by Lexi Blake
It also didn’t hurt that Shelby intended to give all proceeds from the book to a fund she’d set up for the workers injured or killed because of conditions in manufacturing plants that spat out Cain Corp products. The book stood to make Shelby millions, but Carly rather believed she would do it. Shelby was the kind of woman who wasn’t influenced by money or fame. Her mark on the world would be in making a difference.
Shelby Gates was the be-all, end-all of knowledge about Patricia Cain. She’d also become a close friend. Could she shed any light on the subject?
Carly picked up her phone and dialed the number. It wouldn’t be late on the West Coast. Of course, Shelby was probably eating dinner at this time of day. She would give it three rings and then be done with it. She would take that as a sign to leave things well enough alone, and the next time she called Shelby they would talk about the latest fashion or what they were watching on TV.
Shelby picked up on the first ring. “Hey, Carly.”
Well, she’d asked for a sign. “Please tell me you don’t have my number in your phone.”
“Nope. I’ve got it memorized. What’s going on? It’s so good to hear from you.”
It had been a while and Carly felt guilty about that. “Sorry, it’s been a crazy time for us here. I’m coming to LA in a few weeks though. I was hoping we could find some time to meet.”
“I would adore that.” Shelby sounded genuinely pleased. “I’ll even find a suitable disguise. I think I would make a good pregnant blonde. It might be the closest I get to actual pregnancy. I need a date or two. Tell me how the date with Hottie McHotterston went. What was his name? Drew?”
And that was the last time she let Meri know who her friends were. “My sister got your name off this phone, didn’t she?”
“She’s a sweet one. And she’s worried about you. She just thinks you should have some fun. So do I.”
“I didn’t call you to talk about my date. It was a little weird and I don’t know if I want to see him again.” That wasn’t true. She knew damn well she wanted to see him, but she didn’t know if she should. “I called about something else.”
“Tell me you’ve left the witch and you want to do a public interview.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
Shelby sighed over the line. “Are you ever going to tell me what she’s got on you? I have some suspicions, but I consider you a friend so I haven’t looked too deep.”
Thank the universe for small blessings. “Maybe one day. How did your interview with Lewis go?”
Lewis Smith had been a publicity rep for Patricia before she fired him for missing a red carpet event. His wife had been in labor at the time. One didn’t put one’s children before Patricia Cain and stay in her employ.
“He was a gold mine,” Shelby said with a laugh. “Truly he made her sound like the Wicked Witch of the West. Do you have someone else for me? You need to be careful.”
“No, I have a question. What do you know about how Patricia made her money in the beginning?”
“A lot. Why?”
“I’m curious.”
“You’re never curious, but you are cautious, so I’m going to assume you won’t tell me. I owe you a massive favor and, like I said before, we’re friends. So ask me anything.”
Though she liked Shelby and believed she was one of the good ones, she didn’t trust anyone at all when it came to Patricia. She trusted Shelby more than anyone else so she talked to her about the job. Over the year they’d known each other, she’d come to value her very much. “I want to know about her first company. It was about twenty years ago. There were only a few investors, right?”
Over the line she heard the sound of papers shuffling and she envisioned Shelby sitting at her desk, working through her dinner. This was one of the reasons Carly helped her out. They were a lot alike. “Yes, there were five investors, but one didn’t actually put in a ton of money. He was the brains behind the company so he got sweat equity. Benedict Lawless. Genius of a man. There have been several magazine articles written about what happened with him. Apparently the pressure got to him and he snapped. He killed his wife and set his house on fire right before the company went public. He should have waited because, damn, that company made a shit-ton of money.”
“Didn’t he have kids?” She wasn’t about to give away the fact that she’d talked to one of them today. She had questions that needed unbiased answers, but she wasn’t going to out the Lawless siblings.
“Four kids. Three boys and a girl.”
“Did they get a portion of the sale? After all, their parents would have had stock.” It was the piece that didn’t fit for her. Those kids should have been millionaires.
“Give me a sec. The kids got screwed, but I don’t remember why offhand. I’ve got the research in here somewhere. I haven’t done a ton of reading on the early businesses. I’ve been concentrating on the fun stuff first. You know, all her affairs and the fact that she got arrested for a drunken brawl as a teen. I’ve found some pictures of her looking super slutty, which I normally wouldn’t use because I’m not into the whole shame game, but after her article on the decline of moral values in the country, a pic of her dressed in a miniskirt that doesn’t quite cover her cootch is too much to pass up on. And let me tell you, younger Patty didn’t believe in undies. Wait, here it is.” There was a long pause over the line. “That explains it. Son of a bitch. What fucking bastards. There was a morality clause.”
That sounded like Patricia. “So if Benedict violated the morality clause by committing a crime, his stock would revert to the other shareholders?”
“Yep, and last time I checked, murder was a crime. They stole the stock from those kids. They could do it because there was no family left to defend them. Wow. You know, I’ve never thought of interviewing them because I doubt they even remember her.”
Oh, they remembered Patricia Cain. “I’m sure they’ve moved on with their lives.”
“Well, if you consider becoming the world’s youngest billionaire moving on, then yes, I suspect at least one of them has. I haven’t paid any attention to Andrew Lawless because I honestly hadn’t thought about what he’d been through. Think about it. He was left with nothing and he still found his way to the top. What kind of man does that? He’s kind of an enigma. He doesn’t do interviews, shies away from the press. There are only a few pictures of him. He’s interesting. I don’t know what happened to his brothers and the sister.”
Andrew Lawless was apparently the only one who’d kept his name. “He does sound interesting. Who were the other investors?”
“Um, Stratton, Castalano, Cain, and Hatchard. You should know the first two. Bill Hatchard was a big deal at the time. He was brilliant when it came to investment strategy. Some people called him Midas because everything he touched turned to piles and piles of gold. He dropped out of public view a couple of months after the IPO. The rumor is he was deeply disturbed by what happened with Benedict Lawless, and the nastier rumor is he was having an affair with Iris Lawless. So he drops out of the business world for years only to come roaring back as the COO of 4L Software. The way the story goes, when Drew Lawless wanted to form his company, he couldn’t find investors. Now I get that since he didn’t have cash backing him. Hatchard comes on and he manages to get them the money they need and the rest is history. He’s an interesting story in and of himself. If I ever get this damn book done I’ll take a look at him, too. I’d love to know what he was doing during those lost years.”
Carly was certain it was a truly interesting story, but not the one she wanted to know more about. The Lawless siblings were specifically invested in Patricia Cain as one of the conspirators. “You don’t know anything else?”
“I’ve got some notes. I took over this story from another reporter. His notes talk about the fact that he found some internal documents stating that Benedict Lawless was very much against selling
any of his tech. According to these notes, there was a big fight among the board as to whether or not they would ever take the company public. Lawless and his wife wanted to keep it private so they could control how the tech was used. He was some kind of do-gooder.”
“Doesn’t it seem strange that a do-gooder turned out to be a killer?”
“The ways of men are strange, my friend. Of course, when you think about it, it was kind of neat and tidy that the argument got settled the way it did. And by tidy I mean bloody and awful, but the fight was over. There was no Lawless left who could fight the board. Hey, you don’t think it was a setup, do you?”
This was why she’d tried to ask delicately. “I don’t know about that.”
“It’s awfully convenient, don’t you think?” Shelby’s voice had gone soft, a sure sign that she was thinking.
“I don’t understand why there would have been an argument in the first place. Not a real one. Couldn’t the other investors have simply outvoted him? He only controlled twenty percent of the company.” It was another thing she didn’t understand.
“I’ll have to look at his contract, but I think he controlled the entirety of anything produced outside of the company. That particular piece of tech was something he’d been working on since he was a teen playing around on his father’s computer in the garage.”
“Then the patent should have gone to the kids.”
“Who had no lawyer to fight for them,” Shelby pointed out. “Those kids immediately went into the system. They were just trying to survive. They didn’t know a damn thing about contracts or patents. Lawless’s contract was airtight, but someone thought it was fair. I doubt his wife would have let him sign it if she thought it wasn’t. She was a lawyer. She hadn’t practiced in years, but she would have known how to read a contract. Yuck. Now I have to go and read a bunch of contracts. I hate reading anything without a good love scene, you know what I mean?”
“I know you sound crazy sometimes.” But Carly couldn’t help but smile.
“You don’t know the half of it, sister,” Shelby agreed. “I think you’re onto something. Lawless was ready for a fight. The other investors wanted their money, and this way they didn’t even have to share it. Holy shit. This could be a way bigger story than I dreamed of.”
“Put the brakes on the conspiracy theories. I was merely interested. I heard someone mentioning the old partners at one of the wakes Patricia attended for Steven Castalano.” A total lie. She hadn’t been there, but she needed an excuse for bringing the subject up. “I was curious about how she got started. When she talks about it, she was a businesswoman who got stuck in the rat race, and forming Cain Corp was how she got out of it. I wanted to know if that was true.”
“Nothing that comes out of that woman’s mouth has any grounding in fact. Cain Corp is about as rat race a corporation as you can get. I hadn’t truly thought about going back and looking at her previous businesses. I’ve always focused on Cain Corp. Now I can see there might be a lot of potential. I’m coming at it all wrong. I was looking for the sexiest angle possible.”
“Sexy?” There was nothing sexy about her boss.
“It’s a word we use for a story that will bring a lot of publicity in. It’s why I’m doing this unauthorized bio in the first place. Patricia Cain is a huge celebrity but she’s also controversial. She’s considered to be a helpful domestic diva by some and a bully trying to shove women back into domesticity by others. She’s all about hearth and home, so proving she’s actually a narcissist is a sexy idea. But what if she was something even worse. The business stuff requires thought. I can’t sum it up in a photo or a couple of paragraphs, which is why I was avoiding it, but you might be onto something.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“She stole a fortune from four homeless children who’d recently lost their parents. Those other investors worked together and yet not one of them stepped up to help out those kids? What kind of monsters were they? They made their futures from Benedict Lawless, and yet they couldn’t put some of it in a trust for his children?”
There was something about the passion in Shelby’s voice that made Carly ask the question she’d always wanted an answer to. “You know, I’ve never asked you why you decided to take on this project. Is it personal for you? Did she hurt you in some way?”
Shelby was quiet for a moment. “I can’t stand a bully and she’s a prime example. She sets women up to compete against one another and not over anything important. She sets us up to feel like shit because our homes aren’t perfect or because we grab fast food one night a week because we’re too tired to cook. She plays on our insecurities to build herself up. She’s like every mean girl grew up and formed a single, massive tool. She’s the mean girl equivalent of a Transformer, and I think it would be good to take her down.”
It still felt like more than simple social justice, but Carly decided to let it go. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you would let me take a look at some of that business research you have?”
There was a pause on the line. “Do you have any idea how much trust I’m about to show in you? If Cain ever got word of what I’m doing, she would try to shut me down.”
Thank God. She needed more than what she’d read. She needed to understand what had happened. It would be far easier to walk away and simply not call Bran back. In two years she could quit and everyone would go their own ways. “That’s not going to happen.”
So why couldn’t she do it? Why was she sitting here looking at images of a dead couple and wondering if she had a responsibility to help them now that their children were adults?
What was it about Bran that made her want to be the woman she’d been before she’d gotten married, before she’d worked for Patricia Cain? That Carly wouldn’t have hesitated. That Carly would have seen herself as a crusader, trying to right a wrong.
“All right, a copy of the file is being sent to your private e-mail,” Shelby said after a moment. “You know, for a woman who claims to love her job, you do an awful lot to ensure your boss never finds out anything about your personal life.”
Like she actually had one. “I’m erring on the side of caution. And thank you, Shelby. If I find anyone else you should talk to, I’ll send them your way.”
“And I will look into my new line of investigation. Thanks so much for making me read through contracts and patents. Boo.”
She smiled again. Shelby would prefer the sexier stuff, but she would definitely be thorough in her investigation. “You’re so welcome. Please let me know if you find anything. You know, I never asked why the first reporter dropped the story. He did all that research but then passed it on to you? That doesn’t seem smart.”
“John was the smartest man I ever met. He was brilliant and he didn’t hand off the research to me. I inherited it. He was my brother and he died in a car accident.”
“I’m so sorry.” She didn’t know what she would do if something happened to Meri.
“Yes, me, too,” Shelby said quietly. “It was a single-vehicle accident that occurred shortly after he attempted to interview Patricia Cain. He’d been trying to get a one-on-one with her for months, but that day she deigned to talk to him. He died an hour later.”
Holy shit. There was Shelby’s reason. She’d always known it was there, an undercurrent in everything Shelby did. “You think Patricia had something to do with the accident.”
“I can’t prove it, but someday I will. Be careful, Carly. She’s capable of anything.”
The line went dead.
Carly took a deep breath and sat back, still wondering what she should do.
Chapter Three
Two hours later she was still wondering. It was almost eleven and she looked out over the balcony. From her apartment she could see the bay and the historic lighthouse that marked it. Once a year they did a reenactment of Sir Francis Drake’s raid on old St.
Augustine and everyone dressed in proper gowns and attire and did their part and then got rip-roaring drunk afterward. She’d only participated once. It had been a few months after she’d moved here for her job and she’d gone out with some friends and had the best time. Until morning and the humiliation only Patricia Cain could dish out.
She loved this town. Despite some of the crap that had happened here, it had become her home. It was pretty far from the small town in Alabama she’d grown up in. No one here knew her father had dumped her mom. No one knew she’d spent her teen years in a singlewide while her mom went through man after man. Here everything was clean and neat. Sometimes she thought that drab trailer where she’d shared a room with her sister was the reason she’d pursued the job with Patricia. At the time this world seemed so shiny, Patricia herself the queen of all things beautiful and welcoming.
It was all a facade. Just because a home looked lovely didn’t mean she was welcome.
But she still loved this city with its cobblestone streets and horse-drawn tours. She simply hated the fact that if she squinted she could see Patricia’s mansion off in the distance.
What was Bran doing tonight? Was he sitting in some hotel room plotting his revenge? Did he have a whiteboard with a checklist? Or had they tricked out some apartment somewhere to be their man cave/revenge den? He looked like a man who could brood with the best of them. But when he smiled, oh, when he smiled her heart nearly stopped.
It was time to recognize that his attractiveness was one of the barriers to her making the call she knew she should make.
When had her conscience fled? She might get out of this mess in two years, but what did any of it mean if she didn’t come out even vaguely resembling the girl she’d been?
With a long sigh she turned and walked back into her apartment, closing the door behind her. She should get to bed and in the morning she would toss out the card Bran had given her and get on with her life. It was the smart play and she was a smart girl now. She wasn’t the idiot who’d come from Alabama with a book of Southern recipes and the hope that Patricia Cain would be her fairy godmother.