Money To Burn (10 page)
Authors: Katy Munger
Talbot examined the card without comment imeout comand slid it back toward me. “How the hell can I help? I barely knew Nash.”
I remained calm, even though he was talking to me like I was a junkyard dog who had wandered in to chew on his carpet. At least I wasn’t married to the jerk. What did I care if he was an asshole whose self-esteem depended on how many people he could terrify in any given day?
“I understand you knew the deceased,” I said pleasantly. “That you had several conversations with him in the weeks prior to his death?”
Randolph Talbot was glaring at me, having switched from trying to intimidate me with his voice to trying to intimidate me with his burning eyes. He was good at it. He made Charles Manson look like Mr. Magoo. But I just smiled with even more pleasant determination and waited until he gave up.
“Where did you hear that?” he finally barked.
“Does it matter? Did you speak to him?”
“You’re not the police,” he said.
“No, I’m not.” I paused. “Maybe they would be interested in knowing about it. I haven’t told them yet.”
It took about three seconds for him to weigh the implications of my remark. “I spoke to him several times,” he admitted. “About matters that had nothing to do with his death, I’m sure.”
“What did you speak about?” I inquired politely.
He hesitated again, using each silence as a symbol of his disapproval—and as a way to let me know that he didn’t have to answer my questions, that he was merely humoring me because I wasn’t worth the bother of confronting. “We talked about a number of things,” he hedged.
“Like the recent harassment against him?” I suggested.
“As a matter of fact, yes.” He glanced at his watch impatiently. “In fact, I called him after I heard through the grapevine that he was having trouble. I assured him that, under no circumstances, was T&T behind it. He believed me.”
“Lucky for you,” I observed.
“We were not behind it,” Talbot snapped. “The day we’re reduced to pulling stupid stunts like that is the day I get out of this business. In fact, after my conversation with Nash, I sent out a confidential memo to our security people and all high-ranking executives outlining the situation and making it very clear that I personally abhorred it facabhorreand wanted to be immediately informed if anyone heard anything indicating who might be behind the harassment of Nash.”
“Just in case one of your henchmen was being over-zealous?” I asked.
He stared at my boobs, another ploy men use to intimidate the shit out of women. But I was wearing the equivalent of female armor: my underwire, reinforced spandex Warner bra and, believe me, it could withstand a lot more than dirty looks from dirty old men. I sat quietly, smiling back.
“Exactly,” he finally said. “I’m not going to screw around with this. If I say T&T had nothing to do with the harassment of Thomas Nash, you better believe that’s the truth. No one runs this company but me.”
“When did this confidential memo go out?”
“About a month ago. Don’t look to us for the trouble.”
I wasn’t planning to. A month ago was two weeks before Nash’s death. That was plenty enough time for his underlings to get the word. Yet the attacks on Nash had continued. He was probably telling the truth.
“I guess the Durham cops have talked to you?” I said.
He eyed me carefully. “They have not. I had my lawyer contact the police, to inform them of what I just told you and to offer to be of any assistance. They have yet to request further information from either me or T&T.”
“I guess they’re more trusting than I am,” I offered.
“Or smarter,” he said.
I shrugged, perfectly happy to accept his implied insult. This annoyed him.
“You a dyke?” he asked suddenly. “You’re built like one.”
“No,” I answered in my deepest voice. “Just a red-blooded, man-loving American girl blessed with big bones and a fondness for hand weights.” I did not add that only
a moron would think dykes came solely in extra-large. Lord, had America learned nothing from the endless hype surrounding “Ellen”?
He grunted and looked at his watch. “One more minute,” he warned me.
“About your daughter,” I began.
His head whipped up and he glared at me.
“I assume you know she was involved with Thomas Nash,” I said. My pulse beat faster in spite of my efforts to remain cool. His eyes burned bright when he was mad and I hoped I had not underestimated him. The .44 was, after all, only a drawer away.
“How much do you know about that?” he demanded.
“I know they were engaged. Did you?”
He stared at me for a moment before replying. “Of course I did. Do you think a daughter of mine could go out in public with someone and I not know? I have people everywhere who report back to me on what my children do. I don’t like surprises. But this thing with Nash was just more of Lydia’s nonsense, like trying to save the children of Guatemala. She was only doing it to spite me.”
“You don’t think they were in love?” I asked.
“Oh, he was in love,” Talbot said with a pitying laugh. “Like a dozen men before him. Very in love.”
Suddenly, I understood. “I see,” I said quietly. “Nash called you to let you know that his intentions toward your daughter were honorable and you managed to let him know, without ever coming out and saying it, that the price of your daughter’s hand was for him to drop his lawsuit against your company. Or perhaps I should say, lawsuits.”
Talbot stared at me, his expression a cross between anger and admiration. “Not bad,” he said. “That’s close. You want a job?”
“Working for you? No,” I assured him. “You had a number of good reasons for wanting Nash dead. Surely the police realize that.”
“What the police realize, young lady, is that Thomas Nash had dropped his suit asking for more Clean Smoke royalties. And he’d withdrawn the harassment charges before that.”
“What about the Hargett case?” I demanded. “The one involving marketing to underage smokers? Nash was going to testify against you on that one. He told me so himself.”
His smile was reptilian. “He changed his mind. The Hargett case was settled the day Nash died. As was the Clean Smoke suit. His testimony was moot.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“See for yourself.” He pulled out two signed contracts from a file drawer and showed them to me. The first was an agreement signed by Thomas Nahisby Thomsh dated the day he had died. It said that Nash was dropping his request for more Clean Smoke royalties in exchange for the princely sum of one hundred dollars.
The second agreement had been signed by Horace Hargett and his son days before Nash’s death, though Randolph Talbot’s signature was dated the day Tom died. I thought I knew to the hour when Talbot had signed it. I had followed Nash to the T&T building his last afternoon and seen him go inside. Nash must have visited Talbot right after Donald Teasdale, in his stupidity, had turned down his offer to settle the Clean Smoke suit.
Randolph Talbot was smarter than Teasdale. He had killed two lawsuits with one stone, agreeing to give the Hargetts money but only if Nash dropped the Clean Smoke suit first.
I scanned the Hargett agreement. In it, the Hargetts agreed to drop the lawsuit pending against T&T in exchange for a two-million-dollar settlement, to be paid directly to the family within three days. The lawyer’s cut would be paid separately on top of the two million. That much money was peanuts to someone like Talbot, but it was a fortune to a poor mountain family faced with astronomical medical bills. Nash knew that, and that was why he had accepted Talbot’s terms.
“You are a piece of work,” I told him. “Not only did you use your own daughter as a hostage, you used those poor cancer-ridden hillbillies as bargaining chips to force a decent man into silence. What did you do? Offer to settle with the Hargetts only if Nash dropped the Clean Smoke suit?”
Talbot smiled and raised his eyebrows, hands folded smugly. “Once you know a man’s weakness, you’re halfway to beating him at his game. Thomas Nash had a serious weakness for justice. All I did was use it to my advantage.”
I thought I knew Randolph Talbot’s one weakness and I had an urge to use it right then and there. “Pretty bad planning on your part, wasn’t it?” I said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“If you’d only waited one more day, Nash would have been dead anyway. He couldn’t have testified. You paid the Hargetts two million for nothing.”
His smile faded. I had hit him the only place it hurt— his wallet. “At least it proves my innocence,” he said.
“Sure. But you could have gotten a damn good lawyer for two million dollars.”
His eyes narrowed. Two little tusks and he’d have made a good warthog. “Are we done here?” he demanded.
“Almost,” I promised. “I just need to know if you opposed Nash marr0” ed Nashying your daughter.”
“Opposed it?” His smile returned, twice as smug as before. “I applauded it. It solved a lot of my problems. Once he was in the family, it would just be a matter of time before I brought his company back into the fold.”
“You were going to let him develop his new curing process and then buy him out?” I guessed.
Talbot shrugged. “Best way to get innovation—go out and buy it. He would have sold out to me, I have no doubt about it. Him and that partner of his.”
“Franklin Cosgrove,” I offered.
Talbot nodded. “Cosgrove’s a whore. Always was. The best way to his heart is though his bank account. Just in case you’re interested.” He smirked and stared at my chest some more. Why did I have the feeling that there weren’t a whole hell of a lot of female executives running around T&T?
“I’m not interested in anything about Cosgrove,” I assured him. “Except whether or not he killed Thomas Nash.”
Talbot shook his head. “Cosgrove had ten million reasons for wanting Nash to stay alive. I hear everything Nash was working on went up in smoke. All his files, all his research, everything.”
So Talbot’s information was even better than mine. It didn’t surprise me. “It’s a shame about his work being wiped out,” I remarked.
“More than a shame,” Talbot pointed out. “No one else is even remotely approaching his methods. This industry needs a future.”
“Did your daughter know you approved of her engagement?” I asked, wondering if Lydia had been lying to me.
Talbot laughed. “Hell, no. She’d have lost interest immediately. I know my daughter. Little Miss Rebel. I had to rant and rave against her even seeing him and hide that I knew they were engaged. I told Nash not to tell her that I even knew, for the time being at least, while I pretended to think it over. Otherwise, she’d have lost interest in him. Lydia’s rather predictable, once you get to know her. Like most people.”
I wondered if he had been able to predict that Lydia would ask me to prove whether or not he was responsible for her fiancée’s murder.
“I have to disagree,” I said politely. “In my experience, people are inherently unpredictable. That’s what keeps me in business. I find it hard to believe that you know your daughter as well as you think you do.”
The corners of his mouth twitched as he thought something over and I wondered what he was up to. “Why don’t you meet her and find out for yourself?” he suggested. “I’m giving a dinner party tonight. You must come. It will give you a chance to meet Lydia and ask her all the questions you like about Nash. And you might meet some other people who could help in your investigation. When it comes to tobacco, Durham is a small town. Most of the people who really count in the industry end up eating around my table.”
Gathering at the trough, no doubt. But I knew he had other motives for inviting me into his home. Randolph Talbot was like a human X-ray machine. The whole time I had been sitting in his office, trying my best to look unfazed and competent, his shark’s brain had been sniffing out my weakness. And he had found it. Maybe it was the slight Florida cracker accent that gave me away, or my discomfort with his expensive chair, my worn boots, maybe even just the way I wore my clothes. Who knows? But he had definitely ferreted out that I had been born and raised poor—and that the prospect of sitting down at a dinner table with people who had money might scare the shit out of me. I hated him because he was right. He had found a way to intimidate me.
I was determined not to let him win.
“I’d love to come,” I lied.
When you’re raised within spitting distance of a swamp by an old man who has never even left the rural center of Florida, table manners are the last thing on the list of skills to learn. My grandpa taught me how to shoot, how to skin a squirrel and six different ways to get the catfish biting in the dead of summer. But he damn sure never taught me the difference between a salad and dessert fork. I was in over my head and I knew it.
If I couldn’t act the part, I could at least look it. After all, that’s the American way. It was only half past three. I had plenty of time to prepare.
I headed to a new thrift shop on University Drive and found a light blue raw silk pants suit for twenty bucks and a pair of almost matching heels that would do nicely. Then I hit the cosmetic aisle at Eckerd’s and bought myself some new hair dye and makeup that was a little more subtle than my usual in-your-face shades. Finally, I spent a few minutes at a book store thumbing through Emily Post. I felt a little better by the time I left. I’d start from the outside of the silverware and work my way in. Unless they served snails, I’d be okay. No way I was swallowing the first cousin to a slug.
