Too Rich and Too Dead

by Cynthia Baxter

  At the moment, however, she had a more immediate concern: how to break into the metal file cabinet. Unlike the front door of the building, it didn't open with a code. It required a key. And the only key Mallory had seen was the one Harriet had slipped into her pocket.

  But she figured it was unlikely that Harriet carried the key to her file cabinet with her at all times. It was more likely it had a special place right here in the office.

  Still, while the room wasn't very big, it was extremely cluttered. Just glancing around at the stacks of folders, office supplies, boxes, envelopes, and all the other accountrements required to run a business made her feel as deflated as a balloon the day after the birthday party.

  How will I ever find that key? Mallory thought, remembering how tiny it was and contemplating the thousands of places Harriet could have stashed it.

  She wondered if there was a simpler way to open the drawer. After all, in books and movies people were always picking locks using hairpins.

  Desperately she glanced around, even though she was aware that it was unlikely that she'd find a hairpin on Harriet's desk. After all, fussing with her hair didn't exactly strike her as Harriet's style.

  Yet she was heartened when she noticed an item that struck her as close enough: a paper clip. She grabbed a large one that had been left on the desk, pulled it apart to turn it into a thin metal stick, and plunged it into the lock.

  “Come on, come on…” she muttered as she poked it around inside the tiny hole.

  The truth was that she didn't have a clue as to what she was supposed to be doing. All she knew was that in the movies, this technique always looked so easy. Then again, it was possible that hairpins possessed some magical property that paper clips just didn't have.

  When she heard a click, it was all she could to keep from crying out in triumph. That is, until she realized that what she'd heard was the sound of the paper clip snapping in two.

  “Great,” she mumbled, tossing it into the trash.

  She decided to return to Plan A, which was hunting down the key. She began by opening drawers, feeling under stacks of papers and rifling around in containers filled with more paper clips, pennies, and erasers. Then she ran her finger along shelves and even the top of the door. Finally, in a last desperate attempt, she dumped out the contents of the pencil mug sitting on the desk.

  Mallory let out a cry when there, among all the pens and pencils, she actually spotted a small silver key that looked very much like the one she'd seen Harriet use. Still, it wasn't until she shoved it into the lock and felt the perfect fit that she realized she had, indeed, found exactly what she was looking for.

  She glanced around furtively, remembering Harriet saying that she sometimes thought the walls had ears. For all Mallory knew, they also had eyes. But once she had assured herself that at least it didn't appear that anyone was watching her, she pulled the drawer open.

  Mallory's heart pounded furiously as she peered inside. Despite all the chaos outside the cabinet, inside this particular drawer there was only one thing: a thick manila folder.

  Written neatly on the outside in large capital letters was a single word: LAWSUIT.

  Surprise, surprise, she thought wryly. Juanita was right.

  Tentatively Mallory opened the folder and read the top page: Harriet Vogel, plaintiff, v. Rejuva-Juice Corporation, defendant.

  It's backward, Mallory thought, puzzled.

  But her cloud of confusion cleared as she realized that while Juanita had been correct about the lawsuit, she'd apparently gotten the details wrong. Carly wasn't suing Harriet; Harriet was suing Carly.

  So much for Juanita's supernatural eavesdropping powers, she thought wryly.

  But why was Harriet suing Carly? she wondered. And if it was Harriet who had initiated the lawsuit, why would that make her angry enough to kill Carly? It should have been the other way around.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor and perused the contents of the folder, page after page of dense legalese. She stopped when she came across a thin notebook with a soft cover and stapled sides. As soon as she flipped it open she realized it was a journal of some sort. Actually, it was more like a log, one in which somebody had recorded events in a straightforward, factual way.

  How am I ever going to make sense of all this? she thought with dismay.

  But she forced herself to focus on the first page, holding the tiny, handwritten notes close as she tried to decipher them.

  “April 12, 2004,” the first entry began. “Realized I could use the Internet to pursue my interest in health tonics after finding an article about nontraditional treatments. Decided to explore possibilities.”

  Mallory scanned down the page, glancing at the entries that followed. One read, “Found more than ten articles on health benefits of folic acid. Must learn about its mechanisms in the body.” Another said, “Exciting new developments at Life Sciences Institute in Amsterdam. Contact for permission to visit.” A third said, “Set up appointment with Dr. Marilou Moschetti re: discoveries about body's ability to rebuild.”

  As she read on, Mallory wondered if perhaps she'd stumbled upon a log that Carly had kept.

  After she'd skimmed several pages, she turned over a page and found a single sheet of paper, folded in half and stuck inside the book. Frowning, she opened it. Carefully printed on top were the words “HEALTH DRINK.”

  Below, written in the same handwriting as the journal, was what looked like a recipe.

  As Mallory skimmed it, she immediately recognized the names of some of the ingredients. Açaí berries, goji juice… she remembered that those had been mentioned in that New York Times article. She seemed to recall Carly being quoted as saying that they were well-known as restorers of youth and vitality. The other ingredients that were listed had equally strange names.

  A wave of intense heat ran through her as she realized what she was looking at. It was the recipe for Rejuva-Juice. The original recipe.

  But why would Harriet have the recipe and Carly's journal? Mallory flipped through the other pages in the folder, various notes and letters, some with Harriet's scribbled signature. And that's when the truth dawned on her. The recipe was written in Harriet's handwriting and stuck into her journal.

  Almost as if Harriet, and not Carly, had developed the magic potion that had given birth to a multimillion-dollar enterprise. One for which Carly, and not Harriet, had received both accolades and lots of money.

  But Mallory was still confused. If Harriet is the real inventor of Rejuva-Juice, she thought, then why is everyone acting as if Carly invented it? And if Carly stole it—and if Harriet actually initiated a lawsuit over ownership—why would Harriet have worked for her all these years, cheerfully going along with the charade?

  She was still puzzling over what she had found and what it meant when she heard another click. A loud click, one that had nothing to do with a paper clip snapping in two.

  In fact, she had seen enough movies in her day to know exactly what she was hearing. So she wasn't all that surprised when she slowly turned her head and saw that the click had come from a gun.

  Or that the person holding the gun was Harriet.

  “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel

  until he comes home and rests his head

  on his old, familiar pillow.”

  —Lin Yutang

  Hello, Harriet,” Mallory said, trying to sound matter-of-fact instead of letting on that she felt as if her heart was about to explode in her chest. “I see you have a gun.”

  Harriet nodded. “I've had it for years. I got it ages ago, just in case I ever felt threatened.”

  Mallory found herself unable to stop staring at it. Somehow, letting it out of her sight seemed unwise, given the fact that it was pointed right at her.

  “But It's only me,” she said, her voice catching. “Surely you don't feel threatened right now.”

  “I'm not sure what I feel,” Harriet replied, her voice just as uncertain. “I thought we wer
e friends, Mallory. I thought I could trust you. But instead I find you sneaking into my office, breaking into my file cabinet… At this point, I don't know what to think.”

  Join the club, Mallory thought morosely.

  She held up the journal with the recipe sticking out of the pages. “All I wanted was to find out the truth,” she said. “And I did. At least, I think I did.” She took a deep breath. “Harriet, are you the person who really invented Rejuva-Juice?”

  Mallory watched as Harriet's face reflected one emotion after another. Shock, anger, relief… and finally resignation. “Yes,” she replied simply.

  “Does that mean Carly stole it from you?”

  “She didn't steal it!” Harriet insisted. In a much quieter voice, she added, “Not at first.”

  “Harriet,” Mallory said, speaking in a low, gentle tone, “maybe you should put that silly gun down and tell me the whole story.”

  “I'll tell it to you,” Harriet said without moving the gun from its original position, “but I'm still not sure if I can trust you.”

  What about me? Mallory thought. It's not easy to trust someone who insists on talking to you from the other end of a gun.

  “You can trust me, Harriet,” she assured her. “What matters now is the truth. I have a feeling that Carly Berman has been living a lie for the last few years, one that affected you very deeply.”

  Harriet nodded. “you're right—it was a lie. The whole thing. I did invent Rejuva-Juice. Just like I told you, I got interested in health because I've had such serious problems of my own. that's why I started doing research and traveling around the world, trying to find out what people could do to hold onto the most important thing they have.”

  “But if you came up with the formula,” Mallory asked, “why on earth did you let Carly pretend she was the one who developed it?”

  “Because she was the one with the charisma,” Harriet replied bitterly. “The beauty, too.” She glanced down and made a sweeping gesture at herself with her free hand, adding, “Look at me, Mallory. Who would ever believe that I was someone who had discovered the fountain of youth? What kind of spokesperson—what kind of symbol—could I have ever been for a product that was capable of keeping people young and vibrant—and most of all, healthy?”

  “So you just handed it over to Carly?” Mallory asked, incredulous.

  Harriet's eyes widened. “Of course not! I'm a businessperson, remember? Carly and I had an agreement. She was going to popularize Rejuva-Juice, and once she started making money with it, we were going to divide up the profits. But she kept putting me off.” She laughed coldly. “Even though I was her accountant, she kept trying to convince me that we weren't making a profit. She was always coming up with different excuses. She had to expand Tavaci Springs; she needed to hire a better and more expensive public relations firm; her market research told her she should start using a more upscale bottle that would cost more…”

  With a deep sigh, she said, “Mallory, you probably think I'm naïve or just plain dumb, but for years I accepted whatever she told me. If there was one thing Carly was good at, it was making people believe whatever she wanted them to believe. Including me. But finally enough time went by that even I began to doubt her. So I went out and hired a lawyer. Of course I felt bad about suing Carly, but I had no choice.

  “Besides, I was confident that I'd be able to win back the rights to Rejuva-Juice,” Harriet continued calmly. “So was my lawyer. He was also certain that we'd get a big portion of the fortune she'd made over the past few years. All we had to do was make a jury believe that I was the one who invented Rejuva-Juice, not Carly.”

  “But she was so convincing!” Mallory exclaimed. “I completely bought into her presentation at the Wheeler Opera House. All those photographs of her traveling to the most remote destinations in the world—”

  Harriet snorted. “Nothing but a fairy tale. A total fantasy. It was something she and I dreamed up to make the story behind Rejuva-Juice sound enticing.”

  “But what about all those shots of Carly standing in the rain forest and in those little villages in the Himalayas?”

  “The wonders of computer technology,” Harriet snapped. “Carly used Photoshop to superimpose pictures of herself over stock photos of the most exotic corners of the world. In fact, she even made up most of the names of the places she supposedly visited in her quest to create her own version of the fountain of youth.”

  “You mean there's no village called Mongo-Bongo in New Guinea?” Mallory was disappointed. she'd already considered pitching Mongo-Bongo to Trevor—maybe a piece on whether a diehard vegetarian can have fun in a place where cannibalism still prevails.

  “If anyone did any traveling,” Harriet continued in the same biting tone, “it was me. I went all over the world, doing research. But I didn't go trekking around primitive villages or any other exotic locales. I did my research at libraries and medical research institutes.”

  Mallory still wasn't sure that Harriet was telling the truth. But it certainly sounded as if she was. And the fact that she was still holding a gun on her had nothing to do with how convincing she was.

  That didn't mean there weren't still some loose ends.

  “What about Sylvie?” she demanded.

  Harriet looked startled. “What about Sylvie?”

  Mallory took a deep breath. “Harriet, I saw you having lunch with her right after the police released you. Even though you swore the two of you were enemies—”

  “But we're not!” Harriet insisted. “In fact, I was hoping that Sylvie would testify on my behalf.”

  “Testify?” Instead of the whole scenario becoming clearer, it seemed to Mallory that it was just getting more confusing.

  Harriet nodded. “Before that jury I had to convince.” Gesturing toward the booty Mallory had found stashed in the locked file drawer, she explained, “I have the handwritten recipe, of course, along with all my notes. But in the end, it was going to be my word against Carly's. that's where Sylvie came in. she'd had enough dealings with Carly to know that she didn't really know very much about the product she had supposedly invented. Carly wasn't exactly a chemist, you know. Sure, she was great at the fluff, but when it came to the real interaction of Rejuva-Juice's ingredients with the human body, she never understood any of it.”

  “But wasn't Sylvie determined to buy the company?”

  “Yes, she was. In fact, I figured she might even have to be subpoenaed as a hostile witness. Which is why I wanted to do everything I could to ingratiate myself.”

  “And Gordon?” Mallory asked. “What about the movie he wanted to make about Carly's life?”

  “Hah!” Harriet cried. “How could he possibly make a movie about someone's life story when it was all a lie? He didn't know it, of course. But Carly certainly did! And so she knew she could never sell the rights to him. It was one thing to tell her adoring customers that she had traveled to New Guinea and the Himalayas and all those other exotic places. But it was something else to tell a whopper like that on as grand a scale as a full-length feature film! That doesn't mean she didn't adore the attention. She loved being courted by a Hollywood director, even if he wasn't exactly on the A-list anymore.”

  The more Harriet spoke, the more confused Mallory became.

  “Harriet,” she finally said, “if all this is true—and I believe that it is—then why did you hire that man to kill Carly?”

  Harriet's mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about?”

  “That man I heard you arguing with at your house! It was less than an hour ago. Isn't he the person you hired to kill her?”

  “I still have no idea what man you're—” The creases in Harriet's forehead smoothed slightly as she said, “Now I get it. You must mean Micky Mitchell, the process server.”

  “That man you were fighting with is a process server?”

  Harriet nodded. “he's the guy I hired to serve Carly with the papers for the lawsuit.”

  “In that case,” Ma
llory asked, sounding as doubtful as she felt, “what did you two have to fight about?”

  “Money,” Harriet replied matter-of-factly. “After Carly was killed, we switched gears and served Brett, since as Carly's spouse he would inherit everything. And given all the news coverage the Bermans were suddenly getting, Micky decided he deserved to be paid more money than the amount we'd originally agreed on. Do you believe he was even talking about hiring a ghostwriter so he could write a book about his version of the events?”

  Mallory had to admit that, like everything else Harriet had told her, that explanation made perfect sense. Which still left her puzzled about Harriet's motive for killing Carly.

  “Okay, so you didn't hire that man to kill Carly,” she said. “But all that means is that you killed her yourself. What I really want to know is why.”

  Harriet's voice was at least two octaves higher than usual as she cried, “But I didn't kill Carly!”

  Before Mallory had a chance to say the words, “Of course you did,” she heard a thump in the hallway. At exactly the same moment, she and Harriet swiveled their heads around to see who had come up behind them.

  “Of course she didn't,” Brett Berman's voice boomed. “I did.”

  As soon as he stepped into the doorway right behind Harriet, Mallory saw that he, too, was holding a gun.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Harriet quickly tucked hers into her skirt pocket.

  “And now,” Brett said calmly, holding his gun up to the accountant's head, “I'm going to kill you.”

  Mallory noticed that even now, Brett looked as if he was posing for the cover of GQ. Every strand of his thick silver hair was in place, and his deep tan made the color of his electric blue eyes even deeper. And he was wearing the same beige suit she'd seen him checking out at the designer boutique.