The Death of an Ambitious Woman (5 page)

“Are we done?” Moscone asked.

“I guess so.You know, this isn’t what I expected. Where’s the computer? Even if she used the laptop that was in her car, where are the cables, chargers, power strip, something? Where’s the phone? Perhaps this room is more a refuge than a place to work. Anyway, the most interesting thing about this room,” Ruth concluded, “is that someone searched it before we did.”

Susan Gleason saw them out.

“Back to headquarters?” Moscone asked.

Ruth didn’t hear him. She was staring across the lawn to where Carson Kendall sat alone on the edge of the large sandbox in the center of the play space, temporarily forgotten by an unsettled household.

“Just a minute, Detective.”

Ruth approached Carson slowly. He raised his neatly combed head and looked at her steadily. He didn’t seem at all afraid.

“I’m Police Chief Murphy.” Ruth walked to the edge of the sandbox.

“You’re here about my Mom.”

Ruth sat down beside Carson, facing the other way, so her feet stayed out of the sand. “I’m sure you miss her.” Carson nodded, gazing into the distance. Ruth thought of the silver locket tucked in with Tracey’s old clothes. “She loved you very much.”

To Ruth’s utter surprise, Carson shook his head, no. A tear slid down his nose. “She was very mad at me,” he said, and then began to cry in earnest.

Ruth put her arm around him and cradled him to her side, her chest tight with the little boy’s misery. She thought about her own children. Just that morning, after their wonderful family drive the night before, Sarah had been late for school and needed a ride. She’d lost her shoes for the umpteenth time that month and was running all over the house searching for them. “Come on,” Ruth had yelled, standing by the door. “Put something on your feet, because we are leaving this instant!” Then she’d lectured Sarah for the entirety of the short ride to school about personal responsibility, taking care of her things and respect for other people’s time. Sarah had banged out of the car the moment it stopped and stalked off without so much as looking back.

“Parents don’t stay mad,” Ruth told Carson. “They get over things.”

Carson turned his face to hers. “But what if they die before that happens?”

Immediately after roll call the next morning, Lieutenant Lawry appeared in Ruth’s doorway, a cup of coffee in each hand. They had their second cup together whenever they could manage it, which worked out to about half the time. It was a ritual they both enjoyed.

“Nothing from the hotels.” Lawry sat erect, starched shirt on starched skin. He was the only person on the force, Ruth reflected, who could be described as looking dapper in a New Derby PD uniform.

“I saw.” Ruth indicated the pile of reports on her desk.

“We may have to go public with the Pace disappearance.” Lawry advanced the idea tentatively.

“I know.” Ruth dreaded bringing the press into any investigation. Witnesses reacted by clamming up or talking too much. Hours were devoted to following false leads. Most of all, a measure of control was ceded. However, in a missing persons case, the media could be helpful. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and a state trooper somewhere will stop Pace for speeding, run his plate, and discover it’s forty years old,” Ruth said, thinking of the blank spaces McGrath had described on the stable walls.

“Maybe.” Lawry was loyal, but not to the point of fooling himself—or her. He wasn’t buying into the fantasy.

“I’ll let you know about the press by midday.”

“You’re the boss.” Lawry smiled. “Thank goodness.”

“What does this company do?” Ruth asked as she and Moscone sped toward Fiske & Holden at Moscone’s usual maniacal speed. In Derby Center, the sidewalks flying by were crowded with pedestrians enjoying the warm sunshine, aware their liberation from nasty weather might be short-lived. In New England, spring is a discrete event like Indian summer, sandwiched between bouts of chilly rain.

“It’s a small cap mutual fund. They take chunks of money from individuals, trusts, and groups and invest it in smaller public companies.”

Outside the Center, the crowds disappeared quickly. By the time Ruth and Moscone reached the office parks at the edge of town, no one was around. The modern buildings sat alone on rolling campuses surrounded by vacant cars. Ruth hoped the buildings enjoyed their parks, since people never seemed to use them. She wondered how glass and concrete could be used in so many variations of ugly.

Fiske & Holden’s offices were in the ugliest building of all. The last one in the Truman Executive Park, it was a squat square perched on the side of a steep hill. A seamless expanse of tinted windows was sandwiched between large sills of heavy masonry. Despite the glass, the building had an oppressive feel, as if its concrete lid was pushing it into the ground. A parking lot with a dozen spaces led up to the front entrance. Moscone pulled Ruth’s official car into one of the two slots marked “Visitor.”

Fiske & Holden was the building’s only tenant. The reception area was sleek and modern, decorated in black and dark gray. Brenda O’Reilly’s marble workstation faced the big glass window and front door. She had a clear view of the parking lot, though the bar-height counter at the front of her workspace blocked her view when she was on the phones. The open door behind her console led into a windowless break room. A large table stood at its center, a refrigerator and sink on the periphery.

“Jack is in Boston. He’ll be here soon,” Brenda told them when Moscone explained their mission. “I think you should start with Ellie Berger, our office manager. She’s been here the longest and does all the personnel stuff.”

Brenda punched some numbers and talked into her head-piece. Ellie Berger appeared and led Ruth and Moscone away.

Ellie Berger had a friendly face framed by light brown curls. She was a maternal woman somewhere in the long journey of middle age, short, and while not plump, soft and rounded. Her office was smallish, second in the row of three on the north side of the building. From the window, views of the parking lot and the accident site were obscured, but the hills of Waltham and Weston were visible beyond the stretch of Willow Road in the foreground.

Ellie closed her door and pointed her visitors to two serviceable office chairs facing her wooden desk. “This is about Tracey’s accident, I’m sure.” Ellie’s big eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m sorry. This is a difficult time.”

Ruth gave the woman a moment to compose herself. “I’m sure it is, Mrs. Berger. Brenda said you’d known Tracey the longest.”

Ellie Berger closed her eyes. “Jack Holden and I are the only ones still here who go back to when Tracey arrived. The place was drying up. Tracey came in like a breath of fresh air. She was only twenty-eight, a whiz kid, young and beautiful. She was so energetic; she swept you up in her enthusiasm. She and Jack took his father’s musty old investment firm and reinvented it in less than a year. Those early days were the most fun I’ve ever had in my working life. As time went by, I watched Tracey fall in love, get married, have her baby.” Ellie Berger blew her nose.

Ruth looked out the window at the black ribbon of Willow Road, beginning its steep descent outside Ellie Berger’s office. “How did you find out about the accident?”

“Brenda, Kevin, Jane, and I always bring food from home and eat in the break room. As we were getting back to our desks, we heard the sirens. I stood at this window,” Ellie Berger gestured toward her view, “and watched the emergency vehicles go by—police, ambulance, fire. I couldn’t see where they stopped, so I ran into Jack’s office. You can see down the hill from there. Then, Kevin, Jane, and Brenda burst in. Poor Jack was at his desk trying to eat a sandwich and read the paper. We stood around gawking. Of course, we had no idea it was Tracey. You couldn’t tell what type of vehicle it was from up here and she’d left half an hour earlier. Hannah Whiteside called us at about 4:30 with the news.” Ellie exhaled noisily, fighting for composure.

Ruth counted—Brenda, Kevin, Jane, and Ellie were in the break room, Jack was eating in his office and Tracey, of course, was in the mangled SUV at the bottom of the hill. Brenda had told Moscone there were seven employees. Someone was missing.

“Adam Bender, our trader,” Ellie answered when asked. “I don’t think he was here. Adam always walks a half-mile up Willow Road in the other direction to the Deli-Cater at lunchtime, gets a turkey on rye and an apple juice and walks back. You can set your watch by him. He eats at his desk. He isn’t sociable.”

“Who else in the office used Screw Loose?” Moscone asked. “Did you?”

“No. My husband is handy with cars. He does the routine stuff. As for who else used him, Brenda would know better thanI. She keeps track of the appointments and the keys.” Ellie sniffed into a tissue. “I never understood why Tracey let that man take care of those expensive cars. She said he was good. But he wasn’t, and now his carelessness has killed her.”

Ruth leaned forward. “Mrs. Berger, do you know that Al Pace’s carelessness killed Tracey Kendall?”

Ellie pulled a tissue from her top desk drawer. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Al broke Tracey’s car.” She wiped her eyes.

“How well did Mrs. Kendall know Mr. Pace?” Moscone asked.

Ellie looked confused. “How well do you know your mechanic, your dry cleaner, your dog groomer?”

Ruth knew her dry cleaners intimately. They were Marty’s parents.

Moscone tried again. “Mrs. Berger, did you ever have any indication Al Pace was more to Tracey Kendall than a man who took care of her cars?”

Ellie’s open face closed down. “Excuse me? Did he tell you something? Because if he told you he was more to Tracey than a friendly soul with business problems, he’s a dirty liar. All she ever did was give him advice from time to time.”

“Tracey confided in you?”

“No, she wasn’t one to open up about her personal life, but I knew her for eleven years. There are some things I’m sure about.”

Ruth assessed Ellie’s answer and her vehemence. Would this soft, motherly woman lie? She might, Ruth concluded, to protect a child or someone she related to as one of her children.

“Mrs. Berger, we need to see Tracey’s office and talk to the other employees.”

Ellie hesitated before responding, her mouth set in a grim line. “Fine. You look at the office while I set up the interviews. We’ll start with Jane Parker and Kevin Chun, our analysts.” Without waiting for a reply she picked up the phone, then paused. “Are you going to be asking the staff questions like that?”

“Like what?”

“About Tracey and Al Pace.”

“Yes.”

Ellie Berger studied her desk blotter. “That doesn’t make me happy.”

Tracey Kendall’s office was behind a closed door off the reception area. Large and sleekly modern, it was as different from her study at home as it could be. Two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows framed a full view of the parking lot and partial view of Willow Road. The third wall was hung with two abstract paintings, splashes of color and texture that caused the rest of the room to recede. The desk and conference table were made of sheets of glass supported by clear Plexiglas. On the desk, Tracey’s phone and the docking station for her laptop appeared to hover in midair.

Ruth opened the bank of closet doors behind the conference table. The closet was half filled with file cabinets. On a rod on the other side of the closet hung a gray suit, a white blouse still in the cleaner’s wrap, and a laundry bag containing a bra, half-slip, panties, and a couple of extra pairs of hose. A pair of black pumps sat on the floor.

“What were these for?” Moscone asked. “Does this support the idea she was getting ready to take off?”

Ruth felt the fine wool of the jacket. “No. These are here for emergencies, like if she spilled something on herself at lunch, or lost a button.”

Moscone began opening file drawers. Ruth bent to examine the pockets of the suit.

Ellie Berger knocked on the doorframe. “Ready?”

Ruth glanced at Moscone, who nodded slightly. Nothing obvious here—and unlike Tracey’s study at home, this room hadn’t been searched.

“Yes, Mrs. Berger, thank you.” Ellie led them from the room.

Kevin Chun and Jane Parker shared an office on the south side of the building. They were good looking, in their mid- to late twenties, wearing expensive business casual clothes. Ruth realized with a start that they were around the same age Tracey Kendall had been when she and Jack Holden transformed this company. These kids looked bright, but Ruth couldn’t imagine anyone giving them millions of dollars to invest.

Kevin and Jane stood to shake hands and then pulled four rolling desk chairs together at the center of the room. Jane was the first to speak. “Is it true that guy from Screw Loose had something to do with Tracey’s accident?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Moscone answered.

Jane nodded, taking this in. “It’s a terrible loss.We saw Tracey every day, worked with her, traveled with her. Tracey is, was, the person I most admired in my life. I wanted to be just like her.”

“What was it you admired?” Ruth asked.

“Tracey knew how to work. She showed us what it is to love your work. She thought this was the best job in the world.”

“Our clients give us their money to pool and invest.” Kevin Chun explained. “Our job is to find small companies that will grow big. Tracey loved to get up every morning and test her wits against the market. She said some days might be awful, but it would never, ever be dull.”

“Was she good at it?” Ruth asked.

“She was great at it.” Jane answered without hesitation.

“What made Mrs. Kendall so good?”

Kevin Chun answered. “Tracey could look at a business, meet with its management, and decide quickly if it could be a winner. I read all the plans and reports and did the research and Jane crunched the numbers. Tracey would pore over our analyses, but what she really had was the ability to understand who was telling the truth, who was lying, and who was fooling themselves. She never fooled herself. She never hung onto an investment in a company out of affection for its product, its management, or its history.”

Jane Parker continued. “Tracey said that all these companies were like stories and she was getting paid, very well paid, to read them. Every one has a plot and characters and we look at them and wonder, ‘How will it turn out?’ ”

“With the market in the state it’s in, I would think it’s been more difficult lately,” Ruth observed.

“For sure,” Kevin answered, “for everybody. We’ve taken some hits, but given everything, we’ve done better than most. Our clients are pretty satisfied.”

“What will happen now?” Moscone asked Kevin.

“Jack’s trying to reassure the clients and convince them not to leave the fund.We’ll lose some, for sure. Once things stabilize, I don’t know what will happen. He’ll look for another partner, I suppose. The clients have the right to pull out if the management of the firm changes, but they’d be crazy to in this market. Hopefully, Jack can persuade them to stay.”

“Do you two also work for Mr. Holden?”

“Technically, but Tracey researched and picked the investments. Jack focused more on bringing in the clients. He doesn’t involve us much.”

Moscone shifted the subject. “Did either of you use Screw Loose?”

Jane shook her head, but Kevin answered, “Yes.”

“Did you ever have any trouble with Al Pace?”