Brad didn't answer immediately. "I asked who stands to gain, financially or otherwise, from Hammond's murder."
"I didn't want to answer that just then. People could be listening and reporting things. You know what I mean? I started to phone you this morning, then decided just to come over and tell you what I think in person."
Brad said, "Good," and then seemed to be waiting to hear what secrets Novotny might reveal. Personally, I thought the man sounded a little paranoid. Did he think someone had bugged his own office? I'd married right out of college, so I worked only briefly in an office myself, but I'd heard a few unpleasant stories about sexual harassment and backstabbing, to say nothing of downsizing and corporate takeovers. What other shenanigans went on in Harry's company besides the rumors about him and Amanda?
"I'm only the marketing director," Novotny said, "so I don't have access to any but routine financial records, but something may be a little shady."
"How shady?"
"Like I said, I'm not sure. Some of us get stock options in the company as part of our annual compensation, but lately John Ziegler…"
Brad interrupted. "That's the vice president?"
"Yes. He's been trying to buy up options owned by the rest of us."
Aha, a takeover attempt.
"You think he's trying to get control of the company? Did Hammond suspect?"
"No, I don't think so. Hammond owned most of the shares, of course, but with him gone, Ziegler might try to buy out the widow."
"As vice president, won't he pretty much run the company anyway?"
"I doubt it."
"Then who will?"
"Amanda Dillon."
I didn't hear anyone speak for a long moment after that and assumed the lull meant Brad was pondering that new information. Personally, I thought the mention of Amanda—her face should suddenly collapse like Dorian Gray—popped up way too often.
Novotny continued. "Ziegler operated under Amanda's orders during Hammond's absences, and I think she has an employment contract that gives her a lot of power."
"How about you? Where do you stand in the company hierarchy?"
"Behind Ziegler at the moment, but Hammond planned some changes. If he took the title of CEO and made Amanda president, I could have moved up ahead of Ziegler."
"Why is that?"
"Because Hammond knew that Ziegler despised Amanda, that he didn't like working for a woman."
"A young and pretty woman, at that."
"Right. He's older. He hasn't adjusted to the way things are now. You have to give Hammond credit. He recognized potential in people and promoted them—men or women."
"I'm impressed." Still, Brad's tone revealed a smidgen of sarcasm.
"So you didn't mind working with Amanda, got along with her just fine." He paused. "You may not have been aware of it, but I happened to be standing in the hallway yesterday when you and she had an argument. I didn't hear the conversation, but it looked serious to me."
Novotny hesitated about a nanosecond. "We had a difference of opinion about something, that's all. Nothing important."
"Getting along with her is admirable, but I've been hired to find some answers, and your wanting to move up might seem to some people like a motive for murder."
Novotny's voice didn't reveal any concern. "The police may suspect me, like everybody else, but if I wanted to kill him, I'd have waited until after he promoted me, wouldn't I? Why do it before?"
I thought that over. Novotny's reasoning made sense. If I were he and wanted to take over the company, I wouldn't kill Harry with a vice president and Amanda Dillon still in line ahead of me.
"I'm trying to help," Novotny said next. "Ziegler is the financial officer, and I think he's been hatching this for a long time. Maybe Hammond found out, so Ziegler killed him. Or else he hired somebody else to do it." He paused. "You want to absolve Mrs. Hammond, so I'm offering it for what it's worth."
"Okay." Brad's tone suggested a shrug. "Thanks. I'll look into it. Anything else I ought to know?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. Are you aware that Hammond's daughter was having an affair?"
I groaned. Not another person trying to throw suspicion on Debra Hammond. I stopped listening momentarily, disturbed about this change of direction. First, he implicated Ziegler, then Debra. His stories could have been just that, stories, an attempt to divert suspicion from the real murderer, himself. As Brad had hinted the day before, he might have killed Hammond that night and only pretended he found him already dead.
"James Powell is a real sleazebag," I heard Novotny say. "And, since he manages the Bay Meadows store, he attended the banquet Saturday night. So he had the opportunity to kill Hammond."
Powell? Who was Powell? I hadn't heard that name before. I got up from my chair and walked across the little office, hoping to hear better from the other side of the open door.
"Interesting," Brad said. "Do you have any proof of his affair with Debra Hammond?"
"No, but she's been seen in their store."
Brad made a scoffing sound. "Since when is a woman going into a jewelry store suspicious?"
"When her father owns a different jewelry store in the same mall."
"So you think that the only possible reason she could have for going there would be to see Powell."
"Of course."
"She wouldn't just want to discuss business with another jewelry store owner?"
"Powell isn't the owner, though he acts like he is. Anyway, I don't think Debra had anything to do with her father's business, nothing to discuss with anybody there. I think she works for a financial company."
"Assuming for a moment you're right and Debra Hammond is seeing James Powell, why would one of them need to kill her father?"
"Maybe to keep him from disinheriting her."
"Forgive me for doubting you, Mr. Novotny, but not many daughters kill their fathers, and if they do, it's not usually over money. If she married the guy, she might not need her father's money."
I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep from protesting out loud. Brad had repeated my very words. I supposed next he'd add that after some grandchildren arrived, Harry would have come to accept Powell as his son-in-law.
But he didn't say it.
Next, I heard Novotny again. "Everyone knew that Hammond hated that whole operation. You see, a long time ago Hammond and Kevin McDonald had been partners in the jewelry business."
Kevin McDonald? Good grief, the list of people I'd never heard of was growing like Pinocchio's nose.
"When they split, McDonald went to L.A. and developed his own line of jewelry stores, but then he opened one in the same mall up here."
"How did Hammond react to that?" Brad asked.
"Made his blood boil. And then rumors started that his daughter, Debra, had a thing going with the manager, Powell."
"Did Hammond ever threaten Powell or say anything about what he'd do if his daughter became involved with him?"
"Not to me personally," Novotny admitted. "He probably said something to Amanda. She knew everything."
A short silence followed, and I paced the room for a moment. When I reached the other end of the small cubicle, I suddenly noticed a briefcase made of dark brown leather sitting on the floor between the two chairs. I picked it up and read the initials stamped in gold on the top: HDH. Harry's missing briefcase. Brad had found it already. I walked behind my desk and put it inside the credenza for safekeeping, then turned my attention back to the conversation in the next room.
Brad said, "Thanks for the tip. I think the idea is out in left field, but I'll look into it. Anything else?"
I didn't hear his reply, but soon Novotny came through the open doorway. He came over to me, smiling, and reached across my desk with his free hand to shake mine. "Thanks very much."
Since I'd barely said two sentences to the man, I wondered why he thanked me, but I smiled back, and he left.
Brad came out of his office a few moments later, grinning, and dropped
a tape on the desk. "Here, in case you missed anything."
"I didn't miss him accusing Debra of killing her father. First, Amanda hints at it, now Novotny. And I don't believe it."
"You have to admit it seems everyone else does. You may have to revise your opinion." He headed for the connecting door, then turned back toward me again. "By the way, did you ask Rose if she has Harry's briefcase?"
My mind did a double take. "I beg your pardon?"
"I said, 'did you ask her about the briefcase?'"
"That's what I thought you said, but I don't understand why you said it. You already found the briefcase."
"No, I didn't."
"Then what's this?" I slid open the door of the credenza, pulled it out, and set it on top of the desk, handle up.
Brad looked almost as surprised as he did at twelve when he found out I already knew he'd been riding cable cars in San Francisco instead of attending school. "Where did you find it?"
"Right over there." I pointed toward the visitors' chairs against the opposite wall.
After a quick glance at the chairs, he fingered the initials on the top of the case. "How did it get there?"
"I assumed you put it there. I certainly didn't."
"I couldn't. I spent another hour looking for it this morning and came up empty."
We looked at each other again, and then our next word came out simultaneously: "Novotny."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Brad and I continued to look at each other for a few minutes, but I didn't really see him. In my mind's eye, I saw Carl Novotny walking out of my office with a briefcase in his left hand.
"I thought he took his." I skirted around Brad to peer through the open door into his office. "Whoops! No, he didn't. He took yours."
Brad came up behind me and stared at the place on the floor next to his desk where he always left his. "Son of a gun. Amanda said they looked alike."
I stated the obvious. "He must have forgotten he left his out here and took yours by mistake. Too bad."
"Whaddayamean, bad? That's good news. Because it isn't his. It's Hammond's. Now I can return it to Amanda. She asked me to find it, and it walked right into my office."
I returned to the desk and glanced again at Hammond's initials on the briefcase. "I hope your success as an investigator doesn't always hinge on such fortuitous circumstances."
He sounded a little defensive. "I searched long and hard for this thing. I deserve a bit of luck."
"Yet, you can't return it to Amanda. You have to give it back to Novotny."
Brad frowned. "Actually, I may have to turn it over to the police."
"And they'll keep it forever and hamper business, just what Amanda didn't want."
"I'll call Amanda and tell her that we have it. However, if the cops think it's evidence, I can't withhold it."
"We don't know that it is evidence. It may never have been at the crime scene at all. Maybe Novotny found it somewhere else. Besides, Amanda said it contained only business papers."
"Nevertheless, I have to follow the rules."
"It seems a little nitpicky to me. Where did you learn that?"
"Those three years on the police force." He didn't look up for a minute, then added. "You expected it, didn't you? Isn't that why you, Samantha, and I were sent to Sunday School?"
I'd never been able to determine when Brad was serious and when he was pulling my leg, and our parents had been strict about our attending church all through our teens. Church and Sunday school attendance had not ranked high with their fellow baby boomers, but our mother believed in it and continued the tradition raising Brad, Samantha, and me. Since then, I often wondered if the proliferation of crime among younger and younger children had anything to do with their lack of moral education on weekends. As for Brad, I remembered his attendance stopped after he turned sixteen, but at least the lessons had apparently not gone in one ear and out the other without ever touching brain matter.
He picked up the case and strode into his office, placing it on top of his desk. He grabbed the phone with his free hand before he sat down. He soon had Amanda on the line, and then he opened the briefcase, which, as it turned out, hadn't been locked.
I jumped up from my chair and hurried after him, leaning across his desk to look at the contents. While he read off the names on the file folders inside, I removed a video cartridge. Neither it nor the slipcase bore any kind of label, so it didn't appear to be a rented movie. That piqued my curiosity.
I turned it over in my hands. It was a VHS tape. Very old school. Who had used it and what for?
Brad made notes on one of his yellow pads, and I heard his half of their conversation.
"Maybe not," he said into the phone. "Depends on whether they think it's important. I'll call my friend Tom Ortega and ask him." I heard only a lot of silence on Brad's end, and then Amanda apparently agreed he could talk to Tom, and he hung up.
"What about the videotape?" I asked. "Did Amanda say what that's all about?"
"She says it's just pictures of fancy jewelry. You know, necklaces, bracelets, things like that."
"But who uses VHS? Does Amanda know it's an old tape?"
"Yes."
He picked up the phone again, and I heard him ask for Tom, so I put the recorder on the desk and went back to the outer office again.
After another five minutes, Brad came out and told me to call Novotny and arrange to swap briefcases with him. "Find out how he came to have it, and tell him to give it back to Amanda right away."
"Tom doesn't think the police need to see it? Is he sure about that?"
"I described everything in it, and he said they already had all the information about who Hammond visited in Los Angeles."
"And the videotape?"
"Tom said that unless it showed the murderer committing the crime—which is hardly likely with no camera in that hotel linen room—he'd just believe Amanda's statement that it contained pictures of jewelry."
That surprised me, but who was I to question the workings of the law?
Brad had his hand on the knob of the outer door when I stopped him. "I have to teach a bridge class this afternoon, so I'll be out for two or three hours."
He turned back. "I'll be having lunch out myself."
"Who's your lunch date with?"
"If you must know, it's with Ms. Dillon."
"Oh? What for?"
"I need to know everything about Hammond's business affairs in Los Angeles. I'm planning to fly down tomorrow to interview his contacts."
I decided to challenge his motives. "You can't con me, Bradley Featherstone. You just want to see the gorgeous Amanda Dillon again. And the fact she's smart and has a prestigious job doesn't hurt."
His mouth turned up, and although the light from the window was behind him, his face got a little pink. "I admit I like working for her. Who wouldn't? And I'd like to prove I'm a good investigator."
He lingered in the room for another moment, biting his thumbnail, then took a look at his wristwatch, saluted in my direction, and headed out the door.
As soon as he'd gone, I called Novotny at his office, but he wasn't in, so I left a message. Then I called his home and left a message on his voicemail there.
Having done all I could for the moment to contact the man, I went to the coffee shop on the first floor of the office building for an early lunch. Velma Edison sat at the counter, and she called out loudly and patted the empty stool next to her, so—unless I wanted to be rude—I had no option but to take it.
Velma's in her forties and has never been married, which is probably a good thing, since she's the sort of person who could give wife-beaters a good name. She's a gossipy troublemaker who could win an Olympic gold medal for pessimism, but I hated eating in restaurants alone, so I sometimes put up with her.
"I see you're working for your brother again today," she said. "How's business?"
I never discussed Brad's business with anyone. In Velma's case, I took a perverse delight in making up out
rageous stories of his investigations, which she seemed to believe. Once before, I invented a couple of murders he supposedly solved, so—now that he actually had a murder case—I said he was chasing an international jewel thief. While I waited for my lunch, I described scenes from the old Cary Grant movie, To Catch a Thief, which she failed to recognize.
Velma worked in a flower shop. I'd often wondered how a person with such a naturally sour disposition became a flower shop owner—an occupation I assumed required some joy and love of life. But what did I know? Apparently not wanting to leave her shop unattended for long, she finished her lunch quickly and hurried across the street to her store.
When she'd gone, Parry Williams, who owned the art gallery on the first floor, called and waved to me, and I joined her in a side booth. Parry was named for a place near where she was born in Canada and had a trace of what passes for a Canadian accent, mostly in the vowels, in her voice. She greeted me warmly the first day I worked for Brad and was the closest thing I had to a girlfriend in the building. Both of us single—she was widowed with five grown-up children she seldom visited—we sometimes went to dinner together or to a movie. Unfortunately, she liked films with sad endings, which you'd never guess from her otherwise jolly disposition.
"So you managed to get rid of Velma." She raised her eyes.
"She had to get back to her shop. Apparently left the door unlocked." I took a bite of the sandwich I'd brought with me to the booth. "So how's your business?"
"This is slow season."
"Is an office building a good location for an art gallery?"
"Yes, it works out very well. This building is still only partly occupied, and new renters for the offices upstairs need art to hang on their walls."
Much as I liked her personally, I found most of her merchandise consisted of large abstracts of the guess what I'm supposed to be variety and heaps of trash that someone had mistakenly dignified with the name of sculpture. Naturally, I hadn't been one of her customers. Impressionism is as far from photographic realism or even representational art as I cared to go. Nor had I seen any reason to buy her realistic painting of a roll of toilet paper.
"So long as you sell enough to pay the rent."
Dead Men's Tales (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 2) Page 5