“Do you have any evidence that someone might have been seriously pissed off? After all, Michael died the day after he ended the deal. Did you keep in touch with Mark or Tom after Michael’s death? Did they ever reach out to you when he died? Say anything to you?”
“I never heard from Tom Smart again, but I did hear from Mark Dodd after Michael died. It was when I put StoneTech on the market.”
“And?”
“He wanted the company. He pleaded with me to sell it to him and his new group of investors. But he never was as bright as Michael was, and since I didn’t think he had the insight to build upon Michael’s vision, I turned him down and sold StoneTech to someone else.”
“Bet that made him happy.”
“It didn’t—but that was four years ago, and he never came after me for it, did he? That’s one of the reasons I don’t believe he’s behind this. Because if he killed Michael for turning him down, wouldn’t he have done the same to me?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe getting away with one murder was enough for him.”
“What you should also know is that neither he nor Tom showed up at Michael’s funeral, which took place two weeks after his death—certainly enough time for them to calm down and come to their former best-friend’s funeral. That might mean nothing to you, but it happened—and I’m just putting it out there for you.”
“Did they give you a reason? Send flowers?”
“No and no. They just chose not to show.”
“Why did it take so long to bury Michael?”
“Because his siblings and his friends are spread out all over the world—they needed time to plan and to get here. Two of his sisters live abroad and have young families. For them, it was a logistical nightmare. As it was for some of Michael’s closest friends, who also live abroad. So, I decided to postpone his burial so that as many of his family and friends as possible could be there to attend it. It was the right thing to do—they deserved the chance to say goodbye to him.”
“Tell me about Michael’s decision to take over MicroCom.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t know much about that. That was all on him and his board. They wanted to take over MicroCom because they were becoming a rising star in the lucrative encryption software market. They saw the company as a threat, and they wanted to shut them down. I know that for a fact because Michael and I talked about it often. MicroCom was becoming a serious player, which was the reason for the takeover—and MicroCom wanted nothing to do with. Unfortunately for them, they were a publicly traded company. They were free for the taking, so long as Michael came in with a bid that could seduce investors to go along with him, which I knew he was planning to make happen at any cost.. And I think that, because of Michael’s stellar reputation and because investors knew that that kind of merger would make them a hell of a lot of money, the board at MicroCom knew that he’d probably win that vote. They knew that Michael would and could steal their company away from them if he wanted to—and believe me, he wanted to.”
“After Michael’s death, did StoneTech go through with the takeover?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because at that point, it was up to me to run a company I knew little about. I cancelled the takeover. When Michael died, I felt that StoneTech had died with him. No one in the company had his vision—least of all me. So I sold it.”
“To whom?”
“QuantumCo.”
“Who are they?”
“At that point, they were StoneTech’s major competitor.”
“Did you know any of the players?”
“No—well, at least not personally. When I met with them, they were just several faces sitting around a boardroom table telling me why they were the one I should go with. Still, I knew that I needed to make sure that StoneTech fell into the right hands, and Michael’s team guided me. They told me that QuantumCo was a great company, second only to StoneTech when it came to the development of encryption software. At that point, the heat to buy StoneTech was competitive as hell—dozens of companies were eager to buy it—but I was repeatedly told to go with QuantumCo. And after I met with them, I could see why. They were impressive. They came armed with a whole host of ideas and energy, so I decided to sell it to them. And from what I see today? I did the right thing. Because of that merger, QuantumCo is now the world leader in encryption technology. Michael’s legacy is a big reason for that, and that means everything to me.”
“Who was on QuantumCo’s board?”
“It’s been so long, I have no idea. These weren’t people I knew on a personal level. At that point, I was listening to Michael’s team and trusting them to guide me. When I met with them, I just went with my gut.”
“No worries,” he said. “It’s easy enough to find out who was on the board. Tell me about Lydia.”
“I loved her. She was wonderful.”
“She’s since passed?”
“She has.”
“How old was she when she died?”
“That’s what’s tragic. She was only forty-five.”
He furrowed his brow at me. “What happened for her to die so young?”
“Heart failure.”
“At her age?”
“It happens.”
“Maybe if there’s a family history involved, but it otherwise doesn’t happen often in someone so young. Where did she die?”
“I can’t remember the specifics. I do know that she was cleaning a client’s house, but Lydia had many clients, all of them high-end. The medical examiner’s office said she died of a heart attack there.”
“How long after Michael died was this?”
“Six months?”
He just looked at me, and then he took a sip of his water. “How far do you want to take this, Kate?”
“I want to know if what I heard today is true. And just talking it out with you now, a part of me is starting to think that it could be. I know it sounds crazy, but if you’d been with me and Laura today and heard what Rhoda had to say to me—how specific she was in the details—you’d be second-guessing all of this yourself, just as I am.”
“Would you like me to look into this for you?”
“I would.”
“If I do, you need to know that I’ll only do so pro-bono.”
“No,” I said. “I plan on paying you your going rate. And just so you know—just in case you try to fool me about that—I can find out what that rate is. But before we go there, I need to know whether you think that there is something here.”
“It’s possible, but I’ll need to check into a few things first.”
“Like what?”
“The police report is a good place to start.”
“I expect a bill for your efforts.”
“Kate, I want to do this for you.”
“That’s off the table. I’m glad that you’re here, Ben—I really am. I’m happy to see you again. But this relationship is professional. Bill me, or I’ll go elsewhere.”
“All right,” he said. “I get it. I understand where you’re coming from.”
“What matters is Michael. If he was murdered, I will spend my last dime to bring his murderer to justice. That’s how much I loved him. And that’s how far I’ll go for him. Because, even five years out, I miss him to this day.” I shrugged at him. “None of this is easy. When you love someone as completely as I loved Michael, sometimes moving on seems like an impossibility. I’m ready to do that, but today raised his ghost, and now I need to deal with those emotions.”
“I’m glad to hear that you’re willing to try to move forward.”
“Michael wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. He wouldn’t have wanted me to go through the rest of my life without children or a good man by my side. It’s taken me a long time to come to that conclusion, but I have. And I’ve accepted it.”
I looked hard at him.
“But none of that happens until I’m certain about whether Michael’s death was a fluke or a murder. If it was an
accident, then I’ll just move on with my life. But if it was a murder? I can tell you right now that it will consume me until we find whoever did this to him—and bring them down.”
* * *
“So, where do you think you’ll start?” I asked him later as I returned to the living room and handed him a fresh bottle of water.
“With Lydia.”
“Why Lydia?”
“Obviously, I don’t know anything about her family history when it comes to health-related issues, but I do find it odd that she died of heart failure at the age of forty-five—and only six months after Michael’s death. Do you know if she had any heart-related issues? For instance, did she ever tell you that she couldn’t lift heavy objects because her doctor had warned her against that kind of activity?”
“She never said anything like that to me. Lydia was a workhorse. As for her lifting heavy objects, I saw her do it many times. And then there was Bruiser, who was a beast of a dog. He died a year ago. Whenever Michael and I took him for a walk, we were exhausted when we returned home. I don’t know how Lydia managed to walk him on her own, but she did. And she never once complained about it.”
“This doesn’t sound like a woman who was fearful of her health,” Ben said.
“I agree. Maybe there was no family history of heart problems. But we can’t rule out that she might have been the beginning of that history.”
“It’s possible,” he said. “I’ll find out where she was working when she died. If her former employer or employers will grant me an interview, I’ll talk with them about that day.”
“To what end?”
“In this business, you question everything, Kate. Especially when a healthy young woman unexpectedly dies just six months after witnessing your husband’s death. I don’t like the sound of that,” he said. “Not at all.”
“Are you suggesting that she could have been murdered?”
“Everything is worth considering until you rule it out.”
“But she died of a heart attack. How can that be considered a murder?”
“There are a whole host of ways to induce heart failure, Kate. For instance, if Lydia had been asked to clean something that had been rigged to send thousands of volts throughout her body, that would have brought on heart failure.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“I’m not saying that happened. I’m just saying that it could have happened. There’s a difference.”
I closed my eyes at the thought that Lydia might have died because of her association with Michael and me, and then I just shook my head in resignation. “What else could have happened to her?”
“That’s subjective.”
“When it comes to her heart, I want to know what could have happened.”
“All right. When it comes to inducing heart failure, one of the more popular options is succinylcholine, which is a strong muscle relaxant that paralyzes the respiratory muscles. It’s normally used in hospitals to allow for the insertion of a breathing tube into the throat of a still-conscious patient. In higher doses, it can paralyze the entire breathing apparatus, and the victim suffocates to death, which leads to heart failure. The win for the murderer is that it’s not normally tested for in toxicology screens.”
He took a sip of his water and said, “And then there’s aconite, a plant indigenous to many parts of the world. All parts of that plant are poisonous, but the root is highly toxic. Aconite has been called ‘the perfect poison to mask a murder.’ It can be detected only by sophisticated toxicology analysis using equipment not always available to local forensic labs. If someone slipped it into, say, a cup of tea, her heart would have seized up and she would have died from it. Again— this is pure supposition. The point here is that there are many ways to bring on a heart attack that a medical examiner could easily overlook.”
Overwhelmed, I closed my eyes. How was I even having this conversation now? Had my friend been murdered? She couldn’t have been.
But what if she had…?
“So, you’ll seek out where she was when she died?” I asked him.
“I will.”
“As I said before, Lydia had a high-end clientele. When you find out who employed her, let me know. Because I’ll probably know them on some level. If they’re resistant to working with you for whatever reason, I can probably change that. We’re a team when it comes to this.”
“To a point, we are.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I’ll let you help me out on the sidelines, and by that, I mean that if I need information about certain people and you have it, then you can share it with me in private. But that’s where it ends. I need to keep your name out of this investigation as much as possible so that I can protect you. If, for some unknown reason, that psychic was right and Michael was murdered and the murderer finds out that someone like me is asking questions about his death, things could escalate quickly in a very bad way. When you murder someone, Kate, you never once stop looking over your shoulder. That stain is on you for the rest of your life. Unless you’re dealing with a sociopath or a psychopath, murderers always are hyperaware of their surroundings because they’re paranoid about being found out. That kind of paranoia can last for life. That’s what we’re going into here. So, I need you to listen to me and do as I say for your own sake. Or I won’t take this job.”
“I need you to take it. I trust you—you know that. Because of our past, I trust you more than anyone.”
“Then I need for you to promise me that you’ll do as I say.”
When it comes to my husband, I can’t promise you any of that, Ben. If I find out that Michael was murdered, I will be the one who slices his murderer’s throat. Not you. Not the police. It will be me. If my husband was murdered, Michael will have his vengeance through me.
I hated to lie to him, but what choice did I have? So I said, “I will. I get it. I concede. So, we go forward?”
“We go forward,” he said.
When he stood to leave, he said that he’d be in touch with me in the morning.
CHAPTER EIGHT
And he was.
At seven sharp, while I was making coffee, my cell rang on the kitchen countertop.
“Hello,” I said.
“It’s Ben.”
“You’re up early.”
“I get up at five.”
“Is that the SEAL in you?”
“Might be.”
“I remember a time when you wouldn’t get out of bed until noon.”
“I was a lot younger then. Look, I have a question for you.”
“OK…”
“Do you know a Maxine Witherhouse?”
“I do. Why do you ask?”
“Because Lydia died in her home. She was under her employ at the time of her death.”
“Lydia worked for Maxine?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t. She never mentioned Maxine to me. And if the press reported on it when she died, I don’t remember it. How did you find out?”
“I have friends on the force. I made a call and got my answer. It’s all in the police report.”
“Do you have a copy of the report?”
“I will in the next hour. First, tell me what you know about Maxine.”
“Beyond the fact that she’s a horrible snob?”
“Yes, beyond that.”
“Maxine is as fake as they come. She can be nice to your face, and a mean-spirited bitch behind your back. A year or two ago, she almost had a big, splashy divorce with her husband, Bill, after he found out that she was having an affair. In the end, divorce ultimately became out of the question because there was no prenup between them. Maxine would have lost too much money. As for Bill, he would have lost his social standing, which matters very much to him. So, apparently they worked it out.”
“What else do I need to know about them?”
“Maxine is the one with the pedigree,” I said. “She’s in the book.”
“What b
ook?”
“The Social Register. If you’re a member of society, you’re in the book. It’s so exclusive, only a few hundred people in the States can claim that they’re in it. It’s the closest we Americans get to underscoring our own royalty. Maxine is in it thanks to her lineage. Her grandfather and father helped to build Manhattan into what it is today.”
“What did they do?”
“The Witherhouses first made their fortune in oil. Then, they used that money to build Manhattan’s subway system. So, enough about them and the kind of money and power they wield, wouldn’t you say?”
“What does Bill do?”
“He’s in banking.”
“And Maxine?”
“Maxine drinks martinis before noon. If she isn’t drunk, she pulls herself together and lunches with the right people. She and Bill also host elaborate parties at their mansion on Fifth. I call them ‘statement’ parties. ‘I’m-richer-than-you parties.’ Am I forming a portrait of them for you?”
“You are. Do you know anything else about Bill?”
“I don’t. But I think that when you start to research them, you’ll have plenty of material on your hands, because they’re that well known—and their lives are that well documented.”
“What are your plans for today?”
“After yesterday? I was planning on staying here and reading a good book to try to distract myself.”
“Good. I’ll call you when I know more.”
“More of what?”
“Depends on what’s in the police report. I’ll call you as soon as I get it.”
* * *
I was in the living room, sitting on one of the sofas and re-reading my favorite novel, Dominick Dunne’s An Inconvenient Woman, when my cell rang at one o’clock. I put my iPad down on the table next to me, and answered the call.
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