Heaven's Fire (27 page)

"Angela," her mother called up the steps. "You want I should get that?"

"No, Mamma," she said, folding the afghan and placing it neatly on the end of the bed. "I'll do it. Something must be wrong with the computer." She crossed the hall to her old room, but the ringing stopped just as she reached the door.

She was surprised to see her brother sitting at the desk. "Pat, what are you still doing here?"

Her brother turned from the keyboard of the computer. "I tried to go on-line while you were taking your little..." he looked at the clock in the corner of the computer screen, "three-hour nap. This thing is slower than slow, so I'm cleaning some things out. Dad's mailbox has 1,453 e-mails saved.

"
Look at this.
"
Pat read off the screen: "'Get Viagra, Coral Calcium On-line,’ ‘Benefits of huperzine A, phosphatidylserine,’ ‘Is it long enough for you?’ ‘Is it long enough for
her
?’
"
Pat turned back to his sister. "Just what do you think Dad was into?"

"Please, no more." Angela reached around him and switched off the computer.

"What are you doing?" Pat squawked. "I was in the middle of--"

"Remember the story of Noah in Sunday School?" Angela scolded. "We shouldn't be like Ham and look upon our father's nakedness. We should be like Shem and Japheth and cover him up."

"Do you think he--"

Angela pretended not to hear him. "The computer is slow because we do not have high-speed access. Using the modem--"

The ring of the telephone interrupted her, and she realized why the computer's answer phone wasn't picking up. "You've unplugged the house line," she said to her brother. "I had it running into the computer, so we could use the answering machine to screen calls."

"Oh," Pat said. "I needed to go on-line, and I didn't want to tie-up the home line."

"Then the least you could have done was to answer the phone, instead of letting it ring when you were right here.
"

She shook her finger at him.
"
And please, Pat, you know so little about computers, you are the last one who should be plugging and unplugging things. You call for help on every little thing. Even Pappa knows more, he--"

"Knew," Pat said, turning away from her and rebooting the computer.

"What?"

Pat swiveled back to face her. "Dad
knew
more. He's dead, remember?"

It was like her brother had plunged a knife into her heart. And it was true: she had forgotten, just for a moment. "At least I'm not erasing any trace of him." She nodded toward the computer screen.

"Angela!" her mother called from downstairs. "The phone! It could be someone important!"

Angela answered the still-ringing telephone, wondering why her brother really was on her father's computer.

*****

It was a little after eleven when Jake got home.

True to his word, Simon had ordered Chinese: egg rolls, spicy beef, Hunan pork, chicken with peanuts, and sesame shrimp.

The display of food cartons reminded Jake of Simon's Great Wall of paint samples. "Couldn't decide, huh?"

"Variety," he said, handing her a glass of wine. "It's the five-spice of life. Besides, I've seen you eat."

"Good point."

He raised his glass in salut. "Thank you."

Jake raised hers, too, and smiled. She was feeling very mellow all of a sudden. "I was just going to thank
you
, and not just for getting me out of the fire. I'd forgotten how nice it was to have someone to talk to besides the plants."

Simon looked around. "You have no plants."

"Dead," Jake said. "Everyone of them. I'd watch out if I were you."

He clinked glasses with her. "To those who have come before."

"And gone," Jake said, laughing. "So how was your day, dear?"

"Well, now that you ask, it was very interesting."

Before Jake could inquire further, the phone rang. Simon set down his wine glass and made to answer it, but Jake got there first. "Hey, it's
my
phone. You want people to gossip?"

Simon held up his hands in surrender as she picked up the phone. "Hello?"

Five seconds of silence. It gave her just enough time to wonder if she really was afraid of gossip, or afraid that Simon--or Jake herself--would become too comfortable with the living arrangements. You start out ordering in Chinese and answering each other's phones, and pretty soon you're finishing each other's sentences and planning to grow old together.

"Someone you don't like?" Simon asked, as she hung up the receiver.

"Telemarketer, no doubt. They apparently didn't want to talk to me."

"Well,
I
want to talk to you." He kissed her on the nose. "Can I trust you?"

"That's what the plants asked, just before they died."

He laughed. "Okay, guess I'll take my chances, but first, can I offer you a little spicy beef?" He held up a carton.

*****

After dinner, they took to the couch in the living room with the balance of the bottle of wine. Simon was tired, but he still wanted to talk to Jake about event contracts in general, and the Firenze contract in particular.

She made it easy. "Okay, so what were you going to ask me?"

"Say a contract was found between a fireworks company and a sponsor," Simon said, stretching. "And say that contract called for a certain down payment, but the money actually deposited was another, lesser amount."

"And two trains were traveling at..." Jake curled her legs up under her. "So you found a contract between Firenze and Refresh Yourself. For how much?"

Simon grinned. "Seventy-five thousand. That seemed like a lot to me."

"Not really. It's pretty much in line for a big show."

Okay, so Cruise was right on that, too. "The contract requires half down, or thirty-seven thousand five, but only twenty-two five wound up in the account."

"You're wondering what happened to the other fifteen thousand dollars?" Now here was a woman who could hold her numbers.

"My first take is that Guida took cash back from the deposit, unbeknownst to Pasquale and the rest of the family.
"

"That's a possibility," Jake admitted, "but it's not the only one." She sounded almost reluctant to say it.

"So what are the others?" Simon asked.

"Other. And it‘s Bryan." She wasn’t looking at him.

"Bryan Williams?" Simon didn't get it. "You think he could have taken the money? How?"

"I'm not sure of that, or of why I‘m telling you when I'm not even sure what I'm thinking." She took a gulp of wine.

Simon didn‘t bother to try to decode the convoluted sentence. He wanted to go to bed. Jake's bed. "Out with it."

"Okay, listen, this can get sort of complicated." She leaned forward. "Part of Bryan's job is securing sponsors. His fee is a percentage--usually thirty percent--of the amount the sponsor pays for the sponsorship."

"So if Refresh Yourself paid seventy-five thousand dollars for the fireworks, then Williams should have gotten twenty-five thousand, give or take."

"Give or take," Jake said. "But here's where it doesn't add up. Bryan's fee should have been part of the title sponsorship agreement, and that contract would be between Refresh Yourself and Lake Days. Then
Lake Days
would contract with Firenze for the fireworks themselves. If the contract you found is between Refresh Yourself and Firenze..."

"Williams wouldn't have gotten a cut?"

"No, and it's not like Bryan to do something for nothing."

"Well, you should know. You used to work for him." My God, was that a twinge of jealousy?

"If you think Bryan let me touch the money, you don't know Bryan," Jake was saying. "But I
have
heard that he's not averse to taking a little something under the table."

"A gratuity of sorts? Where did you hear that?"

"From Pasquale. Evidently Bryan asked him for a kick-back on a contract once, years ago. Pasquale never forgot it."

"Wait." Simon was confused. "So whenever this was, Pasquale signed a contract with a third party and Williams wanted him to funnel part of the fee back to him."

"Right," Jake said. "Bryan called it a referral fee, which is fine if everyone has agreed to it. But from what Pasquale told me, Bryan wanted Pasquale to pay him without Pasquale's end customer--Refresh Yourself in this case--knowing about it.
"

Sounded like someone besides the fireworks company was getting the short end of William’s shtick. "So what happens to the customer? They pay for a seventy-five thousand dollar show, but get a fifty-thousand one?"

"Yup. Plus the fireworks company takes a double hit. Not only is it paying the 'referral fee,' but its reputation suffers because shows start looking chintzy in comparison to its non-kickback-paying competitors."

"Unless all the companies can be talked into falling in line," Simon said thoughtfully. "Then 'chintzy,' as you put it, becomes the standard."

"Wait," Jake's face had gone white. "You're not thinking that Bryan set up the explosion to try to force Pasquale into going along?"

Of course Simon was thinking that. What else would he be thinking?

But Jake was shaking her head. "While I'm the first one to call Bryan a slimeball, I can't see him as a murderer. Besides, if the missing fifteen thousand really was a kickback to Bryan, shouldn't he be satisfied?"

Simon had been thinking about that. "Fifteen thousand dollars is still ten thousand less than what you say he normally should have gotten. Maybe the explosion was only meant as a threat. Williams had no way of knowing Pasquale would go back to relight--"

"Sixty-five hundred less," Jake interrupted. "It's thirty percent, not one-third, so that's twenty-one five, not twenty-five thousand."

"Whatever." Jake should get together with Cruise. "But, anyway, the sabotage of the shell was an inside job, so--"

Jake interrupted, looking puzzled. "Sabotage? So you're certain it wasn’t an accident?"

Simon realized she hadn't been privy to his conversation with Pat on the porch...was it just last night? Seemed weeks ago now. He filled her in on that, along with the cause of the fire at his house, complete with broken bottle, and lighter.

"So," Jake summarized, "someone switched the black powder in the lift charge with silica sand, so it would explode in the mortar. And that someone burned down your house."

"Let's leave my house for another discussion," Simon said, shifting uncomfortably. "As for the shell, it had to be someone with access either at the factory or on the Lake Days grounds. That means a member of the family or one of their employees."

"Then that leaves Bryan out?"

Was she asking that hopefully?

If so, Simon had no aversion to crushing those hopes. "Not necessarily. After all, somebody had to give Williams his cut."

"Somebody inside." Jake tucked her feet up under her. "And Pasquale found out."

*****

Luis had a dilemma.

And it wasn't a good kind of dilemma. You know, the do-you- get-the-Mustang-or-the-Corvette kind of dilemma. Sweet, either way you cut it.

No, this was more like take-the-bus-or-walk: Bummer. Or
major
bummer.

Luis got up from the couch in his living room and started pacing. He'd talked to Gwen, who'd talked to Jake, and sure enough, Jake had taped over the close-up of the old man getting blown up. And even though Gwen was pretty ticked at Jake, she said there was no way to recover the footage. Didn’t seem all that broken up about it either.

Luis didn't get it. Yeah, the footage showed the old guy getting blown up, but there was no blood or guts. Besides, even if there was, blood and guts sells. If it bleeds, it leads, right? Right?

Wrooong. Luis picked up his bottle of Pacifica and took a hit. At least when you're dealing with Jake and Gwen, it was wrong. W...R...O...N...G...

Luis would give anything to be back in the old days, when newsmen were, well...men. And they actually reported, instead of reading press releases. Hell, sometimes they were right there in the thicket of things, making news themselves. What did Gwen and Jake know or care about the First Amendment and freedom of the press? Nothing, that's what. And there was something else they didn't know, either.

They didn't know Luis had a duplicate tape.

Luis had told Jake he started running tape
after
losing the link to the microwave van. He'd lied. He had been running tape all day. In fact, he had just filled one tape and stashed it in his bag when the explosion rocked the boat.

Setting the beer bottle down on a coaster, Luis started the pacing again. Up and down, from his five-disc progressive scan DVD, past the Bose speakers, to his plasma flat-screen and back again.