The Fregoli Delusion (5 page)

6

They were met in the lobby of
Jarrett Tower by Midtown district Sergeant John Graham, a stocky, square-jawed
cop with the demeanor of a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. He explained that
officers were currently deployed on all floors of the building occupied by
Jarrett Corporation staff, including floors one to four and fourteen to
twenty-one. The other floors were leased out to other tenants. The top floor,
Graham explained, was reserved for the CEO and his executive assistant. It was
accessed only by an express elevator requiring a pass code and an escalator
that ran between the twentieth and twenty-first floors. The express elevator
had been shut down and the escalator was under their control, so Jarrett’s
floor was sealed off. The uniformed officers would stay put in the building,
Graham said, until the lieutenant said otherwise.

Hank nodded.

Graham was known affectionately as
Johnny Go. As a patrol officer he’d been saddled with the nickname Johnny Gofer
because of his willingness to run errands for other people, but it had been
shortened to Johnny Go when he became a sergeant because he was constantly
urging the patrol officers in his care to strive for bigger and better things.
Hank knew him more by reputation than by experience, as Johnny Go had been
Karen’s mentor when she was wearing a uniform as a young officer. She never
tired of telling stories about him.

“Stains is in the twentieth-floor
board room right now,” Graham finished, “busting some guy’s chops. I just came
down from there.”

Hank and Horvath rode an elevator
to the twentieth floor, where they were met by a redhead in her early fifties.
Tall and slender, she wore a pink jacket-and-skirt outfit with a string of
white pearls. Her skin was pale and her eyes were blue.

“You’re Lieutenant Donaghue,” she
said, stepping forward and holding out her hand. “I recognize you from the news
reports. I’m Marjorie Kelly, Mr. Jarrett’s executive assistant. You can call me
Peggy.”

Hank shook her hand. She had a
firm, business-like grip.

“Mr. Parris and several other
chief executives are downstairs right now holding a press conference,” Kelly
explained. “We’re announcing that Mr. Parris will assume the responsibilities
of interim president and CEO until a permanent succession is finalized. Our
stock price is taking a hit right now, and we’re trying to control the
bleeding.”

“I understand,” Hank said. “I
appreciate your cooperation.”

“Your detective’s in the board
room at the moment with Emory Raskin, our general counsel. Emory had a few
concerns about the warrants, but if I’m not mistaken the detective was more
interested in his whereabouts this morning. When I left, he was answering a lot
more questions than he was asking. If you like, I can show you the way.”

“In a moment, thanks.” Hank had
spotted Tim Byrne coming up the corridor.

“We’re well underway,” Byrne said,
his pig eyes flicking from Peggy Kelly to Hank. “Stainer explained the facts of
life to their lawyer. She’s in the board room with him right now.”

Hank glanced at Kelly, saw her jaw
muscles tighten, and realized she was suppressing a smile. “Thanks, Tim.”

“We’re processing the office and
board room on the twenty-first,” Byrne went on. “I’ve explained to Mrs. Kelly
we’ll need everyone’s fingerprints for reference purposes. Might be an issue
here on c-level.”

“C-level?” Horvath asked,
frowning.

“Corporate slang,” Byrne
explained. “C-level refers to the top level of executives whose titles all
begin with a C: CEO, CFO, CIO, COO.”

“I believe I saw our security
company’s fingerprint records listed on your warrant,” Kelly said.

“And so you did, but I prefer to
take my own, thank you very much. More than once I’ve seen fingerprint records
tampered with to hide something or other.”

“I don’t understand why you need
to fingerprint upstairs to begin with. He was shot near his home, not here.”

Kelly’s tone was reasonable and
her expression genuinely puzzled, and although Byrne was a bristly prick who
didn’t play well with others, he enjoyed these moments in his life when he
discovered a gap in someone’s education that he could fill with his own
superior knowledge.

“You see, Mrs. Kelly,” he said,
folding his arms across his chest, “the lieutenant’s job involves learning
everything he can about the victim’s activities over the final few days of his
life. He’ll want to know when he was last in his office, for example, and whom
he saw. He’ll construct a timeline and fill it with reference points for every
person he interacted with along the line. He’ll want a record of all the
fingerprints in the office for corroboration, and who knows, maybe we’ll find a
set of prints that don’t belong in there. Maybe someone slipped in and bothered
him about something. Maybe the same person showed up again this morning on the
bike path and—”

“Tim,” Hank interrupted, “where
are you with the records from the security company?”

Byrne frowned at the interruption.
“Mick’s down on the fourteenth right now,” he replied, referring to CSI Mickey
Marcotte, his computer technology specialist. “The security company’s owned by
Jarrett but run by a guy named Drussler.”

Hank turned to Horvath. “Go down
there and see if you can find Mr. Drussler.”

“He’s waiting in his office,”
Kelly said. “I gave him instructions to make himself available.”

“Thanks,” Hank said.

“I’m on my way down,” Byrne said
to Horvath. “Let’s go.”

Hank followed Kelly to a set of
large cherry wood doors that opened abruptly as they approached. A grim-faced
man emerged, threw a look at Hank, and pushed by him down the corridor.

Karen popped her head out,
scowling. “That was fun.”

“I expect you’ll have questions
for me as well,” Kelly said to her. “We can go upstairs to my office if you
like.”

“In here,” Karen pointed. It was a
given in Karen’s world that potential suspects should be questioned away from
familiar surroundings whenever possible. The board room was as close to neutral
territory as she could manage at the moment.

Hank looked at her over Kelly’s shoulder.
Karen motioned with her chin, turned on her heel, and walked to the end of the
long board room table. She pointed at the chair on her right. Kelly obediently
sat down. Hank closed the board room door and sat down directly across from Kelly.
He shoved his chair back and crossed his legs comfortably, his body language
declaring that their questions would be casual and friendly, nothing to worry
about. He removed his notebook and pen from his jacket pocket and flipped the
pages. He noticed that Karen’s notebook was on the table in front of her
instead of the top drawer of her desk where it usually sat.

He smiled. “I’ve been listening to
a faint Midwestern accent, Peggy. Ohio?”

“Columbus, yes.” Kelly folded her
hands on the table.

“Did you go to school there?”

“Ohio State. I did my
undergraduate degree there and stayed for my MBA at Fisher.”

“Is that right? My sister’s an OSU
alumna, too. She went there for her medical degree. She’s a pathologist in
California.”

“Very interesting,” Kelly said.

Karen leaned forward. “Where were
you between six and eight o’clock this morning?”

“I was here, Detective. I arrived
at five thirty as always and took the elevator up to the top floor, which your
criminologists will confirm from the elevator logs included in the data they
get from IT, along with video surveillance footage. I haven’t left the
building. It’s been a horrible day and I’ve been very, very busy.”

“How did you and Jarrett get
along?”

Kelly looked down and covered her
mouth with her hand. She paused, took a breath, and met Karen’s gaze. “Fine.”

“Do you want to take a minute?”
Hank asked.

She shook her head, lowering her
hand. “He was a typical CEO: a Type A personality, very self-centered, highly
competitive in just about everything, a touch stubborn.” She tightened her
lips. “More determined, I suppose, than stubborn. He listened to advice from
others and acted on it when he believed it was solid. He was very loyal to the
people he kept around him, and he was very good to me. I liked him.”

“Any recent arguments between the
two of you, Mrs. Kelly?” Hank asked.

She shook her head.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I had my little cry already this
morning,” Kelly said. “I suppose there’s more, but not right now. Actually,
it’s not
Mrs
. Kelly. Kelly’s my maiden name. My husband’s name is Lamb.
Commander David Lamb, United States Navy. We’ve been married twenty-eight
years.”

“Any children?”

“A son who’s twenty-six and a
daughter who’s twenty-three.”

“So you’re saying, Ms. Kelly,”
Karen said, leaning back, “you got along just fine with Jarrett and had no
reason whatsoever to pop him?”

“That’s correct,” Kelly replied
calmly. “No motive, no opportunity. Care to go for strike three?”

“Phht.” Karen folded her arms
across her chest. “A Navy wife who doesn’t have a firearm in the house? Give me
a break. Why don’t you explain what you do around here? You were Jarrett’s
secretary, right?”

Kelly shook her head. “No, Mr.
Jarrett’s secretary is Mary Ann Williams. You’ll speak to her later. My title,
actually, is chief of staff and executive assistant to the CEO. It might help
if I explain my duties.”

Karen shrugged, as though bored
with it all.

“As chief of staff,” she began,
directing her words to Karen, “I attend all board and committee meetings. I
represent Mr. Jarrett whenever he misses them. When I speak, it’s Mr. Jarrett
who’s speaking. I maintain an information management system that includes all
reports tabled before the board and committees and all action items, I analyze
these reports and action items for problems, and I inform Mr. Jarrett when I
see something that needs his attention. I help the senior executives interact
with Mr. Jarrett, which means before they meet with him they often meet with me
as a sounding board. I keep track of his state of mind and his focus, and I can
tell them if they’re about to hit a brick wall or if Mr. Jarrett’s interested
in what they want to do.

“In addition to all that, as
executive assistant I handle the administrative details. I make sure one of the
secretaries picks up the dry cleaning and keeps the liquor cabinets stocked, I
supervise all the directors’ secretaries, the personal trainers, the on-site
medical staff, the drivers, and everything else that keeps Mr. Jarrett and the
chief officers comfortable and moving forward.”

“So if you kept track of his state
of mind,” Karen said, not caring to hide her skepticism, “how was it the last
few days? Was he upset about something? Somebody in particular on his shit
list?”

“Nothing unusual. His state of
mind has actually been quite good the last few months.”

“Why’s that? Something going on?”

Kelly hesitated. “It’s not
something I’m at liberty to discuss.”

“Are you talking about his
decision to retire?” Hank asked. “Mrs. Jarrett mentioned it to me this
morning.”

“She did?”

“I realize it isn’t public
knowledge. I assume the details were still being ironed out.”

Kelly nodded. “The board knows, of
course.” She glanced at Karen. “The board of directors represents all
shareholders of the corporation. The directors understand that shareholders
might have a negative reaction, since Mr. Jarrett has run this company based on
his personal vision from day one. The input of the board was key because the
last thing Mr. Jarrett wanted was a loss of shareholder confidence.”

“Who’s taking over?”

She hesitated again.

“It’ll become public knowledge
very soon,” Hank reminded her, “but not through us. We need to understand the whole
picture if we’re going to find out who shot him.”

“Mr. Jarrett had decided to sell
his majority interest in Jarrett Corporation to his daughter, Diane. He made
sure she’d have the support to be chosen as president and CEO.”

“Diane Jarrett Benson,” Hank said.

“Yes.”

“So how’d that go down?” Karen
asked.

“It caused a hell of an uproar.
Diane’s a minor shareholder but she’s had no active involvement with the
company at all to this point. Mr. Jarrett had, shall we say, a few barriers to
overcome before the idea caught fire on this floor. A few egos were bruised and
there was initial resistance to the notion of an outsider coming in and taking over.”

“Do people still feel that way?”
Hank asked.

“No, I don’t really think so.
Diane met with the board and the chief officers, individually and as a group.
They tried their best to break her down, but she’s extremely bright and runs a
very successful investment firm with her husband, David Benson. It didn’t take
them long to realize she’s her father’s daughter.”