86
Gina glanced at her watch: 9:45. Check-out time was eleven o’clock, but most hotels, upon request, would give you a little extra time. But she didn’t want to cut it too close. When she finished here, she still had to drive the boxes back to Lucinda’s house, make her way to the airport, and turn in the rental car. If she missed her flight, it could mean a substantial change fee and paying for another night in a hotel room.
A half hour earlier she had come across the first pieces of the evidence she was looking for. Scattered inside several manila envelopes were articles about abused women who had received settlements from major corporations. Paula had printed out a story about a reporter at Fox News who had received a $10 million settlement. 5X what I got. Next time a lawyer!! was scrawled in the margin. The name of the attorney for the woman had been circled. Was it possible Paula had contacted her? Gina entered the name in her laptop.
Wanting to give her eyes a break, she used the machine in the room to make a cup of coffee. It was warm, weak, and predictably foul-tasting.
Paula settled for $2 million without using a lawyer, Gina thought. She ultimately lost most of the money on a boyfriend’s bad investment. If Meg Williamson received a similar amount, that would explain the mortgage-free house in Rye on a modest salary. Cathy Ryan came from a wealthy family. Maybe it was harder or impossible to tempt her with money.
Gina sat back down and resumed the task of going through Paula’s records. She flipped through documents related to the purchase of the residence. In the next folder was a wide array of late notices from credit card companies, utilities, an auto leasing firm, and the phone company. There was correspondence from a law firm representing the condominium association threatening to commence foreclosure procedures. Paula’s final days were anything but peaceful, Gina thought. She had ample motive to try to get more from REL.
A white 8.5-by-11-inch envelope was the last item in the box. Only one word was written on the outside. Judas. Gina undid the metal clasp and pulled out a three-page document. The letterhead was from Carter & Associates. Oddly, there was no business address, only a phone number. Trying to contain her excitement, Gina read the settlement agreement Paula had signed a year and a half earlier. There was no mention of counsel representing Paula. The only names on the signature page were hers and that of a Michael Carter and a notary.
Gina flipped over the document and recognized the familiar spidery handwriting. 6/24 left message. 6/27 11:00 at 123 Meridian Parkway. The dates immediately triggered a memory. She opened her laptop and called up the police report she had scanned into her computer. Paula’s body had been discovered on Monday, June 27. She knew the police would try to use whatever they could find in the apartment to determine the approximate time of death. According to the police investigation report, “a flier dated Friday, June 24, announcing a condominium association meeting that would be held on Wednesday, June 29, was found on the kitchen counter. According to the president of the condo association, the fliers were distributed to the door of each resident on the afternoon of Sunday, June 26.”
So if Paula took in the flier, she was alive at least until that Sunday afternoon, Gina thought. Whoever was scheduled to meet Paula on Meridian Parkway on Monday afternoon could have killed her Sunday evening or into Monday morning. Finding out where she lived would have been easy. She had purchased the condo in her own name. The information was in a public database.
Gina typed the Meridian Parkway address into her computer. The building offered temporary office space. She needed to find someone there who would share with her which companies/individuals were renting space on June 27.
On the assumption that Michael Carter was a lawyer, she went to the New York Bar Association website and tried to conduct a search. Only members could use that option. She emailed Lisa and asked her to do it.
Gina held the three-page settlement in her hand and considered what to do. If she was right, this could be a key piece of evidence in a murder trial. Using her phone, she took pictures of the three pages and the back page where Paula had written notes. She emailed the pictures to herself to assure she could retrieve them in case anything happened to her phone.
After hustling down to the lobby, she was told there was no business office in the hotel. The clerk agreed to make a copy for her. He found it strange but agreed that Gina could accompany him to the copying machine in the back office. She didn’t want any gaps in the chain of custody. He refused her offer of $10 to let her borrow a roll of masking tape.
Back in her room she put the original back in its envelope and box, used the tape to seal all four boxes, and carried them to her car. After leaving them on Lucinda’s porch, she eased onto Interstate 80 East for the drive to Omaha.
As Gina gazed past the endless rows of corn, she thought to herself, I’m on the trail of a great story, but I have no idea who’s going to publish it.
87
Theodore “Ted” Wilson finished shaving in the bathroom of his Beverly Wilshire hotel room. He toweled off his face as he walked into the bedroom, pulled on and buttoned a starched white shirt, and chose a tie. Conducting the road show for the REL News initial public offering was an exhilarating experience. It was also a grind. The PowerPoint presentation to the private equity groups and pension funds in Chicago had gone well, but the Q&A period had run significantly longer than they had anticipated. There were a lot of questions about to what extent the profitability of REL News was linked too strongly to Brad Matthews. What if he had a heart attack? Suppose he chooses to retire? Did any other on-air personality have the gravitas to slide into Matthews’s chair if for any reason it became available?
Ted’s team had missed their scheduled departure to Los Angeles and had been forced to scramble onto other flights. Instead of first class, he had found himself sandwiched in the middle seat between a young man who should seriously consider a career as a sumo wrestler and a woman with a squirmy two-year-old on her lap. By the time they checked into the hotel, it had been one o’clock in the morning.
Most team members were looking forward to the end of this traveling and the long hours, to having a chance to reconnect with spouses, children, and significant others. Although Ted would welcome the chance to catch up on lost sleep, part of him dreaded a return to normalcy. For the past few weeks work had filled the void in his spirit, the empty space in his life that had been created by Gina. The thought of trying to find someone to replace her was more daunting than simply being alone.
The delay in reaching the hotel hadn’t changed their plan. Breakfast at 7 a.m. Today at ten o’clock they would make their pitch to CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. The largest public pension fund in the United States, CalPERS managed the assets of over 1.6 million public employees, retirees, and their families. CalPERS was considered a bell cow in the industry. Get them to commit to a significant investment in REL, and many other pension funds would follow their lead.
CNBC was on the television. The federal investigations into the alleged monopoly power of Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook were plodding forward. All four companies were major clients of Ted’s bank.
He had just finished knotting his tie when he heard his cell phone vibrate, signaling the arrival of a text message. He walked over, glanced at the screen, and almost felt his heart stop. It was from Gina. Please trust me.
Ted tapped on the screen to go into his text message file. This has to be the first line of something much longer, he thought. But no, this was the entire text. Please trust me.
Slowly, he sat down on the bed. The alarm clock read 6:53. In minutes he would have to head downstairs.
What does she mean? he asked himself. For a moment he was angry. She had no right to do this to him. Disappear with no explanation and then send a cryptic message to further toy with his emotions. But the resentment passed almost as quickly as it had appeared. Any contact with Gina, even these three words, was infinitely preferable to heartrending silence. In the early
days of their separation, he would jump at the arrival of a text, believing this one had to be from her, offering some explanation for what happened and a path leading them back to where they had been. But there were only so many times one could be disappointed. Hope can sustain, but at the same time it can make one feel like a fool and act accordingly.
Why would she ask me to trust her? Is it possible there’s some reason she broke it off, but can’t share it with me?
Ted’s mind raced through the time they had spent together, searching for any hint of what Gina was trying to communicate. He recalled a company dinner he had brought her to early in their dating relationship. Taking him into her confidence, she had shared with him that she was working on a story about a major charity in the New York area that supported veterans wounded from their service overseas. The charismatic founder, who had lost a leg in Afghanistan, had been widely hailed for his fund-raising prowess. But he had a darker side. Two former employees had confirmed to Gina that he had child pornography on his computer. Their discreet complaints to the board had gone nowhere. Her article would expose him and force his resignation.
“Not a word about what I’m working on,” she had warned Ted several times before the dinner. One of the partners at Ted’s bank sat on the board of the charity.
It was as if a light had been switched on in his brain. “Of course, that’s got to be it,” he said aloud. There was only one story that Gina could be working on that would make it impossible for her to trust him. Why? Because merely by letting him know what she was doing would put him in a compromised situation. It was clear as day. Gina had uncovered wrongdoing and was now investigating his bank!
88
Gina pulled on a bathrobe and slippers and, eyes filled with sleep, made her way to the kitchen. Her flight to Newark had been delayed by four hours. Bad weather on the East Coast followed by mechanical problems on the ground had resulted in her touching down at 2 a.m. It was after three-thirty that she finally fell asleep.
More out of habit than needing the guidance, she had used Waze during her drive to the airport in Omaha. It had completely drained her cell phone battery. She had resisted the temptation to use a charging station at the airport. A cybersecurity expert spoke at a dinner she had recently attended. He warned that airport charging stations could have devices implanted by hackers to download the information stored in the phone. Never, he stressed for the same reason, accept an Uber driver’s offer to charge your phone.
Under ordinary circumstances Gina would have been salivating to get to the meeting with her editor at Empire Review. She had what she considered to be proof that Paula Stephenson had reached out to REL to renegotiate her settlement. Paula’s life had ended at precisely the same time she had agreed to meet someone from Carter & Associates.
It was the time when she and her editor would talk strategy. At what point should they share what they know with the police? She had a contact number for Michael Carter. They would listen together on speakerphone as they called the number, shared some of what they knew, and tried to gauge the reaction of the person on the other end. The other scenario for them to consider was how to respond if Michael Carter contacted her. She had used her cell phone to communicate with Meg Williamson. Her number undoubtedly had been passed to Carter.
But at a time when she most needed the help, the editor’s chair at Empire was empty. An idea occurred to her. She could call Charlie Maynard, her former editor, for advice. She glanced at the clock on the refrigerator: 8:45. 5:45 was way too early to call the West Coast, particularly when the person was retired.
She pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her bathrobe and plugged it into the charge cord atop the kitchen table. A small red line indicated the battery was working its way back to life. A vibrating noise announced the download of a text message. It was from Ted! How would he respond to her cryptic Please trust me message? His answer caused a wave of relief to wash over her. “Thank God,” she said aloud, as she stared at his reply, marveling that six letters could lift the shadow that had hung over her for weeks. Always was his response.
89
Michael Carter was grateful he had thought to bring an umbrella. What had started as a light drizzle had quickly progressed into a steady downpour. His wife and son had gone to bed early and were fast asleep. No explanation had been necessary regarding why he was leaving the apartment at 11:25 p.m.
It had taken Junior less than ten minutes to respond to his text. 11:30 tonight. Same place. He was tempted to walk back under the awning of his building when he saw a black Lincoln Navigator turn onto his block and slowly pull to the curb opposite where he was standing. Oscar stepped out and peered under the umbrella until he could see Carter’s face. Satisfied, he opened the passenger’s rear door. Carter shut his umbrella and slid into the backseat. Oscar closed the door behind him and disappeared.
“Sorry to bring you out on a night like this, Mr. Carlyle.”
“I should apologize. You’re the one who was standing in the rain. By the way, call me Fred.”
“Okay, Fred, I’ll get right to it. Three months ago Paula Stephenson who wanted to renegotiate her settlement all of a sudden commits suicide.”
“I’m aware of that. I read your email.”
“And then Cathy Ryan who was refusing to negotiate with us dies in an accident.”
“Both terrible tragedies,” Junior said, his voice somber.
“Tragedies with something in common. Both Matthews victims who refused to cooperate have left this world prematurely. Nothing happens to the victims who settle and keep quiet. But the ones who won’t settle or stick to the settlement, that appears to be very bad for their health.”
Junior exhaled loudly and buried his face in his hands. “What a mess!” he sighed. “Michael, I have a confession to make. Until tonight, I was concerned that you had something to do with Paula Stephenson’s death—”
Carter’s objection was immediate and fierce. “I assure you I had absolutely nothing to do with that. I can prove that I—”
Junior held up a hand to cut him off. “Michael, I know. You don’t have to convince me. I should have known better than to listen to Sherman.”
“While you’re at it, you should ask Sherman why he’s doing it. You and I know that the two deaths are not a coincidence. What’s going to happen when somebody figures it out?”
“I don’t know,” Junior said. “I have to think about that. In the meantime, Michael, you be careful. I know that Sherman’s hired somebody to look into your background. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s having you followed.”
“Fred, I want to lay low for a while. With Ryan,” he hesitated, searching for the right word, “gone, we’ve tied off all the loose ends that we know about. There’s one in South Africa, but I don’t think she’ll be a problem. I’ll keep doing the money drops—”
“We’re not quite finished with the victims,” Junior said quietly.
Carter turned to him. “We’re not?”
“A few days ago Brad Matthews called me. He said he wanted to visit my father and asked if I could be at the house at the same time. Apparently even he has a conscience. When we were alone, he opened up to me, apologizing for what he had done. He didn’t want to deal with Sherman or you so he gave me the names of two more women who he said should receive payments.
“Even more surprising, he said he had personally reached out to the women. They accepted his apology and agreed to the settlement. All you have to do is meet with them and sign the papers. Nothing needs to be discussed,” he said as he handed him a slip of paper. “This is their contact information.”
“All right. I’ll do it. But after that, I’m finished.”
“Agreed. And a word of caution. No need to share this with Sherman. There’s enough venom already between Matthews and Sherman.”
“But two more victims. That’s another four million dollars. How will I—”
“You’ll get the money via wire. Let me worry about that.”
“Okay.”
“Michael, I’m sorry you’re in the middle of all this. I know you have a family. Be careful.”
Carter opened the door and stepped out. The rain was coming down hard, but he didn’t bother with the umbrella as he trudged toward his building.
90
“All dressed up and no place to go,” was how Gina felt as she contemplated her next move. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that both Paula Stephenson and Cathy Ryan had been the victims of foul play. What was going on at REL News went beyond an abuse scandal! Women were being murdered.
She considered but rejected the idea of contacting Carter & Associates. As a lone investigator she was far more vulnerable than she would be if she had the weight of a respected national magazine behind her. She had spoken to Jane Patwell, who reported that no progress had been made in naming a successor to Geoff. An ad hoc committee was scrambling to put out next month’s edition. Jane had promised to call her if anything changed.
The email she had sent to her mystery source, Deep Throat, had gone unanswered. Gina’s involvement in this case began, she recalled, when Cathy Ryan sent her an email, but after responding, she never heard from Cathy again. She shuddered at the thought that Deep Throat had met a fate similar to Cathy’s.
There was one small benefit that flowed from her REL News investigation being on hold. She opened her laptop and retrieved the phone number she was looking for. I have to do this, she said to herself. But that didn’t prevent a feeling of guilt as she started dialing. It was answered on the third ring.
“My name is Gina Kane. I’m hoping to speak to Philip Callow.”
“You got him.”
She had given a lot of thought to what she would say next. Part of her wanted to blurt it out in frank terms. Your gold-digger stepmother has set her sights on my much-older, retired father. Am I right to be concerned? But the situation called for subtlety.
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry Page 25