Independently Wealthy: A Novel

by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  I supposed I had to, since he’d put it that way. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a new accomplice, especially such a gorgeous one. So I nodded, grabbed my cell from the coffee table, and found that number with the 845 area code. I read it to Jack, and then he punched the numbers into his phone and hit the speaker button. I held my breath as we listened to the line ring.

  “Don’t offer him money,” I said quickly. “Appeal to his morality. I think he might have some … even if it doesn’t seem that way.”

  Jack nodded as Peter Hansen answered in his gruff voice. “Yeah?” he said.

  “Mr. Hansen,” Jack began in a businesslike tone, “my name is Jackson Lucas … and this call is regarding Edward Stone.”

  “God damn it,” Peter said disgustedly. “I thought I told you people to stop bothering me.”

  “You told Savannah Morgan to stop bothering you,” Jack corrected him. “I’m not her … but she’s here with me. And I can’t understand why you’d be so hostile toward her when all she’s trying to do is find out who’s responsible for her father’s death.”

  “Because I don’t know anything about it … that’s why.”

  “Mr. Hansen,” Jack went on in his calm but persistent tone, “Savannah is a friend of mine … and I wonder if you know she was assaulted last night.”

  “I heard about it on the news. I saw the video. But they say she wasn’t hurt.”

  “Not this time,” Jack said, “although she might not be so fortunate in the future. I want to prevent any further violence against her and the rest of the Stones … and from what Savannah tells me, you might be able to assist us with that.”

  “Listen,” he said angrily, “I don’t—”

  “You don’t want to get involved. You’re afraid of the Caldwell family and Amicus Worldwide. Well, let me tell you this,” Jack said, pointing his finger in the air like Peter Hansen was right in front of him. “If you can live knowing a murderer is free because you don’t have the guts to open your mouth, then I’m not sure how you can call yourself a man. I don’t know how you can stand to look your kids in the eyes while Edward Stone’s children suffer every day, wondering what happened to their father.”

  I heard Peter’s smoker’s cough and his voice coming out in a raspy hiss. “You’ve got some fucking nerve to bring up my kids. All I’m trying to do is protect them.”

  “They’ll only be protected,” Jack said, “if the people you fear are behind bars. If those people suspect you’re a threat—and they very well might—they could come after you … or your children. Don’t tell me the possibility didn’t cross your mind after you saw what happened to Savannah in that subway station.”

  Jack put the phone on the coffee table. We stared at it until that gravelly voice came through again. “I can’t do this over the phone … or at my house or anywhere near my family. I can meet you at a diner in Yonkers in a couple of hours.”

  Finally. I was so relieved, and I just couldn’t keep quiet anymore.

  “Give me the address,” I said, leaning toward the phone, “and I’ll be there.”

  A few minutes later I was in my bedroom with the door closed while Jack waited in the living room. I changed my clothes, brushed my hair, and stuck the Yonkers address I’d written on a slip of paper into my pocket. Then I opened the door and walked down the hall and found Jack standing in the living room, wearing his coat.

  “George will drive us up there,” he told me. “I called Ned and Caroline, and they’re fine with this as long as George and I are with you to make sure you’re safe.”

  I went to the closet and pulled out a periwinkle jacket with a faux fox collar. “That’s fine,” I said as I slipped into the jacket and walked toward Jack. “It’s good of you to blow off your entire workday to do this … and I can’t even express how grateful I am that you were able to tip Peter Hansen over the edge. Your business skills come in handy sometimes.”

  “Don’t give me too much credit,” he said. “You’re the one with all the courage and perseverance. I’m impressed that you went one-on-one with Senator Caldwell and her husband … not to mention Terrence Miller. I’m not surprised … but definitely impressed.”

  I laughed and zipped my jacket. “Did Ned tell you about that?”

  Jack nodded. “He also told me you’re not with Alex anymore … and believe it or not, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “You might not believe this,” I said, “but I do believe you.”

  He smiled with his mouth closed. Then he glanced down at the floor and back at me, looking serious. “Another thing Ned told me is what happened between you and Wesley Caldwell … and Ned also mentioned what he initially suspected about him. If Caldwell achieved that goal, I’m going to wring his neck.”

  I was glad Jack was too well bred to elaborate on what Ned had suspected about Wes. “I value your concern for my honor,” I said, “but it’s intact.”

  Jack seemed to get the message. “Oh,” he said. “Well … that’s good.”

  “But the more I think about it,” I said, “the more suspicious of Wes I become.”

  Jack’s brow furrowed. “Why’s that?”

  “Well,” I began, “maybe his main reason for getting involved with me isn’t what Ned thought. Maybe he also wanted to keep an eye on me to protect his parents. He kept trying to convince me that they had no responsibility for Lake Kolenya … and he probably wanted to redirect my attention from them to Terrence Miller. That must be why Wes was so eager to give me access to him.”

  Jack nodded slowly. “Could be,” he said.

  “Another thing,” I went on, “is that Wes has this tattoo—the scales of justice—and he said it’s what he believes in. At the time, I respected him for it … but now I’m wondering if his idea of justice is completely warped. Like Ned once told me, Wes probably hates Edward and blames him for everything that happened to his parents—and the fallout that came down on Wes personally—and maybe he thought getting rid of Edward would balance things out.”

  “A sick and angry mind might see it that way,” Jack agreed.

  “A sick and angry mind might not be satisfied with one victim,” I said, “especially one who wouldn’t accept that Edward’s death was an accident. And that could explain the subway-station shove.”

  “You think he paid off that girl?” Jack asked.

  I shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t have to. She might’ve felt indebted to him because of how he treated her. Wes rescued her from an abusive baby-daddy and helped her to find a job. Maybe she isn’t used to kindness and would do anything for a guy who showed her some.”

  “Jesus,” Jack said. “That’s so messed up … and completely possible.”

  I put up my hood, preparing to face the cold. “Or maybe I’m totally off the mark,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I’ll take a gamble on your instincts any day.”

  That made me smile—especially because I’d lost some confidence in my instincts lately.

  “Listen,” I said, “you mentioned my perseverance. Well, since I was the one who invested so much time and energy in this, I want to finish it by myself.”

  “That isn’t a good idea. Like I told you before, you don’t have to—”

  “—handle everything alone. You’re right … but I won’t be alone. You and George and I will drive to the diner just as we planned … and then you can wait in the car.”

  Jack folded his arms and thought for a moment. “We’ll sit with you and keep quiet.”

  “That won’t work. You can come into the restaurant, but sit far away.”

  “Unacceptable,” he said. “You need to be within sight.”

  I mulled that over, stroking the synthetic fur that circled my face. “All right,” I said finally. “As long as you pretend you don’t know me. This guy will probably be more honest if he doesn’t feel intimidated.”

  He nodded. “Okay, Savannah … you’re right, and you’ve convinced me. I agree to your terms. Now should we seal this arrangem
ent with a handshake?”

  I took a step forward and pushed back my hood. “We can seal it like this,” I said before I kissed him lightly on his lips. I tasted cinnamon on mine as I stepped back and he smiled, denting the deep dimples in his cheeks.

  “Well,” he said, “That’s something I didn’t expect today.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Today has been full of surprises.”

  *

  I’d never been to Yonkers before, so I didn’t know what the rest of it was like, but the diner where Peter Hansen had instructed me to meet him was in a run-down area, on a street lined with ramshackle houses and businesses.

  It was noon when I sat inside the diner at a booth next to a window, ignoring Jack and George. They were at a table across the aisle, pretending to be part of the lunch crowd as they drank coffee. I’d ordered coffee, too, but didn’t touch it because caffeine was the last thing I needed when I felt so jittery that my legs trembled against my red vinyl seat.

  I stared through the window, where I saw a battered old Toyota pull into a space across the road. A middle-aged man wearing a brown parka and a baseball cap got out and headed toward the diner, and he spotted me when he walked through the door. He headed my way, slid onto the seat across from me, and tossed his hat on the table. It wasn’t a Mets cap like the one he’d worn last summer—this one had an emblem embroidered with NEW YORK RANGERS.

  I looked over my coffee at Peter Hansen, who was clearly one of those men who refused to accept his baldness and go for the full shave. The top of his head had just a few meager strands of hair that matched his gray goatee, but he’d grown the back and sides into a frizzy nest that reached his shoulders. I wasn’t sure what to say as I stared at him and the Spain-shaped birthmark between his eyebrows, but I cleared my throat and started talking.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said as the waitress stopped by.

  “Nothing for me,” he told her.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I can buy you lunch.”

  “No,” he said so forcefully that the waitress gave him a funny look and hurried off. Then he drummed his fingers—including the one with the missing tip—against the table. “The first thing I want you to know,” he began, “is that I am not here for Edward Stone.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I know you hate him because you think he had some responsibility for Lake Kolenya. But when I first spoke with you over the phone, you said Senator Caldwell had fooled him … she convinced him that Amicus Worldwide wasn’t doing anything wrong. But how do you know that?”

  He shrugged. “I heard things when I worked at her house. I was painting the bedrooms upstairs, fixing the pipes in the basement … and voices carried through the vents. I heard Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell talking about Amicus and what it was doing … and I heard Mrs. Caldwell with your father. She used to bring him around when her husband was away.”

  “Oh,” I said uneasily.

  “Yeah,” he went on, “she’s a shifty bitch like my ex-wife. Other than my mother and my daughters … I don’t trust any woman.”

  His loathing for Edward clearly extended past Lake Kolenya, but I wasn’t going into that.

  “So Senator Caldwell definitely tricked Edward about Amicus,” I said.

  He loosened his hands. “Of course she did … it was her reelection year, and she wasn’t going to let that shit run her out of office … especially because it was her husband’s fault. The two of them knew chemicals from Amicus were poisoning the lake … and when all those people from Lake Kolenya went to Stone and asked him to investigate, he confronted her about it. But she used her womanly wiles to brainwash him.”

  “But not forever,” I said.

  He shook his head. “He finally got so suspicious, he told her he was going to put a team of reporters on the story … and he was also going to call the head of Amicus to confront him with the allegations. I can’t remember that guy’s name…”

  “Terrence Miller,” I said.

  “Yeah. That’s right. Stone and Mrs. Caldwell had a huge brawl about him. Her husband was staying at their place in Manhattan overnight because he had a business meeting … but their son was visiting from D.C. I was doing some wiring in the attic, and Wes was in the guest bedroom. Mrs. Caldwell kept telling Stone to keep his voice down, but he said he wasn’t going to listen to her anymore and he’d be as loud as he wanted. So I heard everything … and Wes must have, too.”

  Wes had heard everything. I dug my nails into my palms.

  “Please go on,” I said.

  He slung his arm over the back of the booth. “Mrs. Caldwell begged Stone to butt out … but he wouldn’t. I guess he’d finally found his balls, and he laid into her pretty good before he stormed out of the house.”

  I wished that had been caught on camera. I’d watch it fifty times. “What did he say?”

  “That she was a liar. That she’d deliberately misled him just to keep her career intact … and he wanted nothing to do with her anymore.”

  I wanted to cheer, but I kept my poker face. “What was her response?”

  “She was bawling. She was hysterical. But she was probably more worried about her career than about him … and it’s too bad he didn’t figure that out from the beginning. But even though he finally woke up, it was too late. The rest of the media broke the story before Stone News did.”

  “And then he was gone,” I said.

  “Because of Wesley Caldwell,” Peter added.

  Even though that possibility had been brewing in my head, hearing it stated so unquestionably made me shiver. “Are you speculating about Wes because he overheard that conversation, or—”

  “I’m not speculating,” Peter said, lowering his voice. He leaned toward me, and I smelled tobacco on his breath. “I know it for a fact. That kid was enraged. After Stone left, I heard him screaming at his mother, calling her a filthy whore and saying she’d destroyed their family and his future by having that affair. He said Edward was going to ruin all of them.”

  How could I have given Wes even the smallest benefit of my doubts? I was furious with myself for ever letting him trick me like his mother had tricked Edward, but maybe it wasn’t our fault. Maybe Wes was exactly what he’d called Terrence Miller—a very convincing fake.

  “Not long after that,” Peter continued, “he had an offer for me: He’d give me a quarter of a million dollars from his trust fund to take out Stone and make it look like an accident.”

  “But that made you angry,” I said, remembering our first phone call, “because you don’t take money unless you earn it legitimately … and you’re not a criminal.”

  “Damn straight. I told Wes all of that … and I reminded him I have a family that needs me around. And since he’s a hot-headed young guy—same as I was once—I tried to give him some advice. I tried to convince him to forget his scheme because it wouldn’t end well for him, but that just set him off. He threatened to make trouble for me if I didn’t keep quiet.”

  The waitress came by and asked if I wanted a fresh cup of coffee. I shook my head.

  “So that’s why,” I said when she was gone, “you didn’t want to get involved. But it must’ve been eating away at you … and that’s the reason you tried to tip me off outside Stone News last summer.”

  He shrugged as he scratched his goatee. “That friend of yours who called me this morning said some things I’d been thinking for a long time … and so did you. If Wes had finished me off, I would want my kids to make sure he paid for it.”

  “You think Wes drove a car into Edward’s himself?” I asked. “I mean … if he offered you money, he might’ve done the same with someone else.”

  “If you mean that poor drunk in Brooklyn who got blamed for this, you’re wrong. Wes didn’t like my reaction to his offer … and since he already had me to worry about, I’m sure it was safer to do the job alone.”

  “Would you testify to that?” I asked, clutching my paper place mat. “Will you come to Manhattan and tell the detecti
ve who’s in charge of Edward’s case everything you’ve told me?”

  He scoffed. “Why should I say it again? You’re wired, aren’t you? Why don’t you just play back the tape?”

  “What?” I said. “I’m not—”

  “Do you expect me to believe you came all the way up here from Manhattan to politely request I help you?”

  I glanced out the window at George’s car parked at the curb, between a rusty Saturn and an old Camaro with a flat tire. “Actually,” I said, turning back to Peter, “that’s exactly what I did. And I hope it shows that your mother and your daughters aren’t the only women in this world you can trust.”

  *

  That night, Tammy Burns rolled over on Wesley Caldwell. Her loyalty ended when she was given a choice between charges of attempted murder or simple assault. Then she copped a plea and admitted everything, and I learned she was craftier than I was. She’d made a secret recording of a conversation with Wes in which he offered her money in exchange for eliminating me.

  It was the same amount he’d pitched to Peter Hansen, who told the NYPD the story I’d heard at the diner. He didn’t have evidence other than his word, but his statement—and Wes’s arrest for conspiracy to commit my murder—were enough for the police to open an investigation into the possibility that Edward Stone had been intentionally killed by Wesley Caldwell.

  I saw Wes the next morning, when I woke up to snow falling outside my bedroom windows and his image on TV. He was everywhere—MSNBC, ABN, CNN, and especially Stone News, which constantly replayed a video clip of Wes being picked up by the police in Virginia before his extradition to New York.

  “Wesley Caldwell,” said a Stone News anchorwoman, “the only child of the former New York senator Carys Bowman Caldwell and Jonathan Caldwell—the ex-COO of Amicus Worldwide—was arrested early this morning at his home outside of Washington, D.C., for conspiracy to commit the murder of Savannah Morgan. Morgan is the daughter of our network’s founder, Edward Stone, who died last year under suspicious circumstances. Morgan recently had a brief romantic relationship with Wesley Caldwell.”