Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions (8 page)

The last two years’ releases gave me a very skimpy view of what was happening at Phoenix. There were releases announcing contract awards, financial results, appointments of directors and officers, and that was about it. The annual reports were pretty much a compilation of all the news that was fit to print in one place, setting out the company’s accomplishments for the past year, their plans going forward and the yearly audited financial statements.

The financial statements, from what I could understand, indicated that the company was consistently making money. The latest annual report showed a five year history of the stock price, and it had steadily risen in small increments over the five years.

But I definitely needed a lesson on how to read the financial statements. Heated discussions I had overheard throughout the years of senior executives arguing with the auditors to sign off on different accounting treatments kept echoing in the back of my mind. I needed to know where a company could pad the statements.

I gave up in disgust at six o’clock and left the office. I was surprised to see Lou waiting for me beside the dark Lincoln in front of the building.

“Don’t you have a life?” I joked.

He held the door of the car open for me and gave me a little smile.

“I was always on call until I heard from Mr. Connaught. I intend to keep at it until I hear differently from you.”

He was concentrating on the traffic as we pulled away from the curb.

“Lou,” I called from the back seat. His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He nodded.

“Why weren’t you driving Mr. Connaught on the night he was killed?”

He maneuvered around a stalled car blocking our lane and didn’t answer me until his attention allowed.

“I’m not sure when he was killed, ma’am, but I didn’t drive him on Wednesday. When I went to pick him up on Wednesday morning at his apartment, he never showed. I just thought he’d gone to the office early. He did that some times. But then his secretary, Miss Carrie called me, all in a panic, around ten o’clock that morning wanting to know where he was.”

This was all news to me.

“You mean he never showed up for the directors’ meeting on Wednesday morning?”

“Not that I’m aware of ma’am.”

“Do you know when they found his body?”

“No ma’am.”

Why hadn’t I asked any of these questions earlier? I grabbed the cellular phone that was mounted between the seats and dialed Cleve’s cell number. I looked at my watch and hoped I got him before he got on the plane. I had insisted he go home for the weekend.

The phone wasn’t through one ring before he answered.

“Cleveland Johnston.”

“Hi. It’s Kate. Did you report Tommy as missing when he didn’t show for the board meeting?”

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“What time?”

“Around six that night.”

“Did the police do anything?”

“No. They said a person has to be missing more than twenty-four hours before they could consider them as missing.”

“But where was he?”

“They don’t know, Kate.”

“I know that. I’m just thinking out loud.”

“The police are looking into it.”

“Sure they are. I’m their prime suspect so that means they’re not looking elsewhere.”

“You’re not their prime suspect. They’re just covering all the bases.”

I needed to know. Something was burning inside me and I needed to know, now.

“Cleve, can I get into Tommy’s apartment?”

“Sure. It’s yours now anyway. I understand the police are done looking through it and the doorman has the key and instructions to let you in. The law firm sent over a letter today.”

I told Lou we had a change of plans and we headed for Tommy’s apartment.

chapter eleven

I was nervous and apprehensive now that I was here, and I tried to look casual as I stood under the awning-covered entrance to the apartment building and looked across the busy street at Central Park. I felt at “sixes and sevens” as my grandmother used to say, and my feet seemed cemented to the ground. Lou had insisted on waiting for me and was lounging beside the car. I walked back over to where he was standing several yards down the street.

“I’ll take you up on your offer,” I told him.

When we had pulled up in front of the building he had offered to introduce me to the doorman who manned the desk in the lobby of the apartment building.

“I’ve known him for some time now, Miss,” he had said. “I often wait for Mr. Connaught in the lobby.”

In my typically independent way I had refused his offer, but was now having second thoughts about the whole thing. I wasn’t even sure in fact if I wanted to go into the apartment. What did I expect to find?

Lou led the way through the revolving entrance door and to the marble-encased reception desk where an elderly gentleman sat. His uniform looked like something right out of the Wizard of Oz, with all sorts of gold braid and tassels. I suppressed a school-girl giggle.

He stood up as we approached and a wide smile crossed his face when he recognized Lou. The name tag on the breast of his jacket read “Ted”. After Lou had introduced us and Ted had expressed his condolences, I made my way to the elevator, alone. Both had offered to accompany me, but I had declined their offer.

I stepped off the elevator into a small foyer where the door to the apartment faced the elevator. Ted had told me the apartment was on the 14th floor and when I asked the number of the apartment, he had told me the
whole
of the 14th floor. I had tried not to look too surprised.

The lock was well-oiled and the door opened quietly. I entered the dark apartment and closed the door behind me. Silence surrounded me and I stood in the dark for a few moments while my eyes adjusted. My hand found a panel of light switches on the wall beside the door and I flicked them randomly. Pot lights came on over my head and I swiveled in a one hundred and eighty degree turn to take in the surroundings. The entrance-way was massive, by my standards anyway, and probably measured thirty feet by thirty feet. The floor was tiled in a dark green marble and the walls stretched upwards to about fifteen feet. The area was painted in a neutral earth tone and a few small pieces of art were hung randomly.

I crossed the lobby floor and entered the apartment. My random flicking of the light switches had turned on several table lamps and a quick look to the right and left took my breath away. There were no walls and the long room appeared to be the size of a football field. I stood rooted to the spot and peered about in the soft light. To the left was the living area and straight ahead of me was a long, highly polished dining table. I quickly counted twelve chairs around it and shook my head in amazement. Everything looked like it was out of
Better Homes and Gardens
. The furniture in
my
apartment can best be described as early-American, hotel lobby.

I ventured from my spot into the living area and wandered around several groupings of sofas and easy chairs. The outside walls were not walls, they were windows. Floor to ceiling, all around the room. At the center of the windows there were French doors which opened onto a terrace overlooking the street and Central Park. Wrought-iron furniture filled the balcony.

I turned and looked to the far end of the room, past the dining area where I could see a large desk with a computer and several wing-back chairs. I quickly crossed the yards and yards of plush carpet to Tommy’s desk, eager now to discover some answers. Answers to what Tommy had done in his last hours. I sat in the large leather chair at his desk and looked around. The desk was neat but not overly pristine like the rest of the apartment. This was a working area and Tommy’s presence was obvious. A waft of his after-shave hit my nostrils and I felt him nearby.

I sat for a moment trying to remember the brand of his after-shave, which I had never smelled on anyone else. It brought back some sweet memories and a smile played across my face.

And then I heard a door close. The noise took a few seconds to register because where I lived in my apartment in Toronto, the sound of closing doors was a regular sound, one you became used to hearing. This sound though was a quiet one, and I remembered that I had the whole floor of the building to myself, so I shouldn’t be hearing doors closing. Fear shot up my back and my shoulders clenched. My eyes darted around the room and I slowly got out of the chair. There was a door in the wall to my left and I was sure the sound had come from somewhere behind that door.

I tentatively pushed on the door and it swung open into an eating area with a large kitchen behind it. Both rooms were dark and the only light came from the outside, through the large windows.

“Hello?” I called out tentatively.

My stomach was knotted with nerves but I walked through the eating area into the kitchen. I found a corridor off the kitchen to the left and I peered into complete darkness. I stupidly started down the hallway, with my arms outstretched, feeling for a light switch on either side of the wall. A sound came from behind me but before I could turn around I was sprawled on the floor. I wasn’t hurt but I cried out in surprise and quickly tried to scramble to my feet.

Whoever had pushed me, shoved at my back again and this time I yelled in frustration and anger.

“Stop.”

I was on my hands and knees and before I could turn around, a fistful of knuckles slammed into the side of my head. The force of the punch landed me on my side and my hands automatically covered my face. I kicked at my attacker and tried to see who it was but I could only see a large figure standing above me in the darkness.

My ears were ringing from the punch and fear screamed up and down my spine. But no screams or sounds came out of me. I was paralyzed with fright, afraid to move. All of this had happened in seconds but time seemed endless. The body above me reached down and grabbed my suit jacket at the shoulder and heaved me a few inches off the floor. I hit out at an arm and tried to push away but I should have left my hands over my face because the next blow knocked me out cold.

The patrolmen told me that the intruder had left through the door in the kitchen that led to one of the internal staircases in the building. I was nursing a wallop of a headache and holding an ice-pack to the side of my head, while they checked the perimeter. They informed me that there were two exits to two different stairways and they were sure the kitchen exit had been used because the door was unlocked. That stairwell went all the way to the basement of the building where anyone could leave the building without being seen.

Ted the doorman was standing nervously against the window, turning his hat round and round in his hands.

When I had come to and called him on the intercom I discovered on the kitchen wall, he and Lou had rushed up to the apartment.

“Shouldn’t have happened,” he kept mumbling, over and over. I think the poor man was in more shock than I was, and Lou had taken control of the situation and immediately called 911.

The scene was somewhat reminiscent of what had happened to me several months ago, and I felt a certain sense of deja vu. That time someone had broken into my apartment, while I slept. Afterwards my apartment had been filled with police while I sat, dazed and confused. And pissed off.

And I was pissed off again. I had sworn that I wouldn’t find myself vulnerable again, after the last time, and here I had walked right into it. The promise to myself to learn how to defend myself had never been acted on.

I looked up at the patrolman standing in front me.

“We’ve checked, and it seems he came in the same way he left. All of the other perimeter doors are locked. Ted here tells us no one could get past him in the lobby, so we’re assuming it was a professional job of lock picking. Must have come through the basement.”

I nodded in agreement because I didn’t know the layout of the building. It all seemed feasible to me. But why this apartment? So, I asked the question.

“A number of reasons, ma’am,” the cop told me. “My best guess is that your attacker read that the man who owned this apartment died and thought the place would be an easy mark. We can’t tell if anything’s been stolen, but the place doesn’t seem disturbed. We think you interrupted him in his tracks.”

When they had left I asked Lou to take me to my hotel. I needed to get out of here, and in spite of my throbbing head, I was full of nervous energy.

It was only 8:30 when I got back to my suite and I paced the rooms, chain-smoking and thinking. I didn’t believe that the person who had broken into Tommy’s apartment was a cat burglar or a drug addict, looking to score. The burglar had plenty of time to steal everything while I was laid out cold on the floor, but I was sure nothing obvious had been taken. The break-in must have had something to do with Tommy’s death. I made up my mind to go back to the apartment and find out what they had been looking for.

chapter twelve

“How
do you get yourself into these messes?”

“Get
myself into messes? You think I plan it, Jay?”

I was standing in the small hallway outside the door of his studio apartment. He was three floors up, above a small, independent bookstore on the ground floor.

Jay had answered the door and immediately saw the swelling on the side of my face. Rather than a hello, he wanted to know how I get into
messes
.

“And besides,” I continued indignantly, “messes are what a cat makes when it misses the litter box.”

“Alright, already,” he said soothingly. He pulled me into the apartment and into his arms. “So I reacted badly. You scared me. Have you looked in a mirror?”

“No,” I said into his chest. I never look in mirrors.

“Not a pretty sight, but you’re still beautiful to me.” He held me back and looked at my face again. “What happened?”

“Sucker punched.” I looked around Jay’s apartment and smiled. His unit could fit in the bathroom of my suite at the hotel. I sat in the lone armchair and told him my story. He just sat quietly and kept shaking his head.