“Had you spoken to him in the last few days?” Detective Shipley asked me.
I hesitated before answering because I wondered if a message on voice mail counted.
“No. But I did have a message on my answering machine at work from him the day he died.”
Shipley made a long note in her book before looking up at me again. I wondered if Detective Bartlett ever spoke.
“And what was the message?”
“He said he wanted me to come to New York. My boss, Mr. Johnston was coming here for a board of directors meeting and Tommy left a message asking me to come along.”
“How did he sound on the message?”
“He sounded great. Full of enthusiasm, as usual. He was surprised to learn that I was working with Mr. Johnston.”
“Please describe your relationship with Mr. Connaught,” she said woodenly. It sounded like a question right out of a survey.
I didn’t have to think about my response. “Good. We were friends.”
Detective Bartlett’s eyebrows went up in disbelief at my response.
I stared at her and said, “Do you find that hard to believe Ms. Bartlett? That a divorced couple could have a good relationship?”
She blushed under her dark skin and lamely shook her head.
“Are you currently involved in a relationship with someone?” Shipley continued.
“Yes. But what’s that got to do with the price of rice in China?” I demanded.
“Just trying to get the whole picture.”
I’d had enough of their questions and decided to turn the tables.
“I’d like some information on how your investigation is going. Do you have any suspects?”
They both looked at each other and I was sure I saw the beginning of a grin on Bartlett’s face.
“Besides me?” I snapped.
“We’re not at liberty to say.” Shipley closed her notebook and jammed it back in her purse. “We’d like a copy of your financial statements.”
“My what?”
“Your financial statements. We can get the information by going directly to your bank and your employer, but you could help us by just handing over the information.”
“That’s just a waste of your time. Let’s go on the record here and now,” I stated emphatically. “I did not kill Tommy Connaught, and I did not have anything to do with his death. And I will not hand over my financial statements. You want them, go through proper channels.”
Shipley had an amused look on her face at my outburst and I was sure she was thinking I think thou doth protest too much.
I ignored her. “And yesterday was the first I heard that Mr. Connaught was naming me as his beneficiary. I would suggest that you turn your sights on someone else because you’re wasting your time investigating me.”
They both stood up to leave and Shipley left her card on my desk. I felt completely frustrated and was positive I’d hear from them again.
chapter ten
The next hour was spent very productively. I sat dumbly in my chair and stared out the window and chain-smoked. I felt useless and out of my comfort zone. I had trouble putting any thoughts in coherent order and repeatedly asked myself why I was here. I also thought about leaving. Packing it in and returning to Toronto. Running away from it all. Getting the hell out of Dodge.
Just before I slid completely into the black-hole of self-pity, I heard a timid knock on the office door. It was Carrie.
“You’ve got a call,” she told me.
I looked at her standing in front of my desk and wondered where she got the money to buy her clothes. Yesterday she’d been wearing an absolute knock-out suit and today she had on an outfit that probably set her back several hundreds of dollars. Like the suit she had on yesterday, this outfit showed off her hourglass figure. The jacket was long, tapered at the waist and flared out over her hips. Without moving my head I glanced down at the pathetic suit I was wearing. Definitely not dressed for success.
“Ms. Monahan?”
I snapped my attention back to Carrie.
“Sorry. You were saying?”
“You’ve got a call holding. I wasn’t going to interrupt but I thought you’d want this one. Someone from the morgue.”
The someone at the morgue was calling to let me know that the body was ready to be released. The body. I understood that all bodies were like slabs of meat to them but they could have been a little more delicate when they were calling the next of kin.
I had no idea what to do next. So I went to find Cleve. Carrie told me he was working out of a small meeting room down the hall. I stuck my head in the door and found him surrounded by mounds of papers and books.
“Gotta minute?” I interrupted him.
“Hey.” He seemed happy to see me. “I’ve been buried up to my neck here with paper. I need some of your time to go through all this mess with you.”
“Sure Cleve. But first I need some help.”
He was quick to offer to make the arrangements on my behalf.
“What kind of service do you have in mind?”
“I haven’t thought about it,” I told him truthfully. “Can you just get Tommy to a funeral home and then I’ll decide?”
His hand reached across the table and covered mine.
“Consider it done. What else can we help you with right now?”
“Everything. Can I be absolutely honest here?”
He nodded.
“I’m completely overwhelmed. I’ve got no idea where to start. And I have no idea what needs to be done.” I threw my hands up in the air. “Tell me what needs looking after. What’s expected of me?”
He thought for a minute before replying. “First of all, there’s nothing that needs your immediate attention. Maybe you should just take the next day or so and catch up on your reading. Last night you asked for all of the annual reports, press releases and financial statements. Why don’t you work your way through those first? Then I can spend some time bringing you up to speed. You should meet the executive team. And the project leaders. Get to know the people. Once you know the people, they can introduce you to Phoenix’s products and projects.”
It sounded like a plan to me.
“What are your immediate plans, Cleve? Are you sticking around for a while?” I knew it was a lot to ask. He had a family in Toronto.
“For as long as I’m needed,” he reassured me.
The financial statements were a total puzzle to me. The press releases and annual reports were a bit more helpful, and I started to gather a little understanding of the company. I was cautious though because I knew from experience how much or how little a public company was willing to share with the public. If it was mediocre news it was published with much fanfare. If it was great news they called a press conference. If it was bad news, they had a conference call with the stock analysts and tried to make it look like good news and downplayed the bad parts. Full, true and plain disclosure took on a whole new meaning when you were wading through a public company’s press releases.
The last two years’ releases gave me a very skimpy view of what was happening at Phoenix. There were releases announcing contract awards, financial results, appointments of directors and officers, and that was about it. The annual reports were pretty much a compilation of all the news that was fit to print in one place, setting out the company’s accomplishments for the past year, their plans going forward and the yearly audited financial statements.
The financial statements, from what I could understand, indicated that the company was consistently making money. The latest annual report showed a five year history of the stock price, and it had steadily risen in small increments over the five years.
But I definitely needed a lesson on how to read the financial statements. Heated discussions I had overheard throughout the years of senior executives arguing with the auditors to sign off on different accounting treatments kept echoing in the back of my mind. I needed to know where a company could pad the statements.
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I gave up in disgust at six o’clock and left the office. I was surprised to see Lou waiting for me beside the dark Lincoln in front of the building.
“Don’t you have a life?” I joked.
He held the door of the car open for me and gave me a little smile.
“I was always on call until I heard from Mr. Connaught. I intend to keep at it until I hear differently from you.”
He was concentrating on the traffic as we pulled away from the curb.
“Lou,” I called from the back seat. His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.
“Can I ask you a question?”
He nodded.
“Why weren’t you driving Mr. Connaught on the night he was killed?”
He maneuvered around a stalled car blocking our lane and didn’t answer me until his attention allowed.
“I’m not sure when he was killed, ma’am, but I didn’t drive him on Wednesday. When I went to pick him up on Wednesday morning at his apartment, he never showed. I just thought he’d gone to the office early. He did that some times. But then his secretary, Miss Carrie called me, all in a panic, around ten o’clock that morning wanting to know where he was.”
This was all news to me.
“You mean he never showed up for the directors’ meeting on Wednesday morning?”
“Not that I’m aware of ma’am.”
“Do you know when they found his body?”
“No ma’am.”
Why hadn’t I asked any of these questions earlier? I grabbed the cellular phone that was mounted between the seats and dialed Cleve’s cell number. I looked at my watch and hoped I got him before he got on the plane. I had insisted he go home for the weekend.
The phone wasn’t through one ring before he answered.
“Cleveland Johnston.”
“Hi. It’s Kate. Did you report Tommy as missing when he didn’t show for the board meeting?”
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“What time?”
“Around six that night.”
“Did the police do anything?”
“No. They said a person has to be missing more than twenty-four hours before they could consider them as missing.”
“But where was he?”
“They don’t know, Kate.”
“I know that. I’m just thinking out loud.”
“The police are looking into it.”
“Sure they are. I’m their prime suspect so that means they’re not looking elsewhere.”
“You’re not their prime suspect. They’re just covering all the bases.”
I needed to know. Something was burning inside me and I needed to know, now.
“Cleve, can I get into Tommy’s apartment?”
“Sure. It’s yours now anyway. I understand the police are done looking through it and the doorman has the key and instructions to let you in. The law firm sent over a letter today.”
I told Lou we had a change of plans and we headed for Tommy’s apartment.
chapter eleven
I was nervous and apprehensive now that I was here, and I tried to look casual as I stood under the awning-covered entrance to the apartment building and looked across the busy street at Central Park. I felt at “sixes and sevens” as my grandmother used to say, and my feet seemed cemented to the ground. Lou had insisted on waiting for me and was lounging beside the car. I walked back over to where he was standing several yards down the street.
“I’ll take you up on your offer,” I told him.
When we had pulled up in front of the building he had offered to introduce me to the doorman who manned the desk in the lobby of the apartment building.
“I’ve known him for some time now, Miss,” he had said. “I often wait for Mr. Connaught in the lobby.”
In my typically independent way I had refused his offer, but was now having second thoughts about the whole thing. I wasn’t even sure in fact if I wanted to go into the apartment. What did I expect to find?
Lou led the way through the revolving entrance door and to the marble-encased reception desk where an elderly gentleman sat. His uniform looked like something right out of the Wizard of Oz, with all sorts of gold braid and tassels. I suppressed a school-girl giggle.
He stood up as we approached and a wide smile crossed his face when he recognized Lou. The name tag on the breast of his jacket read “Ted”. After Lou had introduced us and Ted had expressed his condolences, I made my way to the elevator, alone. Both had offered to accompany me, but I had declined their offer.
I stepped off the elevator into a small foyer where the door to the apartment faced the elevator. Ted had told me the apartment was on the 14th floor and when I asked the number of the apartment, he had told me the whole of the 14th floor. I had tried not to look too surprised.
The lock was well-oiled and the door opened quietly. I entered the dark apartment and closed the door behind me. Silence surrounded me and I stood in the dark for a few moments while my eyes adjusted. My hand found a panel of light switches on the wall beside the door and I flicked them randomly. Pot lights came on over my head and I swiveled in a one hundred and eighty degree turn to take in the surroundings. The entrance-way was massive, by my standards anyway, and probably measured thirty feet by thirty feet. The floor was tiled in a dark green marble and the walls stretched upwards to about fifteen feet. The area was painted in a neutral earth tone and a few small pieces of art were hung randomly.
I crossed the lobby floor and entered the apartment. My random flicking of the light switches had turned on several table lamps and a quick look to the right and left took my breath away. There were no walls and the long room appeared to be the size of a football field. I stood rooted to the spot and peered about in the soft light. To the left was the living area and straight ahead of me was a long, highly polished dining table. I quickly counted twelve chairs around it and shook my head in amazement. Everything looked like it was out of Better Homes and Gardens. The furniture in my apartment can best be described as early-American, hotel lobby.
I ventured from my spot into the living area and wandered around several groupings of sofas and easy chairs. The outside walls were not walls, they were windows. Floor to ceiling, all around the room. At the center of the windows there were French doors which opened onto a terrace overlooking the street and Central Park. Wrought-iron furniture filled the balcony.
I turned and looked to the far end of the room, past the dining area where I could see a large desk with a computer and several wing-back chairs. I quickly crossed the yards and yards of plush carpet to Tommy’s desk, eager now to discover some answers. Answers to what Tommy had done in his last hours. I sat in the large leather chair at his desk and looked around. The desk was neat but not overly pristine like the rest of the apartment. This was a working area and Tommy’s presence was obvious. A waft of his aftershave hit my nostrils and I felt him nearby.
I sat for a moment trying to remember the brand of his aftershave, which I had never smelled on anyone else. It brought back some sweet memories and a smile played across my face.
And then I heard a door close. The noise took a few seconds to register because where I lived in my apartment in Toronto, the sound of closing doors was a regular sound, one you became used to hearing. This sound though was a quiet one, and I remembered that I had the whole floor of the building to myself, so I shouldn’t be hearing doors closing. Fear shot up my back and my shoulders clenched. My eyes darted around the room and I slowly got out of the chair. There was a door in the wall to my left and I was sure the sound had come from somewhere behind that door.
I tentatively pushed on the door and it swung open into an eating area with a large kitchen behind it. Both rooms were dark and the only light came from the outside, through the large windows.
“Hello?” I called out tentatively.
My stomach was knotted with nerves but I walked through the eating area into the kitchen. I found a corridor off the kitchen to the left and I peered int
o complete darkness. I stupidly started down the hallway, with my arms outstretched, feeling for a light switch on either side of the wall. A sound came from behind me but before I could turn around I was sprawled on the floor. I wasn’t hurt but I cried out in surprise and quickly tried to scramble to my feet.
Whoever had pushed me, shoved at my back again and this time I yelled in frustration and anger.
“Stop.”
I was on my hands and knees and before I could turn around, a fistful of knuckles slammed into the side of my head. The force of the punch landed me on my side and my hands automatically covered my face. I kicked at my attacker and tried to see who it was but I could only see a large figure standing above me in the darkness.
My ears were ringing from the punch and fear screamed up and down my spine. But no screams or sounds came out of me. I was paralyzed with fright, afraid to move. All of this had happened in seconds but time seemed endless. The body above me reached down and grabbed my suit jacket at the shoulder and heaved me a few inches off the floor. I hit out at an arm and tried to push away but I should have left my hands over my face because the next blow knocked me out cold.
The patrolmen told me that the intruder had left through the door in the kitchen that led to one of the internal staircases in the building. I was nursing a wallop of a headache and holding an ice-pack to the side of my head, while they checked the perimeter. They informed me that there were two exits to two different stairways and they were sure the kitchen exit had been used because the door was unlocked. That stairwell went all the way to the basement of the building where anyone could leave the building without being seen.
Ted the doorman was standing nervously against the window, turning his hat round and round in his hands.
When I had come to and called him on the intercom I discovered on the kitchen wall, he and Lou had rushed up to the apartment.
“Shouldn’t have happened,” he kept mumbling, over and over. I think the poor man was in more shock than I was, and Lou had taken control of the situation and immediately called 911.
The scene was somewhat reminiscent of what had happened to me several months ago, and I felt a certain sense of deja vu. That time someone had broken into my apartment, while I slept. Afterwards my apartment had been filled with police while I sat, dazed and confused. And pissed off.
Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions Page 6