In Self Defense (4 page)

The publishing company occupied the entire building, the top two floors of which were devoted to the editorial and business functions, while the bottom two had been turned over to production.

Dusty and Erin stepped out of the elevator onto the third floor, and as they had been instructed, made their way, as inconspicuously as possible, along aged but well-maintained hardwood floors, through a maze of corridors, to an office near the far end.

“Clare Durant?” Erin inquired softly.

A woman, not much older than the detective, whose photograph was frequently seen in the society pages of all the local newspapers in connection with one charitable organization or another, looked up.

“Yes?”

“I’m Detective Erin Hall and this is Detective Dusty Grissom from the Seattle Police,” Erin said.  “We’re responding to a report about harassing phone calls.”

Clare’s eyes widened in surprise and then she turned and glared at Nina across the way.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “There’s been a mistake.  You really didn’t have to come here.  This has nothing to do with you.  What I mean is, it’s not important enough for you to have wasted your time.”

“If you’re being harassed, it could be very important, and you must have thought so when you called,” Dusty told her.

“I’m the one who called you, Detective,” Nina said, stepping out of her office and crossing the corridor.  “Someone
is
harassing her, it’s been going on for weeks now, and whether she wants to admit it or not, it’s got her scared out of her mind.”

The two police officers looked at Nina, then at each other, and then back at Clare.  “Perhaps if you tell us what this is all about, Mrs. Durant,” Erin prompted, “we can help you sort it out.”

Clare made a face at Nina, who showed no sign of backing down.  “All right,” she said with a sigh because she clearly had no choice.  “The first time he called was about three weeks ago.  He asked to speak to someone I’d never heard of.  I told him he had the wrong number, and I didn’t know the person he was trying to reach.  But then he said he liked the sound of my voice, so maybe he’d talk to me instead.  I told him that I was sorry but I wouldn’t be able to help him with anything, and I hung up.  He called back five minutes later.”

“And from then on, he’s been calling her every day,” Nina put in.  “At least several times a day.”

“What do you do here at Thornburgh House, Mrs. Durant?” Dusty inquired.

“I’m an editor,” Clare replied.  “In the fiction division.”

“Does the person calling you call you by name?”

Clare nodded.  “Yes, he does.”

“Do you recall, at any time, ever telling this person your name?” Erin wanted to know.

“No, I never told him my name,” Clare replied.  “But we have direct lines here, and I answer my own phone.”

“How do you answer it?”

Clare shrugged and then looked at the detectives a little sheepishly.  “I say my name.”

“Also, you keep referring to the caller as ‘he’ and ‘him,’” Dusty observed.  “Does that mean you’re sure it’s a man?  It couldn’t be a woman, or even a child?”

“Well, the voice has an odd sort of sound to it, as though it might not be his real voice, but it’s too deep for a woman, so I assume it’s a man,” Clare said.  “But how old he is, I couldn’t guess.”

“And, so far, it’s just been telephone calls?” Dusty asked.  “He hasn’t tried to make a date with you or get you to meet him in person anywhere?”

“No, he hasn’t.”  Clare opened her mouth and then closed it again.

“You wanted to say something else, Mrs. Durant?” Erin prompted.

“He knows what I look like,” Clare said after a moment.

“How do you know that?”

“Because today he said that my eyes were brown and my hair was blonde.  And then he said I looked pretty in blue.”

The two detectives exchanged glances.  “Mrs. Durant, we’d like you to make a list, if you would,” Dusty said.  “Of all the people you know that you think might want to play this sort of prank on you.”

Clare looked at them, clearly aghast.  “You think that someone I know would do this to me?” she asked.  “You think I could know anyone who would think this was funny?”

“Well, that’s the first thing we’ll want to eliminate,” Erin said smoothly.  “Once we determine that we’re not dealing with someone who’s just playing a very bad joke on you, we can begin to look elsewhere.  Perhaps you know of a person that feels you may have wronged him in some way?  You, or your husband?”

Clare blinked.  “You don’t think this could be connected to Richard, do you?”

“If someone is angry at your husband, it’s not beyond reason to think that he may try to retaliate by targeting the person closest to him,” Dusty told her.

“I never thought of that,” Clare murmured.  “And we have children!  All right.  It might take me some time, but I’ll get you a list of everyone I can think of, if just to assure you that it isn’t any of them.”

“I don’t know if it means anything or not, but she had a very bad accident a few months ago,” Nina said suddenly.  “Then the calls started -- I don’t think it was even as much as a week after she came back to work.”

“Is that so?” Erin asked.

“Yes, it is,” Clare admitted.  “But I don’t see how the two could be connected.  I was alone with my family at the time of that accident.  There was no one else around.”

“There may not be any connection,” Erin said.  “But it helps to know everything going in.”

“What sort of accident was it?” Dusty inquired.

“She was hiking in the Olympics and she slipped and fell down the mountain,” Nina said before Clare could respond.

“Well, not all the way down,” Clare corrected her.  “Only about a hundred and fifty feet.”

“Even so, that must have been pretty scary,” Erin said.

“Yes, it was,” Clare confirmed.  Scary and painful and heartbreaking, she thought.  “But as Nina said, it was just an accident.  It isn’t likely that it could have anything to do with this.”

“Probably not,” Erin conceded.

              “It was good that your friend here called us,” Dusty added, nodding in Nina’s direction.  “There are some pretty deranged people around these days, and there are a lot of friends who wouldn’t have stuck their necks out to try and help.”

“Look, I’d really prefer if you didn’t have to involve my husband in any of this,” Clare said, as the two detectives turn to leave.  “It’s an especially busy time for him at work right now, and I don’t want him having to worry about me.  In the overall scheme of things, what’s going on here isn’t very important, and there’s no reason why we would have to bother him with it, is there?”  It wasn’t a question.  “I’d rather you keep him out of it.”

It had been a horrible summer.  Clare in leg and arm casts and shoulder sling, unable to do much but stay at home, with too much time to think.  And Richard, hovering, controlling conversation, telling everyone who would listen that he was to blame, that it was his fault for not being able to prevent her accident.

“Well, for the time being, it can stay just between us,” Dusty said.  “We’ll talk again when we know more.”

***

“What do you think?” Erin asked, as they made their way out of the maze and back toward the elevator.

“I think the friend is right,” Dusty replied.  “I think she’s one scared lady.”

“Hmmm,” Erin murmured thoughtfully.

“What?”

“I don’t know, there was a moment there,” she said.  “I guess it made me wonder if she might be more afraid of our telling the husband than she is of the caller.”

“You think there could be some reason she doesn’t want him to know?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Is that your woman’s intuition talking?  Or do you happen to have prior knowledge?”

Erin looked at her partner in surprise.  “Don’t you know who she is?”

Dusty looked blank.  “Clare Durant?”

“Nicolaidis Industries.”

“Of course,” he said, snapping his fingers.  “I didn’t make the connection.”

“You mean you don’t read the society pages.”

“That, too.”

“Not that it makes any difference,” Erin said.  “Whether we involve the husband or not, we have to find this guy.  Because I have a feeling this isn’t just about phone calls.”

“No,” Dusty agreed.  “And he didn’t call her by mistake that first time, either.  He knew what number he was dialing.  And more important, I think he’s close.”

Erin nodded.  “That’s what I think, too.  So where do you want to start?”

“She’ll get us her list, but I think we should start with everyone in the building,” Dusty said.  “She seems sure it’s a guy’s voice, but I wouldn’t be too quick to eliminate anyone just yet.  And then, she’s an editor, so we should get a list of all her authors, both past and present.  And if it’s possible, we should take a look at the wannabes she’s turned down over the years, just to see if any of them might be holding a grudge.”

They stopped at the reception desk on the first floor.

“Excuse me,” Dusty said, showing his badge to the same woman who had directed them to the elevator.  “We’re going to need a complete list of all your employees, as well as some of your past and present clients.  How would we go about getting that information?”

The receptionist blinked.  No one had ever asked for that before.  “I don’t know,” she replied.  “You’d have to ask Human Resources, I guess.”

“Will you call someone for us, please?” Dusty requested politely.

An hour later, after the human resources manager, the corporate counsel, and Glenn Thornburgh, the head of the firm, himself, had all weighed in on the propriety and the legality of releasing private information, the two detectives were on their way, armed with the names, addresses, and telephone and social security numbers of the one hundred and twelve employees of Thornburgh House, as well as a list of all of Clare Durant’s present and past authors.  A list of those whose manuscripts she has rejected over the last four years was going to take a little longer to come by.

***

Clare sat at her desk, trying to work, but she was barely able to make out the words on the pages in front of her.  She was, she thought, understandably upset.  This whole thing had gone too far already and now threatened to spiral out of control.  What had been a private matter had become a matter of public record. 

It was one thing for Nina and Anne-Marie to know about the caller.  But now the police were going to involve everyone she knew or had ever known, her friends and associates . . . her coworkers . . . her clients.  And that was decidedly unnerving.

She knew enough to know that things like this had a way of growing wings.  And usually did.  To prove her point, a reporter from the
Seattle Times
who covered the police beat, telephoned just after lunch.  It was a short conversation, and on the whole, not a particularly polite one.  In fact, it was the first time in her life that she had ever been rude to a member of the media.

Already, she regretted speaking to the police.

While Clare Durant went to great pains to keep her personal life private, to a great extent, she and her husband lived in the limelight.  As a result, her reputation in the community was important.  Her present situation was not something she wanted strangers to paw over, or gossips to whisper about.  No, this was definitely not the way she wanted things to be handled.  Not at all.

***

“If you were having a problem, I wish you’d come to me,” Glenn Thornburgh told her.  “We’re family here.  We help each another.”

“I didn’t think it had anything to do with the firm,” Clare replied, acutely uncomfortable.  “That’s why I didn’t mention it.”

“Well, I hope you’re right, and I hope this whole thing can be cleared up quickly and quietly,” Thornburgh said.  “You’re far too valuable an employee here, you know, and I wouldn’t want anything to interfere with your excellent work.”

Glenn Thornburgh was a rather formal man, and this was the first time in a long time that Clare could remember him ever saying anything to her about the quality of her performance.

“I appreciate that, and I’m sure this will all go away soon,” she murmured.  “But even so, I promise that I won’t let it interfere in any way with my doing my job.”

“That goes without saying,” Thornburgh assured her kindly enough.

Clare currently handled six writers.  They were not necessarily the high visibility authors that the bigwig editors liked to keep for themselves, perhaps, but they were among what were called the bread-and-butter writers, the ones who churned out mid-list books on a regular basis and whose earnings could be counted on to pay the bills, month in and month out.  And Clare had been keeping them happy for four years now.

“I thought Thorny was going to fire me on the spot for causing trouble,” she told Nina later, using the nickname some of the employees had for the head of the company.

“Now why would he do that?” Nina responded.  “You didn’t start this.”

“Maybe not,” Clare conceded, “but I feel as though it’s my fault.”

“Poppycock!”  Nina was adamant.  “Whatever is going on here, this guy is preying on
you
-- not the other way around -- and don’t you forget that.”