The Precipice (23 page)

Chapter 33

E
lizabeth was trying to keep her breathing steady and quiet. She didn’t know how long she could stay where she was but she needed time to think. Time to get her head straightened out. What had just happened in her boss’s office seemed more like a nightmare than anything real.

Suddenly the light was switched on in her office. She jumped and held her breath, listening for footsteps. Someone was walking around her office, not making much noise at all on the carpet. Elizabeth watched to see if any feet came into view from her perspective down under. Finally a shoe came into view. It was a man’s shoe. Black. It took everything she had to stifle a gasp. Then the second shoe moved next to the first. They were pointing towards her credenza. Elizabeth was holding her breath. She placed her hand over her mouth and nose to help her keep from making a sound. She had a feeling that she knew who the shoes belonged to and was hoping he would just leave her office. Then came the voice from the doorway.

“That’s Elizabeth and her grandmother.” It was Vera. She sounded like she was standing in the doorway. Elizabeth surmised that the male she was talking to must be looking at her photos on the credenza. Then she heard the sound of the frame being returned to its original location. She felt so uncomfortable that someone was handling something of hers that was so personal. The photo had been taken many years ago when her grandmother attended her college graduation, a very special occasion that she felt so fortunate to have been able to share with her.

Then came the second voice. “Very sweet.”

This confirmed her suspicion that it was Drescher with Vera.

Finally, the shoes left her field of vision and made their way back to her office door.

“I’m sure she hasn’t gone far.”

“Well, her office was dark so maybe she has already left.”

“She just got here! She better not have left already. Especially if she didn’t tell me first!”

Elizabeth cringed at hearing Vera’s voice. She was starting to perspire. She was feeling trapped, totally unsure of what was going on.

Someone extinguished the light in her office and their voices continued down the hall out of range of her ears. She held her breath again.

She waited and listened. No sounds. No lights. No voices.

It was so quiet that she felt like she was the only person in Loran Design. The only person in the building. Finally, she felt brave enough to scoot out from under the desk slightly. She peered over her desk to see if she could see anything in the hall. Nothing. She crawled back under the desk and waited some more. No one knew she was there. Still no sound except for the clock on her credenza.
Tick. Tock.
It was so loud. It sounded like the ticking was in her head. She wanted it to stop.

Chapter 34

S
he dozed in and out of sleep for a while. It was still dark in her office when she became lucid. She had no idea how long she had been there. Even if she could see the clock on her credenza from where she was, it was too dark to make out the time. She listened. She wasn’t sure what to do, although she was beginning to feel the need to escape her close quarters.

She felt a nagging feeling that she needed to leave and find an alternate way out of the building, that someone would stop her if she took the usual route. She stood in her office, trying to think what to do next and decided that the safest way to exit would be down the back fire stairs. There was a main set of stairs but she really wanted to try to get out without anyone seeing her.

She reached the door to the back stairs and quickly pushed it open. There were twenty-two stories to get down. This wasn’t the lighthouse at Pennington Point, but she had to get down to the bottom anyway.

Elizabeth had to focus on getting to the bottom of the stairs safely. She hung onto the railing and kept her eyes on her feet as she descended the stairs. Her shoes made a clicking sound as she went. There were no other sounds in the stairwell. She kept going, watching the signs on the doors as she passed which displayed the floor number. 21…20…19…18…17…16. Even though she was moving with gravity, her legs were starting to get sore. She just ignored them and kept moving. 15…14…13…12. She had to stop briefly and catch her breath. Her legs felt wobbly. It crossed her mind that someone her age should not have trouble with this. It was time to make the gym a priority.

Elizabeth pressed on. 11…10…9…8. She stopped again to take a breath and give her legs a break. She listened for a moment because she thought she heard a noise. All was quiet. Nothing. Then she heard it again. Footsteps above her. She gasped and started her feet again. She had eight stories to get down. She had to do it as fast as possible. She didn’t need to find out who was in the back stairs with her.

7…6…5…4…3…So close to the bottom but she could hear the footsteps even louder. Who was in the stairs with her? She didn’t want to find out. She forced her legs to keep moving on to the second floor and finally the first. She pushed open the exit door and burst into an alley. Her feet stopped. She looked up and down. No one else had exited recently. No one was in sight. There were dumpsters scattered throughout the narrow passage that ran between her building and the one behind it. Frantically trying to think which way to go, she knew she needed to head toward Lexington Avenue. She looked in both directions again and finally decided to turn right. She ran as fast as her legs would take her. Halfway up the alley her left foot landed in a pothole and she started to roll her ankle. She pulled up on her right foot enough to catch herself and resume running. She thought she heard the exit door slam again, but didn’t take the time to look back.

When she hit the sidewalk on Lexington, her eyes scanned the street looking for a taxi. She ran to the curb, waving her arm and whistling. A yellow cab pulled right up. A light rain was falling but she didn’t notice. She opened the back door to the cab and started to climb in. Suddenly there was a hand grabbing her arm. She gasped and tried to pull away.

A familiar voice said, “Elizabeth, it’s me.”

She stopped trying to pull away and instead, turned her body around, landing with her back against the side of the taxi. She looked into his eyes.

“Kurt.” It took a few seconds for it to sink in that he was really standing there. She was so glad to see him. “What are you doing here? You’re a long way from Maine.” She smiled slightly.

“I thought you might want to hear how our investigation turned out…and I wanted to make sure you’re okay.” There was genuine concern in his eyes.

Elizabeth looked up at him and smiled more broadly. Her suit jacket had spots of water on it and her hair was tussled from her run down the stairs. Kurt appeared amused by her unkempt look. So uncharacteristic for her.

Elizabeth could sense he was noticing her unusual appearance and quickly became self-conscious. She ran her fingers through her hair to try to put it back into some sort of mediocre coiffure.

Mitchell’s amusement turned to concern about her being wet. Elizabeth reassured him that she was fine. He gave her his jacket anyway. She started to protest but he insisted. She thought he was sweet.

They walked across the street to a neighborhood bar, one that Vera and Elizabeth had visited on a few occasions, when her boss was trying to prime her with alcohol and find out what made her tick. It was Friday, barely midday but New York City was known for being alive any time of the day. Stir was a bar with an uptown, metro feel with contemporary lighting and seating. It was dark wood paneled with stools at the bar running along the left side of the room and small square tables scattered throughout which were mostly empty. Not quite up to a standard of fine, white table linens, but still a few steps up from the trashy McLendry’s Irish Pub a few doors down. The air was a bit stale, but tolerable and the canned music had a jazz flavor to it, which was not really her taste, but she could ignore it. They found a relatively quiet corner and ordered a round of drinks. The bar was known for its martini menu, but they stuck with their usuals, Pinot Grigio for her, Jack Daniels on the rocks for him. The standard basket of pretzels and dipping sauces were delivered along with the drinks. Elizabeth was exhausted but anxious to hear what Kurt had to say and happy to leave behind whomever was in the stairwell with her.

They shared small talk between sips of their drinks but Elizabeth was anxious for him to get started. She pulled his jacket up closer around her shoulders and looked to him to begin the debriefing.

“Elizabeth, you may find this hard to believe…” He found it difficult to just blurt it out.

“Go on.” She was impatient and didn’t understand his hesitation. Her eyes implored him to continue.

“Your client…” He took a deep breath, buying himself some time to choose his words carefully. “Your client, Jack Drescher, was involved in all of this.” He paused to allow her time to let that sink in.

She sat back in her seat as if to put distance between her and something she couldn’t wrap her mind around. “What? Kurt, what are you talking about?”

“Elizabeth, evidently he had some business dealings that had gone sour recently and was not doing well financially. Actually, that’s probably an understatement. Apparently, he was so over-leveraged that he was desperate. His accountant, who turned out to be the now deceased Joseph Stevens, had refused to sign off on a set of financial statements that he had prepared in the hopes of securing additional financing. Stevens refused to have his name associated with the statements because they were not only misleading, but downright false. Completely fabricated. So, without the CPA’s blessing, the bank refused Drescher any additional credit. As a result, he became insolvent. He had no liquid assets to work with on a day-to-day basis and his business came to a grinding halt. In his mind, the inn was his last hope. He actually started several months ago harassing poor Amelia about selling the place.”

“He was the real estate attorney who wouldn’t leave her alone?” Elizabeth was following right along, but she couldn’t believe her ears.

“Yes. He pretended to be an attorney in the hopes of coercing her into doing what he wanted her to do, sell it for next to nothing. This place could have meant millions to him. A prime piece of coastal Maine real estate. We think that initially his plans were to build luxury condos. But when cash became a problem he switched his plans to buying it cheap and selling it quickly to the highest bidder. That could have solved his financial problems in one transaction.”

“Oh my God! But how would he even have known about our inn? I know he and I never talked about it. Our discussions were strictly professional.” She looked at Kurt and furrowed her brow. “Vera!”

He shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head in a gesture of “could be.”

Elizabeth could imagine Vera chatting away with Drescher over drinks and inadvertently passing on personal information about her.

“Right. Well, most of the harassment came in the form of phone calls, but then he took it up a couple notches and started sending letters, very professional looking letters from this fictional attorney he was portraying. Your poor grandmother must have been so stressed out.

Elizabeth let out a heavy sigh. Had she been there sooner maybe she could have been of more help. She wished her grandmother had called her sooner. She wished she had thought to call her. She had had no idea of what was going on. She would have to live with that one.

“We had been tracking Drescher’s movements for quite some time in his business dealings throughout New England when we made the connection between him and Pennington Point Inn. As the tennis pro for the inn, I was able to maintain a good cover while I kept an eye on things up close. We knew it was just a matter of time before he slipped up and we could nail him. He is now facing a laundry list of charges against him including extortion and murder. Somehow, the financial problems that started all this seem so trivial in comparison.”

“Yeah. Seems like things really got out of control.” Elizabeth looked like she was in shock. A client she had admired and respected had done the unthinkable.

“I’ll say. He tried to convince Amelia that she didn’t rightfully own the property.”

“Yes!” Elizabeth remembered her conversation in the lighthouse. “My grandmother told me she couldn’t find her copy of their marriage license at the inn and had no luck at town hall.”

“Well, we didn’t give up on that. We put some people on it. I think the town clerk was just too lazy to go into storage when Amelia asked. But it’s amazing how motivated she became when we flashed an FBI badge. The oldest records had never been put on microfiche or any other type of long-term storage. They were just thrown into boxes and stored off site when they moved into the new town hall. It was a minor miracle that they still existed and could be read. We located a copy of her marriage certificate and the deed to the inn. Case closed on those questions.”

“Thank God.” Elizabeth heaved a sigh of relief. “If only she were around to hear this.”

“Oh, I think she knows.” He tried to comfort her with a pat on the shoulder.

Elizabeth fixed her gaze on a focal point across the room. She was trying hard to process what he was saying. She couldn’t help wonder if this had anything to do with all the times she had rejected Drescher. She shuddered.

Mitchell continued. “Evidently Amelia wasn’t caving in like he wanted her to. So he decided to pump up the pressure by making things miserable on a daily basis for her and the entire staff to the point that no one would want to stay or work at the inn. His brother owed him a favor or two so he coerced him into checking into the inn for the weekend to really stir things up.”

“Hutchins.” Elizabeth was catching on.

“Exactly. Bill and Sara Hutchins were really James Rizzo, Jack’s brother-in-law, and his wife, Ann. Ann is Drescher’s sister.”

Elizabeth was fighting back her anger toward the Dreschers, every last one of them.

“The Rizzos pretended to have a daughter who went missing.”

Elizabeth turned away from Mitchell. He had to lean in to hear her speak. “So there was never a Kelsey Hutchins who was missing and feared dead?” Her teeth were clenched in anger.

“No. That was merely an elaborate distraction for us and another black mark on the inn to dissuade potential guests from booking reservations there.”

She turned abruptly toward him. “They had half the Maine State Police out looking for that girl!” Her voice was elevated.

“Well, don’t worry. They, too, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They have racked up filing a false police report, obstruction of justice, interfering with a police officer, aiding and abetting a felon. The list goes on.

“On top of it all, Drescher lured his accountant, who wouldn’t sign off on his financials, to the Pennington Inn under the pretense of burying the hatchet, so to speak. Instead, Drescher buried the hatchet in him, probably thinking he could pin it on Tony, if he used his knife, or you and Rashelle by videotaping you finding the body, which he accomplished by hiding in the wine cooler.”

The package that we found in your car, that supposedly contained the missing girl’s necklace, was actually from Drescher. It was originally a token of his affection for you but when you left unexpectedly for the weekend in Maine, it suddenly took on a whole new purpose.

Elizabeth was staring intently at the floor. She breathed in deeply and let it out slowly. “Somehow, whatever they get just doesn’t seem like it’s enough for what they’ve done.”

“I know. But they all will certainly see prison time. Drescher also had his nephew involved in this mess, too.”

“Armand.”

Mitchell raised his eyebrows at her. He was definitely impressed. “Yes, again. He got himself hired as an all-around handy guy, helping in all areas of the inn’s operations, wherever he was needed. He got his foot in the door by first befriending Slater.”

Elizabeth’s eyes got wide upon hearing this.

“He asked Slater to recommend him for the job. So since his job took him all over the inn, he was able to slip in and out without anyone getting suspicious or asking questions. Drescher had him distributing those handwritten notes asking about the missing girl. His intention was to further stir up the pot and to legitimize the search.”

Elizabeth realized she wasn’t the only one receiving the mysterious notes. “I never thought I could feel this much hatred toward someone.”

“I understand. That wasn’t all he was distributing…” He waited until he had her undivided attention.

She looked at him, squinted her eyes slightly, and tilted her head as if trying to figure out what he was going to say next.

“From what we can tell, Armand was also the one who was delivering Zoloft to Amelia…your grandmother.”

Elizabeth’s eyes took on the look of a tiger.

“He apparently brought drinks to Amelia under the guise of delivering refreshments from the kitchen and they were laced with the drug.”

Elizabeth jumped to her feet slamming her hands on the table. “That BASTARD!!”

Kurt rose to his feet, skirted around the table and grabbed onto her arms. He knew she was very vulnerable right now. She burst into tears and he pulled her into his arms. She sobbed uncontrollably for a while with her face buried in his chest. Finally, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes. She was having trouble accepting what he had told her. It was bad enough before when it looked like someone might be slipping her grandmother the drug. But somehow, it was so much worse hearing who actually did the dirty deed.