The Golden Girl (3 page)

“What if I was to say I can offer you the chance to do just that?”

“Just what?”

“Find the killer. Would the Madison Taylor-Pruitt I think I know—nerves of steel and a resolve unlike anyone else’s—would she take me up on the offer?”

“Yes. Though I don’t know how you can offer that, so it’s a hypothetical, Renee.” Madison lifted her teacup and sipped, and then took a bite of her scone.

“Madison, the Gotham Roses was an idea close to my heart. In my wilder youth, I was in the Peace Corps—that’s where Olivia and I met, you know—and I saw firsthand what good people with high ideals can do. But after I married Preston, I also saw what ruthless people with low ideals can do. The Sinclair family, his own flesh and blood, took advantage of his honesty and decency, and they framed him, made him a scapegoat. It nearly destroyed me. Until I received my own unusual offer—similar to the one I am making you today.”

“An offer?”

Renee nodded. “An offer to go undercover.”

“What? You mean, like for the police?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. It would provide you with a chance to clear your father’s name—and find Claire’s killer.”

“I’d do it.”

“Don’t say yes quite so fast.”

“I’m used to making split-second decisions based on my gut.”

“This is a bit more elaborate. You’d be working for a cover agency—not the police per se. You’d have to decide for sure that you’d be willing to dedicate yourself to catching the real killer, and sign an oath of allegiance that, if broken, would be just as serious as breaking an oath to the FBI or CIA. So think about it carefully.”

“If I can commit a hundred million dollars to a new waterfront high-rise and steam ahead with it in the face of every obstacle a large-scale building project can have, I can commit to this, Renee.”

“I knew I could count on you. And frankly, dear, you have too much to lose not to take me up on this, shall we say, opportunity.”

Renee paused, then continued, “When Preston had his legal issues, I was contacted by a woman named the Governess. Never directly, though we’ve spoken on the phone. Through representatives. And this person—and even I’m unsure who she is—wields unprecedented power. You, your father, Preston, myself, we deal with money and boardrooms and power. But this is power with the strength of the government and FBI behind it—resources I still find amazing.”

Madison tried to follow what Renee was driving at. “Are you saying you work for the government?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. The offer—early release for Preston—came with strings attached. I considered the strings positive, however. I never lost that part of me who was the free-spirited girl in the Peace Corps, determined to do good. The strings involved running a secret organization that reports only to the Governess. With backing and support from the FBI, the CIA and other law-enforcement entities, including Scotland Yard and MI-5, this organization is now embedded in the Gotham Roses. Among you are about fifteen or sixteen handpicked women with talents and ambitions needed to bring down various criminal activities. Undercover.”

“But why the Roses? Why not the FBI or the CIA or…the regular police? Why involve a bunch of—no offense—wealthy young women? What do we—or you—bring to the table?”

“Do you know how to use a lobster fork, Madison?”

Maddie laughed a little. “Sure.”

“And how to use a finger bowl?”

Maddie nodded.

“Can you waltz, fox-trot, discuss the Bauhaus movement in art and converse with a diplomat—in his or her native language usually?”

“Sure.”

“Well, shocking as this may be to you, Madison, this world we live in, this bubble, if you will, isn’t easily penetrated. The society pages, for instance, are concerned with
old
money. You and I both know how we often feel about the nouveau riche. The Kikis of the world, the women who, despite the wealth they may have married into, wouldn’t know class if it ran them over.”

“So?”

Renee leaned forward. “It would be impossible for the FBI or law enforcement to penetrate the society pages, to blend in with us, to fall into step with our world, if they had to solve a crime in our midst. And with Enron, with the various scandals…Tyco…whomever…we’re talking some crimes that not only top the hundreds of millions of dollars, but also that trickle down to ordinary people who put their faith in the officers of the board. If they claim the company to be financially sound, the public believes it until a scandal breaks and sends the market tumbling, and suddenly Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public lose their life savings.”

“So you’re saying these women have been working as…spies? Cops?”

“Agents. They’re able to blend in and solve major financial and banking cases, even drug dealing among the elite. They can do what the FBI can’t—namely, infiltrate the path of crime among mind-boggling wealth without being perceived as interlopers.”

“I’m…stunned.”

“Well, Madison, I always knew you had talents that would put even the best and brightest to shame, but I also knew the best agents have a passion, a reason, for joining. It’s a tremendous commitment, and it means a duplicitous life. And it’s not something anyone should undertake just because she’s an adrenaline junkie or thinks it might be a lark.”

“And then Claire was murdered,” Maddie whispered.

“Yes. And I wouldn’t wish this crisis on my worst enemy, not even on the bastards in the Sinclair family who framed my beloved Pres. But when I saw the news last night, so did the Governess. Madison, rumors are floating that Claire’s death is less personal than you may think.”

“What do you mean ‘less personal’?”

“She may have been murdered to stop her from revealing financial irregularities at Pruitt & Pruitt. And the administration would like to avoid seeing another Enron. The financial markets are unstable enough as they are.”

“So you think there is something illegal going on at our company and that Claire was murdered for being a whistle-blower? I can’t believe it.”

Renee nodded. “What I, or the FBI, think is immaterial. We need facts—and we need you to get them or we’ll assign the case to someone else.”

“Pruitt & Pruitt is my life. I’m not going to let it be destroyed. If elements in my company are trying to skirt the law, I
will
find out.”

“If you want to do this, Madison, you need to show up here tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. and meet your handler. If you don’t show, I’ll know that it wasn’t meant to be. Just as I know you will never speak of this to anyone. Ever. And if you show up, you will be trained even further than your father’s private security firm trained you. You’ll be pushed to your limit. And I know, of anyone, you’ll succeed.”

Maddie was still absorbing all Renee had told her. She looked at her watch. “Okay, Renee, I’ll think about it. I should go, though. The police want to interview me.”

“Of course. I hope I see you tomorrow. I learned a long time ago that we can live life in a gilded cage, or we can live life fully using our talents.”

They both stood. Renee clasped Maddie’s hand. Then Maddie left the sunroom and headed for her limo.

Charlie held open the door for her. She settled into the back seat and shut her eyes, her head spinning.

“You okay, Miss Madison?”

“Yeah, Charlie. Just have a lot on my mind.”

“Want to take a drive out to the country? Leaves are in full fall glory about now.”

“No, thanks. I have the police coming at six.”

“Right. Okay. Well, you just call my cell phone if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Charlie.” She smiled, remembering how he sometimes used to sneak her off after school to get ice cream if she’d had a bad day—a direct violation of her mother’s macrobiotic rules.

A short time later, Charlie eased the limo into the parking garage. Maddie got out, leaning over the front seat to give him a peck on the cheek first. Once in the building, she pressed the elevator for up and took it to her floor.

Glancing at her watch, Maddie saw she had an hour before the police arrived. She was dreading the interview. She unlocked the door to her place, and turned to her left to deactivate the alarm—only to be hit on the back of her head with something. She guessed the butt of a gun as she saw stars, but she had, through luck or training, “felt” the presence of someone for a split second before she’d fully even processed the thought in her brain. She’d turned just enough to deflect the blow, and though the pain through her neck and shoulder was severe, she hadn’t blacked out.

Whirling, she saw a man with a black wool ski mask. He froze for a second, surprised, she guessed, that she was still standing. She immediately grabbed the seventeenth-century stone statue of a pagoda that rested atop the desk in her entranceway, and swung it for the head of her assailant. She missed but managed to land a solid hit to his shoulder.

“Bitch!” came his muffled response. He reached out, trying to grab her by the throat, but Maddie ducked—always keep them off balance, her martial arts trainer had told her—and then landed a solid punch to his solar plexus.

He doubled over, and she knew she’d knocked the wind out of him. He wheezed and coughed, then raised one fist and punched her in return, landing on her jaw. She flew backward against the wall. Still on her feet, she somehow managed to land a roundhouse kick into his thigh. Now he was really angry, she could tell.

He bellowed, grabbing her by the hair, and rammed her head against the wall. She finally screamed—loud. She clawed at his mask. But using her hair for leverage of some sort, he spun her away from himself and then dashed out the door and down the hall to the stairwell.

Maddie had fallen back against the sharp point of the corner of her dining-room table. Pain coursed through her back, but she willed herself to get to the keypad of her alarm system. She pressed the panic button, still puzzled as to how the assailant had outwitted her system. The button made the entire keypad light up with red lights. Maddie looked down the hall, the assailant now gone, and waited for the security company to dispatch a team.

Someone, she decided, was up to no good at Pruitt & Pruitt. And she was more determined than ever to figure out who that was.

T
he security company was still there when the police arrived. The head of security, Marcus Barron, was taciturn, his face etched with fury. No one outwitted his system—ever.

The two plainclothes detectives gave their names as Tom Briggs and Ed Compton. They talked with Marcus, who kept shaking his head incredulously.

“This guy was not only a pro, disabling a camera in the hall, but he knew the building codes. He didn’t set off the alarms, because he knew what codes to use.”

“Even to her apartment?”

Marcus nodded.

Briggs, the taller cop, with a build like a former football player, said, “So who has the codes?”

“Our system, in ten years of business, has never been hacked. Ever. I presume the head of the building’s security detail is to blame for the breach. I don’t know. She says no one has her code—her father insisted on it.”

“What about her father?”

“Her own father attacked his daughter? Jack Pruitt? You’ve got to be kidding me, man.”

“Stranger things have happened in our line of work.”

“No. You don’t think she’d recognize him, even with a ski mask?”

“Then he could have hired someone.”

Maddie listened to all this with an ice pack pressed to her neck. “Look, gentlemen, this is all preposterous. I interrupted a thief. Do you have any idea what the art in this apartment is worth? In the millions. That painting—” she swept her hand toward a Picasso “—is worth over a million itself. I inherited it from my grandmother, who was an avid Picasso lover.”

Ordinarily, Maddie would never flaunt her wealth like that, but the two cops were irritating her with their insinuations. And she did think it had to do with Pruitt & Pruitt, but no sense giving the police any idea about her father—he was under a big enough cloud of suspicion already.

Marcus said, “I’m going to post a security detail outside your apartment until we redo the system tomorrow.”

“That’s not necessary.”

Marcus, with the chiseled features of a roman statue and the sculpted body to match, shook his head. “Look, Ms. Pruitt, your father’s company pays me a lot of money to keep its valuables safe. And I’d say, if you excuse the expression, you’re his most precious possession. You can’t talk me out of it, so know our guys are there and then put it from your mind. And I still think you should go to the hospital.”

“Dr. Halloway is coming over.” He was the Pruitt family’s personal physician. She and her father were in superb shape, but Jack Pruitt couldn’t tolerate the thought of ever wasting even ten seconds in a doctor’s waiting room. So Halloway played a lot of golf and was kept on a retainer basis. He had gone to prep school with Jack Pruitt and her father was extremely loyal to old friends.

Hours later, Maddie was mentally—and physically—exhausted. The police hadn’t seemed as interested in catching Claire’s killer as in nailing her father. She was used to it in a way. People loved to take down the wealthy, to be able to think, “See, money can’t buy you happiness.” Maddie knew that was a thousand percent true. Her childhood, for instance, hadn’t been a particularly happy one. But she also knew relishing the downfall of another person wasn’t right either. By the end of the interview, Detective Briggs had begun zeroing in on Maddie herself—her resentment over her father’s affair with Claire. Luckily, Maddie had an airtight alibi. She had been at the office when Claire was killed. After that, she was in the club—and had been seen there by hundreds of people, not to mention she
had
gotten a playful mention in Rubi’s column.

Briggs even went so far as to insinuate that Maddie herself had staged the break-in. Maddie had risen from the dining-room table, and with all the iciness she could muster, and with a look in her eyes that would instill panic in even the toughest lawyers negotiating with her over a piece of property, she said, “The mayor will be hearing from me about this ridiculous line of questioning as my friend’s body lies in the morgue. You can leave now, gentlemen, and don’t come back. If you do, you’ll find my attorneys will make you wish you’d never joined the force. If, after my call to the mayor, you even stay detectives instead of being reassigned to the K–9 unit.”

After they had left, Halloway had arrived and given her a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and a painkiller. She intended to fill neither. Her father called.

“Marcus filled me in. What the hell happened?”

“If he filled you in, then you know, Dad. Look, I’m wiped out.”

“Dammit, Madison, I hate it when you don’t keep me informed.”

“Hmm…Imagine how I felt about you and Claire. Uninformed, lied to. I’m going to bed. Good night.” She hung up. Then Maddie had poured herself a stiff drink and tried to think.

Claire had been an absolute tigress in the courtroom—but she was proud of her reputation. There wasn’t any way she had been involved in anything illegal. So who was the traitor at Pruitt & Pruitt? And who was so powerful to have been able to access her building and her apartment?

Maddie sipped her scotch—a single malt that would go for two hundred dollars a shot at any high-end restaurant. She remembered being twenty-three the first time she had scotch. She had thought it was the single most vile drink on the planet, but again, her father had taught her well. The “big boys” she negotiated with and against drank it to celebrate closing a deal—and she learned to drink it, too. Now she enjoyed a smooth scotch—and she needed it to steady her nerves in light of all that had happened in the previous twenty-four hours.

She gazed out on the skyline, and Renee’s words rang in her ears. All her life, Madison had wanted to build skyscrapers, to leave her mark in history—on the skyline of Manhattan. She wanted to look out on spires and soaring glass buildings and know she was responsible for making these hundred-million-dollar projects a reality. But as a member of the Gotham Roses undercover organization, she could do so much more. So in the wee hours, as Manhattan spread like a shining jewel in front of her, Madison Taylor-Pruitt decided she would work undercover. She would be a government agent. And she would see that justice was done. For Claire.

Bam!

Madison was flung through the air and to the mat by her trainer. She’d hit the mat so hard, she thought she’d broken a tooth.

Jimmy Valentine gave her a grin and reached a hand down to help her up. Madison actually felt for the mat beneath her. She felt as if she’d hit solid floor, not mat, but no…the mat was still there.

“Man, you are one well-trained lady.” Jimmy smiled. “You may be my best agent yet.”

Maddie accepted his proffered hand and rose, slowly, from her prone position. “Well trained? You’re kicking my ass.”

“Look at me. I’m six foot one, a good two hundred twenty-five first thing in the morning before I’ve eaten my way through one of my wife, Linda’s, breakfasts. I
should
be kicking your ass. I’d be kicked out of the CIA if I couldn’t. Now let’s try that move one more time.”

Jimmy was teaching her to do leg sweeps, whereby she literally tried to sweep an opponent’s legs out from under him or her. This was after a half hour on a heavy bag, twenty minutes of jump rope, four miles on a treadmill set for steep uphill, and a firearms lesson, which she had passed, Jimmy said, “like you were a born sniper.”

Maddie tried to focus, but she was still absorbing the fact that beneath Renee’s glamorous home and the Gotham Roses elegant club was a labyrinth of rooms and tunnels. Feeling as if she was in a James Bond movie, after she was processed and prodded and poked by a doctor, and after her irises were scanned into some high-tech security equipment, which made even what Pruitt & Pruitt had look amateurish, she was ushered downstairs into a whole new world.

Maddie decided the best metaphor for it was an anthill. There may have been a whole world, busy and bustling upstairs in the Club. There were always teas, events, planning meetings and lunches being held to benefit their charities. On the second and third floors were Renee’s private residence—just she and her daughter with Preston still in prison. But beneath the world of the hill above was another world. Madison saw two or three fellow Roses turned agents ushered in and out of high-tech rooms, and she discovered, when Renee gave her the tour, that everything from computer equipment to sophisticated listening devices, to a firing range and training center, even to a dressing room with a stylist who helped women when they went under deeper cover, were all housed here.

Most amusing, to Maddie at least, were the people like Jimmy Valentine, who was their trainer. She had seen him before. In a painter’s outfit, splattered with the color of Renee’s sitting room. Another man she saw tending to an immense computer she had always believed was one of Renee’s personal accountants.

“You ready, Pruitt?” Jimmy grinned at her. He was certainly gorgeous, with classic Italian sexiness, but behind that smile was a deadly serious trainer. He showed no mercy because, he said, “The bad guys won’t either.”

They squared off against each other. Maddie stayed out of the range of his reach—which was the tricky part. He so seriously outsized her that in order for her to attack him, she had to get close to him, which meant he could grab her and send her sailing across the room.

She inhaled deeply through her nostrils. Belly breathing would show him she was tired, which she sure as heck was. But she wasn’t about to let Jimmy Valentine know. This was day two of training, and she was determined to take him down.

Get him off guard,
she told herself. When she’d trained with her father’s Black Ops guys they constantly stressed that hand-to-hand combat was as much a mental game as a physical game.

She suddenly dropped to the floor, slid in close to Jimmy, and with one vicious and fast side-sweep of her long leg, flattened him. Before he could grab her, she’d rolled three times, was up on her feet, and drew her gun—which was unloaded for practice.

“Freeze!”

Jimmy Valentine stared up at the ceiling. She thought she’d really hurt him and dashed over to him.

“You okay?”

He smiled a huge grin, ran his hands through his thick black hair and sat up. “My leg hurts like a son of a bitch, but I’m more than okay. Honey, you are going to surprise a helluva lot of people. Most especially, some bad guys.”

“You think?”

“Look, some of the women who are undercover, they’re gorgeous. Who am I kidding? They’re all knockouts—Vanessa Dawson? She’s a goddess. And they’re smart, sophisticated. And they can shoot, now that they’ve been trained. They all have talent. But you have it inbred in you. I read your file. Your father being paranoid about kidnapping and all.”

“Yeah. I was already training in my teens, and then got more intense training when I went off to college.”

“That’s the key. They got you when you were young. It’s like second nature. Great drop to the floor. I wasn’t expecting it.”

He lifted the leg of his black tracksuit. “I’m gonna have a terrific bruise. Good for sympathy from Linda.”

“What does she think of your job?”

He shrugged. “As long as I’m safe and come home to my girls at night, she’s cool with it. I have two daughters—Mia and Sienna. Apples of my eye.”

“Let’s try that choke-hold routine again.”

“They warned me about you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The amazing type-A competitive streak. You’re so driven, they say your
blood
is type A.”

“Oh, aren’t we clever.”

“Always, Park Avenue Princess, always,” he said, his brown eyes making clear he meant it affectionately.

Jimmy finally stood and said, “You’re sure you want to go another round?”

She nodded.

The choke hold involved him facing her and placing his hands around her neck—he didn’t apply much pressure, but enough that she had to be cautious to fight panic. Then her move was to jam her forearms up between his two arms and force his arms outward with as strong a motion as she could. The fact that Jimmy’s forearms were the size of her thighs made things tricky.

They each readied their stance, and Jimmy pretended to choke her.

Maddie fought against the tide of panic.
It’s a mental game,
she told herself,
just like staring down the piranhas who wanted to force the sale of Pruitt’s hotel holdings last year.

In an instant, she flashed back to the masked intruder reaching for her throat. Fear mixed with anger, and she brought her arms up in a swift motion and slammed them against the inner forearms of Jimmy. He grunted, but released her neck, and she took four steps back and pulled her weapon.

“Freeze!”

“Thumbs up! You fight like a champ.”

“Thanks.” She beamed. He was right. She couldn’t help it, but she was competitive to a fault, and knowing she was better than most filled her with pride. Like being valedictorian of her elite private high school—only better. She liked knowing she was trained to do combat. It stirred something inside her.

After she finished with Jimmy, she was brought to the dressing room, which had an adjoining medical room with a massage table and whirlpool spa and other delights for sore muscles. She had no time for a rubdown, though. She showered and changed and was brought to a briefing room. There, she met with Troy Carter, who was assigned to be her handler.

“Hi, Madison,” he said, reaching out and giving her a firm handshake.

“Hi.” She smiled and sized him up—just as she was sure he had. She had noticed the two-way mirrors in the training room when she and Jimmy had been fighting.

Troy Carter was, like Jimmy, tall and extremely well built. Whereas Jimmy’s Italian good looks and New York accent made him seem like an “ordinary guy,” Troy looked former military to Madison. He had close-cropped hair, a soft wheat color, and gray eyes, and his jaw was square. He wore khakis and a golf shirt. His bearing though, his posture, was anything but relaxed. He stood ramrod straight, and she noticed how his eyes moved from one corner of the room to the other, as if he was always on his guard, assessing his surroundings. They were completely safe in the conference room, she knew, but she guessed that because of his background, he had ingrained habits.