Muzzled

by David Rosenfelt

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “Good. I was afraid you were investing in their IPO. I don’t want you to become one of those friends I have to loan money to.”

  “Do you know the top guy there? Eric Buckner? I met with him.”

  Robby shakes his head. “I’ve met him, but I don’t know much about him. He’s a science guy who thinks he knows finance. You can count the number of science guys who really understand money on very few fingers.”

  “Bill Gates.”

  “He’s one of the fingers.”

  “Buckner said I could talk to whoever I wanted in the company.”

  “Then go see the CFO, Gerald Bennings. He knows what he’s talking about, at least compared to Buckner.”

  I thank Robby and leave, a little disappointed. I was hoping that huge money was to be made at Pharmacon. Vogel and the two victims worked there, and it is not rare to find murders connected in some fashion to the chance to get rich.

  Robby has seemed to dampen that possibility, if not killing it entirely. I would have been better off talking about the Cubs.

  “It was like watching a slow-motion train wreck.” Linda D’Antoni is talking about her late sister, Carla. “But there was no way to stop it from happening. It’s the worst, most frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced, and nothing is in second place.”

  We’re talking in the downstairs cafeteria in Hackensack Hospital, where Linda works as an intensive-care nurse. She’s just finished her shift and looks exhausted, but is obviously anxious to talk about her sister.

  “Tell me about her.” I want to hear the general before I ask the specific; I find I learn more that way.

  “That’s not the easiest thing to do. There were two Carlas; she was one person and then she was another. Looking back, I still can’t believe it.”

  Linda shakes her head in sadness at the memory. “We lived together in a house in Leonia when we moved here, close to five years ago. Then, all of a sudden, she moved out. Said it had nothing to do with me; she just wanted to live on her own. She said she needed her space. So she rented a studio apartment in Lyndhurst. Can you imagine? She took a studio apartment because she needed space. I still don’t know what was going on with her.”

  “Maybe a boyfriend?”

  “No maybe about it, but it was more than one. She started going out a lot, hanging out with people she never would have hung out with before. I guess there was a quality about Carla that enjoyed some danger, living on the edge a bit, but she always kept that under control. That changed.”

  “Did she talk about her boyfriends?”

  “Why do you want to know all this stuff?”

  It took her longer to ask the question than I had expected. “I have a client who is accused of murder. I think the people that actually committed the murder may have been Carla’s killers as well. I’m just trying to put together as much information as I can.”

  Linda considers this for a few moments. “Okay. Maybe you can get somewhere. The police don’t seem to be making any progress. She mentioned a few boyfriends in passing, mostly just first names.”

  “Any you can remember?”

  “Chuck … Danny … Joseph … Rick … she mentioned Rick a few times. I can’t think of any others.”

  “Alex?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did she say Joseph’s last name?”

  “You mean because of that media story about Joseph Russo? I read about that in the paper, but Carla never mentioned any last name. There’s one other thing.…”

  “What’s that?”

  “In those last couple of months, Carla all of a sudden had money. I don’t know where she got it from, but she was buying things, picking up checks. I never asked her how; I think I was afraid to.”

  “Do you know where she got the money?”

  “No, but she wasn’t hiding it. She even told me she would give me stock tips.” Linda shakes her head sadly again; I have a feeling she does that a lot these days. “She never got to do that, or a lot of other things.”

  “Where did she work?”

  “She was a hairstylist, a really good one. But that’s not where she got her money. When she died, I called the salon to make sure they knew what happened, and they told me she hadn’t been there for three weeks. Never called and told them why and never told me anything about it.”

  “Where are her things?”

  “At my place. I packed up her apartment, but haven’t gone through them yet. I’m working up the nerve.”

  “If you find anything that might relate to what was happening in her life, I would appreciate your telling me. You should tell the police is well.”

  Linda takes a deep breath, as if girding herself for the ordeal of going through her sister’s things. “I will. I should have done it already. And if you learn anything about what happened to her, will you tell me?”

  “I will.”

  She stands to leave, but then stops. “She was my little sister and no matter what, my best friend. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that she’s gone.”

  There’s nothing that I can say that will make Linda feel better, so I don’t try.

  She has told me a few interesting things. One is that Carla was dating fairly indiscriminately. Vogel seemed to think they had a more significant relationship, and he was apparently wrong about that. She also didn’t have a particularly special connection to Russo either, if Linda’s comments are to be taken at face value.

  Much more interesting is Carla’s apparently coming into some money not long before she died. This case might ultimately come down to money, so if someone was giving a bunch of it to Carla, then that person would be of interest to me.

  There could be a benign explanation for it. Maybe one of her boyfriends just gave her money because he liked her or was showing off. So what? It happens all the time and is rarely sinister.

  One thing is curious, at least to me. While Linda said that Carla never mentioned Alex Vogel, Pete Stanton knew about the relationship. He even made a veiled threat to charge Vogel with Carla’s murder. Clearly he didn’t hear about it from Linda, so I would like to know who his source was. It might be significant. Or not.

  The bottom line is that I’ve gotten some insight into Carla from Linda, maybe even a lot, but not nearly enough.

  There’s one way to rectify that, and I should have done it a while ago. I call Sam and tell him to get on checking out Carla D’Antoni.

  “Okay, good timing. I’m just wrapping up the work on Phillips and Bledsoe’s burner phones. As soon as I’m finished, I’ll start on this.”

  “There’s a bunch of pancakes in it for you if you come up with something good.”

  I had called to try to set up a meeting with Gerald Bennings.

  He’s the CFO at Pharmacon, and Robby said he was the guy I should talk to there. Robby seemed to imply that Bennings was not a complete idiot, which represents a ringing endorsement coming from Robby.

  I mentioned Robby’s name when I called, and I suggested that Bennings could check about me with his boss, Eric Buckner. After all, Buckner had said he would give his okay for his employees to meet with me.

  Checking with Buckner turned out not to be necessary for Bennings; that I knew Robby was enough to get me in the door. And that is where I am now … in the door. More specifically, I am in Bennings’s office at Pharmacon.

  “I’m surprised Robby suggested you talk to me,” Bennings says. “I assumed he was pissed at me.”

  “Maybe he is and saw talking to me as getting his revenge. But why would he be pissed at you?”

  “Because he couldn’t get in on the IPO; he looked at it too late.”

  Robby told me he had no interest in buying into Pharmacon, and Bennings is implying otherwise. I don’t care who is telling the truth, but I suspect it’s Robby.

  “He told me he thinks you should wait to go public, that you’re pricing too low.”

  Bennings smiles. “Robby l
ives in a world where having enough capital is not a problem. If he were sitting behind this desk, and if he didn’t personally have a basket full of billions, he might view things differently.”

  “When is the IPO?”

  “I actually can’t talk about it. We’re in the quiet period.”

  I have no idea what a quiet period is, but I think I’ll try to use one on Hike. “What can you tell me about Alex Vogel, Stephen Mellman, and Robert Giarrusso?”

  “Salt of the earth, all three of them. They did their jobs, did them well, and always had a good attitude. It’s horrible what happened, but the police have it wrong. There is no way Alex Vogel should be in jail.”

  That’s exactly what his boss, Buckner, said. I wish I could get them on the jury. “Stephen Mellman worked for you?”

  Bennings nods. “Yes, so I definitely knew him better than Alex and Robert. None of them will be easy to replace.”

  “Would Mellman have been involved in setting up the IPO?”

  “In the very early stages, but most of the work was done after he died.”

  “Buckner told me he assumes the three of them were planning to leave and start their own company.”

  Bennings shrugs. “Certainly could be. Happens every day.”

  “Any idea why they would do that? Did they think things were not promising here?”

  “I have no idea what they thought about our prospects. Most likely Giarrusso was working on a new drug idea that the three of them thought they could capitalize on. With Vogel in research, Giarrusso handing the science, and Mellman raising the money, they would have thought they had all their bases covered.”

  “Could it have worked?”

  “Depending on the drug, and depending on how much money they could raise, which would in turn depend on the drug.” Then, “It’s not an easy business, but everyone wants to take their shot.”

  “Can you think of any reason anyone in your world might have thought of them, or Alex Vogel in particular, as enemies?”

  Bennings considers the possibility for a few moments, then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, no.”

  “Do the names Charlie Phillips and Orlando Bledsoe mean anything to you?”

  Another shake of the head. “No. Who are they?”

  “It’s who ‘were’ they. They’re both murder victims.”

  He half recoils. “And are they also involved in this case?”

  “Could be. Welcome to my world.”

  “And I thought this was a tough business. I’ll ask around, but I never heard of them.”

  “Thanks. Good luck.”

  “You mean with the IPO?”

  I put my fingers to my lips. “Shhh … quiet period.”

  It was a typical morning for Jeremy Bowers, and that was the problem.

  Every day was almost identical to the one before, and the one before that, going back the eight years since Bowers had arrived at Strickland Laboratories in Monticello, New York.

  He had received a number of promotions, culminating in his ascension to lab director three and a half years ago. But basically the job had not changed; there were no ups or downs, no new challenges.

  Bowers had kept up with the changes that technology had brought, and he rightfully believed that Strickland Labs was as modern and competent as anything the big cities had to offer. But that didn’t help with daily drudgery.

  Bowers just showed up, did his job, and did it well.

  Day after day after day.

  That is why every free moment he had was spent in the woodworking shop he built for himself at home. That was his true love, and his hope and expectation was that in the not-too-distant future it would become his occupation. He would open a store and sell the furniture that he made.

  But until then he did his job conscientiously, as rote as it was. Even lunch hour was the same. He always ate with his second-in-command, Allen Julian, in the building cafeteria. Strickland Labs shared it with an accounting firm; each company occupied half of the six-story building.

  Julian had arrived at the company three years earlier and quickly rose to the number two position. He was clearly Bowers’s chosen successor, though nothing indicated that the transfer would take place anytime soon.

  The two men rarely talked about work during lunch; discussing bacteria cultures was just not that interesting. So they talked sports or politics or whatever else came up as the subject of the day. Mostly sports; Bowers was a Yankee fan, and Julian preferred the Mets, so Bowers usually had the upper hand when it came to competitive comparisons.

  Despite the time they spent together at lunches, Bowers knew little about Julian. He knew Julian was competent at his job and more familiar with modern techniques than Bowers himself.

  But he had no idea the extent of Julian’s ambition and how he had long been angling to remove Bowers and take over his position. Bowers was also completely unaware that Julian was having an affair with Bowers’s wife. These are the kinds of things that Julian understandably did not raise at lunch.

  They had a routine; since it was cafeteria-style, one of them would go on the food line and get the meals for both of them. The other would get the drinks, and they’d meet at their regular table.

  Today, Bowers got the food and Julian took care of the drinks. They then ate in relative silence; what talking they did was about baseball and what the New York teams might do at the trade deadline.

  After lunch they went back to their respective offices. Julian could then do nothing but wait for what he knew was about to happen.

  Somewhere around three o’clock, he would get a call from a panicked coworker that Bowers had collapsed. Julian would rush over and watch the medical personnel frantically and unsuccessfully try to resuscitate his fallen boss.

  An ambulance would take Bowers away, and he would be pronounced dead either on the way to the hospital or soon after arrival there. The initial suspicion would be that he had had a massive coronary, and an autopsy would subsequently confirm it. The death would be considered due to natural causes; certainly there was no reason to suspect foul play.

  Everything went exactly as Julian knew that it would, with one minor exception.

  The call came at three fifteen.

  “Carla D’Antoni led a pretty active social life,” Sam says.

  This just confirms what her sister told me, but I ask, “How so?”

  “There were a lot of text messages on her phone to different guys, and she slept at a number of different places over the course of the last few months. Or let’s say that her phone did.”

  This is already making me a little uncomfortable. Carla is dead, brutally murdered, and it feels wrong to be invading her privacy like this. Unfortunately, I have to do it if I am going to fully defend my client.

  We’re in my office; one of my rare times here. It’s just easier to work from home, especially with Laurie there. But I needed Edna here to type some motions that Hike will present to the court. So she and Hike are in Hike’s office. Between her dismay at having to work, and Hike’s ability to depress and annoy, chances are decent that she will be the only one to come out of that office alive.

  “Was Vogel’s house one of the places she stayed over?”

  Sam nods. “Seven times.”

  “What about Russo?”

  “Nope.”

  That surprises me; maybe the reports of her being Russo’s girlfriend were wrong. But Russo is not the type to have met Carla at a hotel. He would be concerned about his personal safety, so would always want the home-field advantage. Yet Russo reacted when I mentioned Vogel’s name, so I just assumed there was some rivalry there over Carla.

  “Let me check that to make sure.” Sam goes down the hall to get his notes. He’s back within three minutes with a briefcase full of folders, and he takes one out and starts going through it.

  “No, I don’t see Russo’s house anywhere. Maybe she met him somewhere else.”

  “Okay.”

  He continues to look through the pa
pers, then finally says, “Wait a minute.”

  “What is it?”

  “Something looks familiar.…” He opens the briefcase again and takes out two more folders. He starts poring through them. I’m not going to get anywhere by asking him what is going on; it would just slow him down.

  “Wow,” he finally says.

  “What are you wowing about, Sam?”

  “Based on her phone GPS, she was at an address on Market Street in Paterson from seven forty-five until nine thirty. It turns out it was a bar called Masters.” He looks at the papers in front of him again. “That was a week before she died.”

  “So?”

  “So it hit me that the address seemed familiar, and now I know why. Bledsoe went to that place all the time, maybe five times a week. Phillips was there as well, but not as often.”

  “Were they there the same night?”

  “Good question.” Sam turns back to his papers and within fifteen seconds says, “They were. Bledsoe got there twenty minutes before her and stayed an hour afterwards. Phillips was there as well, but he got there after Carla left.”

  “Wow” was the appropriate comment for Sam to make; this is a major development. If Carla knew and met with Bledsoe, and if Bledsoe blew up Vogel’s boat, then it completely changes my view of Carla, as it relates to this case.

  Vogel was amazed that Carla approached him at the bar; she was young and attractive and things like that just didn’t happen to him. It now seems likely that it was not the result of some instant attraction to him; I think she sought him out specifically and with a purpose.

  I’m not yet sure what that purpose was, but it gives me something to check out. “Sam, I want you to look for other times they might have been together.”

  “I will, but I have something else to tell you that you might be pleased with.”

  “I already like that sentence. What is it?”

  “In the weeks before her death, Carla made three deposits, one a week, into her checking account. They were for nine thousand dollars each, and she made them in cash.”