by Linda Barlow
“I have friends,” Blackthorn said. “A few of them have already filled me in.” He dropped a folder on the desk between them. “Here’s what we know so far. The killer was a professional shooter. He didn’t get close enough to Rina to transfer any physical evidence to her body. He escaped with his weapon, a .22-caliber pistol. Anaheim PD interviewed lots of witnesses who claimed to have seen the guy, but no two descriptions are the same. We know he was in the room with her, but so were over a hundred other people. It was a nightmare for the crime scene folks, who got enough irrelevant hairs, fibers, fingerprints, and other crap to fill an entire evidence room with little glass jars and paper bags. At the end of it, we got zip. This is one case that won’t be solved by physical evidence.”
“And the gun hasn’t turned up, right?”
“No. He probably used it then broke it down, took the pieces up to LA, and dumped ‘em into the ocean. We won’t find it. In these cases they either leave it on the scene—the untraceable ones of course—or they hide them. I suspect they go into the same black hole with odd socks that vanish in the dryer.”
“You figure he picked up the piece in California?”
“Couldn’t fly in with it, that’s for sure.”
“On the other hand, maybe the doer is from California—they got hit men in LA.”
“You’re absolutely right. He could be from anywhere, that’s the trouble.”
“Maybe this case isn’t going to be solved at all.”
“Yeah, it will. Somebody wanted Rina de Sevigny dead. And when I find out why, I’ll know who. The long-lost daughter’s the obvious suspect, of course. Especially now that she’s turned out to be Rina’s heiress.”
“That reminds me,” said Carla, “is it true that you were a beneficiary, too?”
“Yeah, she left me a painting. That was a surprise.”
“I didn’t know you knew her that well.”
“Jessie and I both knew her, during Jessie’s illness.”
“Jeez, Boss, next the cops’ll be investigating you.”
“Yeah, right.” Blackthorn brushed this aside. “Okay, I want to know everything there is to know about the Harrington woman—her business, her sex life, her friends, her life with her mother, assuming they ever had a life together. I’ve ordered Jonas to do one of his infamous computer searches on her. I want to know which side of the bed she sleeps on, her astrological sign, her blood type, her grades in high school, her first boyfriend, her last boyfriend, and what she had for lunch last Tuesday. Think you can handle that?”
“Think you’re obsessing a bit?” Carla said dryly. “So we fucked up. It happens.”
“Just do it, Murphy,” Blackthorn growled.
Was he obsessing? he wondered as she left his office. Maybe, but it was important to get the details right.
Briefly, he thought back over his years with the FBI. His father had been a New York City cop, and law enforcement had been what he’d always wanted to do—ever since childhood.
Vietnam had almost changed that—he’d seen too much violence, too many horrors, and lost his clarity about the difference between the good guys and the bad. After Nam, he’d sometimes thought that the only thing he could do well was kill…
That was when the drinking had started. It had only been bad for a few months before he’d realized that he could either sober up or watch his life go down the toilet. He’d chosen the former, graduated NYU with honors, joined the FBI.
They’d been good years, and he’d been good at his job. But you had to be an organization man to advance far up the chain of command, and he was forever being called on the carpet for being too damn independent.
It had been Jessie who’d convinced him to start World Systems Security.
It had been a good move. But losing Jessie had been bad for business. He’d been unable to focus. He’d been overwrought, and he’d made some bad decisions, taken some unfortunate actions…
Now he figured he only had one chance to put things right.
Rina de Sevigny was dead.
And anybody could have done it. A relative. A friend. A business associate. A religious fanatic. Someone who’d been helped by her program. Someone who’d been harmed by her program. Someone who believed Power Perspectives was essentially full of shit.
Or Rina’s long-lost daughter.
“I still can’t understand it,” April said. “It’s been twenty-eight years since I last saw my mother. Why would she leave her business to me?”
Arthur Stanley shrugged. “She did not take me into her confidence,” he said.
Stanley had urged her to come back to his office for a Saturday morning meeting so he could explain to her the terms of Rina’s will. He’d just informed her of the extent of her inheritance. It staggered her imagination. Power Perspectives was a multimillion-dollar operation. During the past few years when Rina had become guru to movie stars, politicians, and ordinary people with a yearning for peace in their hearts, the Foundation had been inundated with cash. Stanley told her, with obvious pride, that it was one of the fastest growing private companies in the country.
“The intent of her wishes is clear,” he said. “Not only has she left you the company, but she also expects you to run it. Indeed, it was her fondest hope that you would decide to carry on in her place.”
“That is out of the question,” April said. “I have my own business to run.”
“Madame was apparently aware of that,” Stanley said. “In fact, her instructions state that it was your obvious competence at running your own business that convinced her of your talents. She did not make this change because of a sentimental whim. She was convinced that you—and only you—were a fit successor to her.”
April shook her head. “She didn’t even know me. I’m a different person from the child she left on a dock in New York Harbor.”
“It seems that she has followed your progress, particularly in recent years. Of course, she was still a young woman. I’m sure she didn’t expect to die so soon. I am reasonably certain that she expected to be in touch soon, and to begin grooming you for the job. It is unfortunate that things have worked out so tragically. It will be difficult for you with the family, I am sure. One or more of them might decide to contest the will. But it was carefully drawn up, and Madame de Sevigny’s wishes were clear.”
“Her wishes, perhaps. But not mine. I never asked to be my mother’s successor.”
“I understand.” He handed her a slick folder with a glamour shot of Rina smiling on the cover. Inside was a thick sheaf of papers about Power Perspectives. “But I hope when you have read this material that you will change your mind.”
April took the material. In truth, she wasn’t sure how sincere her protests were. The more she thought about inheriting Rina’s business, the more tempting and exciting it was beginning to seem.
“This is all so impersonal,” she said to the lawyer. “Besides the business interests, did she leave anything of a personal nature to me?”
“There is a co-op apartment that she owned—or, I should say, that is owned by Power Perspectives. I believe it may have some personal items in it. Otherwise, only this,” he said, handing her a large manila envelope. “My instructions were to turn this over personally to you, should anything happen to Madame. I gather from what she told me that it is of sentimental value only. A keepsake, was the term she employed.”
April unclipped the envelope and removed a 4-by-6-inch framed photograph of herself and her mother leaning against their cottage that summer on Cape Cod. Rina was clad in short shorts and an oversized man’s short-sleeved shirt with the tails knotted about her middle. April was wearing ragged shorts and a Boston Celtics T-shirt. They were both barefoot and April was clutching her baseball glove.
The photograph was faded and the frame was tin. That had been her last carefree summer. Her life until then had been restless and peripatetic, yet she had been happy with her mother.
Stanley cleared his throat. “It is a modest rem
embrance, but I am sure it was left to you with love.”
April shook her head. “Neither the word nor the concept were part of my mother’s vocabulary.”
The lawyer shrugged.
April rose and paced the office, trying to calm down, to focus. She stopped in front of the window and looked out over the city. To her, New York was a new place. To her mother, it had been the place where she had achieved her highest and most dramatic success. Power Perspectives. Rina de Sevigny’s personal empire.
Bequeathed to her only daughter. Whom she had abandoned at the age of twelve.
Why?
She turned. “Mr. Stanley, you seem to know a good deal about the de Sevigny family. Surely you can tell me—at least give me some idea—why Rina would leave this legacy to me instead of to one of them?”
“I have already told you everything I know.”
“She apparently believed her life to be in danger, isn’t that right? Why else would she have hired a bodyguard?”
The lawyer shrugged.
“Is it possible that she trusted no one in the family? That it’s because she didn’t trust them that she left her fortune to me—the one person in her life who has had nothing to do with the de Sevigny family?”
“Anything is possible,” Stanley said slowly. “But I repeat that Mrs. de Sevigny did not confide her concerns to me.
“Is there anything you can say that will help me? Isobelle seemed quite shocked when she heard the will. I take it she had expected to inherit instead?”
“I don’t think it’s any secret that she was the chief beneficiary under Madame de Sevigny’s prior will. For some reason Rina replaced Isobelle with you.”
“And you have no idea why?”
The lawyer shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ms. Harrington.”
“Dammit, Mr. Stanley, my mother was murdered. Now I am being asked to step into her place. Before I even consider doing so, I’d like to know something about how to navigate my way through what appears to be a viper’s nest!”
He pursed his lips. “You could, I suppose, refuse the legacy. Isobelle would inherit in that case.”
“That would certainly be the easy way out for everyone involved.” Easy, yes, but nothing worth having had ever come easily to April. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some decisions to make.”
“Of course.”
April returned the photograph to its oversized envelope and hugged it to her chest as she hurried from his office.
“It’s worth six thousand pounds, but I doubt if they realize that,” Christian de Sevigny said over the phone to his agent in London. “I suggest we offer four and be prepared to go as high as five. If their responses indicate a more sophisticated assessment of the value than I’ve seen them display in the past, we’ll pay them the full six, but no more.” He paused. “I’m expecting a bargain here, Giles. That’s what I employ you for.”
“Of course, sir, and I’m most appreciative of your patronage,” Giles replied quickly. “You may rest assured that this matter will be concluded completely to your satisfaction.”
Obsequious flunky, Christian thought. “I trust so, Giles,” he said, and broke the connection.
Christian leaned back in his leather-padded desk chair in the library of his townhouse on Fifth Avenue and flicked a gold-plated lighter at the end of a cigarette. As he inhaled the mentholated smoke he felt calm descend over him. He wanted the piece—wanted it badly, in fact, since it was a rare example of a particular style of Chinese export porcelain that would make an excellent addition to his collection—but it wasn’t worth wasting so much energy over. He had more important things to think about, dammit.
Like the mess his father had gotten them into.
Blowing out smoke, he swiveled his chair around so he was facing his computer screen and called up the relevant financial information. Using his mouse, he flicked through a rapid series of screens. He shook his head. He ground out his cigarette. Shit, he said to himself.
The numbers hadn’t changed since this morning.
Not that he’d expected them to.
For the past three months, Christian had been treasurer and chief financial officer of what he had at one time thought of as the de Sevigny empire. Ten years ago when he’d reluctantly begun working for the corporation in a trivial job at his father’s insistence, the corporation had been astonishingly successful. What had been started in Marseilles by Christian’s great-grandfather at the turn of the century as a small shipping and hauling business had grown over the years into pan-European trucking and international shipping.
The Second World War had paralyzed De Sevigny Ltd., whose headquarters had moved to Paris shortly before the Occupation. The family, several of whose forbears had been Jewish, had fled west to the U.S. and set up shop again in New York. They’d been able to reestablish the Marseilles connection, where the company’s largest shipping factories were located, and the business became multinational—and prosperous.
During the fifties and sixties, the de Sevigny corporation, which had resisted all temptation to turn public and had always remained in private, family hands, had expanded into constructing cargo ships, luxury liners, and military transports. Their oil tankers had been ready to transport Middle Eastern oil during the energy crisis of the seventies, and the market for new luxury cruise ships had boomed so mightily during the crazy-spending days of the eighties that they’d expanded the New York subsidiary and essentially moved their base of operations from Paris to here.
Now, though, after several years in a row of tight money, military cutbacks, and global recession, the shipbuilding business was in shambles.
Times had been tough for everyone, but the de Sevignys had suffered more than most because Armand, in his son’s considered opinion, had been very foolish about his investments of the corporation’s once-impressive profits. Hanging on during recessionary times was something the de Sevignys had done more than once in this century, and there should have been plenty of cushion to accomplish this without struggle. Indeed, there would have been if Armand hadn’t poured the company’s resources into a series of bizarre ventures, almost all of which had lost horrifying amounts of money.
His father couldn’t have had a more devastating effect on de Sevigny Enterprises if he’d planned it.
Dammit, he thought, in spite of everything he missed Rina. She’d been the one levelheaded person around here. On business matters, her advice had always been remarkably sound.
The phone rang again. “Hi, hon,” said a familiar feminine voice when he put the receiver to his ear.
“Daisy,” Christian said.
“You still got your ass in the saddle, boy? It’s late and it’s Saturday night. You should get out more, enjoy your youth.”
He smiled. Daisy Tulane, widow of a Texas millionaire, had a lovely Southern twang to her voice—it had been one of the attributes that had attracted him to her. Newly fledged as a politician, Daisy had been a close friend of Rina’s. As a result of “seizing her power,” she was now running for the Senate.
“Speaking of asses,” he said, “when are you planning to get yours back to New York? We hardly saw each other at all during the funeral. I was hoping you’d stay for the weekend.”
“My schedule’s tough, but it’s on my mind, believe me. I’m hoping I can slip in next weekend. Maybe not till Sunday morning. I’m doing one of those charity benefit things in Dallas next Saturday night.”
“Need an escort?” he asked, regretting the question as soon as it was out of his mouth. He didn’t have the time to fly to Dallas next weekend.
“Well, I’d love one, hon. I was thinking of going in on the arm of the local police commissioner, but I’d can him in a second for the chance to go with you.”
Yeah, right, Christian thought cynically. Being tight with the local police would pick her up some votes, which, to Daisy, was probably a lot more important than romance.
“Never mind, I can’t do it,” he said coldly. “I’m looking a
t the mountain of work here.”
“Poor baby,” she said. “I miss you, hon. It’s been awhile since we’ve had any privacy, hasn’t it?”
In fact, he thought, they’d never had much privacy. Daisy had whisked in and out of town for Rina’s funeral, and they’d only started seeing each other a few weeks before her death. The relationship was still in the early stages, and he’d really like to be with her more often. Daisy was a fascinating woman—strong in so many ways, and yet vulnerable, almost shy, in others. Sexually, in particular. Her husband couldn’t have been much of a lover.
There was so much he’d like to introduce her to… if only she’d make a little more time available for him.
On the other hand, what he really ought to do was find himself a woman in New York. Maybe even a woman his own age. Or younger.
At forty-nine, Daisy was considerably older than he was. Oh, sure, she didn’t look it. She took care of her body and she was graced with lovely, ageless skin. But the fact was, there were bound to be younger, more attractive women available if he only had time to seek them out. No doubt they’d be more compliant as well—and less independent than a rich Texas widow who’d set her sights on a career in national politics.
“How y’all coping, hon?” Daisy asked.
“It’s been difficult,” Christian said. He could hear that his words were clipped. Christian was aware that people thought of him as cold and overly controlled, which suited him just fine. He’d spent many years learning to contain his emotions, and he was pleased that he’d finally succeeded. “The police and the FBI are hanging around constantly, that asshole bodyguard is asking questions, and the latest is that the long-lost daughter is taking over Power Perspectives—a task she’s ill-suited for as far as I can tell.”
“Taking it over? What d’you mean?”
“Seems Rina changed her will and April Harrington has inherited the business. Isobelle’s bouncing off walls with frustration. It’s something to see.”