Dead File (16 page)

“Okay,” Wendy said. “I’ve given this some thought, Sunday, and I’m going to tell you exactly what you could do for me. Then you’ll tell me if that works for you. Don’t forget, I can’t pay you. I’ll take you to lunch when my literary agent sells the book.”

“No, I’ll take
you
to lunch. This is very exciting,” Sunday responded.

Wendy started taking her through the procedure that connected her office terminal to her computer at home where
Don’t Be Dumpy
was stored, and Sunday took notes. After about a dozen steps, several of which were passworded, the directory for the book files came up on Wendy’s screen in the newsroom.

“That’s amazing,” Sunday said. “I didn’t know you could access home from here.”

“Not everybody can. I have a special setup. Now, don’t ever let anyone else see these files,” Wendy said. “Or know my passwords.”

“Of course not.”

Wendy clicked on file after file, briefing Sunday. After about forty minutes she’d walked the intern through the book chapters and carefully explained everything that needed to be done.

“Got it?” she asked Sunday.

“Absolutely. I know exactly what to do. I can work on the book for a couple of hours most days I’m here. Okay?”

“Sure, okay. Better than okay,” Wendy said. “But what can I do for you?”

“Help me get a part-time job when I’ve finished my intern-ship. You know everybody in the business.”

“Deal,” Wendy said, and they shook on it.

31

M
imosa. A small, charming bistro on Beverly Boulevard in West Los Angeles. Mostly couples paying attention only to each other. Richard and Maxi sat at a table tucked in a corner of the heated, outside patio lined with ficus trees studded with tiny white lights, not only at the holiday season but all year round. Their waiter was pouring French Merlot.

“I’m glad you don’t have a story for the Eleven,” Richard said. “We don’t have to rush.”

“What time is your flight tomorrow?” Maxi asked.

“I changed my mind. I’m not going.”

“Ahh. And have you mentioned this to Capra?”

“Sure. He had no problem with it. He said, Stay home, Richard, relax. Take a month off, with pay, for that grueling stretch in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He also said he’s gonna give me a big fat raise.”

“Right. So what time does your flight leave?”

“Four-fifteen. In the afternoon. LAX to JFK. I have to be at the airport two hours early.”

“Want me to drive you?”

“What if you’re on a story?”

“Capra told me I could take you. He said it’ll save him sixty-five bucks on a courier.”

“That’s Capra. What are you having?”

Maxi perused the menu. “How does the sliced steak for two with pommes frites sound?”

“Perfect,” Richard said. “Medium rare?”

“Perfect,” Maxi echoed.

It
had
been a perfect Christmas, she reflected. Thanks to Richard. Had it only been three days? A relationship in a microcosm—easy to be perfect when it was only three days long, she knew. She also knew that they would never have allowed themselves to feel what they were feeling if they’d had any more than a fleeting three days. If they were looking at a normal, ongoing working relationship stretching out ahead of them, they never would have let this happen. They were both too smart to let this happen. She smiled.

“What?” Richard asked.

“The wartime syndrome,” she said. “Yes. This is our last night before—”

“Stop it.”

He stopped talking but couldn’t shut down the mischief in his eyes. “I
am
coming to your house after dinner tonight,” he avowed. “Just to make sure you get home okay.”

“I’ll be fine, thank you. I have my whistle,” Maxi said, fingering the silver talisman around her neck

“Yes, but … I have to be there in case you blow it.”

Richard had indeed insisted on following Maxi home. She’d protested vigorously, of course, but as she steered her Corvette up the canyon toward her house in Beverly Glen, now and then glancing in the rearview mirror at his small silver Audi behind her, she felt her blood race.
Oh, God,
she thought,
what am I doing?
Nothing, she told herself. They would have coffee. And talk. He was leaving tomorrow, on an extended assignment.

She zapped open her garage door and pulled her car inside as Richard pulled to a stop at the curb. Sprinting, he came up to her driver’s-side door and helped her out of the low-slung Corvette. And took her in his arms, and kissed her. She felt herself melting into his long, dizzying kiss.

“Cof-coffee,” she mumbled feebly, finally.

“Right. Coffee,” he returned, and he allowed her to lead him through the door into her kitchen. He stopped her hand as she reached to switch on the lights and took her in his arms again. And kissed her again. Until they were interrupted almost immediately by the sound of paws skittering on the travertine kitchen floor. “Yukon,” she murmured.

“Hi, buddy,” Richard pronounced, and he snapped on the lights and stooped to roughhouse with the big, friendly malamute. “Jig’s up,” he said with a laugh. “Might as well make coffee.” There was coffee.

And there was talk. A lot of talk at the kitchen table. Until there was a lull. And the two of them locked eyes. And Richard stood up, took her hand, and said, “I’m sorry, Maxi … but I’m only human. Where’s the bedroom?”

Later, much later, Maxi sat curled up on the love seat in her master bedroom, wrapped in a thick white terry-cloth robe, watching Richard scramble for his trousers, shirt, socks, shoes.

“I can’t believe we did this,” she said.

“Uh … will you respect me in the morning?”

“I’ll pick you up at one o’clock for the airport. And I’ll let you know then.”

32

F
riday morning in the newsroom, 10:55
A.M.
Maxi’s dreamy personal reverie involving scenes from the night before was interrupted by a page over the loudspeaker. A Mr. Goodman Penthe to see her, the assignment editor blared. “Should I let him up?”

Picking up her phone, she punched in the number for the desk. “Yes, Riley, let him up. He has an appointment.”

Get your mind on business, woman,
she chided herself as she waited in front of the assignment desk for an intern to bring in her guest. As the two walked toward her, Maxi scrutinized the man with the bright yellow visitor’s pass pinned to his suit coat. Same short, slight build that she remembered, same thinning, dyed black hair, same chalk-white face, same dour black suit, same prissy little wire-rimmed glasses. Same guy. But this very prominent man, this East Coast industrial bigwig, looked somehow even smaller here in the newsroom, on uncharted turf, than he had the night she met him at Carter Rose’s house.

Maxi thanked the intern, then led Goodman Penthe into the conference room. She could still smell the damn turkey in there from two days ago. If Penthe noticed it, he didn’t say anything. The two settled across from each other at the long table, and Maxi took her tape recorder out of her purse and set it on the glossy surface between them.

“Mind if we tape this?” she asked.

“Yes. I do. What I have to say has to be off the record.”

Maxi pointedly glanced at her watch. “I didn’t know that,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time here for conversations that are off the record, Mr. Penthe—we’re a news organization. Ours is a business that’s
on
the record.”

The reprimand was lost on Penthe, or he chose to ignore it. But Maxi didn’t turn on the tape; privacy was his prerogative, after all. She just silently regretted what was probably going to be a chunk of wasted time. She’d find a way to cut it short.

“So,” she said, “what’s this about?”

Penthe looked around the spacious conference room, occupied at the moment by just the two of them. “Is this room private?” he asked.

“Of course. We don’t bug our meetings, Mr. Penthe. And as you can see, you and I have the room to ourselves right now.”

“All right,” he started, though he still looked uncomfortable. But he seemed like a man who wouldn’t be really comfortable anywhere, Maxi observed as she sat quietly, keeping her gaze leveled at him.

“I’m in town for due diligence on the Rose company,” he said.

“Oh? Is Rose merging?”

“No. Selling, perhaps. If Carter Rose and I can come to terms.”

“And this is off the record?”

“No, no, that’s a matter of public record, of course, even though it hasn’t been widely publicized. I’ve been looking at acquiring Rose International since well before Gillian Rose’s death.”

“And what does this have to do with us at Channel Six?”

“It has to do with you, Ms. Poole. The night I met you at Rose’s home, Carter talked about you after you left. He told me you were the best investigator in the city.”

“Really. With all due respect, what was Mr. Rose smoking that night? I’m a journalist, not an investigator.”

Penthe actually smiled. “Well, I don’t know about smoking, but he
was
drinking, I remember,” he said. Maxi remembered that too. She remembered being surprised by that. She remembered thinking that the unflappable Carter Rose seemed somewhat intimidated by Goodman Penthe.

“He told me that you two were going to exchange information on his wife’s death.”

“Mr. Rose never gave me any information I could use, and I never had any for him that we didn’t put on the news. As you probably know, there hasn’t
been
much information on his wife’s death.”

“Well, in any case, I’d like to make that same arrangement with you. I’ll tell you what I know, and you tell me what you find out.”

Maxi gave an audible, slightly exasperated sigh. “Again, Mr. Penthe,” she said, “I’m not an investigator. I have no interest in information about anything at all unless it’s something I can use in a story for broadcast. Do you understand that?”

“All right, yes, I do—”

“Well, then,” Maxi stopped him. “If that’s what you came to say—”

His turn to interrupt. “Let me tell you what I think,” he said. “I think Gillian Rose was murdered, and I’d like to see the murder solved. I’m in negotiations on the company, and I don’t want to buy any skeletons with it, no pun intended.”

Maxi mentally groaned. “What makes you think Gillian was murdered?” she asked.

“Gillian was going to divorce Carter. He cheated on her right under her nose—he’s been having an affair with his assistant for years. And he has other women everywhere, in different cities, different countries. Gillian was humiliated. But she wanted to get her ducks in a row before she left him.”

“What ducks?”

“Specifically, a formula that she was developing with a pharmacist she knew, her assistant’s father, William Schaeffer. Gillian came to me about it. Told me she was going to leave Carter, and that the divorce would force a sale of the company in order to divide their assets.”

“Why would she go to you with this?”

“Because, as I said, I was interested in purchasing Rose International. I had come out here to talk to the Roses about it a couple of times over the past year. I offered them an inflated price on the stock. Carter wouldn’t hear of it; he had no interest in selling. Which didn’t surprise me, of course; the Roses were young, and the company was building. I just took a flyer, as it were. Nothing ventured . . .”

“And Gillian?”

“Gillian
did
surprise me. She said nothing during our meetings; Carter did all the talking. But later she flew to Baltimore to meet with me, alone. She had me sign an affidavit of confidentiality, then told me about her plan to divorce Carter. Let me know that there definitely
would
be a sale of the company, even though her husband didn’t know it yet. And she went on to tell me about a product she was developing.”

“That Carter also didn’t know about?”

“That Carter didn’t know about. She didn’t want him to know about it. After Rose International was sold, she planned to launch a new company with this product. She was convinced it was going to be a gold mine. But start-up costs—developing it and bringing it to market—are always very expensive. Her plan was to move back east, she said, leave this part of her life behind her. And she wanted me to be her partner. She wanted to use my company, my bricks and mortar, my distribution machinery, to get this product to a worldwide market. And in return, I would be half owner.”

“And you were interested?”

“Very. We entered into an agreement that was to go into effect upon the sale of Rose International. And I told her that I was, of course, still interested in purchasing the business, and keeping her, without Carter, at the helm for a period of time. That was fine with her. The company would need a buyer for Gillian to realize her half of the Rose assets, and I was a viable prospect. So here was an opportunity for me to accomplish two objectives: to buy Rose International, which was my initial aim, and to enter into a promising new venture with the creative half of the Rose company, Gillian Rose. But as you can imagine, at that point in our planning, secrecy was imperative.”

“How could a contract of that nature be kept secret from a man she was wed to both in business and in life?”

“Well, Gillian purposely had nothing concrete signed with William Schaeffer, just a letter of intent that she assured me wouldn’t surface. She said she needed to wait until her divorce was final before formally structuring the deal with Schaeffer, because when the lawyers did the forensic assets search as part of the divorce proceedings, any and all legal contracts would certainly turn up, as you suggest. And Carter would automatically become half owner of the project.”

“And what about
your
contract with Gillian? Wouldn’t that show up?”

“That didn’t matter. It was a simple agreement to partner on product development and production after Rose International was sold. There was no specific mention of the Schaeffer formula.”

“So, now?”

“So now, with Gillian dead, there’s no partnering in the offing, obviously. But I’d still like to buy Rose International. And I’d like to know who murdered Gillian.”

“Why? If it
was
murder, what would it have to do with you buying the company?”