Inheritance

by Judith Michael

  "Word of honor. You won't be sorry. Tell you what. You want to talk to a thief? There's a guy in Seattle who's a whiz at repairing cars; that's what he does now that he's out of the slanmier. I put him away for ripping off a couple art galleries out there. Here's his name; tell him I sent you. Call me when you get back, and I'll tell you if there's anything new to report."

  The next morning Colby was back at work, finding out all he could about the Beacon Hill hotels without setting foot in them. There was time for that; no need to alarm anybody before he was sure of himself. He'd already found, through an employment agency, that a security man from the Chicago

  Judith Michael

  Beacon Hill had been fired by Clay Fairchild and had later gone to work for the Boston Salinger, and he'd interviewed him, but the guy didn't have much to say.

  He mulled it over in his office. Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Washington. How would it work? Somebody could have lined up a maid in each hotel and paid her to get into specific rooms when the guests were out and steal the keys to their houses or apartments or yachts or whatever. No, obviously not steal them; nobody reported any stolen keys. Make copies of them, then. Also security codes for alarms and combinations for safes.

  Colby played with the idea of a maid in every hotel, then discarded it. Too risky. He was willing to bet the guy was looking for specific guests known to have specific art that somebody was willing to pay for, which meant he'd need a maid on each floor, since he wouldn't know which room the guest would get. Too many people for a safe operation.

  Who else, if not maids? Who could get into a room and have time to make copies of keys, go through date books, and find security codes? Security people? Could be. They had entree to all the rooms. But to line up four security people in four hotels and not worry about one of them blowing the whistle . . . very, very chancy.

  The same with the desk clerks, concierges, bellhops, restaurant people in each of the hotels. If it had to be four people, one in each hotel, it was just too damned unreliable.

  Which left the executives. The president of the hotels, vice presidents for quality control, security, and maintenance, and maybe some secretaries. But secretaries would be missed if they went off somewhere for a few days. This had to be someone who routinely traveled to all the hotels, so if he—or she —were gone, everybody would think he or she was at one of the other hotels.

  And that left, by simple elimination, Laura Fairchild, Clay Fairchild, and the other two vice presidents.

  That meant more digging. He did a background check on all of them. And struck gold.

  He couldn't believe his luck. He read through the record of Laura's and Clay's arrest and conviction for theft in New York, and the transcripts of the trial on Owen Salinger's will;

  Inheritance

  he read them over and over, chuckling to himself—was ever anybody so blessed as Sam Colby?—and then he went to Boston and dug into the Salingers' background, reading old newspapers and society magazines. And there they were again: Laura and Clay Fairchild, listed among those questioned in connection with a jewelry theft almost eleven years ago from the family summer home in Cape Cod.

  In the silence of the newspaper file room, Colby sat back with a deep sigh. Goddam if he wasn't a lucky man. A lot of it was genius, but part of it was luck: the luck of the Irish. He'd always had it. He shouldn't forget it and despair when things were bad. He gathered his notes together and left. He had an appointment with Felix Salinger.

  "You didn't tell my secretary what this was about," Felix said as Colby took the chair across from his desk. "There's nothing I can tell you about the robbery in New York; I rarely used that house at the time it occurred."

  "I understand. What I want to talk about is a little different, though it's a crucial part of my investigation." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "What I have to talk about is very sensitive, Mr. Salinger, and I can't proceed until I have your word that our conversation will be kept absolutely confidential. Strictly, completely confidential."

  "I do not gossip," Felix said coldly. He considered the robbery Leni's fault and Leni's problem: she was the one who had used the house; she was the one who had had her privacy violated. Now that the house was entirely his, and he had changed the locks and hired new watchmen, he didn't give a damn about the investigation.

  He wouldn't even have agreed to see Colby, except that July was a slow month and he was bored and angry. He blamed it on Leni: a man abandoned by his wife had too many empty hours. He didn't even have board meetings to keep him busy preparing progress reports, because he'd canceled them for the summer; he was sick and tired of having to defend his way of running the company. He'd work things out, and by the time the board met in September he'd be in control again, as he should be. But, meanwhile, he was bored, and Colby was a diversion. "I do not gossip," he said again. "I keep my thoughts to myself."

  Judith Michael

  Colby nodded. Ice in his veins, he thought. "Well, then. Vm investigating six robberies, five besides your own, all of which bear such strikingly similar features that I am working on the assumption that they were perpetrated by the same person or persons."

  "Yes?"

  "Now, as part of my investigation, I need information on certain people. Two of those people once worked for you, in fact liv^ with you, and I'd like to ask— "

  Felix sprang forward in his chair, knocking over a pencil holder and sending pencils, letter openers, and felt-tip pens rolling in all directions. "Lived with us?"

  "For approximately four years, in . . ." Colby checked his notebook and read the dates. "I'm speaking, of course, of Laura Fairchild and her brother. Clay Fairchild. If you don't mind answering some questions about them . . ."

  "No." Felix sat back. "Not at all. Anything I can do."

  Well, aren't we warm and jolly, Colby marveled silently. "We have no proof of anything," he began. "You understand how important that is. I'm only, as we say, fishing for information, which is why I had to insist on confidentiality." Felix nodded; he was tense, waiting. "Well, without proof, we seem to have a link between the six robbery victims. . . ."He described his theories to Felix, who listened with unwavering attention. "Now I could, of course, have these people tailed, ^|i but the robberies have been about six months apart, and what am I going to do while I wait for the next one? Sit on my hands? And even then we might miss it—tails aren't perfect —and then we might have to wait around for another six months, or more. And if I'm wrong about the Fairchilds or their vice presidents, I'm missing a chance to catch someone else. So you see my dilenmia. I need to find all the information I can in the shortest possible time. So whatever you tell me ... ..

  Felix talked. Unemotionally, he described Laura's appear- M ance at the Cape Cod compound with her brother, how she wormed her way into Owen's affairs, the robbery of Leni's jewels—never recovered—that obviously was an inside job, obviously planned and carried out by Laura and Clay. He reviewed the family's return to Boston, with Laura smd Qay still

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  attached, like leeches. "She even got herself engaged to my nephew; made sure she'd be in the family for good."

  "And who is that?" Colby asked, his pencil poised.

  "Paul Janssen. He's a filmmaker in California."

  Mother of God, Colby thought, automatically writing Paul's name in his notebook. What the devil have I got here?

  "Are they still engaged?" he asked.

  "Good God, no. Of course not. He kicked her out when the rest of us did. He's married to a Boston girl from a fine family. No, that didn't last long."

  "How long?" Colby asked.

  "A year. Perhaps two."

  *They were engaged for two years? And never married?"

  "No. My father died, and we discovered her duplicity and sent her packing. Both of them. We haven't seen them since."

  "You saw them at the trial."

  "Of course. I forgot that."

  Colby sighed. He'd have to figure out what to
do about Paul. Damn it, he liked him; he liked confiding in him. And he wanted to be in his movie. Network TV! The gods are fickle, he thought sadly.

  He turned to a new page in his notebook. "It's a long way from a kitchen maid in your house to the owner of four hotels," he said to Felix. "What I'm wondering is, could you help me with what all this might have cost her."

  "I am not privy to her finances."

  Colby nodded. "But she bought those hotels from you. The same ones that were part of Owen Salinger's will." Felix looked at him in rigid silence and hastily Colby said, "So you know what she paid for them. And you must know what it costs, approximately, to renovate an old building. Plus labor costs to staff a hotel of a hundred or so rooms."

  "Suites," Felix said coldly. 'Three of the hotels are all suites. Only Chicago has both rooms and suites."

  Keeps up with her, Colby noted. "Well, but you see what I'm getting at. It would be important if she's in debt up to her ears, that kind of thing. If you could help me out there ..."

  "Ah. Yes. Of course." He leaned back and began to reel off numbers. "She paid approximately ten million for three of the hotels; twenty for the New York Salinger. Renovation could

  Judith Michael

  have run twenty to thirty milHon each, maybe more; I haven't been in them but I've had reports. I would estimate, roughly, that she'd need ten million cash for each of three hotels— down payment on the mortgage, renovating costs, and start-up costs—and maybe fourteen million for the New Yoiic hotel. Then, of course, there are operating costs: depending on the ratio of staff to guests, they could run anywhere from fifty thousand to a hundred fifty thousand a room—"

  "Per yearT' Colby asked.

  **Of course."

  Colby was adding numbers. "Forty-four million just to open the doors on her hotels. Right? Three at ten million, one at fourteen. Before she gets her first customer."

  *That's close."

  "Where would she get money like that? She worked in your kitchen, right? And left your house with nothing? And at the trial she stated she was working as assistant manager at a resort in the Adirondacks. And then—boom—she shows up with forty-four million dollars in cash, buying hotels right and left. Where'd she get it?"

  F6r the first time in the six weeks since Leni had left him, Felix felt a surge of pure joy. "She'd have to borrow it," he said.

  "Okay. How do you go about borrowing forty-four million dollars when all you are is an assistant manager at a resort?"

  "You con somebody into backing you," Felix said blandly. "She was good at that: she'd already gotten around two old men; somehow she found another one. More likely, more than one."

  "Sounds like I'd like her on my side if I needed money," Colby said, making it a joke, but Felix did not smile. "Well, then, how would it work?"

  Felix sat back and stared at the ceiling, and when he began to talk his whole manner changed: he became crisply professional, his thinking logical and almost abstract. "You need ten million dollars for the Chicago hotel. You form a corporation and sell shares: half to your backer for five million, die other hatf to yourself for five million, which you've borrowed from your backer."

  *Then he's in for ten million."

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  "Yes, but your collateral is your half interest in the corporation. If you can't pay the loan to your backer, or the interest on it, he gets the whole corporation."

  Colby nodded. "And the other three hotels?"

  "You keep borrowing. Bring in other investors, sell them some of your shares. Which means you no longer own half the corporation. You may even need so much money you give up control: you may only own twenty or thirty percent of the corporation by the time you've sold enough shares to get the money you need. If your original backer is still on your side, the two of you probably have enough shares to outvote the new investors. Or not. I have no idea. But the main problem is your debt. At a guess"—he paused, then decided to make it twice as high as it probably was, to make her sound desperate —^'^you could owe half a million dollars a year in interest alone on what you've borrowed."

  Colby whistled softly. "Paid out of the salary she takes from her hotels?"

  "I don't know where else she'd get it."

  "So she has to earn over half a million dollars a year to live on and pay her debt."

  "I would assume so."

  "Could she make that kind of salary from four hotels?"

  Felix hesitated. "Possibly," he said reluctantly. "Salary and bonus based on how well the hotels do. But it would be very difficult. It would mean an unusually high occupancy rate in all four hotels, and extraordinarily high rates for rooms and suites."

  "What's she charging for a suite in New Yoiic?" Colby asked.

  Again Felix hesitated. "A thousand dollars to twenty-five hunted a night."

  Colby whistled again. "And she's getting it?*'

  "I don't know what her occupancy rate is. I'm sure some people are paying it."

  "So she could do it, but it wouldn't be easy."

  "Exactly."

  Colby feU into deep thought. Half a million a year in interest. She could probably pay that off with the commission from stolen paintings. The thefts had been running six to ten paint-

  Judith Michael

  ings a year, if she kept it up, she could be out of debt in no time. Or buy another hotel or two. Hell, he thought fancifully, she could even become an investor herself and buy into other corporations. Like the Salinger Hotels, for example.

  Stop, he told himself. Don't jump to conclusions. It still could be her brother or the other VPs. But he didn't have a motive for those other characters. He sighed. Time to check into all their private lives. Also, he'd have to figure out a way, without alerting anybody, to get the travel patterns of all four of them: find out if they were in the vicinity of the thefts when they occurred.

  Of course, he thought, as he put away his notebook and shook hands with Felix, it could be somebody entirely different, somebody who had a grudge against Laura Fairchild and wanted to set her up, or somebody who just needed a lot of money and had found some way—some connection, some friend who knew the workings of the Beacon Hill—to get into the hotels long enough to get keys made and find security codes. Or there might be another connection among the six robberies that he hadn't found, and the Beacon Hill hotels had nothing to do with them.

  You never know, he mused as he rode the elevator from the top floor of the Boston Salinger. The case is a long way from being closed. But if he had to bet right now, today, he'd put his money on the very resourceful, very aggressive, and— evidentiy—supremely successful Laura Fairchild.

  Chapter 29

  AFTER daik, when the August sun had set and a cool breeze came up, Laura and Ginny went to the roof garden, taking with them the legal forms Ginny's lawyer had given her. "It seems extraordinarily simple," she said.

  *The higher the numbers, the simpler it gets,*' Laura murmured wryly as she reread the documents. 'Tt always amazes me how much easier it is to spend ten million dollars than ten ninety-five."

  A bird sang three pure notes in descending order, repeating them again and again; children threw Frisbees in the courtyard, the traffic sounds of Manhattan were a steady chorus in the background, and amid flowering shrubs and the perfume of roses, Laura signed a promissory note for ten million dollars. And then she and Ginny put their signatures to a purchase agreement for Laura Fairchild to buy Vii^nia Starrett's shares in Salinger Hotels Incorporated.

  "Done," Ginny said with satisfaction. "But you're going to have a hell of a row when you go up there next week for the September meeting and ask them to approve it."

  "It won't be the first time I've had a row with the Salin-gers,"

  "I'd come along for moral support, but I guess I can't."

  "No, we can't both legally be there."

  "So you'll just show up at the meeting?"

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  "Yes."

  "With no warning?"

&nbs
p; "With no warning."

  "You're a brave lady. Or you're all fired up for revenge."

  Laura was silent, and they sat quietly, holding tall glasses of iced tea and nibbling almond tuiles that Laura had made for dessert.

  "Wonderful dinner," Ginny said. "You are one terrific cook."

  "Rosa was one terrific teacher," Laura replied with a smile. "She still sends me recipes every week. She'll be here over Labor Day; come for dinner then. She won't let me in the kitchen when she's in the house, and she's still the best chef I've ever known."

  "And a reminder of happy times."

  "Yes, but it doesn't hurt as much as it used to. I have a lot of other good times to remember: with you, and Kelly, and Clay, and so many of my times with Wes." She smiled ruefully. "Do you know, all I'm remembering these days are the good times we had together."

  "So you miss him."

  "Now and then. Well, a lot, really, but mostly because I haven't met anyone else I like half as well."

  "With all the men you go out with?"

  "How many have you met that you want to see more than once?"

  Ginny sighed. "There is a significant shortage of desirable males. Which doesn't mean some of them aren't okay in bed."

  "I suppose. I haven't found any I want to sleep with. Most of them have such anxious eyes. And the ones who don't are so sure every single woman in Manhattan is desperate for a man that they think they don't even have to be interesting to get all the women they want. I'd rather stay in my wonderful house and read and listen to music."

  "Not true."

  "Well, not every night. I'd love to find someone who's just fun and not demanding. But it really is all right, most of the time. Sometimes I come home from a party and wonder why I bothered to go."

  "Because you're looking for a man, and you can't find one sitting at home Ustening to music."

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  *'I hate what that sounds like: a hunter stalking Manhattan, trying to snare a man."

  Ginny laughed. "I know plenty of women like that. But you're too cool and quiet to be anything like them."