Mistress of Justice (46 page)

“What happened?”

Taylor nodded. “I was stupid. I’m sure
my
phone was bugged too, either at my apartment or cubicle. I should’ve
thought about that. Anyway, we got busted—somebody overhead us. And then at lunch yesterday this guy sits down next to me. He drops a book—I mean,
pretends
to drop a book—and when I bent down to pick it up for him I think he squirted botulism culture into my soup.”

“Jesus, botulism? The most dangerous food poisoning there is.”

She nodded. “I think he got it from Genneco Labs.”

“Our client?”

“Yep.”

“I was talking to a pathologist here. He told me Genneco does a lot of research into antitoxins—you know, like antidotes.”

“So whoever killed Clayton stole some culture—or told the killer about Genneco and
he
stole it?”

She nodded.

“I was feeling a lot better last night but I called Donald and told him I was almost dead, in a coma.”

“You what?”

“I wanted word to get around the firm that I was almost dead. I was afraid the killer would try again. I called and pretended I was my doctor.” She gave a faint laugh. “I called my parents and told them that whatever they heard I was fine—although I have to say I was inclined to let my father stew a bit more. Carrie Mason’s the only one who knows I’m okay.”

Reece stroked her cheek. “Botulism … that could’ve killed you.”

“The doctor told me that, ‘luckily,’ I ingested too
much
of the culture. I got sick immediately and, well, the word they used was, quote,
evacuated
most of the bacteria. Man, it was unpleasant. I’m talking Mount Saint Helens.”

He hugged her hard. “We’re not going to have to worry about anything like this happening again. I talked to Sam, my friend at the U.S. attorney’s office, yesterday afternoon. He’s coming down tomorrow with a special prosecutor from Washington. We’re going to meet with him at the federal building at three—if you feel up to it.”

“I’ll feel up to it. Whoever’s behind this … we’re going to stop them.…” Her voiced faded. “What’s wrong, Mitchell?”

“Wrong?” His eyes were hollow and troubled. “You almost got killed.… I’m so sorry. If I’d known—”

She leaned forward and kissed him. “Hey, I lost those five pounds I gained at Thanksgiving and then some. Call it an early Christmas present. Now, go on, get out of here. Next time you see me I promise I won’t look like Marley’s ghost.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The girl walked sheepishly into the hospital room, hiding behind a bouquet of exotic flowers that she’d probably hand-selected from an Upper East Side florist.

“Whoa,” Taylor told Carrie Mason, laughing at the massive arrangement. “Anything left in the rain forest?”

The chubby girl set the vase on the bedside table and sat in the functional gray chair near Taylor’s bed, studying her carefully.

“You’re looking a thousand times better, Taylor,” Carrie said. “Everybody’s like, ohmagod, she’s dying. I wanted to tell them but I didn’t. Not a soul—like you said.”

Taylor gave her a rundown on her condition and thanked the girl for staying with her just after she’d been admitted.

“It’s, like, no problem, Taylor. You looked … You were pretty sick.”

Attempted murder does that to you.

“Well, I’ll be getting out soon. May not eat for a week or so but it’ll be good to get vertical again.”

The girl avoided Taylor’s eyes. She stood and arranged the flowers and it was this compulsive activity that told Taylor that she was troubled by something.

“What is it, Carrie?”

The girl paused, her back to Taylor, then sat down again. Tears were running down her cheeks. She wiped her face with the back of her fleshy hand. “I …”

“Go ahead. Tell me. What’s the matter?”

“I think I know why Mr. Clayton killed himself. I think it was my fault.”

“Your fault?” Taylor said. “What do you mean?”

“Well, okay … You know Sean.”

One of the firm’s busier spies. Taylor nodded.

“Well, what it was … see, last week Sean asked me out. I went over to his place. And I thought he wanted to go out with me and I was really, really excited about it. ’Cause I’ve had this crush on him for, like, a while. But it turned out … I mean, the thing was he just wanted to go through my purse.”

“Why?”

“To get my log-on pass code for the firm computers. One of the operators told me he went on the system with my user name.”

Taylor remembered the gum-snapping computer operator and the blank screen that should have had information about taxis and computer time and phone records. This was interesting. She nodded for the girl to continue and listened carefully.

“When I found out what he did I got totally mad. I asked him how could he do that? I mean, he way used me. Anyway he got all freaked out and apologized. But I was so mad.… Well, I wanted to get even with him and …” She again attended to the stalks of weird flowers. “And when I was in Connecticut with Mr. Clayton and you … Well, afterward, he came on to me, Mr. Clayton, you know and … well, we sort of slept together.”

Taylor nodded, recalling that she’d overheard the tryst
from Clayton’s den. The poor girl, suckered in by the vortex of the partner’s eyes and charm.

“So, Sean found out and he had this big fight with Clayton. It was really vicious. I think Sean threatened to go to the executive committee about what happened and Clayton was afraid he’d get fired and he killed himself.”

Taylor was frowning. So he and Lillick had had a fight. It had never occurred to her that
Lillick
might have killed Clayton.

Then she focused on the distraught Carrie once more. She couldn’t, of course, say anything about Clayton’s death but she could reassure the girl. “No, Carrie, that had nothing to do with it.” A woman-to-woman smile. “Wendall Clayton slept with half the firm and he couldn’t care less if anybody knew about it. Besides, I talked to Donald. I know why Clayton killed himself. I can’t tell you but it had nothing to do with you or Sean.”

“Really?”

“Promise.”

“Despite what happened, I really kind of like him—Sean, I mean. He’s weird, but underneath he’s not as weird as he seems to be. We kind of patched things up. I think he likes me.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Taylor decided it was time to get out of the hospital. She feigned a yawn. “Listen, Carrie. I’m going to get some sleep now.”

“Oh, sure. Feel better.” Carrie hugged her. Then she asked, “Oh, one thing—do you know where the United Charities of New York general correspondence file is?”

“No idea. I never worked for them.”

The girl frowned. “You didn’t?”

“No. Why?”

“I was down in the pen this morning and I saw Donald Burdick’s wife in your cubicle.”

“Vera?”

“Yeah. She was looking through your desk. And I asked what she needed and she said she was doing a fund-raiser
for the UCNY and needed the file. She thought you had it. But we couldn’t find it.”

“I’ve never checked out any of their files. Must be a mistake.”

Carrie glanced at the TV and her face lit up. “Hey, look, it’s
The Bold and the Beautiful.…
That’s my favorite! I used to love summer vacations so I could watch all the soaps. Can’t do that anymore. Things sure change when you start working.”

Well, that’s the truth.…

Taylor’s eyes strayed absently to the screen, watching the actors lost in their own intrigues and desires. When she turned to the doorway to say good-bye to Carrie, the paralegal had already left.

Taylor felt uneasy. Lillick, Dudley, Sebastian, Burdick … or somebody else had tried to poison her. They might find out that she was no longer in a coma and try again. She summoned the floor nurse, who in turn managed to track down a resident. The young doctor, seeing the urgency in her eyes, reluctantly agreed to discharge her as soon as the paperwork was finished.

After he’d left, she lay back in bed and looked through her purse for her insurance card.

She found a folded sheet of paper stuck in the back of the address book.

It was the poem that Danny Stuart had given her. Linda Davidoff’s poem, her suicide note. She realized that she’d never read it, which she now did.

Taylor Lockwood thought of Linda, the beautiful, quiet, gypsy poet. She read the lines again very slowly.

Then she read them once more.

A moment later a huge orderly appeared in the door. “Ms. Lockwood, good news: The warden called.”

He grinned; she frowned, not understanding.

Then the man delivered the rest of what would be his stock joke. “It’s a full pardon. You’re free to go.” And he maneuvered the wheelchair into the room.

Taylor Lockwood had learned early who the real power centers were at Hubbard, White.

One of the most powerful was a short, round-faced woman of sixty. Mrs. Bendix had used her miraculous skills at memory and association to save the butts of almost every attorney and paralegal in the firm on more than one occasion by finding obscure file folders buried among the millions of documents residing on the gray metal shelves.

She was the doyen of the firm’s massive file room.

Taylor now stood over Mrs. Bendix’s frothy blue hair as the woman flipped through the three-by-five cards that were her computer. Taylor silently waited for her to finish. Mrs. Bendix—even more so than a senior partner—was a person one did not interrupt. When she was through she looked up and blinked. “I was told you were in the hospital. We contributed for the flowers.”

“They were lovely, Mrs. Bendix. I recovered more quickly than expected.”

“They said you were almost dead.”

“Modern medicine.”

Mrs. Bendix was eyeing Taylor’s jeans and sweatshirt critically. “This firm has a dress code. You’re outfitted for sick leave, not work.”

“This is a bit irregular, Mrs. Bendix. But I have a problem and you’re just about the only person who can help me.”

“Probably am. No need to stroke.”

“I need a case.”

“Which one? You’ve got about nine hundred current ones to chose from.”

“An old case.”

“In that event, the possibilities are limitless.”

“Let’s narrow things down. Genneco Labs. Maybe a patent—”

“Hubbard, White does not do patent work. We never have and I’m sure we never will.”

“Well, how about a contract for the development of bacterial or viral cultures or antitoxins?”

“Nope.”

Taylor looked at the rows and rows of file cabinets. A thought fluttered past, then settled. She asked, “Insurance issues, the storage of products, toxins, food poisoning and so on?”