The Chairman (31 page)

“Local guy fished him out of Lake McKenzie not more than a quarter of a mile from where the SUV was found,” Harper answered. “For this time of year, finding it was a million-to-one shot. The guy was doing some ice fishing and thought he’d hooked the biggest walleye of his life. Shook him up pretty bad when he saw an arm coming up through the hole instead of a fish.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Billups asked.

“Hand him over to the family. They’re coming up tomorrow.”

“How’d you identify him so fast?”

“His wallet was still on him.”

“And he was one of the guys shooting seismic up north?”

“Yep. In charge of it for Laurel Energy, according to his family.”

“So that was definitely this man’s SUV I just looked at over at Marcel’s garage?” Billups asked, thinking about how Marcel believed that someone had tampered with the truck.

“Yeah.”

“How do you think he got in the lake?” asked Billups.

“Put there.”

“How do you know?”

“With the ice as thick as it is right now, someone would have had to cut a hole in it to get a body in there,” Harper said confidently. “He wouldn’t have just fallen in. Highly unlikely in this scenario.”

“Aren’t there places where streams or rivers come into or leave the lake? Don’t those areas stay free of ice?”

“Yeah, at both ends of the lake. Unless it’s
really
cold. But the north end is a few miles from where his Explorer was found, and it’s through dense woods. I don’t see this guy leaving his truck to traipse through the woods. He’d stay on the road.”

“Is the south end closer?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How much?

“Not far from where the truck was parked.”

“So maybe he went in at the south end.”

Harper shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“The current flows north to south. I don’t think his body would have drifted
upstream.
”

“Uh-huh. Well, it’s possible he could have gotten lost in the storm and gone up to the north end. It was snowing, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Heavily.”

“So it’s possible?”

Harper moved up beside Billups. “It’s possible, but I really don’t think it happened that way. Like I said, I think somebody put him in the lake.” Harper pulled the blanket up from the side. “Look at this,” he said, pointing at the dead man’s fingers.

Billups glanced down. They were smashed. “Ah, Jesus. What happened?”

“Experience is everything in my line of work,” Harper said. “About four years ago, around this same time, a guy in town named Lennie Mitchell killed his wife. Tossed her in the lake through a hole he’d cut in the ice with a chain saw. Wanted it to look like she’d fallen in. Same way I think whoever killed this man did. Lennie’s wife was a loner. Liked to ice fish by herself. Lennie claimed she went up to the lake by herself one afternoon. Which she did a lot. I knew that. Trouble was, this time she didn’t come back.” Harper paused. “We found her at the south end of the lake a few weeks later and her fingers looked just like this. See, Lennie’d stepped on them over and over as she tried to pull herself out of the hole. He broke every one of them. He admitted that to me back there in the office one Sunday morning. He couldn’t lie to me anymore.” The wind made an eerie sound as it whipped through the shack’s eaves. It sounded like an animal in pain. “I bet if we were to go up to Lake McKenzie and look real hard, we’d find a depression in the ice. A place where somebody cut a hole in it to throw this guy in. It’ll already be iced over, but the depression should still be there.”

Billups stared at Harper. “Why would someone have killed him? You said his wallet was on him. Was there money in it?”

“Yeah. And credit cards. It wasn’t a robbery.”

“Then what was it?”

Harper shrugged. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Billups, I don’t have a damn clue.”

Gillette pushed open the bedroom door, expecting to see Isabelle’s form beneath the covers of the king-sized bed. But she wasn’t there. He glanced toward the bathroom. The door was closed. She had to be in there.

“Isabelle,” he called.

No answer.

“Isabelle.”

Still no answer.

Gillette moved slowly into the room, listening for sounds from the bathroom—running water, footsteps—but heard nothing.

“What the hell?”

As he turned back toward the door, he saw her, knife clenched in both hands. He reeled backward, hands to his face, yelling as she came at him.
“Jesus Christ! What are you doing?”

At that instant, Stiles burst into the room and grabbed Isabelle from behind just as she reached Gillette. They flew past him and tumbled to the floor. Seconds later, Stiles had the knife in one hand and Isabelle’s wrists clasped tightly together behind her back in the other.

Gillette’s cell phone rang. He glanced at Stiles, who was lounging on the couch, eyes closed. They’d moved back to the study after turning Isabelle over to the police. “Hello.”

“Christian?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Tom McGuire.”

“Hello, Tom.”

“How are you, Christian? Everything okay?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Just a question, Christian. That’s all.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, have you signed the deal with the investment bankers to do the IPO yet?” McGuire wanted to know.

“No.”

“Oh, great.”

Gillette heard relief in McGuire’s voice. “I’ll probably do that next week.”

“Let me talk to you one more time about buying the company before you do,” McGuire pleaded. “I have some ideas.”

What a traitor, Gillette thought to himself. He had no reason to doubt Faith. She’d saved his life. “I don’t think it’s worth either of our—”

“
Please,
Christian. Please. You owe me that much.”

“We’re too far apart in price.”

“Maybe not as far as you think. I’ve spoken to my backer and I think I can get him to come up.”

“To five hundred million?”

“I think so.”

“So talk.”

“No, not over the phone. I want to do it in person.”

“Why?”

“I want this to be face-to-face, man-to-man.”

“Where are you, Tom?”

“My house on Long Island. I hate to ask, but could you come out here? My wife’s going somewhere with her sister today, and I have the kids.”

“Tom, that’s really—”

“Christian, I haven’t asked for many favors over the last few years,” McGuire interrupted. “Vince and I have kept our heads down and done what you’ve asked. We’ve done pretty well, too. We’ve always delivered good numbers. Please. I really need to talk to you,” McGuire urged.

Stiles sat up slowly and stared at Gillette, able to hear McGuire pleading on the other end of the line.

“All right,” Gillette agreed, staring back at Stiles. “What time?”

“Two o’clock,” McGuire replied. “How about I e-mail you directions on how to get here?”

“Fine. How long’s the drive?”

“About an hour.”

Gillette hesitated. “Okay.”

“Thanks, Christian,” McGuire said graciously. “Really. Thank you very much.”

“It’s okay, Tom. I’ll see you then.”

“What did McGuire want?” Stiles asked when Gillette had hung up.

“To see me again about buying the company.”

“When does he want to see you?”

“Today.”

“What time?”

“Two o’clock. At his house.”

Stiles shook his head. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Gillette nodded. “Yeah, I am.” A setup all the way.

Stiles’s cell phone rang. He snatched it off the coffee table, checked the number, and answered. “Hello? Hey, Pepper. What?” Stiles was silent for a few moments, listening to Billups relate what he’d found out. “Really? Yeah. Okay, call me if there’s anything else.”

“What is it?” Gillette asked when Stiles had hung up.

“That was Pepper Billups,” Stiles replied. “The guy I sent to Canada to poke around, as you suggested.”

“Did he find anything?”

“Yeah. Apparently the guy who was in charge of the seismic shoot up there for Laurel Energy was definitely murdered.”

“Jesus.”

“The truck he was driving was tampered with,” Stiles continued, “and the cops are pretty certain he was thrown into some lake near where the truck was found.” Stiles put the phone back down on the coffee table. “Wasn’t that the guy who was bringing the seismic tapes back for analysis?”

Gillette nodded. “The tapes were recovered. There were some Laurel people a few hours behind the guy. They stopped when they saw his truck, got the tapes out of the front seat, looked around for him for a while, then reported him missing when they got to town.” He glanced out the window. Everything was falling into place. All he needed was one more piece of the puzzle.

“What is it?” Stiles asked, reading Gillette’s expression.

“It’s—” Gillette’s cell phone rang again. “Hello.”

“Christian, it’s Ben.”

“Hello, Ben,” Gillette said deliberately.

“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but these guys at Coyote Oil are really bugging me about moving forward.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and I think we should. I mean, they’ve agreed to our price.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well?”

“Well
what
?”

“Can I tell them we have a deal?”

“Yes,” Gillette agreed after a few moments.

“Great, thanks.”

“Sure.”

“You okay, Christian?” Cohen asked.

“Why?”

“You seem distracted.”

“I’m fine.”

Cohen hesitated. “All right. Talk to you later.”

“Yeah, later.” Gillette ended the call, then dialed Heidi Franklin’s number at Everest. “Heidi? Yes, hello. Look, I’m sorry to make you go into Everest on a weekend, but it was very important. Right.” He hesitated, gazing intently at Stiles as the young woman told him it wasn’t a problem because she only lived a few blocks from the offices. “Did you check it out, Heidi? Were you able to find it? Oh, that’s great. And how long does he have?” Gillette nodded. “Thirty days.” That would explain why they’d had to start the Coyote Oil process so soon.

At a few minutes before one o’clock, Gillette moved out of the elevator and headed through the lobby toward a limousine waiting on Fifth Avenue to take him to Tom McGuire’s house on Long Island. Halfway across the lobby, one of Stiles’s men fell in beside him. Stiles was taking absolutely no chances at this point.

After hanging up with Heidi Franklin, Gillette had told Stiles his theory about what had happened in Canada. That the tapes the Laurel Energy men had recovered from the front seat of the Explorer abandoned near Lake McKenzie on their way back from the oil fields weren’t authentic, that they had been put there to be found by whomever had tampered with the Explorer and murdered the man found in Lake McKenzie by the fisherman. These tapes told a very different story from the ones the men who had murdered the Explorer’s driver had stolen.

Gillette believed that Laurel Energy had stumbled onto a
huge
field with the option properties—and the executives at Coyote Oil knew it. That they were behind the incident at Lake McKenzie. They and their backers. Which was why they were so hot to get the transaction moving, why they were willing to pay what U.S. Petroleum was willing to pay despite the fact that the tapes left in the Explorer showed that there wasn’t much of anything in the ground up there.

Gillette had also told Stiles he was convinced that Ben Cohen was involved. He’d told Stiles how Heidi Franklin had checked the Everest Capital operating agreement and confirmed that, upon the death of the chairman, the chief operating officer would assume control of Everest for a period of thirty days. The reason it hadn’t happened after Donovan’s death was because there
had been no chief operating officer
at that point. Donovan had never appointed one. Thus the need for a quick chairman vote three days after Donovan’s death.

If Gillette was out of the way, Cohen would be in control for thirty days. But that might not be enough time to get the Laurel deal with Coyote done before his term was up and someone was elected chairman. Maybe not enough time to get all the necessary approvals. Which was why they’d started the process now, before Cohen’s thirty days had begun to tick.

The burning question was, who were ‘they’? Strazzi was dead. His wallet was gone but McGuire was still working. As was Isabelle. He could send Faith to McGuire to try to figure out who was pulling the strings, but that would put her in terrible danger. McGuire was sharp. He’d wonder why Faith had dropped out of sight for two days only to reappear asking lots of questions.

Before leaving his apartment to come downstairs, Gillette had called the senior partner at the engineering firm in Texas that had performed the original analysis of the tapes found in the Explorer. He’d directed the partner to have the seismic tests reshot, this time under intense security. To have armed guards present while it was being done, and to have the guards bring the tapes back to the engineering firm from Canada. To keep the tapes under lock and key, with one person guarding the lock and another guarding the key. To spare no expense to make certain the same thing didn’t happen again. The partner promised to have the shoot redone within thirty days, and to make the circle of people involved much smaller this time.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Thanks.” Gillette nodded to the doorman as he headed out of the lobby. It had warmed up overnight. At one in the afternoon, there was bright sunshine and it was more than sixty degrees. Gillette took a deep breath of fresh air as he headed down the steps, then checked warily up and down Fifth Avenue. Stiles’s man in the lobby was beside him and there were two more men by the waiting limousine.

Vince McGuire sat in the front seat of a sedan with one of his men, watching the entrance to Gillette’s apartment building. They were both smoking, front windows rolled down in the warm weather.

“Hey, here he comes.” Vince nudged the driver as Gillette came through the doorway and moved down the steps. “Don’t lose his limo on the way out to Tom’s house,” he warned. “You hear me?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

As Gillette reached the bottom step, one of the two men standing by the limousine suddenly pulled a pistol from his shoulder holster, aimed it at the other guard’s chest, and squeezed the trigger. Then, before the man next to Gillette could react, the shooter turned the gun on him and fired, putting him down with one shot, too.