Bad Publicity

by Joanne Sydney Lessner

  Isobel didn’t bother to remind her that Angus had chosen not to call for help. Instead, she asked, “Why did you need Jimmy’s Demerol?”

  “In the end, I didn’t, but I saw him taking it one day, and that gave me the idea. I took it from his desk when nobody was looking. When I realized I needed something more potent than pills, I emptied the bottle and left it in Barnaby’s office. I hoped the police might suspect him.”

  “So your plan was always to poison Jason here?”

  Dorothy nodded. “I waited until I knew he would be coming here for a meeting. But I got lucky.”

  “Starbucks,” Isobel said.

  Dorothy nodded. “There he was, with Angus. Angus brought the cups over to the counter where I was standing. I had already added the digoxin and Demerol to my coffee, and while Angus was adding milk and sugar to his tea, I knocked his wallet to the floor. I switched my coffee with Jason’s, and Angus took it back to him.”

  Isobel exhaled slowly. “You made Angus an unwitting accomplice.”

  “It was too good a chance to pass up. And once Angus was dead, it was even better. Without him alive to contradict me, I could pin the whole thing on him. When the police asked me what I had seen, I told them I’d seen Angus doctor Jason’s coffee.” She paused thoughtfully. “It’s strange that in the end, Jason died here, where I’d always intended it to happen. It all worked out better than I could have hoped—until you figured it out. Then I tried to silence you, but that didn’t go as planned, either, did it? That poor black girl. I hope she’ll be okay.”

  Isobel felt her body grow damp with sudden sweat. The poisoned coffee was meant for her, not Jayla.

  “She’s James’s girlfriend,” Isobel blurted out.

  Dorothy’s body heaved with a strange half laugh. “Poor guy. He can’t catch a break.”

  “Ex-girlfriend, actually. He’d probably have been more upset if it had been me,” Isobel said.

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  The tone of Dorothy’s voice chilled Isobel, and the truth of her present situation suddenly struck her full force. She was alone in a deserted office with someone who had reason to want her dead. But she wasn’t alone—and she wasn’t the only one Dorothy might want dead.

  Isobel ran to the kitchen, her heart racing. Katrina was sprawled on the floor, unconscious, her russet hair splayed across her face and her arms flung out at an unnatural angle.

  Isobel threw herself to the floor and immediately felt for a pulse. Katrina’s breathing was shallow, and she hadn’t vomited. Isobel reached for her cell phone, but she didn’t have it. She quickly surveyed the small kitchen. No extension. She didn’t want to leave Katrina, but she knew she had to get help. She bolted down the corridor and into the conference room.

  It was empty. Without stopping to wonder where Dorothy had gone, Isobel ran to the credenza and snatched up the phone, but there was no dial tone. She grabbed the base and saw the unplugged wire. As she bent down to reconnect it, she heard the door slam shut.

  Dorothy was standing in front of it, clutching Jimmy’s antique letter opener in one hand and Isobel’s cell phone in the other.

  “Looks like you already called for help,” she said, flashing the phone at Isobel. “We’ll just wait, then, shall we?”

  FORTY-THREE

  James hustled away from the hospital as quickly as he could. At this hour there weren’t many pedestrians, but there weren’t many cabs, either. The few he tried to hail accelerated past him, exercising one of the few tacitly acceptable excuses for discrimination by refusing to pick up a lone, large black man, late at night.

  He bent his head against the cold wind blowing off the East River and tried not to panic. But there was panic in Isobel’s text. And he knew she must really be in danger if she’d forgotten her anger and reached out to him. One thing was clear: she was depending on his presence and nobody else’s.

  As another available cab left him in the dust, he wondered briefly if she needed him only for his muscle. That skinny British twerp wouldn’t be much help in a fight. But if she were in that kind of trouble, wouldn’t she call 911? Then again, maybe she had.

  He stopped short and pulled out his phone. What was he thinking? She had left a voice mail he had never listened to! He dialed in to retrieve the message and started walking downtown. As her words relayed the short but stunning message, he picked up his pace to match Isobel’s rapid-fire patter.

  Oh, shit, James, where are you? Okay, listen. I know you hate me, but please listen. Dorothy who works in the healthcare group is Dorothy Berman. Ring a bell? She has a picture on her desk of the girl from Barnard. I need to know what that means. If it’s her daughter, and she killed Jason… I’m here alone with her—no, not totally alone—Katrina’s here, too. But we’re the only ones in the office, so please, if you get this, you have to come down here.

  Every muscle in James’s body went into overdrive. A flood of emotions overtook him at the mention of the name he’d tried so hard to forget, and he was forced to pause and bend over to catch his breath. Dorothy in healthcare? Last names. From now on, he was going to insist that Isobel use last names! And Isobel was alone with her. If Dorothy had killed Jason—an urge James could certainly relate to—she might kill Isobel. For that matter, she might kill him too when he got there. What was he walking into?

  Come on, he told himself. You weigh two hundred and fifty—okay, two hundred and sixty—pounds. Why are you scared of a middle-aged woman?

  He leaned against a building, panting. He was wasting time, but there was more at stake in this meeting than Isobel could possibly know. He would be forced to face Dorothy, to talk to her. To say all the things he didn’t—couldn’t—confess at the time about what really happened. He knew the official version, he knew the unofficial version, and he knew the truth. He was pretty sure Dorothy knew versions one and two. Version three was going to come as a shock.

  But he had no choice. If Isobel was right about Dorothy, her life was in danger. He inhaled the cold air with such force that it stung his lungs. Then, with a burst of energy, he took off at a run toward the confrontation he had postponed for too long.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “Katrina might die,” Isobel said. “Are you prepared to have her death on your hands, too?”

  “She won’t die. It’s straight Demerol. When she wakes up, she’ll be groggy, and she won’t remember what she did.”

  Isobel gave a dismissive snort. “Which is what? Proofreading German?”

  Dorothy shook her head slowly. “No. Killing you.”

  In spite of herself, Isobel took a step backward. “Why would anybody believe Katrina would kill me? We’re old friends!”

  Dorothy hadn’t moved from her position in front of the door, but now she shifted to the side just a bit. It still wasn’t enough for Isobel to make a run for it. Not with that nasty-looking letter opener pointed at her.

  “Maybe it was Katrina who killed Jason to keep the merger from happening so she wouldn’t have to work for her father. Maybe you figured it out and confronted her, and she killed you.”

  Dorothy’s made-up version of events was so close to what Isobel had suspected for so long that it took her breath away. The thought of her disloyalty made her stomach roil with guilt. Not only had she doubted Katrina, now her friend was in danger because of her.

  “You’re forgetting James,” she said, pointing to her phone, which was still in Dorothy’s hand. “He’s on his way. And he’ll know exactly what happened—and why.”

  Dorothy’s almost robotic composure slipped for just an instant. Isobel knew that if she could only hold on until James arrived, there was a chance that Dorothy might fall apart completely. Then again, so might James. It was even odds at this point.

  But would he come? Even beyond the very real possibility that he hadn’t gotten her message or her text, there were more reasons why he wouldn’t come than reasons why he would. But she couldn’t let on to Dorothy that there was any doubt in her min
d that he would show up. She had to stall for time. She held her hands out in front of her, walked very slowly back to the table, and picked up the papers she had been working on.

  “We may as well finish the annual report.”

  Dorothy froze, and for a moment, Isobel feared she had somehow said the worst possible thing imaginable. Then Dorothy threw back her head and howled with laughter. It was a hysterical sound, truly crazed. Tears ran down her face, and as she wiped them away with her forearm, Isobel heard her ringtone between Dorothy’s gasps.

  “We’ll just…ignore this…” Dorothy panted, pressing a button.

  Damn, thought Isobel. If it was James, it meant he wasn’t on his way. He intended to question her first before deciding whether or not to come.

  Dorothy was clutching at the neckline of her blouse as if she were trying to let in more air. “Did you really…think…we needed to redo the annual report?” she finally spluttered.

  Isobel blinked. “What do you mean?”

  Dorothy let out a mad cackle. “The real report went to print yesterday, right on time. This was a lure, a distraction. And you came back! When you said you had to be somewhere else tonight, I panicked. That was why I made Penny stay until you got here. I had to keep up the pretense that we were on a deadline. But think about it! Germany is six hours ahead. If they needed it first thing tomorrow morning, it’s too late already!”

  Isobel’s mouth went dry. She had been free, and she had come back of her own accord, tempted by time and a half. She’d walked right into Dorothy’s trap. Penny would do whatever was expected of her without questioning the flimsiness of Dorothy’s excuse. Katrina might have guessed if she’d worked on the account to begin with, but she was pinch-hitting. No, if anyone should have seen through the pretense, it was Isobel.

  “But by all means,” Dorothy continued, “if you want to spend your last hours on earth separating prefixes, you go right ahead!”

  Dorothy took a small step toward her, raising the silver letter opener, which flashed in the fluorescent light. Isobel made an instinctive dive under the table. At the same time, she heard an enormous smacking sound and a cry. When she opened her eyes, she saw James standing in the open doorway, looking down, horrified, at Dorothy’s form, crumpled on the floor.

  FORTY-FIVE

  “Oh, my God, James!”

  “Are you all right?” He made a move toward Isobel and slammed into the conference table. Pain rocketed through his thigh. “Shit!"

  “I’m fine. But Dorothy!”

  Rubbing his leg, he sank to his knees next to the older woman and checked her. “She’s breathing.”

  “Quick, give me your phone.”

  He grabbed it from his coat pocket and thrust it at Isobel.

  “Stay with her while I call the police,” she said. “I have to check on Katrina. She’s knocked out in the kitchen.”

  “What the—?”

  But Isobel was gone. He shifted into a sitting position, his stomach clenched in knots. Even though Dorothy was alive, he was afraid she might still cross to the other side just to spite him. He wouldn’t have blamed her.

  Her eyelids fluttered and drooped again. “You,” she moaned.

  Isobel returned a few moments later, still speaking into the phone. “Yes, Detective O’Connor. This is his case… And an ambulance!” She handed the phone back to him. “Katrina’s still out. Dorothy drugged her.”

  Their eyes locked for a moment, and then moved together toward the woman on the floor.

  “Do you think we need to restrain her?” he asked.

  Isobel shook her head. “I don’t think there’s anything she can do now that you wouldn’t be able to put a stop to.”

  Isobel disappeared under the table for a moment, then emerged with an old-fashioned letter opener wrapped in a paper towel, which she deposited into a plastic bag. “I need that soda can, too.” She reached across the table. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come. Next time I’ll make sure we’re back on speaking terms before I send out an S.O.S.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t seem to be able to stay mad at you very long.”

  Dorothy whimpered and shifted her position on the floor. Isobel took a step backward, and James took the hint. He turned his attention back to Dorothy.

  “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to knock you down. It was an accident,” he said.

  “No it wasn’t. Just like Nell’s death wasn’t,” she said in a hoarse voice.

  James swallowed. Here it comes.

  “You’re right. Nell’s death wasn’t an accident. At least, not entirely.”

  Dorothy pushed herself up against the wall as if she were trying to propel herself through it, as far away from him as possible.

  She gazed at him woozily. “I always knew it wasn’t you, but it was too easy for the administration to make you the scapegoat. The publicity for the school was bad enough as it was, but it would have been so much worse for them if they’d accused Jason. His father was too prominent, too powerful. There would have been a long, dragged-out, very public case, and he’d have gotten off in the end. At least this way, there was justice for some. For me, but not for you.”

  James cleared his throat. “Mrs. Berman, there’s something you need to know about what happened that night. Something only those of us who were there know.”

  He sensed Isobel positioning herself behind him, and was glad of the support it suggested, although he knew that when she heard what he was about to say, she might try to disappear through the opposite wall.

  “I know what happened,” Dorothy said wearily. “He knew she couldn’t tolerate alcohol. She told him over and over. He tricked her into drinking somehow, and it killed her.”

  James took a deep breath and plunged on. “We were drinking Kamikazes California-style. That’s when you lean your head back and someone else mixes the drink in your mouth. That’s what we were doing that night. And Nell…” He shut his eyes, knowing even as he did so, that he couldn’t protect either of them from what he was about to say. “Nell turned to me and said, ‘What the hell? One won’t kill me.’”

  “She did not!” Dorothy hissed.

  James continued, rasping on through the squeeze in his throat.

  “I knew she shouldn’t risk it, but I was too far gone to care. There are things I could have done. I could have grabbed her and taken her away. Hell, I could have knocked the bottle out of Jason’s hand. But she didn’t want me to. That’s what I thought, anyway. Who knows what she really wanted in that moment? You should have seen the triumph in Jason’s eyes. Yes, for that, you can blame him. But it wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t murder. It was—I don’t know what it was. But she asked for the drink. And then she asked for another, and then two more. And I let her.”

  Dorothy’s eyes were closed, and for a moment he thought she’d passed out again. But her mouth began a series of twisting movements and her face flushed dangerously purple against her silver hair.

  “That is A LIE!”

  The force of her words sent James backward, knocking Isobel into the table. For a moment, they both flailed, but then he felt her hand on his shoulder, steadying them both. Dorothy’s eyes were open now, lasering hatred at him.

  “She would never have done that. NEVER!”

  “James, let it go.” Isobel’s voice was soft in his ear.

  He shook her off, his eyes never leaving Dorothy’s. “We have to face the truth. Both of us. We’re the only ones left.”

  “Sometimes the truth is better left avoided,” Isobel said quietly.

  James whirled on her, rising to his feet in a move so sudden it surprised them both.

  “I’ve been running from this for years! They were right to kick me out. There—I said it! But they should have kicked Jason out, too. They should have kicked him out first.” He gestured wildly at Dorothy. “And she needs to know that Nell wasn’t an innocent victim. She was a victim, yes, but of her own
desire to fit in. To be loved.”

  “She was loved, you big, fucking animal!” Dorothy’s voice sirened into the room. “I loved her, we all loved her!” She bent forward on all fours and pulled herself to her feet. “Don’t you dare—don’t you DARE blame her!”

  “I don’t!” James screamed back. They were nose to nose now, but instead of fear or shame, he felt relief uttering the words he had held back for so long. “We were all responsible! We are all—all of us—responsible for our own actions. For God’s sake, if I’ve learned anything in AA, it’s that! Nell was playing with fire. She was the only one who really understood what she was doing. She gambled, and she lost! She lost…”

  He felt his knees give way under him, and he crumpled into a chair, awash with racking sobs that shook his sturdy frame. He felt Isobel behind him, her arms on his shoulders, as guilt, anguish and relief flooded out of him. He was dimly aware of Dorothy wailing as she sank to the floor.

  They were still like that when the police found them.

  FORTY-SIX

  “We were on our way back from Kit Blanchard’s when we got confirmation of the fingerprints on the coffee cup,” Detective O’Connor said.

  Isobel glanced over to the other side of the room, where Aguilar was locking handcuffs around Dorothy’s wrists. She seemed to have aged decades in the last half-hour. Her pale face drooped, and a dazed deadness had replaced her usually bright, scrutinizing gaze.

  “And Dorothy’s were on it,” Isobel said.