Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions (16 page)

“Each project office is responsible for keeping the official files for their projects,” Carrie told me. “Before I worked for Mr. Connaught, I worked on one of the R and D teams as the project administrator. We had to keep really good files because a lot of the work we do is on medical devices. Our files have to be ready for audit at any time by the FDA - the Food and Drug Administration. We kept all of the research notes, results of tests and any trials, stuff like that. Do you want me to ask for the files on the Arapaho project?”

“No. No thanks Carrie.” Until I understood how things worked around Phoenix I wasn’t about to go upsetting any apple carts. I hadn’t received the warmest of welcomes so far from the staff. Admittedly, I hadn’t been expecting marching bands and group hugs, but I also hadn’t expected some of the icy attitudes either. I guess I didn’t know what to expect. Everything had happened so quickly. One day I was working in a law office as a legal secretary and then
poof!
the next day I was in charge of my own company. I guess if I was being fair, I should give the staff the benefit of the doubt and give them some time to get to know me and accept that Tommy was gone. But I didn’t have any feelings of
fair
about Nat Scott.

chapter twenty-two

Saturday morning I checked out of the hotel and moved into Tommy’s apartment. Correction:
my
apartment. I couldn’t very well justify spending scads of the company’s money on a first class hotel when I had 7,000 perfectly acceptable square feet of living space available to me on Central Park.
The Upper East Side
. The enormity of it all and the overwhelming notion that I owned property in Manhattan,
and
on Fifth Avenue was a little outside my realm of reality. Tommy had died and I was an instant millionaire. I had trouble breathing whenever I thought about how much my life had changed in such a short period of time. This was not a situation that gave me any happiness, just truckloads of daunting responsibility.

Today though was not a day for self-doubt or a pity-party. I had given myself a tough talking-to the night before and had decided to get on with what needed doing. I had been in emotional limbo since finding out about Tommy’s death and had been floating through each day, barely making a dent in what needed to be done. I had to move on and make some huge decisions.

Did I want to stay on as Chair and CEO of Phoenix Technologies? Did I want to live in New York?

I had spent my entire adult life living in Toronto, which is a big city by Canadian standards. In fact it was Canada’s largest city. But New York City was so huge, I wasn’t sure if I could live there.

My gawd, there was so much to think about. Did I need a work visa? What would I do with my apartment in Toronto? If I moved to New York, would I have to give up saying
eh
? Could I get Ron McLean and Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday night on any of the American TV networks? Could I get used to four downs in American football? How would I cope on Labour Day weekend if the Toronto Argos and Hamilton Tiger Cats game wasn’t televised in New York?

And who was I fooling? Being CEO of a publicly-traded company took a lot more experience than I had or could probably learn fast enough. I was surprised that the share price of Phoenix hadn’t hit rock bottom with Tommy’s death and the shareholders finding out that a
secretary
was taking over.

If I stayed in New York, what would happen with Jay? He was on the fast track with his new company and although he was in New York now, he was only here for training. His full-time job was back in Toronto. Our relationship could probably not survive with us living in two cities. My past experience with Tommy in this regard was probably a good yardstick.

I loved Jay and I wanted to be with him. He had told me he loved me but did that mean he was committed to a long term relationship? There was six years difference in our ages and although Jay always told me he didn’t care about that, I wondered if the upheaval in my life was going to fit in with his career and his plans.

Staying in the Big Apple, staying with Phoenix, staying with Jay - it was all eating at me. It was no wonder my stomach was constantly upset. So last night I gave myself a verbal shit-kicking and made some decisions.

I was almost positive I could give New York and Phoenix Technologies a chance. What the hell. If Tommy thought I could run the company, I’d at least try for him. New York wouldn’t seem so enormous and so scary for me if I settled in for a while, so I decided to get out of the hotel, which felt so temporary, and move into the apartment.

I’ll be honest. The thought of moving into the apartment scared the crap out of me. The lump on the side of my head was gone but the memory of being cold-cocked upside the head was still very fresh in my mind’s eye. No one liked being scared and it made me mad to think about being vulnerable.

Feeling scared and feeling vulnerable were wasted emotions as far as I was concerned. I would have to do something about it and learn to defend myself, especially since there had been no breaks in Tommy’s murder or my mugging in the apartment.

Jay was waiting under the awning of the entrance to the apartment building when Lou pulled up in the car. My heart did a couple of flips and I smiled when I saw him standing there. Jay was good looking, by my standards, standing a little over six feet. His brown hair was wavy, cut short but not too short, and he had beautiful green eyes. He smiled widely back at me when the doorman opened the car door.

We held hands in the elevator on our way up to the apartment and didn’t say anything until the doorman had loaded all of our suitcases into the lobby of the apartment.

“Shall I put the suitcases in the bedroom, Miss?” he asked.

I peered at his name tag. “No thanks Albert. We can manage just fine.” He nodded and backed out of the lobby, closing the door quietly behind him.

Jay took me in his arms and hugged me tightly. I hugged back, with all my might. His embrace felt so good. We hadn’t seen each other in days, and when I had called him last night from my hotel, I asked him to move into the apartment with me.

“At least move in for the rest of the time you’re here in New York for your training. Why stay in that little walk up apartment?”

He had hesitated for a bit, and then said, “This is a big step for us Kate. Moving in together.” He hesitated again.

“I know,” I said. “But I don’t want to be alone here in New York.” Hopefully I didn’t sound like I was too needy.

“Is this just a New York decision then? If we were back in Toronto would we be in separate apartments?”

“Well,” I responded honestly. “I don’t know. We’re in New York and so much has changed in my life in the last two weeks. I know I want to be with you. Can we just say yes for now and talk about it when we’re face to face?”

Jay hesitated again and then said he would see me at the apartment in the morning. When the car pulled up and I saw he had his suitcases with him, I felt pretty good.

I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him. He snaked one hand through my hair and the other one wandered down my back. He pulled me closer and I melted into him. Leaving the suitcases in the lobby we wandered into the guest bedroom and stretched out on the large, king size bed. Jay slowly unbuttoned my blouse and helped me out of my clothes. He covered my body with kisses and kept murmuring “Kathleen, I love you”.

Later, I dragged him into the shower for some more fun and games, but not before he made me scrub his back.

That afternoon Jay went to his office and I carried out a complete search of the apartment. I was looking for some very specific things, like Tommy’s hand-held electronic organizer, and some clue as to the password to his computer. But I was also on the look-out for anything out of the ordinary.

Starting in the kitchen I went through every cupboard and drawer. The cupboards held all the accoutrements one would expect to find in a kitchen comparable in size to a large restaurant. There was very little evidence that the kitchen was used on a regular basis. It didn’t look lived in. There were no piles of junk mail on the counters, no plants, no dish towels, and very little in the way of foodstuffs. There was no junk drawer. My kitchen and my mother’s kitchen always have a junk drawer. A drawer that holds take-out menus, elastic bands, pens, pieces of string, bills, receipts, Canadian Tire money, combs, and things we generally have no use for but can’t bare to throw out. Tommy’s kitchen did not have a junk drawer.

In the living room, dining room, lobby and hallways, I opened every drawer in every desk, coffee table, side table, buffet and credenza. I removed every picture and painting that was hanging on a wall to look behind it for a secret safe (I was really feeling like Nancy Drew at this point). I took each one of those pictures and paintings out of their frames to see if anything was hidden under the backing.

In the living room, I removed every book from the bookcase and turned it upside down, fanning the pages, hopeful that something would fall out and give me all the answers.

In the two bedrooms, I searched through every dresser drawer. The drawers and the closet were empty in the guest bedroom. In Tommy’s master bedroom I went through all his clothes hanging in his walk-in closet. I checked all the pockets of all the pants and jackets and shirts. I put my hand into each shoe, not knowing what I was looking for. I was exhausted by this point but refused to stop even when I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. Tommy’s aroma was pungent in the walk-in closet, and I felt myself wanting to cry for him. There was nothing in his dresser drawers other than neatly folded T-shirts, socks, underwear, an old wallet (with nothing in it), and some work-out clothes.

I fanned all the pages of all the books in Tommy’s bookcase (which contained every bestseller in paperback from the last ten years), and was surprised to find two Harlequin romance novels in amongst them. They both looked vaguely familiar and I realized that they were probably old books of mine that Tommy had kept. He used to laugh at my secret obsession with romance novels, and would grab the books from me and tease me about the women on the front covers with their bosoms partly exposed, swooning in the arms of a Fabian-like Adonis.

I had no luck with the books, so I started on the framed photos and paintings hanging on the walls of the bedroom. The sun was going down by this point and the room was getting dark, so I turned on the bedside lamps. There was no overhead lighting and the room was subdued and sexy. I hurried through my task, not expecting to find anything pertinent at this point in my search. It had been a long afternoon and I was bone tired. The ends of my fingers were sore from prying the backs off picture frames, and the back of my neck was throbbing.

I pushed my way up onto the end of the bed and sat down, with my feet swinging off the floor. Now would be a good time to stop with this nonsense, I thought. If Tommy had left a clue, it certainly was
not
in this apartment, as far as I could see.

My eyes landed on the lone photo, sitting in the little space high up on the bookcase. It was the photo of me, taken on our honeymoon. What are the chances, I thought excitedly as I jumped down from the end of the bed. In the end I had to get a chair from the living room so I could reach the picture on the upper shelf, but the effort was worth it.

A key fell onto the floor when I took off the back of the picture frame. “Bingo,” I yelled.

chapter twenty-three

My heart was pounding and I needed a cigarette to help me get my thoughts organized.
Stupid, stupid
habit I chastised myself as I dragged deeply. Pacing back and forth on the terrace, I knew I was onto something significant. If Tommy had taken the trouble to hide a key in the back of a picture frame holding a picture of me, then the key was definitely a key to something.

I was waiting anxiously for Jay to come home because I wanted him there when I inserted the key into the filing cabinets hidden in Tommy’s secret place. I was certain the key would unlock one of those cabinets. It was small, brass plated and looked exactly like the key to thousands of filing cabinet keys I had handled over the years. And the fact that it had the word “Steelcase” engraved on it helped. Steelcase was one of the world’s largest manufacturers of office furniture and cabinets. Duh!

“Look what I found,” I said, and proudly held the small key up for Jay to see when he arrived. “I waited for you to get here before I tried opening the cabinets in the room behind the wall.”

Jay grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and activated the opening in the wall. The key worked on both cabinets which were chock full of files, neatly arranged alphabetically but in a strange way. The files didn’t have names or words on them, only letters of the alphabet, followed by a hyphen and a number. In the A’s, there were seventeen files, labeled A-1 through A-17. The cabinet on the left held files from A through R in two drawers, and the cabinet on the right had files S through Z in the top drawer. None of the files were thicker than an inch, and several appeared to hold only one or two sheets of paper.

The bottom drawer of the right hand cabinet held a jumbled assortment of power cords, computer and printer cables, a few magazines and a strong box. I eagerly grabbed the box and held it up by its handle. Jay calmly took the strong box from me and pushed the button on the front of it and it opened.

The box contained an interesting assortment of items: mine and Tommy’s marriage certificate, dated almost ten years ago, Tommy’s birth certificate, his passport, a crazy love letter that I had written him on the back sheet of a draft prospectus (I remembered writing it one late night at the office as we were all working on the initial public offering of Phoenix Technologies’ shares), another key (which appeared to be a safety deposit box key), and Tommy’s electronic organizer. Eureka! Now we were getting somewhere.