chapter forty-two

I tried to convince the police officers that there was no need for me to go back in the house but they insisted.

I had pointed wordlessly to the front door when they got out of the cruiser. One officer headed for the front door and one approached me.

“You made the 911 call, ma’am?” I nodded.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

I tried to speak but something was caught in my throat. I swallowed furiously a few times and still nothing came out.

He carefully took me by the arm and led me back up the walkway to the front of the house. I followed alongside him meekly. When we got to the front porch, my voice returned.

“I really don’t want to go back in there,” I told him.

“We understand that ma’am,” he said. I wished he’d stop calling me ma’am. I looked up at his face and realized that anyone who looked as young as he did probably called everyone over 25, ma’am. I wondered if he’d started shaving yet. His lips were moving and I willed my brain to pay attention.

“I’d just like you to walk us through what you found,” he was telling me.

I couldn’t look at the body again so I mutely pointed at the open door of the den and ran.

It was getting dark when Detective Leech showed up and knocked on my car window. I was huddled inside in a fog of cigarette smoke. His knock scared me and I jumped an inch off my seat before I rolled down the window. He waved his hand in front of his face when the smoke wafted out.

“It won’t be much longer now, Miss Monahan,” he told me.

“How come you’re here?” I asked him. “Mr. Cox killed himself. It was a suicide. You’re a homicide detective. Why are you here?” I was starting to feel hysterical and my breath was coming in short gasps.

I had been left sitting here, cooling my heels for an eternity. The body was still in the house and official-looking vehicles had been arriving in a steady stream. I had been watching everything through my rear-view mirror and knew that even if they said I could go, there was no way I could move my car.

“Why don’t you come out of there and get some fresh air,” the detective asked me as he pulled the door open. I had my skirt hiked up around my waist and was sitting cross-legged with my knees touching the steering wheel. I had been hugging myself and smoking.

I stumbled out of the car and tried to stretch the kinks out of my knees. Leech put his hand on my shoulder and looked down at me.

“Is there someone you want to call? Someone to come and take you home?”

“I look that bad?”

He nodded. “These situations are rough for the toughest types. You’ve had a shock. I’ve got a few questions for you but you could call someone in the meantime,” he said and offered me a cell phone he had pulled out of his coat pocket. When I didn’t take the phone he put it in my hand and wandered off.

Who would I call? I couldn’t bother Vanessa because I knew she had Ashley this weekend. I tried Jay’s number knowing that the answering machine would pick up. This time I left a message.

“It’s me. Friday night about eight. I, um, I’m at Rick Cox’s house. He’s dead.” I stopped talking and started feeling angry. I pushed the power off button on the phone. What a lovely situation. I had no one to call because I had no friends. My family didn’t live in the city and my pathetic life was catching up with me. I went looking for Detective Leech determined to get this over with and get the hell out of here.

I was lying on the sofa, shivering under my quilt. When the Detective had finished with me I drove the short distance home in a trance where I tried warming up in the hot shower. I finally gave up when the water started to turn cool. I put the kettle on to boil and found a box of teabags at the back of my cupboard. Comfort and warmth were needed and whenever I was sick as a child my mother gave me tea.

The living room was dark and the soft light from the streetlights washed over me where I huddled on the sofa clutching the hot mug in my hands, trying to get the image of Rick’s face out of my mind. The hot tea burned the back of my throat as I gulped it down.

I slid down on the sofa and pulled the quilt over my head. I couldn’t shake the ice-cold feeling in my bones so I breathed hard under the blanket hoping my hot breath would warm me. When the phone started ringing I willed it to stop. Even though I had been trying to reach Jay I couldn’t bring myself to talk to anyone.

When the phone stopped ringing I tried some relaxation exercises to calm myself down. I knew I’d had a shock. But I never thought my body would react like this. My mind was fully cognizant of everything around me and in fact, the sounds of the street from outside seemed sharper and clearer.

I talked to my body starting at my toes. Relax. Then the feet and the ankles. Relax. My body parts and I had a great conversation but I realized the technique wasn’t working when I reached my shoulders. I still felt tense and cold.

A hard knocking on my door scared the shit out of me and I yelped. I reached an arm out from under my quilt and felt around on the coffee table in front of me for my watch. I held it up in front of my face and turned it slightly to let the light from outside show me the time. Eleven o’clock. There was another knock, this time softer. I reluctantly crawled out from under the quilt and went to the door.

“Who’s there?” I asked through the door.

“It’s Jay,” came the muffled reply.

I undid the chain lock and opened the door a crack and saw that it certainly was the long-lost Jay. I pulled the door wide open and turned on my heel and walked back to the living room. Jay followed me and he stood and watched as I sat down on the sofa and pulled the quilt around me. I stared at him and didn’t speak.

He looked like a giant from my vantage point and I craned my neck up.

“Are you okay?” he asked me kindly.

“Do you know how many times in the last week people have asked me if I was okay?” I barked at him.

“Well, you just answered my question,” he said. “Can I sit down?”

I shrugged and he sat anyway.

“I got your message,” he said quietly.

“Which one of the fifteen?” I asked snidely. My mouth was working but the rest of my body was still on standby, I realized, as I started to shiver again. I pulled the quilt tighter around me.

Jay looked at me without expression and I chastised myself for biting at him. He didn’t owe me anything and it was probably time I started to realize it. A few rolls in the hay and a few terms of endearment whispered in my ear had started me down the relationship road. I felt like a fool for getting sucked-in to the love whirlpool.

“I got your message about Rick Cox. Can you tell me what happened?”

I was about to tell him to go down to the police station and read the police report but stopped myself.

“I was supposed to deliver some documents to his house.”

“And?”

“I found him dead in his chair at his desk.”

“My God. How did he die?”

“Shot.”

Jay took a deep breath. “Kathleen. Work with me here. Am I going to get one word answers out of you for the rest of the night?”

“I don’t think you’ll be here for the rest of the night, Mr. Harmon. You got my message because I didn’t have anyone else to call. I felt sorry myself at the time because I realized I had no one else to call. But I’m over that now. I don’t need friends. And I certainly don’t need you. So you can just fuck off and die.”

I felt my body warming up with rage and felt better. I was about to add Jay Harmon to my miserable-shit list.

Jay stood up. “Coffee?” he asked me.

I pulled the quilt over my head and felt tears fill my eyes. I told myself they were tears of rage and vowed I wasn’t going to cry. I had done enough of that to last a lifetime in the last week. Rick Cox was nothing to cry about.

The sounds of water running in the kitchen told me that he was making coffee. I heard cupboard doors open and close and I counted to ten. The man had nerve. He disappears from my life for forty-eight hours. He doesn’t call. And then he comes over as casual as you please and offers to make coffee. I threw the quilt off and stormed into the kitchen. He was leaning. With his hands in his jeans pockets. Shit.

“You,” I said as I pointed my index finger at him. “You piss me off.” I took a couple of steps closer to him as the rage built. I poked him in the chest with my finger and repeated myself. “You piss me off. You disappear for two days and then think you can casually walk back in here? You think everything’ll be fine?”

I took a step back and looked up at him. He made me so mad, just standing there, running his hand through his hair.

“Where the hell have you been?” I demanded.

“Around.”

“Around?”

Jay shrugged and turned around to the coffee machine. He pulled a couple of mugs out of the cupboard above him and put them on the counter. I tugged at the back of his T-shirt.

“Doing what?”

Jay impatiently pushed my hand away from the back of his shirt.

“Some thinking,” was all he said. He picked up the two cups of coffee he had poured and led the way back into the living room.

chapter forty-three

I followed him slowly and quickly came to the realization that it was none of my business. If Jay wasn’t willing to share with me his reasons for disappearing for two days, then that was his business. We hadn’t had time to reach the point in our relationship where it was a requirement to know each other’s whereabouts. And besides Kathleen, I asked myself, who said he disappeared? It dawned on me that the rebuff I had given Jay the other night when I didn’t invite him back to my place had backfired. As usual, my mother would say, I had been thinking of only myself. I had been tired and depressed and wanted my personal space to myself. And in my usual, selfish fashion, I had neglected to share that with Jay.

I turned on the Tiffany lamp on my desk and closed the drapes in the living room, all the while feeling more and more uncomfortable with the situation. Jay was sitting on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table. I watched him as he picked up his coffee cup and took a slow sip. He stared at me over the rim of the cup. The silence between us was deafening and for once I had no smart remarks to make.

I picked up my coffee where Jay had placed it on the table and sat on the chair at my desk facing Jay.

I finally broke the silence.

“I apologize,” I said quietly. “My behaviour was uncalled for.”

Jay shrugged. “You reacted as expected.”

I thought about that and wasn’t surprised. Jay knew me better than I gave him credit for.

“The message I left the other day. About explaining.” I looked at him expectantly wanting a pardon before I made the not-guilty plea.

I faltered when he didn’t respond. “I needed to be alone. I’m sorry if you took that the wrong way. I understand now why you haven’t called me in a couple of days.”

“I understood Kate. But it made me angry. I’ll admit that. When you’re involved with someone, you expect them to be open. And honest. So, do you mind if I make the first stab at honesty here?”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear this but I nodded mutely anyway. Jay put his coffee cup on the table and stood up. He ran his hand repeatedly through his hair and paced behind the sofa.

“You’re a very emotional person Kate,” he told me, as if I didn’t know. “You say what you mean and you mean what you say. Some people appreciate that. It’s a characteristic I admire.” He paused. “But what gets in the way of you being an emotional person is your inability to see other people’s emotions. I mean, understand their emotions.”

Very succinct. He had just told me in a roundabout way that I was selfish. I sat silently and swallowed and felt a blush rise to my face.

“What was that you said to Harold the other day? Something about sympathy and where it was in the dictionary?”

My face was beet red now and I straightened my back and looked straight at him. The lyrics from some long-forgotten song played in the back of my head. Hit me with your best shot. Fire away! Jay’s pistol was cocked and I steadied myself for the shot.

“Sympathy and empathy go a long way, you know. You never seem to take other people’s feelings into consideration. You’re not the only one who has suffered this last week. You’re not the only one who lost a friend. And, just in case you need reminding, there’ve been traumatic things happening to the people around you.” He took a deep breath and sat down heavily.

I had been told, in no uncertain terms, and I felt about six inches high. I was speechless and for good reason. I didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve known you all my life, Kate. I’ve always admired your toughness, your strength. But if we’re going to have any sort of relationship, be it together as a couple, or just friends, you need to… ” he trailed off without completing the thought. He held up his hand like he was stopping traffic.

“Forget it. I’m not about to dictate how you should behave. I’m a big boy and I accept you the way you are.”

I was glad he stopped because I didn’t need any more hints. I had been selfish and I admitted it. My failure to acknowledge what Jay had been through hit me in the face.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. I lit a cigarette and wandered around the living room. My hand caressed the fabric of the drapes and I pulled them apart and stared out at the street. If he could be a big boy, I could be a big girl and face reality. When you live alone you become the center of the universe. The reality was that I was the center of my universe and I grudgingly acknowledged to myself that I was self-centered. Was it any wonder that I was still living alone at the mature age of thirty-four?

Jay was standing beside me now and I admitted to myself that I liked the feeling of him being there. He tentatively put his arm around my shoulder and I knew I was forgiven.

Jay woke me early next morning and tossed my sweat pants in my face.

“Put them on,” he ordered. “We’re going for a walk.”

When I groaned and tried to roll over, he pulled the duvet off me and tossed it to the end of the bed.

“I’ll allow you one cup of coffee and we’re off.”

“Walk? I already walked once this week,” I protested.

He laughed. “You should walk every day Kathleen. Get some exercise. Take your frustrations out on the pavement instead of everyone around you. It’s good for the attitude.”

It was a cool spring morning and I practically had to skip to keep up with him as we headed towards the park. He finally slowed down around the pond and I took this as a sign. I grabbed the first empty bench and sat down.

“Who said you could stop?” he said and grinned at me. “We’re just getting our heart rate up. You have to sustain that rate for at least twenty minutes for the workout to have any effect.”

“I’ll wait here for you. My heart rate’s been up since we left the house. Go on.” He put his hands on his hips. “Seriously,” I told him. “You need it more than I do,” I teased him.

“Wait here then,” he said as he jogged off.

I leaned back on the bench and stretched my legs out in front of me and thought about lighting a cigarette. I breathed deeply instead and enjoyed the feeling of the fresh air in my lungs. It was surprisingly quiet in the park and I looked around me. Up the slight incline in front of where I was sitting I saw a newspaper box. Digging in the pocket of my sweatpants for change I ran up the little hill and dropped the coins in the slot.

The article I was looking for was below the fold. “Toronto Executive Found Dead”. There was a small picture of Rick Cox in the middle of the story and I recognized the photo as the one that appeared in our last annual report. With the paper tucked under my arm I returned to the bench to carefully read the story.

Richard Cox, who earlier this week resigned as chief financial officer of TechniGroup Consulting Inc., was found dead yesterday in his Rosedale home of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Cox is survived by his wife and two daughters.

One securities analyst interviewed for this report, speculated that there was more to Cox’s resignation than was disclosed to the public and TechniGroup’s shareholders. An employee of the company, who asked that his name be withheld, told the writer that it was common knowledge at TechniGroup that Cox’s leaving was not a resignation. When asked if Cox had recently exhibited signs of depression, the employee was unable to comment.

Police report that Cox was found by an employee of TechniGroup who was delivering some papers to his home. Police declined to release the employee’s name.

The story went on to recount the recent slide in TechniGroup’s stock price and the reporter, who obviously didn’t hold any stock, speculated that this latest turn of events would not bode well for TechniGroup’s shareholders.

The report finished by reminding the readers that Cox had been questioned by the police regarding the mysterious death of a TechniGroup employee.

I wasn’t surprised that they had interviewed a securities analyst for the story because it was the analysts who ultimately drove the price of publicly-traded stocks. Securities analysts were the barometer of the stock market. What surprised me though was the fact that the analysts on the street knew that Cox hadn’t resigned. Someone had been talking in their sleep.

chapter forty-four

Jay appeared on my left and slowly came to a stop in front of me. He lifted one leg onto the bench and re-tied his running shoe before contorting his body into all sorts of ungodly stretching positions. I stared at him with an admiring look and then shook my head.

“You really enjoy running, don’t you?”

He nodded and clasped his hands behind his back and arched his shoulders. His soaked hair clung to his head and I could see rivulets of sweat running down his neck. There was a large, dark, wet spot on the front of his T-shirt.

“You should try it,” he panted as he bent over and grabbed his hands behind his knees. The only time my hands see the back of my legs was when I was shaving them.

When he finally sat down, I handed him the newspaper folded to the story about Rick Cox and watched his face for reaction as he read the article. When he finished he laid the paper on the bench beside him and said, “The employee who asked that his name be withheld was probably Tom James. The man can’t keep his mouth shut.”

“You’re probably right. What I find more surprising though is the speculation on the street that Rick didn’t resign.”

“It’s more than speculation, Kate. It’s all over the street. Everyone knows that he was fired and they think they know why.”

“All over the street? Who told you?”

“A friend,” he replied cryptically. “Some of my best friends are analysts, you know.”

I laughed. “Nothing to be ashamed of,” I jokingly told him. “It’s their mothers who should be ashamed.”

“What’s the poop on why he was fired?” I asked.

“The rumours are saying it was because he cooked the books.”

“I guess they’re partly right.”

“I think the street started that rumour because it’s the most logical one, Kate. When a CFO gets fired, it’s the logical conclusion.”

“Well, if those rumours take off, we’ll have the enforcement goons from the Ontario Securities Commission knocking on our door.”

Jay picked up the paper again and looked at the picture of Rick. He shook his head slowly and said, “I can’t believe it was suicide. Rick believed he didn’t do anything wrong. That’s why he fired me. And he wasn’t the type.”

“What’s the type? From everything I’ve ever heard, some of the most apparently sane people kill themselves. You know, it fits here. Successful businessman with a beautiful wife, two kids, a dog and station wagon gets fired. His reputation is going to be in shreds. How well did we really know him?”

Jay snorted. “I worked with him every day for almost a year. The man was a bully with an ego almost as big as Chris Oakes’. Someone who loved themselves that much doesn’t eat a pistol for lunch.”

A picture, forever frozen in my brain, flashed before my eyes of Rick Cox minus his chin and lower jaw. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.

“Maybe his suicide had nothing to do with losing his job. Maybe,” I said and turned towards Jay on the bench, “maybe, the police had something on him about Ev’s death. What if he did it?”

“No way, Kate. He had nothing to gain by killing Ev. Nothing. I had more to gain than he did.”

“Don’t say that.” I touched his shoulder. “Don’t say things like that out loud.”

We walked silently back to my apartment, each of us lost in our own thoughts. As we approached the house, I could see someone sitting on the top step of the porch. The beige overcoat was familiar, even from a block away, and my stomach sank when I realized it was Detective Leech.

Jay and I stood side by side at the bottom of the steps and looked up at Leech. Beside him on the step were my shoes evenly lined up with their toes touching the edge of the step.

“Detective,” I acknowledged him.

“Ms. Monahan,” he nodded at me. He looked curiously at Jay and waited for an introduction.

“Detective Leech, this is Jay Harmon. A friend of mine.”

Leech pushed himself to a standing position and held out his hand to shake. Jay reached up and when he realized their hands wouldn’t meet, he walked up the first two stairs.

“Thanks for returning my shoes,” I told him.

“So they are yours,” was all he said. He picked them up in one hand and put them under his arm. I approached Leech holding out my hand in hopes of retrieving my shoes and sending him on his way. My hopes were dashed when Leech backed up the stairs and pointed at the front door.

“I was hoping for some time to talk to you,” he told me.

I reluctantly led the way and offered coffee when Leech was ensconced in the living room. He shook his head and motioned for me to sit down. Jay had excused himself and I could hear the shower running.

Leech tried balancing both of my wayward shoes on the palm of his hand and then held them out to me like a cannibal offering salt.

“Yours?”

I nodded.

“How did they come to end up on Mr. Cox’s desk?”

“The heels had got caught in between the cracks on his walkway and tips of the heels came off. The lifts. I took them off and carried them. I guess I left them on the desk when I found Rick. Mr. Cox.” Detective Leech had taken out his small notebook and was making notes while I talked. When I finished talking he looked at me without speaking as if expecting me to continue. The man was making me nervous.

I shrugged and held up the palms of my hands. “That’s it. That’s all. A very simple explanation,” I babbled. I wondered if they thought the shoes were the weapon Cox had killed himself with.

“You told the responding police officers that you had heard nothing and seen no one. How long were you at the house before you discovered Mr. Cox’s body?”

I thought about that for a moment and replied, “No more than a couple of minutes.”

“And he was expecting you?”

I nodded again.

“What time did you arrive?”

“I can’t remember exactly. I think just before six.” I remembered that Leech had asked me these same questions last night.

“Why are you asking me all of this? We went over it last night.” I hoped I sounded as exasperated as I felt.

Jay was standing in the doorway rubbing his head with a towel listening.

“Last night was a shock to you and you must admit, you were pretty shaken up. In fact, I was surprised you left on your own. Wasn’t there someone you were trying to call?” As he said this he looked over at Jay.

“No, I was fine,” I told him quickly.

“Well, I thought it might be prudent to go over some facts. See if you remembered anything since last night,” he told me.

“And,” he continued as he flipped his notebook to a fresh page, “my other reason for being here was to ask you if you knew where or how I could contact Mr. Harmon here. So, I’ve killed two birds with one stone.” He laughed at his stupid joke and I stared at him.

“Mr. Harmon, if you’ve got a moment. I’ve been anxious to talk to you now for a couple of days.”

Jay had dropped the towel around his shoulders and was running his hand through his hair, trying to comb it.

“Jay. You can call me Jay.”

“Well, is now a good time?” Leech looked directly at me when he asked Jay the question. It was a look of dismissal but I waited to hear Jay’s reply.

“Sure.”

I picked up my shoes off the floor where they sat beside Leech and discretely left wondering which room would be the best to eavesdrop from. I stood at the back of the kitchen but it was too obvious because it opened on to the living room. I thought about standing at the end of the hall and pretending to be on the phone. There was no way I could go back through the living room to sit on the small balcony, so I gave up and decided to take a shower. I heard Leech’s raised voice and stopped.

“We’ve been unable to reach you by phone. And twice in the last two days, we’ve sent an officer to your apartment and you weren’t there. We’ll need a statement from you accounting for your time over the last seventy-two hours. And, Mr. Harmon, I want times, places, and the names of people who can verify they saw you.”

I hurriedly walked to my bedroom and quickly closed the door. I stood and stared at the back of the door and frantically dug in my pockets for a cigarette. When my hands came up empty I realized that my cigarettes were in the living room on the coffee table, where I’d left them last night.

The police hadn’t asked me to account for my time. I didn’t have to give them times and places. The issue of where Jay had been for the last two days was one I dropped last night. We hadn’t talked about it anymore because I had decided it wasn’t any of my business. Now the police were asking him where he’d been. In the old Nancy Drew books I used to read, they called this an alibi.

chapter forty-five

There was a light knock on the bathroom door and I ignored it. I closed my eyes again and slid further down in the tub and felt the hot water and bubbles gathering around my neck.

“Kate,” Jay’s muffled voice said through the unlocked door.

“Yeah. Come in.”

I felt his presence standing over me and without opening my eyes I asked him if Leech was gone.

“Yes.”

Hiding in the warm bathtub had made me feel better, but just for a few minutes. Visions of the police dragging Jay down the stairs in handcuffs had danced before my closed eyes. Newspaper headlines blared about his arrest.

“What’d he ask you about?” I probed.

“My job. Why I was fired. Where I’ve been the last couple of days.”

“Was he happy with the answers?”

“Somewhat. He’s preparing a written statement and I have to go down to his precinct and sign it.”

I hadn’t been asked to sign any statements. My stomach sank and I opened my eyes. Jay was sitting on the edge of the bathtub with his back to me.

“You know Kate, the way he questioned me, it was strange. He didn’t come out and say it, but I don’t think they’re convinced that Rick’s death was a suicide. He asked me if I owned a gun. He asked me where I was yesterday in the late afternoon. He asked me when was the last time I’d seen Rick. And he went back to the night Ev died and asked me to give him the details of what had happened.” Jay sounded despondent as he rattled this off. His shoulders were hunched and he was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

I stood up in the tub and reached around him for the towel hanging on the rack. With the towel held primly in front of me I asked him to get up so I could get out of the bathtub.

“Sorry,” he mumbled and left the bathroom without looking at me.

I was more perturbed now than I had been when I overheard Leech demanding an alibi. I dressed quickly and found him sitting on the balcony on a kitchen chair that he had moved out there.

“How did you answer Leech when he asked for an explanation of your whereabouts in the last seventy-two hours?” I had decided a flank attack might be better than firing from the hip. No more demands like last night, from me.

Jay shaded his eyes from the sunlight with his hand and peered up at me. My arms were crossed against my chest and I quickly dropped them and consciously eased the muscles in my face. I tried my best not to look like a schoolmarm.

“I told him the truth. I hadn’t left Dodge City.”

“And when he didn’t even crack a smile, you realized he was serious.”

“Yeah. Dead serious. I told him what I’d been doing. He recalled seeing me at the funeral. I told him that after the funeral I spent the afternoon downtown at the Public Library. Dinner at Bigliardi’s with you and Vanessa. Slept in my own bed, alone, so I didn’t have any witnesses. Thursday I had lunch with that friend I was telling you about, the analyst. Dave Smithson. That afternoon I was back at the library, doing more research. Slept alone, again,” he sighed. “I tried wrenching his heart strings with that one but he wasn’t budging.”

I smiled but didn’t interrupt.

“Friday I went to Ottawa. I had to go and see my mom.”

“How is she?”

“She’s great.”

“And how did she take the news?”

I knew that had to have been a difficult trip for Jay to make. His mother was incredibly proud of her offspring’s accomplishments, and rightly so. As poor as his family had been, his mother had insisted that they all attend university. Jay and his sisters all had graduate degrees and they were supporting their mother now. Jay was the last to graduate, and when he secured his job, he and his sisters had finally insisted that their mom quit her job and move out of the old neighbourhood in Centertown Ottawa. They had bought her a nice condominium overlooking the Canal and provided her with more money than she knew what to do with. She was the queen of Tuesday night bingo at the Glebe Community Centre now and Jay had told me that she placed pictures of her kids around her at the bingo table for good luck. The fact that Jay had been fired under questionable circumstances would not have gone over well with Mrs. Harmon.

“She was rightfully indignant, at first. And then when she listened to what had actually happened, how Rick had accused me and then fired me, I could tell she was going to box my ears,” he laughed. “I think she’s worried about me not getting a paycheque and she wouldn’t believe me when I told her I wasn’t destitute. I had to show her my passbook from the bank to prove that I had money in savings. She was ready to give me money because she told me she never spends half of what we give her.”

He leaned the chair back on two legs and put his feet up on the railing of the balcony and stared at his bare feet.

“You know,” he continued quietly, “mom wanted me to move back home. I told her this wasn’t a complete disaster, yet, and that I’d get another job. Besides, who wants to work in a town where the only jobs are with the federal government and all they do is whine about the Senators not winning the Stanley Cup?”

Jay dropped his feet and the front legs of the chair hit the floor. “Traffic was heavy on the 401 and it was late when I got back. I checked my messages as soon as I got home, around ten-thirty and came over here right away.”

My breath came out slowly when I realized I had been holding it all along. These were all reasonable explanations of his whereabouts. We’d discuss why he didn’t call me, some other time.

“Did Leech ask if you slept alone last night?” I said with a laugh.

“No.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me down on his lap where I curled up and put my head against his chest.

“Why were you doing all that research? Checking out companies in your job search?”

“No. As corny as it sounds, I was looking for the truth.”

“Ah, the eternal search for truth. Tell me old wise one, what’d you find?”

He thought it would be better if he showed me.

The file Jay retrieved from his car was about an inch thick and he sorted the various sheets of paper in piles on the kitchen table. He held up a few sheets stapled in the corner and passed them to me. The top sheet read University of Western Ontario, Richard Ivey School of Business, MBA Graduates, Class of 1998. Listed below, in alphabetical order were the names of the graduates. Jay’s name was highlighted in yellow on the second page.

I smiled and passed it back to him. “Adding this to your resume?”

He didn’t answer and handed me a single sheet of paper that had a section in the middle highlighted. I read in small type in the top, right-hand corner Who’s Who 2002. The highlighted section read Oakes, Christopher Earl, B.Comm., MBA: Chairman, CEO and member of the board of directors, TechniGroup Consulting Inc., B.Comm, University of Illinois, 1973, MBA, Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, 1975.

The section went on to describe Chris’ past jobs, the charitable foundations he graced with his presence, and his marital status, or lack thereof.

All of this was old news to me so I handed it back to Jay. He exchanged the Who’s Who photocopy with another single sheet which I immediately recognized. It was our company’s standard biography sheet which had a picture of Oakes and a couple of paragraphs describing his background. The few words describing his academic past were highlighted. I didn’t bother reading any of this and I looked expectantly at Jay who silently offered me another piece of paper.

This one looked vaguely familiar. It was a photocopy of a trade magazine feature article about Chris Oakes that had been written about three months after Chris joined our company. The blurred photocopy didn’t do justice to the original photo that had appeared in the magazine. The photo had pictured Oakes sitting at a desk with an active computer screen behind him. The article had described Oakes as a real computer wizard and it talked about how he used the computer at all hours of the night, sending e-mails and messages to his employees and executives. The article was a joke because Oakes didn’t even have a desk, let alone a computer in his office. Chris could no more operate a computer than I could fly a jetfighter. He was just like Rick Cox - a technophobe and ashamed to admit it. I remember when I read the article I thought they should have been referring to voice mail, not e-mail.

Jay had highlighted several paragraphs that described Oakes’ academic achievements.

I handed this back to him and said, “So?”

“The coup de grace,” he replied and handed me more papers. This set looked similar to the first one Jay had handed me. University of Western Ontario, Richard Ivey School of Business, Class of 1975.

“Do you see Chris’ name anywhere on that list?” Jay asked me. I flipped the pages to find the O’s and carefully read the names.

“You won’t find it on there,” he told me as I read. “I checked the years before and after 1975, and his name doesn’t appear. I called the registrar’s office and they told me he was registered and dropped out in his first year.”

“So, the man’s a liar. Why hasn’t anyone discovered this before now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe when someone reaches his level, they forget to check references,” Jay said.

“Well, Sherlock. What other goodies have you come up with?”

“When I discovered that he’d dropped out of Western, I knew something was fishy in Denmark. I realized then that there was a missing link because his resume of his past jobs only starts after his alleged graduation from MBA school.”

“He was probably slinging hamburgers,” I offered. “Not exactly something you want on your resume.”

“Well, Kate. I’ve discovered he wasn’t slinging hamburgers,” he announced.

chapter forty-six

Jay had uncovered a squirming can of worms and when we put all of the information together it led us down a dangerous path.

Chris Oakes hadn’t been slinging hamburgers between 1973 and 1975. He had been the treasurer of a small textile company in Hamilton, Ontario. The path that led to this revelation was quite convoluted, and after Jay spread out more papers on my kitchen table, he explained.

Jay was standing in front of the wall in the kitchen tracing imaginary lines across his fictional whiteboard. I was glad he didn’t have a marker in his hand because I was sure he would be writing all over the wall.

“Oakes wasn’t the only officer of the company I checked out,” he was telling me. “I pulled the background dossiers on all the senior guys, and all of the directors, and discovered a few interesting things. First of all, most of the directors’ paths have crossed at some time or another in the past fifteen years. They’ve either served on the same boards, or were members of the same charitable foundations, or went to school together. All of their backgrounds as they’ve reported them checked out. Except one.” He paused for effect.

“You want me to guess?”

He nodded his head and said, “Sure. But you’ll never get it on the first try.”

I was never one to back down from a challenge. “Can I ask one question first?”

“Come on. Just guess,” he said impatiently.

I wanted to know if it was an officer or director of the company who didn’t check out but when Jay wasn’t amenable to the game, I guessed.

“Larry Everly,” I pronounced.

Now it was Jay’s turned to look surprised.

“You’re right. How did you know?”

“Ah ha! So I was right,” I rubbed it in. “But it was just a wild guess. I just don’t like the man. Most of the directors are harmless old men who are puppets. Everly on the other hand, isn’t old, and he isn’t harmless. He’s a snake. So, what didn’t check out about him?” I asked eagerly.

He pulled out a sheaf of papers from the bottom of a pile that were paper clipped together and tossed them at me. I removed the paper clip and saw that it was a copy of each of the directors’ biographies. Stapled to each biography was a copy of each director’s entry from Who’s Who.

“Take out Larry’s and check out what he said was his first job.”

“Bittman Brothers,” I read out loud. “1973 to 1975.” My face was a question mark.

“A small, family-owned, Wall Street brokerage house,” Jay told me and tossed more papers at me that were photocopies of excerpts from the Survey of Industrials, a directory that is released each year listing various industrial companies. Jay had photocopied an excerpt from the 1973 edition and highlighted a company called Weinstein Textiles. Weinstein Textiles were described as a manufacturer of industrial strength textiles located in Hamilton, Ontario. Revenues, number of employees and a list of the company’s officers followed. Chairman of the Board and President was a Mr. Robert Weinstein and on the same list I found the names of Christopher Oakes and Larry Everly. Chris Oakes was named as company Treasurer and Larry Everly was District Sales Manager.

“Well, well, well,” I said smugly. “Mr. Everly must have been carrying a big load back then, commuting daily between Hamilton and New York. It must have taken a toll. Did you check it out?”

Jay nodded. “Of course. I called around and discovered that Bittman Brothers had been gobbled up by one of the larger brokerage houses in the mid-seventies. I managed to track down the son of one of the founders of Bittman Brothers who’s still in the business and he told me that Larry Everly never worked there. In fact, he knows Larry because Wall Street’s a small world. Told me they’d have been lucky to have Larry working there. He said if he remembered correctly, Larry was in the Toronto area during those years, working for some sort of manufacturing company. So, I searched the Survey of Industrials and found Larry Everly. And Chris Oakes.”

“Your research skills amaze me,” I complimented him as I flipped the pages and saw the identical information for 1974 and 1975 directories. In the entry for 1975 Oakes still held the position of Treasurer but Larry had been promoted to Vice-President of Sales.

“What happened after 1975?” I asked Jay.

“I couldn’t find any more references to Weinstein Textiles. It appeared to have disappeared off the map.”

I tried to digest the information. From 1973 to 1975 Oakes had said he was at school getting his MBA, and Larry was supposedly working on Wall Street. Treasurer and Vice President of Sales were legitimate jobs, so why did they both feel it was necessary to lie about those two years?

“Larry Everly knows damn well that Oakes is a fraud,” I said.

“And,” Jay pointed out, “Oakes knows that Everly is a fraud.”

“Disgusting,” I stated. I pushed my chair back and made some coffee. “Where does all this information get us?” I asked Jay as I spooned the coffee into the filter.

Jay was silent for a moment and then he said, “It gets us nowhere. All it does is create more questions.”

“Yeah. Like what happened to Weinstein Textiles? Why would it just disappear like that from the reference books?”

“Because you stop paying to have your company listed. From what I understand the Survey of Industrials sends out a renewal form each year to the companies that are listed in it asking for updated information and a fee to have their company listed again. So,” he said slowly, “I called them. Asked them what had happened in 1976 and why Weinstein hadn’t re-listed.”

“And?” I asked hopefully, leaning against the counter.

“They told me I was out of luck. Their records weren’t computerized back then and there wasn’t any way they could check back.”

“Oh,” I said disappointedly.

“But,” Jay said brightly. “All those research skills I honed in university paid off. I did the next best thing.”

This was like pulling teeth.

“You’ve had the answer all along haven’t you?”

Jay smirked. “I got the answer but then I hit a dead-end. I started checking out obituaries. I started with this year and worked my way back.” Once again, Jay paused for effect.

I shifted my weight to the other foot and crossed my arms against my chest. My body language said, you better tell me, and tell me fast.

“Okay, okay. Robert Weinstein died around Christmas in 1975.” He dug around in his papers and came up with a microfiche copy of a small obituary. He handed it to me.

Robert Weinstein, Chairman and President of Weinstein Textiles Inc. passed away suddenly on December 17, 1975. Survived by his loving wife Sadie and son Robert Jr.

I handed it back to Jay who was holding yet another goodie. This time he read it out loud: Robert Weinstein, Chairman of Weinstein Textiles died of an apparent suicide on Thursday night. Mr. Weinstein will be fondly remembered by the many people who had been employed for decades at the textile plant. It was reported that Mr. Weinstein had been despondent recently over the bankruptcy of Weinstein Textiles. He is survived by his wife Sadie and their ten year old son, Robert Jr.

Something was bothering me and I thought about it as I poured coffee. The name Sadie Weinstein was very familiar to me and I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it before.

“Have you ever heard the name Sadie Weinstein before?” I asked Jay as I handed him a cup. He shook his head.

Jay sat down at the table and started rearranging his piles of photocopies. I wandered through the living room and back into the kitchen all the time trying to remember. I played some mind games and envisioned lists of names. Names of friends and family. Names of friends of friends and friends of family. When that didn’t get me anywhere I switched to work. Names of people at the office, people outside the office at law firms and accounting firms. I was impressed with the number of people I knew but still didn’t come up with any Sadie Weinsteins. And then I remembered typing the name so I knew she was related to something I had done at work.

“Jay,” I said, trying to get his attention. He was reading something intently and had ignored my wandering around.

When he looked up at me, I said, “I know her name. And it’s an odd enough name that I doubt I’m mistaken here. I’ve typed her name on my computer and for the life of me, I can’t remember why.”

His eyebrows went up slowly. “You’ve typed her name? On the computer at work?”

“Do you see a computer here at home? Yes, at work.”

“I’ll be right back,” he said over his shoulder as he exited the kitchen quickly and I heard the front door close.

When he came back he yelled for me from the front door. I found him on his hands and knees in the front hall plugging his laptop computer into the wall jack for the phone. I watched him in silence as he typed a few commands into the computer.

The modem inside the computer emitted the scratchy sounds of a phone dialling and Jay looked up at me from where he was kneeling on the floor and asked, “You know Kate, it’d be nice if you joined the twentieth century and got a high speed connection and maybe a computer at home!”

He passed me the computer and I logged on to my system at work.

I clicked the mouse a few times to get to my file manager, clicked on the search button and typed in Sadie Weinstein. We waited while the computer searched the hundreds of subdirectories and documents on my computer.

The computer finished its search and told us there were three occurrences of the name and that they were in the directory acquisitions, subdirectory marshton. I had a directory, or file, on my computer containing all the documents we created for all the companies we purchased. Subdirectories were created with the name of each company we acquired. All relevant, computer-generated documents were filed there. Marshton was the name of the company we had just acquired.

I reached up to the small telephone table beside me and grabbed the pen and pad of paper I kept there for taking messages. I stared at the screen and wrote down the three documents where her name appeared. I clicked the mouse a few more times and a document appeared on the screen. I knew by now what the document contained and wasn’t surprised when the screen showed her name in third place on the list. All shareholders of that company were listed in order of their holdings.

“There it is,” I pointed to the screen. “Sadie Weinstein. She owned twenty-one percent of the shares of Marshton Systems.”

chapter forty-seven

“Well, well, well,” I said slowly as I watched Jay pack up his computer. “Isn’t it a small world?”

I looked at the address I had written down on the piece of paper and picked up the phone and dialled information for Sadie’s number.

“And just what are you going to do with her phone number?” Jay asked me.

“Nothing right now,” I told him. “If she’s not home, I’ll be able to call her later.”

“You’re not going to her house?”

“Not me. We.” I handed him the piece of paper. “It’s not that far from here. Are you driving?” I dug in the front hall closet for my jacket and pulled it on.

“No way.” Jay was shaking his head. “Let’s figure this out first.”

“I don’t think we can figure it out without talking to her. Do you think it’s a coincidence that she was a major shareholder of a company we just bought?”

“Weirder things have happened,” Jay said.

“Like finding out that Oakes and Everly are both liars and that they worked for the same company back in the seventies?”

“That’s weird,” Jay agreed. “But the fact that there are a couple of anomalies in their resumes is not a big deal in the whole scheme of things.”

“And,” I continued, ignoring him, “the widow of the owner of that company now shows up as a shareholder in an acquisition we just did?”

“Maybe it’s not a coincidence. But what are you going to ask her? How are you going to approach this?” Jay demanded.

“Well, I hadn’t quite thought of that yet,” I said dejectedly.

Jay helped me off with my coat.

“And what’s the purpose?”

“You tell me Jay. You’re the one who started it. Why did you dig up all this information? What’re you planning to do with it?”

He turned around and walked back to the living room and I followed him.

“What’re you trying to prove?” I asked again.

Jay sat on the edge of the coffee table and I stood in front of him.

“They’ve ruined my reputation Kate. I was fired for no just cause and I’ve got no recourse.” He looked up at me and there was pain on his face. “Understand?”

I nodded. “Just how hard is it going to be for you to get another job? Without a reference?”

“Not hard. The reality of the situation is this. I’m a graduate of Western and could probably have a job tomorrow after making a few phone calls.”

“So what’s this all about?”

He shrugged. “Petty revenge?”

“You’re asking me Jay? Is it or is it not, revenge?”

He took a while before he answered. “Maybe it started out like that. I was determined to ruin their reputations in the same way they ruined mine. And then I actually found something.”

“But as you so succinctly pointed out to me, what you’ve found out is not such a big deal. Some lying on their resumes.”

“Interesting though, don’t you think?” Jay said with a little smirk on his face.

“I agree. So let’s take it one step further. Let’s go and see this Sadie Weinstein and see if there’s more. Just for the helluva it.”

As it turned out, Oakes and Everly would have been happy if they’d only been exposed as having lied about their education and past job histories.

Mrs. Sadie Weinstein’s house certainly didn’t reflect the fact that our company had recently paid her the hefty sum of $3.5 million for her shares. She lived in a rundown neighbourhood in downtown Hamilton. Her home looked neglected and the white picket fence surrounding the front yard was leaning precariously, in obvious need of a fresh coat of paint. The small gate in the middle of the waist-high fence was hanging by one hinge and the small patch of grass that was her front lawn was choked with weeds.

Jay leaned around me and peered out the side window of the car at her house.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” he said.

The house was dark and showed no signs of life. I opened the car door slowly, reluctant to proceed now that I’d dragged Jay here. He’d only agreed to come along after I told him that I was going, regardless of whether or not he would do the chivalrous thing and escort me. I know he thought this was a stupid move but thankfully, he kept his thoughts to himself.

I had no idea what I was going to say to Mrs. Weinstein, if she answered the door. Deceit wasn’t one of my strong points and I had desperately formulated numerous opening lines on the drive to her house. I stumbled on the uneven front step and cursed when a sharp pain shot through my shin. The light fixture beside the front door was missing the light bulb and I searched in the darkness around the doorframe for the doorbell. No light reached inside the porch which had an overhanging roof so I knocked loudly on the door.

I heard a muffled sound inside the house and said, “She’s there.” When Jay didn’t respond I turned around to find myself alone on the porch and Jay still sitting in the car. I waved at him and wasn’t surprised when he stayed in the car.

The sound of several chains coming unlocked got my attention and I turned eagerly to the door.

A small voice questioned me. “Who’s there?”

“Um,” I replied brilliantly. “Miss Monahan.” A perfect response, I thought. She’s really going to open the door to Miss Monahan, serial murderer.

“From TechniGroup”, I added quickly, finally formulating my plan of attack. When the door still didn’t open, I spoke at the door, “Mrs. Weinstein, I’m from the company that recently sent you some money for your shares.”

The door creaked open a crack and I could see it was still fastened by one chain.

“I’m sorry dear, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” a clear voice said.

“Our company,” I explained, “sent you a cheque, for a very large sum of money a couple of weeks ago. I’m here to make sure you got it.”

“I’m not interested in buying anything tonight,” Sadie said and closed the door.

I quickly knocked again and said loudly, “Mrs. Weinstein, I’m not selling anything. Really.” I dug in my purse for my wallet and found one of my business cards. “Mrs. Weinstein, please. Just open the door a crack and I’ll pass you one of my business cards.”

The sound behind me of a car door closing gave me the strength to push on. I couldn’t fail at this because I couldn’t stand for anyone to tell me, I told you so. Jay had been against my coming here and I had to prove to him that this wasn’t a wild goose chase. I saw him coming slowly up the front walk.

Please, I prayed. “Mrs. Weinstein, please open the door. I’m not here to harm you,” I reassured her.

The chain came off and the door opened to reveal a very tiny, old woman. So tiny in fact, she was shorter than I was. Her pure white hair was permed and it surrounded her head like a perfect 1970-style afro.

She took my proffered business card and read out loud, “Kathleen Monahan, Legal Administrator. Irish.”

I nodded my head. Sadie looked around me and pointed, “Who’s that?”

“Oh,” I said and stepped aside. “This is Mr. Harmon, also from TechniGroup.”

Jay came forward a couple of steps and offered his hand. “Mrs. Weinstein, very pleased to meet you.” She timidly held out her hand and Jay gently shook it.

“Mrs. Weinstein,” I said. “We’re from TechniGroup, a company that recently bought Marshton Systems and our records showed that you owned a substantial number of the shares of Marshton. When the transaction closed, cheques were sent to the shareholders of Marshton. Did you receive the cheque?”

While I said this her face became more confused and she slowly shook her head.

“No. No, the only money I get is my Canada pension and old age security and some money from my son.”

I pulled out a sheet of paper from my purse and said, “Our records also show that you had requested the cheque to be sent by courier, to this address. That was about two weeks ago. You don’t remember?”

Jay nudged me and said, “I’m sure Mrs. Weinstein would have remembered receiving a cheque for that amount of money. We obviously have the wrong person, and we’re sorry for taking up your time.” He took my arm and tried to lead me away but I held up the scrap of paper.

“This address is your address, Mrs. Weinstein. There couldn’t be a mistake,” I told them.

Sadie took a step back and said, “I think there’s been a mistake.” A steady breeze was whipping across the porch and she wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed her upper arms. “It’s cool tonight,” she told us. “Why don’t you two come in and we’ll try and sort it out.”

Jay started to decline but I kicked him lightly on his ankle before I followed Sadie into the dark house. There was light at the end of the hallway and I could see it was the kitchen. Sadie led us into a room to the left of the hallway and turned on a floor lamp with an old-fashioned tasselled lampshade.

“You sit,” she ordered us. “I’ll make some tea. You like tea?” she beamed up at Jay. “Such a handsome boy,” she said as she patted his arm. “Sit, sit,” she reminded us again as she hurried out of the room.

I did a three hundred and sixty degree turn in the living room and admired all of the antiques. It was almost impossible to believe that all of these beautiful things existed inside a house that from the outside appeared ready for demolition. Every surface was covered with lace doilies, pictures and knick-knacks. On closer inspection, I discovered that most of them weren’t dime store knick-knacks, but original Royal Doulton, genuine Hummel, and other delicate English bone-china figurines.

Jay was sitting stiffly on an overstuffed sofa that was covered in a faded, cabbage rose pattern.

“Look,” I said as I held out a Hummel figurine. “It’s an original Chimney Sweep.”

“Put it down,” he hissed. “You shouldn’t be touching her things.”

“Party pooper,” I mumbled under my breath as I gently replaced the Chimney Sweep in his position of honour on a low, Duncan Fyfe coffee table. Every surface was spotless and all of the objects had obviously been lovingly cared for over the years. The baby grand piano in the corner of the room took my breath away.

“Have you ever seen a piano in mahogany?” I asked Jay as I sat down on the bench. “I’ve only ever seen them in black. It’s beautiful,” I purred as I passed my hand over the closed cover of the keyboard.

The closed top of the baby grand was covered in dozens of pictures in ornate frames and I tried in the dim light to focus on the figures in the pictures.

Sadie pushed a rosewood teacart into the living room and sat herself in a small, armless Queen Ann chair.

“I’ll pour,” she declared to no one in particular.

The pictures on the piano were mostly black and whites and several obviously dated back to the early part of the century. I picked up a small, oval frame that fit in the palm of my hand and a very young, incredibly beautiful, Sadie peered back at me. I recognized her in several other pictures, standing arm-in-arm with a strapping, handsome man who was twice her size.

“Miss Monahan,” I heard her calling me. “Milk and sugar?”

The pictures on the piano top were arranged in rows by size and a large, eight by ten, colour photo in the back row caught my eye. The only part of the picture visible from my vantage point was the person’s hair, which was perfectly arranged. I got a funny feeling when I realized that the hair seemed very familiar and laughed out loud. Familiar hair?

I stood up and reached carefully over the rows of pictures to the one at the back and gingerly picked it up. The familiar, and perfect hair, was on the head of the very familiar, and perfect face of Philip Winston, the Third.

chapter forty-eight

My heart was pounding and I realized I was holding my breath. I’m sure if someone had taken my picture at that moment they could have placed it in the dictionary as an illustration beside the word dumbfounded.

Jay’s voice brought me back and I jumped at the sound of it. “Kate.”

I hastily replaced the picture. “Sorry,” I apologized. “I was just admiring all of your beautiful things, Mrs. Weinstein.” I sat primly on the sofa beside Jay and folded my hands in my lap.

“So tell me,” Sadie started. “Are you sure you’re not with that Mr. Ed McMahon from the Johnny Carson show? I’ve seen pictures on the television of the nice people they send around to tell people they’ve won the jackpot.”

I looked at Jay with a question mark on my face.

“Publisher’s Clearing House,” he told me. “Mrs. Weinstein thinks we’re here to tell her she won the jackpot because you told her about a cheque she was supposed to have received.”

“Oh,” I said stupidly and looked at Sadie who smiled at me over the rim of her teacup. “No. But if you’re the same Sadie Weinstein that our company cut a cheque for the other day, I’d say you’ve won more than the jackpot. You really don’t remember receiving a package by courier about two weeks ago?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t remember ever receiving anything by courier.”

We were obviously going nowhere on this so I changed tactics. “Did your husband own Weinstein Textiles?” I received a sharp jab in my side from Jay for that one, but I pushed on. “Was your husband Robert Weinstein?”

Sadie paused for a few moments and then replied softly, “Yes. But what has that got to do with a cheque?”

“I’m not sure Mrs. Weinstein,” I told her honestly. “Can you tell me what happened to your husband’s company?”

“It went bankrupt. We went bankrupt,” she stated flatly. “At Thanksgiving 1975.”

Even though the light was low in the room I could see her eyes brimming with tears.

“What happened?” I questioned her.

She dug in the pocket of her housedress for a hankie and dabbed at her eyes. “Somebody was stealing money from the company and by the time Robert discovered it, it was too late. There was no cash left to pay the bills. Or pay the employees.”

I looked at Jay who was staring at Sadie and silently willed him to look at me. When he finally turned his head to look at me I whispered, “How far do we want to take this?”

He shrugged and hung his head and I pushed on. For him.

“Did they ever discover who was stealing the money?” I asked.

“My husband knew,” she said sadly.

“Did the police catch the person?”

“The police were never told.”

“Why?” Jay asked.

She shrugged her shoulders and pondered the question. When she finally answered, I had to strain to hear her say, “Pride. My husband was too proud.”

“Too proud to admit someone stole from him?” I asked.

She nodded slowly. “And he still lost the company. He tried to make a recovery but within two weeks the banks foreclosed.”

And where was his pride then, I wondered silently. Jay’s hand slipped into mine and I gave it a squeeze.

I took a deep breath and pushed on because as painful as this was for Sadie, I needed answers. Pride is a wonderful thing to wear on your chest when you’re facing adversity and there are lights at the end of the tunnel, like being a scholarship student because your mother didn’t have any money. I needed answers for Jay because I didn’t want to see his pride lead him down the same road that took Robert Weinstein’s business and ultimately, his life.

“Do you know who stole the money?” I asked Sadie.

“Robert never told me,” she said as she shook her head. “But I wasn’t stupid then, and I’m not stupid now,” she said defiantly. “He never told me, but I know.”

Jay and I waited expectantly for her to tell us but she wasn’t forthcoming. So, I tried another avenue.

“Do you remember Mr. Christopher Oakes and Mr. Larry Everly who worked for your husband back then?”

Sadie sat up straighter in her chair at my question and I could see her shoulders stiffen. When she didn’t answer me I knew she remembered them. I wished I had brought pictures of them to show her for confirmation but like Sadie, I wasn’t stupid. I knew that the two men by the names of Oakes and Everly that I work with were the same two who had worked at Weinstein’s in the seventies. Her reaction to their names was unexpected and I needed to know why.

“Mrs. Weinstein, please,” I pleaded. “Do you remember Mr. Oakes and Mr. Everly?”

She stood up and grabbed our teacups from the coffee table and Jay jumped up to help her. I knew this was a dismissal and I also knew I wasn’t leaving until I had the answers so I tugged anxiously on the waistband of Jay’s jeans. He ignored me. Sadie smiled weakly at Jay bent over the teacart and she caressed his cheek.

“Such a nice young man. So handsome,” she said. “Your mother? She’s still with us?”

Jay nodded mutely.

“She must be so proud. Sons are special to their mothers, you know,” she told Jay. “Come. I’ll show you a picture of my son. My Robert. We named him for his father. The most beautiful boy,” she said as she led Jay over to the baby grand in the corner. “He comes to see his mother every week. He pays my bills even though he doesn’t have much money of his own.” She handed Jay the picture of the man we knew as Philip Winston and I watched helplessly.

Jay held the picture in both hands and I saw a look of absolute shock quickly pass over his face.

“Yes,” he said as he passed it back to Sadie. “Very nice. Robert, you said?”

Sadie gave the picture a light kiss before she reverently laid it back on the glossy piano top.

“Robert. For his father.”

I quickly crossed the room and put my hand in Jay’s. “What does Robert do Mrs. Weinstein?”

“Oh, something or other in downtown Toronto. He’s an accountant. He’s such a hard worker. Such a good boy to his mother.” She touched the frame of the picture and chose another one beside it and held it out to us. I took it from her hand and Philip Winston at about age ten stared back at us.

“That was his school picture the year his father died. Robert Jr. had such a hard time after it happened and I wondered if he’d ever be the same,” she said through tears. She took the picture back from me and held it against her chest.

“He found him,” she whispered. “Robert found his father. After school.” Sadie was weeping openly now and my throat tightened. “I’d gone out to do some shopping. Robert wanted me out of the house because he said he was meeting someone. I never saw him alive again. Young Robert found him dead. He didn’t speak a word until after Christmas that year. I thought I’d lost both of them,” she sobbed.

I felt incredibly awkward and uncomfortable and had no words of comfort. Jay on the other hand, stepped forward and put his arm around her shoulders.

Sadie sniffed into the Kleenex Jay offered her and wiped her eyes. “After almost thirty years, I still cry every time I think about it.” She straightened her dress and patted Jay’s arm again. “About the cheque and the money, I don’t know. Maybe Robert saw it in the mail. I’ll phone him later and ask him.” She pulled my card out of her pocket and waved it at me. “I’ll tell him you were here asking and that he should call you. All right?”

I had led myself down this garden path and found myself stuck in an old English-style maze. I didn’t know my way out of it but what I did know for certain was that I didn’t want Philip, excuse me Robert, knowing we had been here. I tried to snatch my card back from Sadie but she had already tucked it back in her pocket.

chapter forty-nine

“He’s blackmailing them,” I declared through a mouthful of Big Mac. “Pure and simple, Philip Winston is blackmailing Oakes and Everly.” I snatched the napkin from my lap and quickly wiped some Special Sauce that was running down my chin.

“For what? Blackmailing them for what?” Jay said as he carefully folded the little bag that had contained his French fries. I watched him fold it into a tiny square and heard it plop when it hit the bottom of the take-out bag that was sitting between us on the front seat of the car.

Jay turned sideways in the seat and faced me. “Just because Oakes and Everly used to work at his dad’s company, doesn’t mean Philip has any reason to blackmail them.”

“Come on Jay. Were you born yesterday? Didn’t you see Sadie’s reaction when I mentioned Oakes and Everly?”

“Yeah. So what? Maybe the mention of their names brought back sad memories. You saw how she reacted when she was holding that picture of Philip when he was young. It was an emotional reaction Kate. Read her emotions.”

“I’ll do you one better, Mr. Know-It-All. I read body language. And her body language when I mentioned Oakes and Everly didn’t indicate sad to me. It was fury. Those two guys had something to do with that company going bankrupt. And that something was stealing. Oakes was treasurer. You tell me, Mr. MBA. If anyone in a company has access to the money, it’s the treasurer. Right?”

Jay angrily turned around in his seat and jammed the key in the ignition.

“Mr. Chauffeur is taking you home. Mr. Know-It-All and Mr. MBA are off for the night.” The tires squealed as we pulled out of the parking lot at McDonald’s and I felt like a teenager again. Hot guy. Hot car. Burning rubber. I hit the automatic window button and stuck my head out the window to feel the wind in my hair. It wasn’t quite the same feeling as being in a convertible, but it was close.

The car silently cruised to a stop beside the curb and Jay turned off the ignition and extinguished the lights. We both remained in our seats and neither of us made a motion to get out of the car. The green digital clock on the dashboard read ten-thirty.

“Well?” I said hopefully. “Figured anything out?”

“Nope. I just keep going round and round the mulberry bush with this. We’ve got all sorts of loose ends and I’m not sure where they lead.” Jay ran his hand through his hair a few times and continued, “I’m not sure that I want to know where they lead, Kate. I started this whole thing as petty revenge. But now, we’ve opened a can of worms and… ” he trailed off.

“You’re right, it’s a mess,” I agreed with him. “But I think this could potentially be more than a can of worms, Jay. This could be a big basket of snakes.”

“Then I want to stop right now,” he stated. “That’s it, that’s all. No more.”

“You can’t be serious Jay,” I argued. I held up my hand and ticked off on my fingers what we had. “One, we’ve got Oakes and Everly for lying. Two, we’ve got Philip Winston lying about his name. Three, we’ve found out that Oakes and Everly used to work for Philip’s father. Four, Philip’s father’s business went bankrupt because someone was stealing from it. And five, I think I know who was stealing from it.”

“You forgot six and seven, Kate. Evelyn and Rick Cox. The police think someone deliberately poisoned Ev and so far they’re convinced Rick shot himself. That’s two dead bodies.”

Jay’s hand found mine in the darkness and he held it tightly. “Kathleen, enough is enough. I’m dropping this. The more I talk and think about it, the more scared I get. And,” he said as he put his arms around me and hugged me close to his chest, “I never planned on you getting involved. This was a stupid lark. It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.”

“I’m not dropping it Jay,” I said defiantly. “I’m not. What if all of this has something to do with Evelyn’s death?”

“Then the police’ll figure it out. Please Kate,” he pleaded with me. “I don’t care anymore about this job. Now that I know more about the idiots at the top, I’m glad I’m not there. The two most powerful guys are liars and the one I had any respect for fired me and then killed himself. Enough is enough.”

I sat silently in his arms for a few moments and felt my insides start to boil with indignation. I pushed his arms away and sat back against the door. “Don’t quit on me Jay,” I told him. “Maybe the police’ll never figure out what happened to Evelyn and I happen to think we’re in possession of relevant information. How it ties together, I don’t know. Yet.”

“No,” he shook his head. “Let them do their job. Drop it.”

“I won’t.” I wanted to stamp my feet but they barely touched the floor of the car. “Someone’s going to pay for Evelyn’s death. I’m not sure how or why, but I’ll figure it out. On my own if I have to.” I got out of the car and stood on the curb with my hands on my hips.

Jay leaned over and placed his hand on the seat and spoke to me out the open door. “I’ll wait until I see your lights on,” he said quietly.

“You’re not coming up are you?” I said with a sinking feeling. He shook his head. “Just because I said I won’t drop it? Are we being a little juvenile?” By we of course, I meant him. “This is a difference of opinion here, Jay. Not something earth-shattering like finding out you vote NDP.”

Jay leaned over awkwardly to pull the door closed. “The juvenile chauffeur is going home. I need a change of clothes and I have to see Detective Leech first thing in the morning to sign my statement. Let’s take a few hours to cool our heels and I’ll call you in the morning. Okay?”

I nodded silently. “Please Kate. Let’s forget it.” I helped him close the door by slamming it in his face.

My dreams that night were somewhat pleasant compared to the nightmares I’d been having of aimlessly wandering the desert, looking for Ev.

My dreams took me back to the old neighbourhood. Jay was there but now he was the same age as I was. It was a trip down memory lane. The softball diamond, the tree-house in Mr. McKinley’s backyard, a barbecue in our backyard on Canada Day and my dad setting off fireworks. All the neighbourhood kids were in my dreams that night.

I struggled awake slowly when my dreams took me to the swimming pool. We were horsing around in the water, tossing a heavy ring to the bottom of the pool and racing to see who could pick it up. I was at the bottom of the pool and couldn’t get back to the surface because I was out of breath. I was struggling in the water and getting nowhere. I wanted to scream for someone to help me but I couldn’t open my mouth. My legs and arms were flailing and I felt myself sinking back to the bottom of the pool.

I finally came awake but the weight of the water was still on me and I couldn’t breathe. My arms were over my head and there was a terrible weight on my stomach. I opened my eyes with a start and stared into a black, woollen face. A hand had my arms pinned over my head and the black face had his other hand over my mouth and nose. I whipped my head back and forth and struggled helplessly.

The black face came closer to mine and I tried to focus. I was getting a little air through one nostril but I desperately wanted to gulp a deep breath. The black face was someone wearing a wool ski mask. Only his eyes were visible through the one hole in the mask. I choked on a sob and felt the terror all the way down to my bowels.

“What?” I tried to scream through the leather glove that was covering my mouth and nose. He continued to stare at me, wordlessly, and I closed my eyes and started to pray but my mind couldn’t remember how.

The weight on my body finally lifted and I opened my eyes to see the person standing beside the bed, his one hand still pinning mine over my head. He slowly removed the other hand off my nose and mouth and I gratefully gulped the air. My body shook from fright and my sobs were loud. He stood there staring at me, not speaking and I prayed that whatever he was going to do to me, he’d get it over with quickly. I closed my eyes again and willed myself to another place.

I took myself back to the softball diamond in my dreams, where I had spent most summer evenings of my childhood. I felt the stranger’s breath now on my face and suddenly I was back under the bleacher seats at the ball diamond, and Tommy Gardner’s breath was on my face. Tommy had me pinned down in the dirt, with both of my hands over my head. He had a glob of spit hanging from his mouth and he was about to let it go. Right on my face. I kicked up with my feet and used all of my strength to push the bully off of me.

The stranger’s breath was hot on my face and without opening my eyes, I struggled to get away from him. My fighting instincts came back and I pulled my feet up and tried to kick at him. He let my hands go and I flailed out at him, scrambling back in the bed to get away from him but I wasn’t fast enough. His fist slammed into the side of my face and everything I’d read in books about seeing stars came true. I cried out and put my hands over my face waiting for the next blow.

“Stay out of it,” was all the stranger said in a low, gravely voice. And then he was gone.

chapter fifty

I stumbled to the telephone, hugging myself and sobbing. I was almost embarrassed to call 911 but the dispatcher on the other end of the line assured me and reassured me. I knew I hadn’t dreamed any of it because the side of my face continued to throb and the steely taste of blood remained in my mouth.

When the police knocked urgently on the door I was still standing in the hall, dressed, or undressed, in my nightwear. White sweat socks and panties.

“Miss,” the voice said from the other side of the door. “Police.”

My hands shook as I undid the chain and opened the door. I wrapped my arms around my breasts to hide my nakedness and backed up against the wall.

“He’s gone,” I said in a whisper. One police officer quickly passed by me down the hall with his gun drawn, and the other one stayed back with me.

“I need to put on some clothes.” I tried to read his name tag though my teary eyes but everything was a blur. He nodded silently and then said, “In a minute. Don’t worry. My partner’s just checking everything. Is there another exit or is this the only door?”

“There’s a fire escape at the back. Out the laundry room door.” I realized then that Mr. Black Mask must have exited through the fire escape because it was doubtful that he would have chain-locked my front door behind him on the way out.

The other police officer reappeared at my front door with his gun holstered. “No sign of anyone,” he told his partner.

“Can I get dressed now?”

An hour later they were still there. Checking for fingerprints and asking me questions. A couple of other very tired-looking, plain clothes officers had shown up and they confirmed that a pane of glass on the back door had been broken and he had gotten in that way.

I called Jay because I couldn’t bear the thought of finishing off the night alone. I prayed he’d hear the phone and wake up because I didn’t want to talk to his machine.

“Hello,” a very sleepy voice answered. A wave of relief washed over me.

I lost my voice when I heard his and couldn’t speak. My throat started to close and he said again, “Hello?”

“Jay,” I whispered.

“Kate?” His voice sounded more awake now. I nodded stupidly and realized he couldn’t see me.

“Jay, can you come over?” I asked weakly.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Someone broke in my house tonight. The police are here.”

“I’ll be right there.” I nodded again and hung up the phone.

The police were convinced it was a random act and told me I was lucky to be sitting there telling my story. I knew it wasn’t random because of what the black mask had said, but I was too frightened to share it with the police. He had scared me sufficiently. I lied and told them he had said nothing.

When Jay arrived he wasn’t alone. Detective Leech followed him in and I was certain I could see the collar of the Detective’s pyjama top peeking through his trench coat. I wondered who the hell had called him.

I was back in a familiar position, huddled cross-legged on the sofa under my quilt.

Leech spoke before Jay. “My, my, my, Miss Monahan. We seem to be running into each other quite frequently.”

“Not by choice, Detective. Rest assured,” I said tiredly.

“Can I get anything for you Kate?” Jay interrupted. “Coffee?” I nodded thankfully and Jay headed for the kitchen.

Detective Leech took a chair across from me and said, “You should put something on that eye. You’re gonna have a beautiful shiner tomorrow.” I touched my cheek gingerly.

“Why’re you here?” I asked him.

“Dispatcher’s a friend of mine. She remembered that you had placed another 911 call just a few days ago.”

“Well, this has nothing to do with the other one,” I lied.

Leech looked at me with disbelief on his face and wandered off without saying anything to talk to the other officers. I rested my head on the back of the sofa and closed my eyes. Sounds of voices in the laundry room filtered through my jumbled thoughts and the smell of coffee brewing reached my nostrils. My right hand shot out from under the quilt and I placed it over my nose and mouth, shutting off my breathing passages. I felt my fingernails digging into my cheek, and my thumb and index finger squeezed the end of my nose. The image of the black, mask-covered face appeared before my closed eyes and I felt the fear rising up again. The fear came from my gut and my intestines turned to Jell-O. My eyes filled and I felt a hand gently take mine away from my mouth and nose and when I opened my water-filled eyes, Jay was kneeling in front of me, holding my hand.

“Don’t do that, Kate,” he said. “You’re leaving an imprint of your hand on your face. Here.” He placed a dishtowel with ice in it on the side of my face and I winced at this new pain sensation. I tried to push it away but Jay held it there firmly. “It’ll swell up. Just leave it there a minute or two.”

“He’s right, Miss Monahan,” I heard Leech say. “You need ice on that.”

“Fuck you,” I said under my breath. I’d had black eyes before and proudly wore them like a badge of honour. When Kate Monahan had a black eye, everyone knew she’d been fighting. I wasn’t proud though of this black eye. I’d never even landed a punch.

I looked at Leech and asked him if they were finished.

“I’d just like to ask you a couple of questions, hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak,” he said with a weak smile.

When I didn’t smile at his lame joke, he asked me if the intruder had assaulted me. That, I considered a joke.

“Whaddya call this?” I said pointing to the side of my face.

“I meant sexually assault you,” he said quietly. He looked embarrassed as he asked the question.

I shook my head and re-lived the feeling of the stranger’s weight on my body. The fact that he hadn’t raped me sent renewed waves of relief through me and I sobbed out loud.

“No, he just punched me.” Jay sat down beside me on the sofa and my hand found his.

“I’m sorry, Miss Monahan. We’re just trying to figure this out. It appears that nothing was stolen and you weren’t sexually assaulted. The apartment wasn’t trashed. So, the question is, why did he break in?”

Jay opened his mouth to speak and I squeezed his hand tight and dug my fingernails in to stop him.

“I don’t know. Maybe he had every intention of raping me and stealing my things,” I lied. “I got away from him and maybe because I was going to scream he ran off.” I knew what he wanted and he had succeeded. He intended to scare me off and it had worked.

The uniformed officers appeared in the living room and told Leech that they were finished. I thanked them and Leech took his time getting out of the chair.

“You,” he said and pointed at Jay. “I’ll see you in the morning to sign your statement. In the meantime, Miss Monahan, I’d suggest you get some ice on that shiner and get some rest.”

I nodded again, feeling like a string puppet. Jay and I sat silently while they all trooped out and when the door finally closed, Jay said to me, “You lied, didn’t you Kate?”

The man knew me better than I gave him credit for. I just hoped the Detective couldn’t read me as well.

chapter fifty-one

“What happened?” Jay asked when they left. I threw off the quilt and went in search of my cigarettes. I realized I hadn’t had one since earlier that afternoon when Jay and I had sat at the kitchen table. My head felt dizzy when I took my first, deep drag. I placed both hands flat on the kitchen table to steady myself.

Jay had followed me to the kitchen and I heard him saying behind me, “I’m so sorry. I should’ve been here. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d been here.” He might’ve been right, but on the other hand, I shuddered to think what could’ve transpired if Jay had been there. I couldn’t remember if Mr. Mask had a gun or another weapon, but if he had, he probably wouldn’t have hesitated to use it on Jay or myself. I don’t know how he would have subdued both of us without a weapon.

I straightened up and turned to face Jay.

“It’s over. Forget it. Don’t beat yourself up over this,” I told him.

“Who was it?” Jay asked knowingly.

“I don’t know, and that’s the truth.”

“Then tell me what happened,” he demanded.

“I woke up. Someone was sitting on me, holding my hands and covering my mouth. He didn’t say or do anything.”

“What did he want?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“Kate, this has something to do with everything else that’s going on. I’m not stupid. Please,” he begged me. “I told you earlier that I’m sorry I got you involved in this stupid vengeance thing. And now this happens. I feel responsible.”

Just forty-eight hours ago we had promised each other to be honest and I remembered that now.

“He told me to stay out of it,” I said quietly. “That’s all he said. And then he left.”

Jay shook his head slowly and stared at me.

“I’m calling the police back. This has gone too far.”

“No Jay. No police. No more police. I’m dropping it. He scared me sufficiently. In fact, he terrified me. I know now what it feels like to be drowning.”

I stood there feeling terrified and reliving the feeling of that hand over my mouth and nose. The walls of the kitchen felt like they were closing around me and I was having trouble breathing, again. I butted my cigarette in disgust and tried to calm myself by taking deep, lung-cleansing breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

I ended up on the balcony, overlooking the street trying to get myself back together. Feelings of helplessness overwhelmed me and I stood there with my hands on the railing, wanting to scream. Rage finally overtook the helplessness and I vowed to myself that if and when I met Mr. Black Mask, face to face, I would personally pound his face to a pulp. I didn’t like being vulnerable and although I’d never portrayed myself as a damsel in distress, the events of the last ten days had made me feel my size, and my sex. I was a small woman, but I was determined not to let my size be my downfall.

When Jay finally convinced me to go to bed, sleep evaded me. My bed no longer seemed like my special place, where I could hide and feel safe. Jay helped me strip the linens and remake the bed so there were no reminders of what had transpired there a few hours ago. But the cool crispness and scent of the clean sheets didn’t help and I laid wide awake, staring at the digital clock.

I was curled in a ball with my back to Jay so I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping. I listened to his rhythmic breathing for a long time and when he offered to hold me, I gratefully turned around, into his arms.

“Thanks for being here for me,” I said into his chest. “I appreciate it.”

He responded by hugging me tighter and telling me to go to sleep.

I dragged myself to the office on Monday morning but feelings of dread overwhelmed me, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to cope.

I had rested all day Sunday and my physical energy returned by the end of the day. Jay insisted on taking a long, leisurely walk after dinner and after a luxurious, steamy bath, my body felt normal. I couldn’t let Jay out of my sight for the whole day and I although I knew it was ridiculous to be feeling this way, I admitted to myself that I needed something to cling to.

I woke up Sunday morning to the sound of the shower and had a momentary panic attack until I reoriented myself. The bed was warm beside me where Jay had been lying. The clock read nine-fifteen and I huddled under the duvet waiting for Jay to finish in the shower. When he reappeared in the bedroom he was dressed in the same clothes he was wearing the night before.

As he fastened his watch around his wrist, he said, “I’ve gotta go to sign that statement for Detective Leech.”

Another panic attack came over me when I thought about being alone in my apartment. I threw off the covers and told Jay I’d go with him and stayed close to his side for the rest of the day.

We avoided talking about the events of the night before for most of the day but Jay finally brought it up that evening on our walk.

“Kate, I don’t think you should go to the office tomorrow.”

I admitted to myself that I’d been having the same thoughts because I was sure that my masked attacker was someone who I worked with.

“I’ll see how I feel tomorrow,” was all I said.

“We have to talk about this Kate. You can’t avoid it.”

We turned around and started walking back to my apartment. Jay wasn’t about to let the subject drop and he stood in front of me.

“You must have some idea of who broke in. I certainly have some thoughts on the matter.”

“Drop it Jay,” I said and tried to sidestep around him but he grabbed my arm.

“No. I won’t. All of this is tied-in to things at TechniGroup. And I don’t think you’re safe going to the office.”

He was right, but I wasn’t about to hide from the world.

“Jay, I’ll be fine. Really. Hiding in my office and doing my work is something I’ve perfected over the last week or so.”

“Call in sick,” he suggested.

“It’s too busy.”

“Oh, really? And the work won’t get done without you there? The world stops because Kathleen Monahan takes a day off?” he said sarcastically.

I yanked my arm out of his hand and defiantly shot back at him, “I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself.”

“Right,” he snorted. “Just like last night. You really took care of yourself then, didn’t you?”

“I tried,” I said very quietly, and started walking home.

“I’m sorry,” he was saying behind me. “You did fine. I shouldn’t have said that but this whole situation is scaring me to death. I can’t bear the thought of something happening to you.”

His hand found mine and we walked silently the last few blocks. The evening air smelled like spring, my favourite season of the year, and the odours and sounds gave me renewed strength and resolve.

At the front of my house I sat on the first step of the porch and motioned for Jay to sit beside me.

“You know,” I told him, “a famous man once said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

But now that I was at the office building I found I couldn’t get out of my car. It was like there was a huge magnet in the seat and it was sucking all the power and energy out of me. When I looked in the rear-view mirror the image that came back at me wasn’t a pretty one. One half of my face looked like Marlon Brando’s in the Godfather. A magazine article had said that he stuffed his cheeks with cotton for that role.

The white of my left eye was bloodshot and the top of my cheekbone and surrounding eye were purplish-black. I couldn’t wait for the green and yellow stage. Jay had suggested make-up to cover it up by I laughed him off.

“People will notice the makeup before they notice the black eye,” I told him.

Before falling asleep the night before, I had made myself try and remember something about my attacker. Rather than push the memory away, I needed to know who it was. The few words he had spoken gave me no clue to his voice because I was sure he had disguised it. I couldn’t remember his height in relation to anything and besides, everyone seemed tall to me. I recalled that he had been totally clothed in black, or very dark, clothes, and the only part of his body that was visible were his eyes. If his eyebrows had been exposed, I was sure I would have recognized him.

The fear and terror I had felt could only be described as all-encompassing. Those two emotions had taken over everything and my will and desire to survive the situation, alive and in one piece, overcame any reasonable thought process of getting a description of my attacker. I promised myself that I would never find myself in the same situation, ever again.

chapter fifty-two

I stayed in my office most of the day and avoided people. The few who saw me on my way in and commented on my face were told that I had taken a nasty fall down the stairs. No one had reason to disbelieve me. I had trouble avoiding Vanessa though and when she finally came barrelling in my office, wanting to go for coffee, I lied to her too and mumbled about falling down the stairs.

Harold called and asked me to see him and I reluctantly went in his office. He was standing with his hands behind his back looking out the window. When he turned around and saw me he didn’t react to my black and blue face but said, “Vanessa told me that you had a fall. Are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

“That’s good. I want you to know that I’m extremely sorry for what happened the other night.”

I had a moment of anxiety until I realized he was referring to me finding Rick Cox’s dead body. What had happened to me on Saturday was not something I wanted anyone to know about, yet.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry about Harold. Shit happens.”

“Things are really fucked up here, Kate,” he told me. I was shocked at his cavalier use of one of my favourite words. Harold didn’t swear unless he was very angry and right now he was acting quite calm.

I wanted to answer that he didn’t know how fucked up things really were but I waited for him to continue.

“The stock’s understandably going to go down again today when everyone remembers what happened on Friday night. But, the other party appears to be still interested in this buy-out, so we’re supposed to push on.”

“All of my stuff is done,” I told him, referring to all of the due diligence materials I had compiled the week before. “How soon can we expect an offer?”

“Their board is meeting this morning and depending on the outcome of that, we’ll hold a conference call this afternoon with our directors. Vanessa has them all on standby.”

“Isn’t that kind of quick? They haven’t had time to go over all the due diligence materials.”

“Oh, they can make an offer and back out if certain things aren’t to their liking. There are time limits but they can do it.”

“Can I ask a stupid question, Harold?”

He grinned. “If you don’t mind a stupid answer, Kate.”

I smiled. “What happens to the stock options?”

“Well, a couple of things,” he said. “First of all, the other company will buy out all existing, exercisable options. The holders will get paid the difference between their exercise price and the buying price. Say for example, the other company offers $12.00 a share for our shares and an executive has options with an exercise price of $6.00. That’s a difference of $6.00 per share and that’s what they’ll get paid.”

Simple enough for me. Most of the senior executives were holding about 500,000 options, so at a gain of $6.00 a share, they’d rake in $3,000,000. Before taxes, of course.

“What happens to unexercisable options?” I asked thinking about all of the options that had just been granted to the senior officers and to Philip Winston the Third. Unexercisable options are options that are usually worthless until they have vested, or matured. The vesting or maturity period is normally one year in our company.

“They’ll probably take those up too. You know, if this deal goes through, there’ll be a lot of work to be done just on stock options alone. With Ev and Jay gone, somehow I get the feeling that I’m about to become an accountant as well as a lawyer,” he said.

“Well, you’ll make your mother proud. She won’t have to lie anymore and tell people you work at the post office,” I laughed. “Now she can brag that you’re an accountant.”

Harold laughed with me and it felt good.

“I’ll help with the stock option stuff if it comes down to it,” I offered. “What’re we doing in the meantime?”

“Waiting.”

“I can wait. I don’t mind,” I told him. “But before we wait, can I ask one last thing?”

He nodded.

“No takeover is clean. How many of us are going to lose our jobs?”

“That’s hard to say, Kate. First of all, it’ll be at least six months before any of that happens. And that’s six months from when the deal closes. If it closes. And, usually on a takeover, the senior executives lose their jobs first.”

My stomach sank. Harold was a senior executive and I was tied very closely to him.

“My point exactly, Harold. Senior executives leave, so do their support staff.”

“Well, we’ll see. If it does happen, you know you’ll never have a hard time getting another job. There are few people in this world with skills like yours, Kate.” He was stroking me and patronizing me but I didn’t mind. Besides, I thought to myself, I think I’d rather work in a Siberian coal mine than stay here.

Before the day was out our shares had dropped another seventy-five cents to $4.75 and the ‘other side’ came in with an offer for all of the outstanding shares of TechniGroup at $12.00 a share. The offer was a well-guarded secret, and no-one but the directors of both companies supposedly knew about it. An announcement was to be made before the market opened the next day and in the meantime, I was tempted to put in a buy order before the market closed and make myself some fast cash, because once the announcement was out about the proposed takeover bid, the shares would rocket up in price and trade around the $12.00 bid price. It was just a fleeting thought though because somehow I couldn’t picture myself in jail for making a couple of thousand dollars profit on inside information.

Needless to say, Harold was a happy man and I was sure he would do everything in his power to make sure the deal closed because he stood to make about three and a half million on his stock options. That kind of money makes it easier to look for another job. I had a few thousand shares I’d bought over the years on the employee stock purchase plan and maybe, just maybe, I’d have enough left over after Revenue Canada took their bite, to buy me a new car - or at least get the locks fixed.

Before my departure that day at five-thirty, I turned off my computer and tidied the mess on my desk. Other than meeting with Harold, I had avoided contact with everyone else. Admittedly, I was hiding and as the day progressed, feelings of cowardice crept around me. My work for the day had ended about an hour earlier but I was loathe to run into people leaving the office at quitting time, so I continued to hide in my office, chain-smoking and thinking.

Jay and I were in possession of information that could adversely affect the takeover bid. Larry Everly and Chris Oakes were frauds and that information alone could cause enough of a scandal, but I wasn’t sure if it would be enough for the other side to back off on their bid. I knew that our company was in bad shape and a takeover bid was probably the best thing for it. New faces, new leaders, lots of cash. The perfect recipe for short-term success in the high tech world. But even if the information about Oakes and Everly was disclosed or somehow found out, I was cynical enough to know that some people would ignore it or at the very least, continue to hide it.

I had no idea who the ‘other side’ was and I asked myself if I knew, would I do something with the information?

So what’s the big deal, I wondered. The other company wasn’t buying Oakes and Everly, they were buying our company. The two of them would be history because our board of directors would be replaced and Oakes especially would be laughing all the way to the bank. He’d be terminated without cause, and the change of control clause in his employment contract would kick in and he’d be paid three times his salary plus all his stock options. Everly’s company would get back all the money they’d invested and he’d get to keep his job.

I wondered though what would become of Philip Winston, a.k.a. Robert Weinstein. Would the new company keep him? The fact that he’d changed his name wasn’t grounds for dismissal. Anyone could change their name so long as they didn’t do it for criminal purposes.

Philip must know that Oakes and Everly were working for his father at the time of the bankruptcy. But that information didn’t help me figure out why he was here at TechniGroup. With everything we’d found out in the last couple of days, I seriously doubted that it was a coincidence that Philip Winston was now our Chief Operating Officer.

A glance at my watch told me it was five-thirty and probably safe to the leave the office without running into anyone, so I packed up and headed down the hall towards reception. I deliberately avoided leaving by the back door because that exit route would take me past the executive offices.

I knew I was being stupid about avoiding everyone but it made me feel safe from the unknown. I had barely functioned all day, acting and reacting like a shell-shocked veteran. Unable to identify my attacker but sure that he was someone I knew had made it impossible for me to act normally. When I pushed the button for my floor in the parking garage elevator, I finally faced the fact that it could only be one of three men who had attacked me. Chris Oakes, Larry Everly or Philip Winston. I’d known it all along and I was sure Jay knew as well.

I’d been unable to bring the thought to the forefront of my mind and address it because I didn’t want to admit it. The intrusion in my house and my bedroom had been the ultimate act of employee bashing. Indignation rose inside me as I stormed down the dimly lit hallway off the elevator to the parking garage.

The invisible legal secretary had stumbled stupidly across some information that the high and mighty executives had been trying to hide. After all my years of blood and sweat for this fucking place, I thought angrily. I yanked hard on the door to the parking garage. One of those bastards had not only invaded my personal space, he’d punched me in the face. I made up my mind then and there to quit my job the next morning. And find a reporter to tell my story to.

Righteous indignation felt much better than fear and cowardice and I was feeling somewhat better when I opened the back door of my car to put my briefcase and purse on the floor of the back seat.

I tried very hard to keep those feelings of indignation when I realized Philip Winston was sitting in the front passenger seat of my car. The fear quickly took over again when he crooked his index finger at me and told me to get in. I backed away from the open door of the car and looked over both shoulders for some help.

Philip quickly got out of the car on the other side and put his arms on the roof of the car. “You know Kathleen, you should lock your doors.”

As if I need to be told that now, I thought.

“They don’t work,” I said lamely and he grinned at me.

I felt sick.

chapter fifty-three

“Get in,” he repeated.

“I don’t think so, Philip,” I told him. “If you needed a ride, you should have asked the office manager for petty cash to take a cab.”

When he slammed his hand on the roof of the car, I knew he had no sense of humour.

“Get in the damn car, Kathleen,” he growled.

“Fuck you,” I replied, backing further away. There were two exits out of the garage and I knew that both would be useless to me if Philip meant to keep me here.

“I just want to talk to you,” he said.

“So talk.”

“Not here.”

“Then leave me a voice message or send me an e-mail. I have no intention of getting in the car with you Philip,” I said as I swallowed my fear.

Philip walked to the back of the car but stayed on the other side. He held up his hands to show me they were empty and said, “Please. I just want to talk.”

“No. You’re scaring me. Now get away from my car.” Sweat was forming on my shoulder blades and my lips were dry. My feet were rooted to the asphalt and I wondered to myself if I had it in me to scream when the time came. It was then that I saw the look in his eyes change and my bowels turned to liquid. I recognized those eyes and knew that he was the one who’d attacked me.

I turned to run but of course, he was much faster than I was. His hand grabbed the collar of my blouse from behind and the force pulled me back against him. I swung around and landed my closed fist on his cheekbone with as much force as I could muster. I remembered to keep my elbow tucked and my feet firmly placed on the ground, just the way my dad used to coach us.

The punch had little or no effect because Philip quickly locked his arm around my neck and dragged me back to the car. I tried kicking him but he was nimble and avoided me.

He led me around to the passenger side and shoved me in the open front door. I looked helplessly around for someone, anyone, but the parking garage was empty of people. Philip hurried around to the driver’s side and tried to fit his large frame in the seat. He grabbed at me again as I opened the door but this time he hurt me when his fingers dug into my neck.

The pain was almost paralyzing and I whimpered, “Please, you’re hurting me.” I tried to push his hand away but it was firmly locked on the nerve in my neck. He finally found the mechanism under the seat with his other hand and he pushed the seat back enough to get his feet inside the car. He slammed his door shut first and reached around me to pull the other door closed.

He put his face very close to mine and said, “Promise to sit still and I’ll let go.” I nodded and when he released my neck I rubbed it with my hand.

I stared at him and said, “You told me the other night to stay out of it and I am. What do you want?”

“It’s too late now,” he said.

“Too late for what?”

“Give me the keys,” he said and held out his hand.

“They’re in my purse in the back seat.” Without taking his eyes off me his hand snaked down between the seats and he found my purse on the back floor. He pulled it through the opening between the seats and started going through it.

“Here,” I said as I tried to grab it from him but he brought his elbow up to stop me. When he finally found the keys he flung my purse at me and jammed the key in the ignition. I hugged my purse to my chest and prayed. And thought about my escape route.

The engine coughed a couple of times but Philip finally had success on the third try. I couldn’t even rely on this piece of shit when it counted the most, I thought.

“I thought you wanted to talk. Where are we going?”

He put the car in reverse and didn’t answer me. He drove the car carefully up the circular ramp to the exit and I thought about jumping out of the car at the booth where I knew he had to stop to put my card in the machine to get out of the garage.

“Where’s your pass?” he demanded.

“What makes you think a lowly little person like me has a parking pass?” I said snidely.

“Because as Chief Operating Officer, I’ve been going over everything. I agree. A lowly little secretary shouldn’t have a parking pass. But your name was on the list. Now where is it?” he growled at me.

Personally, I preferred lowly little person to lowly little secretary, but I let the comment pass.

“On the sun visor,” I pointed. There was one car ahead of us and Philip slowed down as we approached the booth. He put his hand inside his suit jacket and withdrew a small, ivory handled pistol. Or gun. Whatever. He held the gun in the palm of his hand where I could see it.

“Any thoughts you might have had about getting out of the car, have just passed, am I right Kathleen?” he said.

“Fuck you, Robert.” The gate ahead of us went up and the other car passed through. “Go ahead and shoot me,” I declared bravely. “Because you can’t think for a minute you’ll get away with this. Whatever it is you plan on doing to me. Let me out of the car and we’ll forget this happened,” I lied.

I watched him take the parking pass off the sun visor and fit it in the slot of the machine. I leaned down and tried to get the parking lot attendant’s attention through the window on the driver’s side but his back was to us. I grabbed the handle of the door and yanked on it. Gun or no gun, I decided stupidly, I was getting out of here. Philip had different ideas though, I realized too late. His hand came up and the handle of the pistol hit me on the side of the head just above my ear. I saw stars again but this time there was blackness immediately afterwards.

The world felt like it was spinning and the dizziness was reminiscent of the one time I’d had too much to drink. The side of my head was throbbing and the spinning sensation was making me nauseous. My eyes opened slowly for a brief moment before I lost consciousness again.

The next time I came to I heard insistent voices, far away. My head was still throbbing but the spinning sensation was gone and I realized that was probably because I was lying on my back. Without opening my eyes, my hands touched the surface on either side of me and I felt a soft blanket beneath me. The sound of a door opening made my hands stop moving and I kept my eyes tightly shut.

I heard Philip say in a whisper, “She’ll be fine, mother. Look, she’s breathing and has colour in her face.” The door shut quietly behind them and when I heard their voices in the hall again, I struggled to sit up.

“But she’s bad, mother,” Philip was saying. “Very bad. We can’t let her leave just yet.” Footsteps in the hall told me they were leaving.

The room I was in was dark but a little light showed under the doorframe. My eyes took a few moments to adjust to the darkness but it took my brain a few moments longer to get back in working order. Philip had said “Mother”, so it was safe to assume that I was at Sadie Weinstein’s house. A very stupid move on Philip’s part, I thought. I stood up gingerly to make sure I wasn’t going to fall over and when I felt steady enough on my feet I searched the room. Not surprisingly, the door was locked from the outside but the window I finally found behind the heavy drapes wasn’t.

The room that was holding me prisoner was on the second floor of Sadie’s decrepit house. Without thinking about the consequences, I hurriedly opened the window and was thankful to see that the porch roof was only about three feet below the windowsill. The drop from the roof below me to the front yard though, was quite a bit further, and I tried not to think about it as I eased my way quietly out the window. Panicked at the thought of Philip coming back, I quickly pulled the window shut behind me. My pumps felt slippery on the rough shingles of the slanted porch roof and I took them off and tossed each one like a grenade into a bush I spied at the side of the yard. I turned around and crawled backwards, crab-like, to the side edge of the roof, scraping the palms of my hands and knees.

When my feet went over the edge of the porch roof I laid down on my stomach and pushed myself over the edge. I had no idea what was below me but a drop of ten or twelve feet couldn’t be as bad as being shot, I thought, as I let go. My feet hit the ground and I bent my knees to absorb the shock and fell backwards on my ass. The pain that shot up my tailbone made me forget the throbbing in my head. The fall knocked the wind out of me and I gasped, trying to catch my breath. In spite of the pain though, adrenaline made me scramble right back up. I grabbed my shoes from the bush where I’d lobbed them.

Silence surrounded me and I listened for sounds from the house hoping that they hadn’t discovered my escape. I could see my car parked on the street but without my keys, it was useless to me, so I straddled the fence between Sadie’s house and her neighbour’s, and took off running.

chapter fifty-four

Vanessa was peeking out the front window of her house when the cab arrived and she hurried outside to pay the driver. I’d never been so glad to see a friendly face and I felt like sobbing.

The woman behind the bullet-proof partition at the self-service gas station had been understanding. She couldn’t pass the phone through the small opening but she handed me the receiver and her tinny voice through the speaker offered to dial the number for me. There was no answer at my place or Jay’s and this time I didn’t hesitate to call Vanessa.

When Vanessa followed me through the front door, I told her I needed her car, her cell phone and some cash. She looked at my bloody knees and said, “Not so fast. How about a clean pair of pantyhose too?”

I shook my head.

“Well, you can have whatever you need. Come on in and I’ll make you some coffee.”

I followed her into the kitchen which was off the hallway at the front of the house and sat on a bar stool at the counter. She talked and moved about the kitchen efficiently making coffee and getting cups, and cream and sugar from the cupboards. I lit one of her cigarettes and put my elbows on the counter.

“What happened?” she asked me.

“I got mugged,” I lied easily. “They stole my car and my purse.”

“Did you call the police?” she asked calmly and I knew she didn’t believe me.

“No. I called you.”

“Where’s Jay?”

“Don’t know. What time is it anyway?”

“Quarter to ten,” she replied as she dropped a full coffee cup in front of me. About a third of it slopped over the edge. “You’re bullshitting me, Kate.”

I tried changing the subject. “How’s Ashley?”

“Fine. Asleep in bed. Every time she spends the weekend with her father she comes home exhausted. And don’t change the subject.”

I felt guilty but wanted to protect her. We’d been friends forever it seemed. The fewer people I cared about that I dragged into this mess, the better.

“Okay, I won’t change the subject. Where’s Chris?”

“How the hell should I know? I’m not his keeper.”

“Yeah, right Vee. Is he in town or out?”

“In,” she replied tersely. “Has this got something to do with where we work?”

“Correction. Where you work. I’m quitting tomorrow,” I told her.

“Oh, now I get it. Harold gave you shit for coming in late again and you got down on your knees to beg for forgiveness. That would explain the blood on your knees.”

“Save the sarcasm, Vee. This is serious but I’m not getting you involved. Now, are you going to give me your car and phone?”

Her car keys and cell phone were on the counter near the wall and she cupped both of them in her hand and slid them angrily across the counter at me. I caught them before they ended up on the floor. A couple of twenty dollar bills hit me lightly in the face and she said, “Don’t forget the cash.”

“Friends?” I asked her sheepishly.

“Always. But let me help you Kate,” she pleaded. “This is too scary. First Ev and then Rick. And now you, showing up at my door with blood on your hands and knees. You’re a mess. And that black eye has something to do with this. I know it. You didn’t fall down any stairs, did you?”

I ignored her reference to my shiner. “You are helping me Vee. And seriously, I can’t get you involved.” I held up my scraped hands and said, “I ended up like this tonight because I was stupid enough to get involved.” I casually felt the lump on the side of my head left there compliments of the butt of Philip’s gun, but didn’t tell her about it.

“Somebody hurt you,” she said, sure that the cuts and scrapes had been caused by someone else. “At least call the police.”

I slid off the barstool and gathered up the keys and cell phone in one hand, and the cash in the other.

“I plan on calling the police,” I told her. “But in the meantime, please don’t tell anyone I was here.”

Alfredo placed the Diet Coke in front of me and I drank thirstily. I smiled up at his friendly face, glad for the presence of a friend.

“Hungry?”

“Not really. I just needed a place to hang out for a while. Lost my keys,” I told him.

“Your friend was here looking for you, earlier.”

“Which friend?”

“Your boyfriend. Mr. Jay Harmon,” he winked.

“What time?” I had been trying to reach Jay because he had a set of keys to my apartment. I got furious again thinking about the possibility of losing my purse with all my treasures in it, including my original Frank Mahovlich hockey card which I kept hidden in a secret compartment of my wallet.

Alfredo looked at his watch and said, “About an hour ago.”

Jay’s machine kicked in when I tried it again on the cellular. The message said, “Kate, if that’s you, leave me a message and the time. Jesus Christ, I’m worried.” I hadn’t thought to listen to the message on the machine when I called before.

“I’m at Alfredo’s. I mean Tony’s Pizzeria. It’s about ten-fifteen. I’ll wait here until eleven. Jay, I lost my keys to my apartment.” I paused for a moment and when nothing else came to mind I pushed the power off button on the cell phone.

While I waited I thought about the events of the evening. Philip Winston, or Robert Weinstein to those blood-related to him, was definitely a wacko, and I decided to avoid him at all costs. He was definitely bad for my health.

He was bad for my career as well, but I was resigned to the fact that I was quitting tomorrow. Enough of the funny farm for me. I wondered what Harold’s reaction would be when I handed in my notice. The thought, though, of going into the office, turned my blood cold. Maybe I could get Harold to meet me somewhere outside the office, where I could break the news to him. Of all the executives I was working with, Harold was about the only one I trusted.

I picked up the cell in one hand and tried dialling with the thumb of the same hand. I’d seen Vee do this several times and was impressed with her dialling prowess. The phone on the other end rang only twice before someone answered.

“Hello.”

“Harold. It’s Kate.”

“Yes, Kate,” he said slowly. “How are you?” He actually sounded concerned, even interested.

“Uh. I’m fine.”

“Where are you?” Now that was a little too interested for me. On a good day, Harold wouldn’t ask me how I was, let alone where I was. I started to feel uneasy.

“Oh. Out and about. Listen, can I meet with you first thing tomorrow morning?”

“Sure,” he said like he was talking to a three year old. “If it’s important, we could meet tonight,” he offered without demanding to know why. When I placed the call I had the hope in the back of my mind that he’d force me to tell him why and then I could resign over the phone. I thought I knew Harold, but this solicitous side of him was something new to me.

“It’s important. But tomorrow morning would be fine. How about Shopsy’s Deli at Yonge and Front?”

“Fine, fine. Where are you now Kathleen?” The fact that he’d now asked me twice where I was made my knees start to shake.

“None of your damn business Harold. Why are you so interested all of a sudden?”

“Listen Kate. I talked to Philip tonight. He told me what happened and he knows he made a terrible mistake. We want to meet with you to make sure you’re all right.”

I jammed my index finger into the power off button on the cell phone and dropped it on the table like a hot potato. Jesus Christ. Now who could I trust?

I gave Alfredo the number of Vanessa’s cell phone and made him promise to give it only to Jay. I couldn’t stay at the pizzeria because I felt like a sitting duck so I got in the car and drove aimlessly around. When the phone on the seat beside me finally rang, I quickly pulled over to the curb and answered it.

“Yes,” was all I said.

“Kate, it’s Jay. Where are you?”

“I’m not exactly sure right now. Where are you?”

“At Tony’s Pizzeria. I called there but Alfredo said he didn’t recognize my voice but if I showed up in person, he had a message for me. I feel like James Bond.”

“Wrong Jay. This is turning out to be more like Mission Impossible. Can you meet me?”

“Sure. At your apartment?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Not my apartment. Or yours. How about the bench were I sat the other day while you went jogging?”

“You mean down at the park? Why all the cloak and dagger stuff?”

“I’ll tell you later. How soon can you meet me there?”

“Kate, it’s too dangerous to be alone in the park at night. Meet me at the pub where we danced. You remember?”

“That’s a better idea.” I looked out the window of the car to get my bearings and it took a moment for me to remember where I was. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

chapter fifty-five

It turned out that Jay had a very protective side to him and as much as I’d dreamed of having a knight in shining armour to fight my battles for me, I had a helluva time holding him back.

“I’ll kill him,” was all he said through clenched teeth when I finished my story.

“Very nice, Mr. Harmon, but I don’t think your mother’d be impressed. Besides, when we turn him over to the police and I charge him with kidnapping and assault, he’ll go to jail.”

I grinned at Jay but he didn’t get it.

“He’s so pretty Jay, so perfect. They’ll love him in the Kingston penitentiary. I’m sure those convicts have had a long, cold winter and they’ll welcome him with open arms.”

This at least got a laugh out of Jay, but he quickly turned serious again.

“Let’s go then,” he said as he stood up.

“Where?”

“To the police.”

“Hang on,” I told him as I pulled his arm and made him sit down again.

“There’s more to it. There has to be. Why did he kidnap me? What’s he trying to hide? Think about it Jay. So his mother told him we were at the house and maybe he knows we figured out he’s using another name. That’s not a major crime. He’s hiding something else. I’m sure, in fact I’m convinced, that this is all tied in to Ev’s death and Rick’s death. And now Harold’s involved. What the hell is Harold doing messed up with all of this?”

“Maybe Harold doesn’t understand what he’s involved with. You didn’t let him explain what he wanted to talk to you about. Maybe Philip gave him some cock and bull story.”

I snorted at this. “You didn’t hear his voice Jay. He was very concerned, very solicitous. Does this sound like the short lawyer with a big attitude who we’ve all held so near and dear to our hearts these last few years?”

“Okay,” he sighed. “I’ll take your word for it. I just have trouble believing Harold’s involved. I’m feeling like the last virgin at a pool party at Hugh Hefner’s mansion.”

I started to chuckle but he interrupted, “You know. You’re determined to hang on to your innocence and virginity, but in the back of your mind you know it’s all about to end. You’re thinking, do I just give in and enjoy it or do I fight to keep it? That’s how I feel about finding out Harold’s just another snake. Disgusted.”

“You’re turning into a cynic Jay.”

“It comes from associating with you,” he joked.

“Stick with me Harmon, and you’ll become more than just a cynic.”

“In the meantime, we have to do something.”

“After I return Vanessa’s car.”

When Vee answered the doorbell her cordless phone was tucked between her ear and shoulder. She silently motioned us in and Jay and I followed her in to the kitchen where we both sat at the counter on the barstools. The clock on the wall told me it was eleven-forty and because of the hour, I knew she could only be talking to one person - Chris Oakes.

Vee covered the mouthpiece of the phone and told us, “He’s rambling.” She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and mumbled something into the phone.

“This could take a while,” I whispered to Jay and placed Vee’s car keys, cell phone and money on the kitchen counter. “She’s talking to Oakes.”

I slid off the stool and waved good-bye but Vee once again covered the mouthpiece and said, “Hang on. I’ll get rid of him.”

“Chris,” she said patiently into the phone. “Chris,” she repeated in a singsong voice. “Goodbye.” She pushed a button on the phone and put it on the counter.

“It’ll take him a few minutes to realize I’ve hung up and then he’ll call back,” she told us.

“I thought you didn’t answer the phone at home, just in case it was him,” I teased her.

“Normally I don’t, but I thought it might be you, so I’m holding you personally responsible for the crap I’ve just listened to.”

“In one of his abusive modes?” I asked knowingly.

She shook her head. “No. In his morose mode. Drunk and rambling. When he’s sober I have trouble following him but when he’s drunk, it’s worse.”

“Why do you put up with that garbage?” Jay interrupted.

“Because I have two mouths to feed,” she quickly retorted. “And it’ll be something I can tell my grandchildren one day. How the big executive, with all the money and power in the world, goes home at night and has nothing better to do than drink, and watch Star Trek re-runs. He has no friends because he abuses anyone who gets remotely close to him. No one.”

“I thought I read somewhere that he was married,” Jay said.

“He tells everyone that. Cynthia was a woman who lived with him for a while but she’s long gone now. She told me she woke up one day and realized that all the money in the world wasn’t going to keep her there. Cynthia was nothing more than a decoration for Chris.” Vee placed her elbows on the counter and put her face in her hands. None of what she was telling Jay was news to me but he was hanging on to her every word.

“The part of that whole story that amazed me,” I interjected, “was the fact that they never once slept together.”

“Come off it girls,” Jay said. “How could you possibly know that?”

“How many times do I have to tell you, we’re invisible,” I said. “People tell secretaries anything and everything. They think we’re stupid and they say anything in front of you. Because it doesn’t get repeated, they tell you more. Before you know it, you’re a confidante. The boss thinks you’re stupid, we call it discrete. Want to know how many blow jobs Tom James’s wife gave him last year?”

“That’s disgusting. And no. I don’t want to know,” Jay said.

“None,” I told him anyway and Vanessa laughed. “And just for the record, Tom, the great Tower of Jell-O, didn’t tell me directly about his sex life, or lack thereof. He was lamenting with one of the directors one day. In front of me. Unbelievable.”

“I agree,” said Jay. “So Oakes told you Vee that he and this Cynthia never slept together?”

“Yup,” she nodded. “One night, on the phone. Told me that they had separate bedrooms and that they’d never once had sex. Cynthia went up a few notches in my books after that.” She looked at me and we both visibly shivered. “Yuk. Just the thought of getting into bed with that sorry excuse for a man, makes me sick.”

I nodded my head in wholehearted agreement.

“So what was the great one rambling on about tonight?”

“Who knows Kate? It never makes any sense. Tonight he was crying over how much he misses Rick Cox. When he started on about that I just about hung up. He’s sick,” she stated emphatically. “Sick. The whole time Rick was with us, Oakes had a vendetta against him. All he wanted to do was to get him fired. You saw those memos he had the vice-presidents write. All garbage. And then Rick goes and does something stupid and gets himself fired anyway. But then Oakes got totally incoherent. Mumbling away about how it was an accident. Just an accident. Over and over again. She was an accident he kept saying and I wanted to remind him that Rick was a he but I couldn’t bother wasting my breath. She was an accident. And then he put the dog on the phone. Say hi to Baby, Vanessa. That’s when you guys arrived and saved me.”

She was an accident, he’d said. She might be a slip of the tongue once or twice with someone drunk, but to repeat it over and over again, meant only one thing to me. She was Evelyn. The son-of-a-bitch meant Evelyn.

I slowly picked up the telephone that was lying on the counter between us and punched in Oakes’ home number from memory. The phone on the other end rang three times and when it was answered I could hear a dog barking loudly in the background.

“Who’re you calling?” Jay asked me and I quieted him with an upheld hand.

“Um,” was the answer I got from the other end.

“Chris,” I said firmly into the phone. “Kate Monahan here.”

“Uh,” was the reply which I took for a hello.

“Chris,” I said again. “Is that Baby I hear in the background? How is Baby?” Baby was the only living thing that could stand to be around Chris Oakes and for that reason, he worshipped the dog. Talking about the dog always got big points.

“Baby,” he slurred into the phone. “Baby’s fine. You wanna say ‘ello?”

“No. No thanks Chris. I just had a quick question.” The man was clearly drunk and I knew I could go for the jugular and get a few quick answers. Knowing that I was never working for the company again gave me the bravado to be bold. “You were saying earlier that she was an accident. She was an accident,” I repeated.

“Ohm,” he mumbled.

I looked at Vee and Jay who were staring in disbelief at me.

“Chris,” I said loudly to make sure I had his attention. “When you said she you mean Evelyn, didn’t you?” There was silence at the other end of the phone and I wasn’t sure if he’d passed out or was just ignoring my question. “Evelyn. The lady who died. Was she the accident Chris?”

I heard a sob from the other end and I felt the blood rush to my ears. He’d done it.

“You bastard,” I yelled into the phone. “Evelyn. She was the accident wasn’t she, Chris? Answer me,” I demanded.

“She,” he hesitated. “She shouldn’t have died. It was an accident. I’m so sorry.”

chapter fifty-six

“The bastard,” I whispered to no one in particular. “He did it. He killed Evelyn.” My eyes filled with tears of anger and the dead phone hung limply from my hand. Jay got up from where he was sitting and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Kate, he’s drunk. You can’t believe anything he said.” I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and looked at Vanessa who was leaning against the wall hugging herself.

“Vee, he did it. He said he was sorry. That it was an accident.” I was yelling. “The only accident that ever happened in that sorry son of a bitch’s life happened the day he was born.”

Vee was shaking her head now. “No. No way.”

“Don’t Vee. Don’t defend him. This’ll turn out to be just another quirk in his miserable personality. The capability of killing someone.”

“He couldn’t have Kate,” Vee said with disbelief in her voice.

“Are you defending him?” I demanded.

Vanessa hesitated before answering. “Yes. And no,” she said slowly.

“Yes?” I repeated.

She nodded.

“He just as much admitted to me that he was responsible,” I said angrily. “And you’re defending him?”

“He’s drunk Kate. You should know better than to believe anything he says.”

“Stop it. Stop defending him.” My blood was boiling and anger was bubbling up in the back of my throat. I took a step towards Vee and Jay stepped between us.

“Cut it out,” he said.

“What is going on Kate?” Vee asked me. “I don’t understand. You show up here tonight looking like you’ve been through a battle and you don’t have the decency to tell me what happened. You just demand my car and money. And now you’re accusing Chris of murder! Care to fill me in?”

“I can’t fill you in,” I answered her. “Because I don’t know myself what’s going on. What I will tell you is that Philip Winston hit me over the head and knocked me out and tried to lock me up in a room at his mother’s house. I got away and came here. Why’d he do it? I don’t know. And now Chris as much as admits that he had something to do with Evelyn’s death. Why? I don’t know. Maybe you know. Maybe you have some idea.” My breath was coming in short gasps now and Vee was just staring at me.

“Me?”

“Yeah you. Everyone else at TechniGroup seems to be involved in all of this. Why not you?”

“Get out. Get out of my house,” she said as she pushed past me. “How dare you?”

“How dare I?” I yelled at her. “My friend Evelyn is dead and I came close to it the other night. Like it or not, we’re all involved in this and it’s all about to come tumbling down around us. Because I’m not giving up until I find out what is going on.”

“It’s time to get the police involved,” Jay interjected. “This has gone too far.” He tried to take my arm but I shook him off. I backed away from the two of them and balled my hands into fists.

“You do what you want Jay,” I told him. “The police are involved and obviously they haven’t figured out anything. I’m not going to the police. Yet.”

“They don’t know about Philip. And we should tell them about what Chris said. Let’s leave it to them,” he pleaded with me.

I stormed to the front door of the house and yanked it open. Over my shoulder I yelled, “Go ahead. You’re on your own.” The door slammed behind me and I quickly realized that if I was on my own, I would be doing it by foot. My car was still parked at Sadie Weinstein’s house and after the things I’d said to Vanessa, it was highly doubtful that she’d loan me her car again.

I stood there stupidly for a moment until I heard the front door open quietly and I turned around to see Jay silhouetted in the light.

“We made a promise the other day you know Kathleen,” he said softly and I nodded my head mutely, knowing full well what he was referring to.

“I made a promise to stay out of it. I know that. But the moment Philip Winston waved a gun in my face and hit me on the head with it, things changed.” I gave Jay a challenging look, almost daring him to back out.

He raised his hands in the air and shrugged his shoulders at the same time. “Fine. Just tell me what we’re doing before we run off half-cocked.”

“I want to see Oakes. Confront him.”

“That could be dangerous.”

“No more dangerous than things have been in the last two weeks. Only now, we can be aware of the danger. Not let it creep up on us. Okay?”

Jay nodded his agreement and dug in the pocket of his jeans for his car keys and I went back to Vee’s door and knocked timidly. The door opened immediately and I knew she’d been standing on the other side.

“Sorry,” was all I said.

“I know. Ev was my friend too, so do what you have to. Everything’s about to crash about us, isn’t it?”

“That’s a fair assessment, Vee. With what’s happened, I can’t see that things’ll stay status quo. And for that, I’m sorry too. We’ll all have to get new jobs, you know. I’d already made up my mind, but I don’t know what’s going to happen to you, because I think Oakes has worked his last day there.”

“I was working up to that anyway, knowing about the take-over. He already told me that one of the conditions from the other side is that he’ll be gone within six months. He thought he was laughing all the way to the bank because of his options. I knew I’d be out of a job, with him anyway, before too long. So don’t worry about me, Kate. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“You make it sound like I’m going off to war,” I joked.

Her response was dead serious. “Maybe you are.” We hugged each other tightly.

The only response we got from ringing the doorbell was the frantic, high-pitched barking of Baby on the other side of the door. When the dog finally quieted down, we could hear him snuffling and scratching at the bottom of the door. There was still no response from Chris so I rang the bell again. The dog started up again and Jay said, “Oakes must be passed out if he can’t hear the dog going crazy.”

I tentatively put my hand on the ornate brass door handle and pushed down the latch with my thumb. The door opened and I looked up expectantly at Jay, waiting for him to say something. Instead he pushed past me into the lobby entranceway calling Chris’ name. Baby leapt up at me and his claws scratched at my knee where the scrapes from the roof of Sadie Weinstein’s house had only just stopped oozing. The pain of Baby re-opening the wound brought a metallic taste to my mouth and I gasped. My reaction was normal under the circumstances but when I batted him away from my legs, he yelped. He had a stupid, red bow, tied to his topknot and another one under his chin, like a bow-tie. It must be tough enough being a miniature poodle, but to add insult to injury, the male dog was decked out like a foo-foo.

“Quiet, Baby,” I said as I looked around the lobby for signs of life. The house was very familiar to me and I knew the layout from memory. I had been there many times on different errands and knew exactly where we’d find Oakes.

“Downstairs,” I told Jay, pointing to a Colonial style door inset in the curved walls. He looked at me with a question mark on his face.

“Television room. That’s where he hides when he’s drinking.”

A couple of years ago TechniGroup had been about to close a debenture issue and Oakes had disappeared one afternoon. There was no response to his telephone at home, urgent voice messages were not returned, and Harold started to panic about nine o’clock that night. We were at the lawyers’ offices at a pre-closing and all the documents were neatly arranged in piles around a long, rectangular boardroom table that sat thirty people. The junior lawyers from both sides were working their way methodically around the table checking the documents against the closing agenda, making sure all the i’s were dotted and all the t’s were crossed. The senior lawyers from both sides were huddled in the corners of the room, ironing out last minute “deal stoppers”. The chairs had been removed from the table and placed against the walls where the accountants sat, biding their time and watching their fees grow. The only thing missing from all the documents prepared was Chris Oakes’ signature.

There were over sixty separate documents on the closing agenda and ten original copies of each document had been prepared. Chris Oakes had to sign over six hundred documents before the deal could close as scheduled at ten the next morning. Usually in a closing such as this, all documents were signed before the pre-closing started and were held in escrow until all conditions had been met. The actual closing would then take only minutes when the lawyers from both sides would position themselves on either side of the table and with a few silent nods back and forth, it would be agreed that the deal was closed.

Didrickson cornered me where I was standing in the boardroom watching the lawyers, praying they wouldn’t find any typos or other mistakes in the documents I’d prepared.

He smelled slightly sour and his breath was stale. “Where the fuck is Oakes?” he demanded through clenched teeth.

“I have no idea, Harold. I’ve put out an APB on him and I’m waiting to hear back from Vanessa.” Vee was relatively new to the position of keeper of the CEO, but she was quickly catching on to his quirks. She’d assured me I’d hear from her within the half hour.

One of the legal secretaries who belonged to the law firm where we were holding the closing approached me at that point and I looked over at her. “Phone,” she mouthed silently. Without a word I slid out from where Harold had practically pinned me against the wall and followed her out of the boardroom. The news hadn’t been good and the plan I put forth to Harold was one of desperation.

The phone call had been from Vanessa, who’d told me in a small voice that she was at Oakes’ house and he was passed out drunk. There was an empty quart bottle of Scotch on the floor beside the easy chair where she’d found him.

Harold had hit the roof when I told him but he calmed down somewhat when I told him my plan. “We’ll sober him up so he can at least hold a pen and I’ll get him to sign a copy of each document.”

“Two of each,” he’d said. “One for them, one for us.” I quickly marched around the table taking two originals from each pile of documents and stuffed them in my briefcase.

Vanessa had been in the basement television room trying to force coffee down Oakes’ throat when I’d arrived around ten o’clock that night. It was after two in the morning before he was in any shape to sign the documents, let alone hold a pen. He had no idea what he was signing but knew from experience that when Kate put a document in front of him to sign, he signed. No questions asked.

Harold had given the other side some bullshit story about Chris Oakes being detained at some other important meeting and the closing went off without a hitch. Until later that day at the luncheon celebrating the closing of the transaction. Everyone was being civil to each other and all of the acrimony and pettiness that had been evident over the last couple of weeks among the lawyers had evaporated. By the time everyone had eaten and the champagne had disappeared, it was well past four in the afternoon. As usual, I was the only sober one in the crowd, but we were all having a good time. Until Oakes showed up. He was drunk but in control and as usual, he was wearing his public persona and everyone loved him. He was a different man in front of people who didn’t work for him and they all enjoyed his company. I remember giving Harold a knowing look and leaving the party immediately.

When Jay and I entered the basement room, it was a familiar scene to me. There was an empty bottle of scotch on the floor and Oakes was passed out in his La-Z-Boy chair, hugging a half-full bottle and clutching a small white booklet that I recognized as our internal voice mail directory in his hand. The phone on the table beside him was off the hook and a loud busy signal was coming out of the receiver.

chapter fifty-seven

“I wish I had a Polaroid,” I said to no one in particular. Chris was slumped in his chair decked out in his pyjama bottoms and a dress shirt with CEO monogrammed on the breast pocket. Something wet was dribbling out of the side of his mouth and he snorted loudly as I stood over him. The sound made me jump but it also confirmed that he was still alive even though the evidence indicated he had probably ingested enough Scotch to sink the Navy.

“Well,” Jay said smartly. “Go ahead. Question him. He’s all yours. I’ll question the dog.”

“Don’t get smart Jay. I’ll sober him up with coffee.”

“If he’s had all that Scotch, I think it’ll take a couple of days to sober him up.”

“Maybe, maybe not. That empty on the floor could have been sitting there for a couple of days.”

“No. I drankth it tonight,” Oakes slurred. I jumped again and looked at him, still slumped in his chair with his eyes closed.

“Chris,” I said as I edged closer to him. I put my hand out to touch him but recoiled at the thought. He didn’t respond and I repeated, “Chris.” This time I said it louder.

“Go ‘way,” he mumbled.

“I won’t go away,” I told him. “Until you tell me what happened to Evelyn.” Another snort came from his nose and I wasn’t about to allow him to pass out again so I grabbed the fabric of the sleeve of his shirt and pulled on it a couple of times to get his attention.

“Kate, it’s a losing battle,” Jay said. “He just keeps passing out. You’ll never get any sense out of him in this condition.”

“Hey, I’m used to it. This is just like communicating with him at the office. He mumbles and grunts and snorts all the time.” I grabbed the bottle from Chris’ clutches and poured the remains over his head. Scotch soaked into his hair and ran down his face and onto the front of his shirt.

“What the hell are you doing Kate?” Jay demanded.

Satisfied that the bottle was now empty I held on to the neck of the bottle and practiced a few swings with it.

“Emptying the bottle so I can hit him over the head with it,” I told him. Jay swiftly took the bottle from my hand and laid it upright on the table beside Chris’ chair.

“Have you lost it?”

“Hey, I was kidding. I poured it on him to see if I could get a reaction. Maybe I need something colder.” On the back wall of the room there was a fully stocked bar and I knew from the last time I had to sober him up that the refrigerator had an automatic ice-maker that dispensed cubes out a chute in the front door. I found an ice bucket on the bar counter and filled it with ice cubes from the dispenser and then poured cold water from the tap over the ice cubes and sloshed it around a few times. The wicked grin on my face told Jay exactly what I planned to do with my ice-cold concoction.

I stood over Oakes with the bucket poised and asked Jay, “Do you think he prefers a twist of lemon with his Scotch and water?” With my index finger and thumb, I very gingerly held the collar of his shirt away from his neck to make sure some it went inside his shirt.

The reaction this time from Oakes was more to my liking and he reacted quickly, spluttering and cursing. I stood back and watched for signs of an awakening but when it was too slow coming, I filled the bucket again with ice and water and this time poured it over his head and down the front of his shirt. Oakes’ arms flailed about and with his eyes open, he tried unsuccessfully to get out of his chair but I pushed him back. I yanked on the wooden handle at the side of the La-Z-Boy chair to pop up the footrest and Chris’ feet flew up. It was a comical sight and a sure way to keep him prisoner in his chair.

Oakes was awake now and he looked at Jay and I through half opened eyes.

“Hooru,” came out of his mouth and Jay and I looked at each other for interpretation.

“I think he said who are you,” I offered. I put my hands on the arm of the chair and leaned into his face and in my best Marine drill sergeant voice, I yelled at him. “Coffee?” His head lolled to the side and rested on his shoulder. “I’ll take that for a yes,” I said confidently and headed for the bar. One of the lower cupboards yielded a small jar of Maxwell House Instant and I shook a generous amount in the bottom of a large beer mug. To this I added some lukewarm water from the tap and stirred it up with a pink swizzle stick with a cute flamingo on top.

“Now I need your help,” I told Jay. “Just hold his head straight and I’ll do the pouring.”

“He could choke, Kathleen. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

I grabbed Chris’ chin and grimaced as I stuck my thumb in his lower lip and forced his mouth open. The lukewarm instant coffee poured out of his mouth and I wasn’t sure if any was making its mark because I couldn’t see his throat working. So, I pushed on the back of the La-Z-Boy to get it into a more reclined position and poured some more into his mouth. When he swallowed, I slowed down and waited for him to empty his mouth.

I looked up at Jay who was staring at me in horror. “Maybe I’d be better off just spooning the dry coffee crystals into his mouth,” I suggested. “That way the caffeine would work faster.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Maybe. But I’m not leaving here until I get some answers.” I started pouring more liquid caffeine in Chris’ mouth and by the time we reached the bottom of the beer mug Chris was stirring. I perched on the edge of the sofa to wait and eventually my efforts were rewarded when Chris grunted several times and wiped his hand over his face. By this time most of the various liquids that had been poured over him had dried on his face but his shirt remained soaked and stuck to his skin. His pyjama bottoms were in the same condition and the fabric covering of the La-Z-Boy chair gave off an uncomfortable squishing sound when he squirmed in the chair. Chris was probably feeling just like a newborn baby sitting in a soaked diaper.

“Come on Chris, please,” I prodded him. Jay had made himself comfortable in a matching loveseat and I looked over at him. “I don’t suppose you could pick him up and shake him for me?” When he gave me a blank look in return I knew I was going to get about as much response from Jay as I was getting from Oakes.

“Did you want to wait in the car while I beat him with a rubber hose?” This at least elicited a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“I know you object to this. If it wasn’t so serious I’d leave him here to choke on his own vomit. But I want some answers.” Jay nodded wordlessly and I took this for mild acceptance of my methods.

Chris’ eyes were open now and I saw a glimmer of awareness.

“Waddya want?” he asked me.

“Some answers.”

“Get out,” he said as he heaved himself into a more upright position. He pointed a shaking finger at me and said, “You I know.” My eyes followed his hand as it slowly swung around and he pointed at Jay. “Who’s that?”

“Jay Harmon,” Jay told him.

A glimmer of recognition surfaced in Oakes’ face and his mouth formed into a wicked sneer.

“The idiot who got himself fired. Rick’s little bum-boy,” Chris said.

Jay’s face reacted but he didn’t respond. I gave him credit for being able to hold his tongue, a trait I had yet to develop.

Now that Chris seemed somewhat sober, it was time to get this over with. “You told me on the phone that you were sorry. It was an accident. Evelyn was an accident. Now tell me what you meant.”

“Get out of my house.” He fumbled at the side of his chair for the lever and gave it a yank. The chair returned to an upright position and his feet hit the floor. His attempt to stand up was unsuccessful and he fell back into the chair.

“You’re fired,” he told me and I laughed.

“Really?” I asked with mock horror. “And just how long do you think the great CEO will hold on to his job? Now that we know you murdered Evelyn?”

Chris squirmed in his chair and averted his eyes.

“Answer me, dammit,” I yelled at him.

He quickly looked at me and then Jay. His eyes were wide open now and he resembled a deer caught in the headlights of a car. His hand reached for the phone beside him. “I’m calling the police if you don’t get out of my house.”

“Please do,” Jay dared him as he stood up. “Kate, come on, you’re not getting anywhere here. Let’s just leave.”

I stood up and took Jay by the arm to the other side of the room. “Just a few more minutes. I think I can get through to him. Go upstairs to the kitchen and make some coffee. Please. You might be intimidating him.”

“Me? I may have the size but you’ve got the mouth. Maybe you should go make coffee.”

“Go.” I gave him a light push and he reluctantly walked up the stairs. Baby appeared from behind Chris’ chair and followed Jay. I had completely forgotten about the dog. Chris remained in his chair looking like a deposed king. His expression was pitiful and he was a mess. I glanced at the clock on the VCR and it read one twenty-four. Almost time to call it a night but I wasn’t about to give up. Yet.

“You know that it’s all over,” I told him, doing my best Dragnet imitation. Baby started to bark upstairs and I heard footsteps on the stairs. “You’ll never work in this town again. Now tell me what happened. Please.”

I was standing over Chris with my back to the stairs and Baby’s persistent yelping was starting to annoy me. “Baby, shut-up,” I said.

“I agree,” a voice behind me said. “The dog is far too noisy.” I spun around to face Philip Winston who was holding a gun in his hand. It looked like the one he had hit me with but this one had a long, tubular extension on the end of the barrel, which I surmised was a silencer. A familiar sight to any Clint Eastwood aficionado.

The dog was yipping and jumping at Philip’s pant leg. He pointed the gun at Baby and pulled the trigger and the dog gave one final yelp before falling on the floor.

chapter fifty-eight

Oakes let out a bellow of rage and catapulted himself out of the chair. Philip now pointed the gun directly at me and my eyes darted to the staircase.

“I’m all alone,” he said, following my eyes. Then where was Jay, I thought desperately. “The watchdog met me at the door.”

Chris was sobbing and kneeling on the floor cradling the bloody dog in his arms. Philip waved the gun at me and I instinctively backed up. My gut was turning over and sweat had broken out all over my body. Philip’s eyes were locked on mine and he ignored Oakes on the floor.

“You got away from me earlier, and now I’m pleasantly surprised to find you here. I’m running around the Metropolitan Toronto area looking for you and here you are.” His calm voice gave me shivers and bolts of fear were shooting up my spine and through my stomach. The hand holding the gun slowly raised up and he stretched his arm outright until the gun was pointed directly at my face. My eyes closed automatically in anticipation of what was to come next. My senses were heightened and the sour smell of scotch that permeated the air wafted to my nostrils. Blood was pounding in my ears and I could hear my breath and Chris, whose sobs had now turned to a high-pitched keen.

“Your voice message, Chris,” Philip was saying, “was very timely. Thank you very much. Open your eyes. Look at me.” I forced my eyes open and looked at him where he was still standing in the same position, about eight feet away from me. The gun remained pointed at my face.

“Mr. Information Technology here left me a voice message. Said he’d told the girl it’d been an accident. I assumed he meant you but I couldn’t be sure because he was so drunk. Now that’s what I call dangerous. A drunk who spills the beans.”

I glanced downwards at Oakes who was still only interested in his damn dead dog. There was no way I was going to escape this situation and I obviously could not depend on Oakes for support. As usual.

I was praying inside that if Jay were still alive upstairs, he’d get some help but in the meantime, my only hope was to try and talk my way out of the situation.

“I agree,” I told Philip. “A drunk is dangerous. But I don’t drink. Guaranteed. So I’ll never spill the beans, as you put it. Just let me go and that’ll be the end of it.”

He slowly shook his head. “Sorry. No can do. There’s too much at stake. I’ve been working at this for most of my life and I will not let you, or him,” he waved the gun at Oakes on the floor, “get in my way.”

My hands came up, slowly, to my mouth and I pressed them over my face, trying to hold in the sobs that were building in my chest. I had stupidly got myself into this situation and my actions to this point had been impulsive. Impulsive and stupid. I tried to think clearly and logically but panic boiled around inside me.

I thought of Sadie and her deep, motherly love for her son and decided to try to appeal to his human side. “Your mother wouldn’t be very proud of you right now.”

“You keep my mother out of it!” he screamed at me and I backed up another step. The step backwards put the back of my knees up against the low coffee table and I felt completely trapped. “I’m doing this for my mother. She was shamed and humiliated when my father died. We were poor for so many years. I promised.” He said this slowly and his voice was quieter and respectful when he talked about his mother and I wondered what the promise was all about.

“Then think about your mother,” I said quietly.

The next instant happened in slow motion, and every detail remains engraved on my brain. I saw the muscles move ever so slightly in the hand that was holding the gun. Chris had put his right hand on the floor and was trying to push himself into a standing position but he fell over into Philip’s leg at the same moment he pulled the trigger. Later on I would credit Chris for saving my life. The hot, searing pain I felt on my right ear automatically made me think I was dead. I fell back on the coffee table with both of my hands protecting the side of my head where the bullet had hit me. My hands filled with warm fluid that I knew was blood and in a panic now that I realized I was still alive, I rolled off the coffee table onto the floor behind Chris’s La-Z-Boy chair.

“Goddammit Chris,” Philip screamed. “You’re always screwing things up.” I could hear Philip’s breath coming in short gasps. And then his voice changed again and he said calmly, as if we were standing around at a champagne reception, “If he hadn’t knocked my leg, I would have had you right between the eyes. But before you die, let me tell you, you were close. Close to finding out the truth.”

My eyes darted around the room from my hiding position. The clock on the VCR now read one thirty-one and I realized that it had only been a few minutes since Jay had gone up to make coffee. If he had any idea of what was going on down here, assuming he were still alive, help should be on the way soon.

“The truth Philip, the truth is what everyone is going to know after tonight,” I said defiantly. “You’re blackmailing Chris and Chris had something to do with Evelyn’s death. All of it’s going to come out. You’ll never survive this Philip. Your career and Oakes’ is over.” I was tempted to call him some names too, but I didn’t want to push my luck, whatever little I had left. He didn’t respond to this so I pushed on.

“So tell me,” I continued. “What did Oakes and Everly do that made your father’s company go bankrupt?” My right hand was full of blood now from my ear and I wiped my hand on the carpet.

“They stole from him.” His voice was above me and without moving my head I raised my eyes up from the mess I was making on the carpet and looked at Philip’s shoes. My eyes continued up his pants leg and I finally had to move my head and when I did, I looked directly in his face. The gun was held steadily in his hand and it pointed directly at me, less than a foot from my face. “They stole his money. And he was going to the police when they killed him. I came home early from school. The nurse had sent me home because I wasn’t feeling well. Mommy wasn’t there so I went to look for daddy.” His voice had changed and now he sounded like a young boy.

“There were voices in daddy’s den and I was never allowed to interrupt when he was having a meeting but I wasn’t feeling well. So I went outside and peeked in the window to see. They were there. One of them was holding daddy in the chair and the other one was holding daddy’s hand to his head. And then there was a loud noise. Mommy said daddy went to live with the angels.”

The poor child had witnessed his father’s murder. No wonder his mother thought she’d lost both her husband and child. The shock of seeing something like that had obvious, lasting effects.

Philip’s voice changed again and this time, a man’s voice spoke to me. “We suffered. Mom and me. And I promised myself that I’d make it better for us. I was probably 15 or 16 before I realized what it was I witnessed that day.”

“I believe you Philip. But why did my friend Evelyn have to die?”

“It was an accident. She was only supposed to get sick. We wanted Rick Cox out of the picture but things went wrong. We needed to fire him. The woman was never supposed to die. Just get sick and be out of the picture for a couple of days. We disabled her EpiPen. Put a little peanut oil on the food. It was supposed to be no big deal. We needed access to her computer system.”

I thought sadly about Evelyn and the tragic way this madman had ended her life.

“You bastards,” I whispered.

Philip didn’t hear me, he just continued. “Chris promised me Rick’s job. He was going to pay for what he did. I wanted money. And lots of it. For my mother. Chris said if we got rid of Rick I could have his job and his stock options. He said Larry would find another company to buy TechniGroup and then we’d all make lots of money on our stock options.”

Fucking stock options. The level of greed amazed me.

“Well you’ve succeeded. Rick’s out of the way. We’re about to receive a take-over bid. Your options’ll make you scads of money. So just leave it at that. Let me go.”

“Sorry.”

I watched in horror as the shoulder muscle of his arm holding the gun twitched imperceptibly and as I waited for the shot that would kill me, my life virtually passed before my eyes. An overwhelming sense of sadness took over and I willed myself to pass out.

A groan from the other side of the room told me that Chris was still alive. And then a voice, that definitely wasn’t Chris’s said, “Mr. Winston. Drop the gun.”

From my position on the floor, I watched Philip’s eyes dart up in reaction to the voice. The voice was unfamiliar to me but I felt a surge of relief that help had arrived. Philip crouched slightly and without moving his eyes, he grabbed my arm and pulled me up. He spun me around so my back was against his chest and held me tightly with his left arm around my neck. My hands grabbed instinctively at the arm across my throat and I tore at his forearm with my fingers. My fighting made him tighten his hold. I saw one eye of a policeman’s face peek around the wall at the end of the staircase. His left hand held a gun pointed directly at us.

“Just drop the gun, Mr. Winston,” he was saying calmly as he looked directly at me. His eyes were telling me not to do anything stupid but I felt the situation dictated otherwise. I manoeuvred my chin under Philip’s forearm and his grip tightened, which luckily forced my mouth open around his arm. So I bit down as hard as I could and stomped on the top of his foot at the same time. Philip’s reaction was exactly what I expected. He yelled out and loosened his grip slightly from around my neck. I took the opportunity to pull down on his arm with my hands and then I let him have an elbow in the stomach. His arm dropped and I fell to my knees on the floor behind the chair, covering my head with my arms.

One shot rang out and the sound was deafening so I knew the police officer was the one who had fired. I heard a rush of footsteps on the staircase and voices filled the room. I remained frozen in place and listened to the sounds around me.

“He’s alive,” I heard someone say and then the same voice was talking to me.

“Miss. Are you all right?” An arm snaked around my shoulders, where I was huddled.

“Fine,” I managed to say.

“There’s an awful lot of blood, Miss. Where are you hurt?”

I put my hands on the floor and pushed myself up to a kneeling position. “My ear, I think,” I said as I pointed. Adrenaline continued to rush through my body and I felt no pain from the wound. Yet. I swivelled my body around to see Philip lying behind me, face down on the floor with his hands handcuffed behind his back. I used the arm of the La-Z-Boy to pull myself to my feet and stood there on shaky knees looking down at him. He stared back at me silently with hate in his eyes.

“Can you stand him up?” I asked the police officer. “I hate to kick a man when he’s lying down.”

chapter fifty-nine

Chris Oakes’ basement television room was full of people and because of the low ceilings, the noise level was high. I was sitting on the coffee table that had broken my fall and a paramedic was attending to my war wound. I was told I was a lucky person because the bullet from Philip’s gun had only nicked the top of my ear. They were insistent though that I go to the hospital and it was there that I found out that the bullet had taken off a piece of the top of my ear that was the size of my baby fingernail.

Philip Winston was handcuffed to a stretcher with a flesh wound in his shoulder and the paramedics were taking him up the stairs to the ambulance. Oakes had already been taken out, but he had walked. Barely.

The paramedic who was working on me was packing up his large first aid kit that resembled a toolbox.

“Can you walk, or do you want a stretcher?” he grinned at me.

“I think I can walk, thank you very much.”

“Well, your ambulance awaits you.”

“I’ll go to the hospital, but not in an ambulance. He’ll take me.” I nodded my head at Jay who was sitting across from me on the loveseat.

“I’m sorry miss. We have to insist. Your friend can follow in his car. I’ll even sit in the back with you.”

“Fine,” I agreed rather than fight. Of course I was dizzy when I stood up but a deep breath and a conscious decision not to act weak, gave me strength.

Detective Leech appeared which didn’t surprise me. In fact, I was surprised that it took him so long to get here.

“What took you so long Leech?”

He ignored my jibe. “A few questions Miss Monahan.”

My paramedic saved me, for the moment. “Later Detective. This lady’s on her way to the hospital. She’s lost some blood and we understand she took a blow to the head earlier today. So, the questions’ll have to wait.” He took me by the elbow and led me away.

“For that, kind sir, I propose marriage,” I whispered to him as we made our way up the stairs. “You saved me from the dragon.”

He laughed. “At your service.”

The street outside of Chris’ house resembled a circus. Red flashing lights from all of the emergency vehicles were lighting up the street and yellow tape cordoned off the area. A television crew were set up behind the line and their bright white lights made the scene look like a large, budget film was being made.

“There she is,” I heard someone yell and a surge of bodies pressed forward. My saviour paramedic hustled me up two steps into the back of a waiting ambulance and he quickly pulled both doors closed behind him.

Detective Leech finally had his way with me at the hospital. I was forthcoming with as much information as I had but he had nothing to share with me. The hospital staff kept him at bay and before he was allowed access to me, the doctors and nurses patched me up and x-rayed my head. The doctor had been concerned about the blow to the side of my head because the lump where Philip had hit me with his gun was quite large.

“It’s just a mild concussion,” the doctor told me. “Rest is the best cure. As for the ear, the bandages can come off in a couple of days.” I was sitting up on the side of a gurney when he gave me the good news.

“A few people outside want to see you,” he told me. “But protocol tells me that the Detective gets first crack at you. One person tells me his name is,” he paused as he checked a name he had written on my chart, “Jay Harmon. The screaming pack of reporters are being kept outside the hospital but they all want to talk to you. I’m ready to discharge you now but if you want to hide from everyone, we can admit you for observation.” I was sure he wouldn’t be offering the hospital for asylum purposes if I didn’t have such good medical insurance coverage, but I thanked him anyway.

“Send in the good Detective,” I told him. “And thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll go home tonight.” I offered my hand and he returned a firm, but cool handshake. He pulled the curtain closed around my gurney when he left and I rummaged around in the small cart that held my clothes. When I had arrived, the nurses had quickly and efficiently stripped me of my clothes and I made a mental note to call my mother and thank her for always reminding me to wear clean underwear.

My clothes were covered in dried blood and I was loathe to put them back on but it was better than leaving the hospital in a gown that didn’t fasten in the back and was three inches above my knees. I quickly stripped off the gown and was buttoning my blouse when a voice behind the curtain told me that Leech had arrived.

“Just a sec.” I dropped my shoes on the floor and manoeuvred my feet into them without bending over. I left the gown on the gurney and pulled open the curtain to find Leech.

“Miss Monahan,” he said formally. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Where do you want to talk?” I was anxious to get this over with and get home to bed. The large clock on the wall told me it was past three o’clock in the morning.

“Here or at the station.”

“Now?”

“A few questions now, and we can finish tomorrow, if you like.”

“Here then. Is there somewhere we can sit and I can have a cup of coffee while we talk?”

“I think there’s a lounge on this floor. Follow me.”

Jay was sitting in the waiting area and he jumped out of his chair when he saw me approaching but Leech waved him off. “Fifteen minutes, Mr. Harmon. If you’d be good enough to wait, we won’t take long.”

We found the lounge and Leech bought us each a coffee from a vending machine that looked like it had been installed before the Second World War. I was dying for a cigarette but there was no way I could light up in a hospital. I didn’t have any smokes anyway because my purse, which I’d forgotten about, was still in either my car or Sadie Weinstein’s house. I spied my reflection in a dark window. The entire right side of my head was swathed in white bandages and my blood-soaked clothes looked almost unreal. Like props in a movie.

I sat down carefully in a straight backed chair at a table covered in old magazines. Leech sat across from me and opened his ever-present notebook.

“Please fill me in on events since we spoke on Saturday night after the break-in at your apartment.”

Where to start was the hardest part so I decided to take him back a few days before the Saturday night attack. And this time I tried not to leave out any details. I told him about seeing Winston and Cox at the restaurant and Jay’s discovery of the link between Oakes and Everly and Weinstein Textiles. I recounted how Jay and I had met Philip’s mother and discovered that he was using an assumed name. Then I told him about Philip kidnapping me in the parking garage at work and waking up in Sadie’s house.

I showed him my scraped knees which the nurses had disinfected and covered with Sesame Street Band-Aids. Throughout the telling of my story I was calm and almost detached but I had to pause before continuing when I got to the part about what had happened at Chris Oakes’ house. Leech smiled when I described my efforts at sobering up Chris but his expression turned deadly serious when I told him about Philip’s arrival and the subsequent events.

I closed my eyes and told him about looking down the barrel of Philip’s gun and how everything seemed like it was in slow motion. I felt Leech’s hand cover mine and he said softly, “It’s all right now.” Embarrassment flushed over my face for having such a hard time getting the story out so I finished off quickly, with my eyes open, and told him about the things that Philip had said and admitted to.

“Good,” he told me and he flipped his notebook shut and put it away in his jacket pocket. “Tomorrow, we’ll talk some more. You go home and rest.” He was sounding like a Jewish mother and I wondered why I always felt my back go up when he was around. Probably because I never told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I had deliberately left many things out in the past when he had questioned me and the guilty feelings had put me on the defensive.

Leech showed me the way back to the Emergency Department and I found Jay slumped in his chair, fast asleep.

“Let me warn you about the reporters outside,” Leech said before he left. “They’re not allowed in here, but they’ll be outside, in full force. I can’t tell you not to talk to them, but we’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t, until our investigation is over.”

I gently woke Jay when Leech finally departed and he told me that he was parked out front, away from the media. I felt like Elizabeth Taylor sneaking out of the Betty Ford Center and we laughed a little as we stayed in the shadows in the parking lot on our way to the car. It was four-thirty when we finally arrived back at my apartment and after five before we got to bed.

“When did you figure out that Philip was in the house?” I finally asked him.

“When I heard Oakes yell, I was just at the top of the stairs with the coffee. I recognized Philip’s voice and froze. I didn’t know what to do.” He put his arm protectively around my shoulder. “I should have jumped him. You wouldn’t have gotten shot.”

“Maybe not, but you sure as hell would have. He would have shot you as soon as you started down the stairs.” My hand touched the bandages on the side of my head. “Besides, this is nothing,” I reassured him although my ear was throbbing. “Just an excuse not to cut my hair.”

I told Jay about the things that Philip had told me. “So, you were right. He was blackmailing them all along.” After a few silent moments he asked the questions that had been nagging me. “But what about all the other pieces of this puzzle? Why is Rick Cox dead? Why is Harold involved? And why did the stock price take such a dive before all of this happened?”

We didn’t have to wait long to find out because by the time we arrived at the station the next day to meet with Detective Leech, he had most of the answers.

chapter sixty

The phone was ringing persistently and I struggled to pull myself out of a deep sleep. The clock radio told me it was seven thirty-five. I had been asleep for less than two hours and the painkillers they had given me at the hospital had worn off and the gentle throbbing I’d felt the night before in my ear now felt like a pounding jackhammer. Ah, the healing process, I thought. Jay slept soundly beside me and he didn’t move when I ungracefully fell out of bed. My blood-soaked clothes were in a disgusting pile on the floor and I gingerly stepped over them and grabbed Jay’s oversize T-shirt, taking my time, hoping the phone would stop ringing.

The ribbing on the neck of the T-shirt caught on the large bandage on the side of my head when I was pulling it on, jarring my wound and the first curse of the day escaped my lips.

I yanked the ringing receiver off the hook and automatically put it up to my right, bandaged ear.

“Yes,” I yelled into the receiver as I passed it to the left side of my head. The handset felt uncomfortable against the lump over my left ear, so I held it away from my head. A hands-free set would have come in handy.

“Kathleen, is that you?”

It was my mother. Oh god. Please don’t let it be some disaster, I thought in a panic. She never calls this early in the morning, and only ever calls on Sunday, when the rates are cheapest. It never occurred to me that she might be calling about me.

“Yes, mom. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” she asked indignantly. “What’s wrong? You’re all over the morning news and you ask me, what’s wrong?”

“Calmly mother. I’m fine. Really.” My interest was piqued now. “All over the news?”

“Yes, there were pictures of you getting into an ambulance. They said you’d been shot. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Just a small wound. On my right ear. Where are you calling from?” She was normally at work at this time of day.

“Don’t end your sentences with a preposition,” she lectured me and I laughed. Nothing ever changes.

“I’m at home, with your father. He came racing out of the house to get me. He’d seen you on the news.”

“Well, tell him I’m fine.” I briefly filled her in on the events of the previous night and promised to call later.

“And mom?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for always telling me to wear clean underwear.”

I heard her laugh as I hung up the phone and it felt good to take one thing off my list of mental notes.

My heart broke at the sight of Sadie Weinstein, sitting in the lobby of the police station. It seemed she had aged overnight, and the forlorn, lost look on her face made me wonder if she would be able to cope with what she and Philip were about to face. She didn’t recognize either Jay or myself as we passed her with our escort to the second floor for our meeting with Detective Leech.

Leech’s sorry excuse for an office consisted of a desk, a chair and a telephone. I was sure there wasn’t room for a cockroach, let alone two guests, so we met in one of the small rooms where we were told they questioned suspects.

“Not that you’re suspects,” he quickly said. I gave him a smile because I believe in encouraging humour and I also believed that we were never too old to develop the skill. Besides, I was starting to like Leech. When this was all over I might speak to him about possibly changing the pronunciation of his name to Lesh or Latch or something that didn’t make him sound like a Bay Street lawyer.

After we had passed the pleasantries and he had served us some coffee that tasted just the way the television cops described it, he told us that Philip was being arraigned that afternoon on attempted murder charges and that the Crown Attorney was calling on the RCMP Fraud Division for their assistance in investigating a myriad of other possible charges. Leech told us that after they had explained to Philip what ‘hard-time’ in a prison was all about, he had agreed to a plea bargain. Lesser charges for squealing on Chris Oakes and Larry Everly.

Chris Oakes was in a hospital lock-up under a psychiatrist’s care. He had been totally incoherent when the police attempted to question him the night before.

“The only thing he said, over and over, was Baby,” Leech said.

“Well, I certainly hope they have voice mail in the loony bin. He can have his sessions with his shrink over the phone.” I silently chastised myself for what had just come out of my mouth and hoped that in a couple of days, or weeks, I would have more charitable feelings towards these bastards. But, Leech didn’t get the joke and Jay just shot me one of those looks. The kind of look your mother used to give you when you were little. You might be at your great-aunt’s house for dinner and during a pause in the conversation you make a comment about her moustache. Unable to kick you under the table, your mother shoots you that look.

“What about Larry Everly?” I asked.

“The NYPD are co-operating with us and have picked him up and they’re holding him there until we can nail down all the charges. Philip Winston told us some pretty unbelievable things last night and I have no doubt that Mr. Everly will be going away for a long, long time.”

“Care to share any of that with us?” I urged him.

“Winston tells us that he allegedly witnessed Everly and Oakes murder his father. Why he never came forward with that information is a question that will probably not get answered. So, he blackmailed them. He got himself well educated and worked his way around the country in various high technology companies. About a year ago he saw his opportunity. He told us he had been following Oakes’ career so he was watching TechniGroup very closely. TechniGroup was acquiring a lot of companies and that was when Philip approached Oakes. He was going to make Oakes pay, and pay big time. He wanted money, and lots of it, so he came up with the plan to have Oakes buy the company he was working for and get him into a senior position at TechniGroup. He also knew that your company had been ripe for a take-over for some time and as part of his master plan, he figured Larry Everly, with his connections on Wall Street, would be more than eager to go out and find a buyer. Turns out he was right.”

“Finding a buyer for a company our size, isn’t that easy,” Jay said.

“Easy enough when you’re motivated,” Leech told us. “The other side of this nasty deal was that Philip insisted on stock options. And lots of them. I’m not much of a brain when it comes to all of this high level corporation stuff, but I had a quick lesson this morning from my brother-in-law. He’s an actuary,” he said proudly.

Jay and I barely suppressed our laughter when the old joke came to mind. Question: Why did you become an accountant? Answer: Because I didn’t have the charisma to be an actuary. Every profession has its cross to bear and because actuaries do such incredibly boring work, they are perceived to the outside world as lifeless people with no personality. I was sure this was the only joke in history that had been told about an actuary.

“He explained to me about how the price gets set and how you make money on them,” he continued. “Everly and Oakes were to get the stock price down so Winston’s options would be given to him at a low price. So the two of them started passing rumours around. Winston said they talked off the record to some people on the floor at the stock exchange and to industry analysts. Those are the folks that follow your specific industry and make predictions about the business,” he told us needlessly. “I’m getting to like using these buzzwords. I guess the rumours were nasty enough to have the stock price go down and that’s exactly what Winston wanted.”

“It worked,” I interjected. “He got a shit-load of options and the exercise price was pretty low. Along with the rumours that we didn’t know about, there were the other things happening that the public knew about and those events themselves drove the price down even more.”

“Right,” he agreed. “The news that your chief accountant was resigning made the price drop.” I smiled at his use of the term chief accountant. Rick would have liked that. “Oakes and Larry Everly told their sources that Rick Cox had been fired. And that made the price drop some more. But when Mr. Cox committed suicide, it got worse.”

“Was it a suicide?” I asked him.

He shook his head and I watched Jay’s face for a reaction but there was none. He had been sitting quietly, stone-faced through much of Leech’s recital.

“We’ll get to that part in a minute. The news that an employee of the company had died mysteriously and that we were investigating it as a homicide, just added fuel to the fire. So all of these events got the desired result. A low stock price, Philip Winston got his big job at TechniGroup with stock options, and there was another company, ripe to take-over TechniGroup. The plan had worked. But then you,” he nodded at me, “and your partner here, got involved. The both of you were too smart for your own good.”

“Not smart enough,” I said ruefully, pointing to the bandage on the side of my head.

“No,” he agreed. “But Mr. Winston didn’t know how much you knew. When he found out that you had visited his mother, he saw all of his plans going up in smoke. He obviously got desperate.”

“Obviously. It was him, you know, who broke into my apartment the other night.”

“He needed to scare you off. I guess it almost worked.”

“Almost,” I agreed. “But then he had to double his threat and bash me over the head.”

“Desperate men do desperate things,” he said unnecessarily.

“I had made up my mind to let you do your job but he pushed the issue. I want to know what happened to my friend Evelyn.”

“That’s where it all started didn’t it? So sad, that such an innocent person had to get involved. This could all have gone off without a hitch, if she hadn’t died,” he said sadly. “No one would have ever known.”

I didn’t need to hear that and once again I was overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and helplessness because I hadn’t been there to help my friend. Tears welled up inside me and poured silently down my cheeks into my mouth.

chapter sixty-one

Jay and Detective Leech both offered tissues and Leech went to fetch more coffee while I composed myself, which took a while. I gave in to the tears and just sat there and let them flow and after a few minutes my tear ducts dried up. I wiped at my face with the balled-up tissue and waited for Leech’s return. Jay remained silent and left me alone in my misery.

Detective Leech backed into the room carrying three Styrofoam cups of coffee.

“So where were we?” he asked needlessly.

“Evelyn,” I quietly reminded him.

“Yes. Well, it seemed that Mr. Oakes and Mr. Winston put a plan together to get Mr. Cox fired. I understand that although Chris Oakes was chairman of the board and president, he didn’t have all the power. He reported to the board of directors and I have been told that Mr. Rick Cox had several supporters on the board. To fire Mr. Cox outright wasn’t going to work. So, the two came up with a plan, backed by Larry Everly, to discredit him. They initiated several small plans, one of which was to make it look like Mr. Cox had fixed the stock option system to benefit himself. To do that, they needed Evelyn Morris out of the way. Philip was adamant that it was an accident, that she was just supposed to be sick for a few days. It would give them the chance to do whatever they needed and when she came back to work, she would discover that something was wrong. As it turns out, Mr. Harmon here discovered it right away.”

“Philip told me that last night. He said they just wanted her sick, for a few days,” I said with disgust.

“They were aware of her allergy to nuts but not aware of the severity of it. They doctored the food with peanut oil and disabled her EpiPen. Philip and Chris Oakes decided to have a potluck - I think they referred to it as that. A potluck, where the employees bring the food. If the caterers had been hired, Oakes and Winston wouldn’t have had any access to the food.”

“The greedy bastards. All of this for money. Philip Winston is more guilty because he didn’t go to the police and report a murder in the first place.” I felt the rage building in me and wanted to pound my fist on the table.

“Unfortunately, their plan backfired when Mrs. Morris died. And apparently Mr. Harmon, you were another victim. Mr. Cox fired you because he knew he had not caused those changes to be made, and right or wrong, he believed it had to have been you. You were supposedly the only one who knew his system password. Is that correct?”

“I agree that I knew his password. But was I the only person he told? I don’t know,” Jay answered.

“Everything apparently fell apart for Mr. Cox and we were led to believe he committed suicide. Philip Winston has informed us otherwise, which confirmed the Police Department’s suspicions. From the evidence at the scene, it was unlikely that Mr. Cox had shot himself. That was confirmed by Philip last night under questioning.”

Detective Leech sipped from his coffee and looked at Jay. “That was about the time you disappeared.”

“I told you I didn’t disappear,” Jay retorted. “I was around all the time but our paths never crossed.”

“We know that now. But you understand that we had to cover all the bases.”

Jay nodded reluctantly.

“Did Philip give any explanation for why he and Rick Cox were together the night I saw them at Bigliardi’s?” I asked.

“I was coming to that. Philip told us that he was worried that Rick might be on to something so he wanted to meet with him and confirm his suspicions. He got Rick Cox to meet him by telling him that he had information about Oakes that could end his job as chairman of the board. Apparently, Mr. Cox was still interested in working at TechniGroup and would have been happy to see Chris Oakes’ career go up in flames.” He shook his head in amazement as he told us. “The plotting and back-stabbing that went on in this company was amazing.”

“What did Philip think Rick might be on to?” Jay asked.

“One of Mr. Winston’s contacts in the stock market industry told him that Rick Cox had called him asking questions. Turns out this was one of the stockbrokers who had been fed all the false information by Oakes and Larry Everly. When Rick Cox called the broker, the broker took the opportunity to question Rick further on those stories. Suffice it to say that Rick Cox knew he’d been set up. Very complicated.”

“So when Philip called Rick with the cock and bull story about dirty information on Chris Oakes, Rick jumped at the chance to meet him.” Jay added. “Not so complicated Detective, once you’d worked there for a while.”

“I’m a little confused,” I piped in. “Why did Rick end up murdered?”

“Let me guess,” Jay offered. “Because of the information he had. Philip wasn’t about to let anyone screw up his plan so he killed Rick.”

Detective Leech shook his head. “No. You’ve only got part of it right. The next part of the story is what will get Philip Winston his immunity from prosecution, if we can prove it. That night at Bigliardi’s, Rick Cox threatened that he was going to the Ontario Securities Commission with the information that Oakes and Everly were manipulating the stock price. Winston says it was Oakes and Everly who killed Rick Cox. And once I’ve had a chance to question Larry Everly, I think we’ll find out that they did it the same way they killed Philip’s father. Philip probably thought there was some poetic justice there, forcing or blackmailing the two into killing again. The ultimate act of revenge. And that young lady and gentleman,” he nodded at us, “is all of the information we’ve gathered so far.”

I was suffering from information overload but there was one small point that needed clarifying. “How and why did Harold Didrickson get involved?”

“He’s just another sad statistic,” Leech said. “Philip told me that Oakes had been wanting to fire Mr. Didrickson for a long time. For what reasons, we don’t know.”

“He never needed a reason,” I interrupted. “If the wind changed, that was reason enough. The man was a lunatic. Correct that. Is a lunatic.”

“Well, after Rick Cox met with Philip Winston at the restaurant, he called Didrickson. They were buddies?” he asked me and I nodded my confirmation. “Didrickson panicked at the thought of Cox going to the Ontario Securities Commission because he was about to make out big on the intended take-over and he needed the money.”

“Didn’t we all,” Jay added sarcastically.

Leech ignored his comment and continued. “I know it sounds like a plot from a dime store novel, but it seems that Mr. Didrickson and his wife have a little passion for the tables in Vegas. And the track. And the football games. They’re in debt up to their proverbial eyeballs and this was going to be Harold’s big payoff. Typical gambling syndrome. He knew he was going to be fired, but he managed to hang in for a long time. When the end was near and he saw all that potential cash, he couldn’t allow anything, or anyone, to get in his way. Mr. Didrickson threw friendship to the wind and turned into a Benedict Arnold. He called Philip and the rest is history. He was a ready, willing and able participant in assisting Philip in luring Miss Monahan here, back into the trap.”

It was all too much for me to take in and digest. All the pain and suffering that had been caused for the almighty buck. I got up from my chair and wandered over to the window where I stood facing Jay and Leech.

“I haven’t read the papers or watched the news today,” I said to Leech. “How soon will the whole story make the news?”

The thought of the company going down the tubes and all of the hardworking employees who had sweated blood for so many years losing their jobs was too much to fathom.

“Enough of the story is out now. I understand that trading has been halted in the shares and the Securities Commission will be involved shortly. One of the directors of the company was interviewed this morning on the news and he was adamant that they would push on.”

I lit a cigarette and thought about the irony of it all. The remaining directors of the company would push on. Wonderful. A couple of the crooks had been caught and were locked up for the time being, but the rest of the morons were still on the loose with the public shareholders’ money. The blind were now leading the blind.

I took a drag from my cigarette and blew the smoke out the open window. The smoke wafted through the screen and dispersed quickly in the fresh air and I thought for a moment about finding something symbolic about the smoke disappearing so quickly.

Fuck it. I wasn’t into symbolism, just reality.