouth closed.”

“Or get your teeth sharpened.”

We both laughed.

“Who were the other two clients?”

“Albert Weidemeir. He's okay.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He works for the Sewer District. Mr. Anderson represents—represented—the Metropolitan Sewer District. Albert is some sort of accountant over there. He works in the controller's office. He's real quiet. Kind of dull. Your basic civil servant model, if you know what I mean. In the whole time I've known him, he's only told me one off-color joke.”

“What was it?”

“He called for Mr. Anderson last Halloween. I remember because I told him I wouldn't put the call through until he told me a dirty joke. You know, trick or treat. Well, he hemmed and hawed for a while, and then finally he asks if I know what the Sewer District's motto is.”