The door flew open again and Helen stuck her head in. Lindsay laughed shortly. “A closed door has a lot of meaning around here.”
Preoccupied, Helen nodded to me in greeting. “Sorry, but Wendy’s having a meltdown and we could really use your magic touch, Lindsay.”
Lindsay nodded, not pointing out to Helen that she was having her own moment of despair, just smiling bravely. I assured Lindsay I’d be fine, maybe even visit the ladies’ room while she and Helen tended to Wendy.
I trailed after them down the hall, getting close enough to the conference room door to see that Francesca was already in there with Wendy, handing her a mug of something steamy and talking to her in a low, soothing tone. I felt somewhat envious, thinking of how lovely it would be to work with other women who were so supportive, so willing to put their own work aside to help a colleague through a rough personal moment. That qualified as blood in the water in my office and the boss loved a good feeding frenzy. Kept her teeth sharp.
Almost as sharp as the teeth Tessa bared in an insincere smile as she walked up beside me. “I didn’t know you were here. Is there a problem?” Tessa followed my line of sight to the conference room door and sighed unhappily, but made no move to join the gathering.
“Lindsay said I could drop by if I had any more questions, so I did.”
Tessa folded her arms across her chest and I could see both wrists were still bracelet-free. “We should keep things slightly more formal than that. Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“Are we talking about notifying lawyers or just security?”
Tessa’s grip on her own arms tightened, the silk of her
blouse crimping under the pressure. “I’m just looking to ensure a smooth and consistent flow of information. We’re all very anxious to have this article present Gwen to best advantage. That may sound selfish, but it’s just practical. We’re in the midst of a crucial transition.”
Tessa was almost trembling with the effort to keep her emotions contained and I found that curiously emboldening. “Do you think Gwen minds that you slept with Garth?”
Tessa’s angry claw shot from her arm to mine before I could step out of range. “Let’s talk in my office.”
She propelled me down the hallway and into an office that was the same size and layout as Lindsay’s. Tessa’s accents were different—a dramatic dried flower arrangement and framed vacation snapshots on the credenza—but otherwise the offices were impressively democratic. Not until the door had latched behind us did she let go of my arm. “We believe in discretion around here,” she said crisply.
So my sin was not the question but where I’d asked it? “Excuse me.”
“Who told you?”
Wrapping myself in my journalistic mantle, I decided to bluff her. “I’d rather not reveal my sources at this point,” especially because they were named Intuition and Hunch.
“I’d appreciate the opportunity to know the agenda of the person who singled me out so you know the kind of biased information you’re getting from that source.”
What fascinated me most at this point was that she wasn’t even trying to deny it. What also fascinated me was the phrase, “Singled out?”
“Or have you already talked to the rest of them and I haven’t heard about it yet? Is that what Wendy’s crying about?”
Why my accusing Tessa of having slept with Garth would make Wendy cry was beyond me. I needed to start again. “Perhaps you didn’t understand my question.”
“I understood it quite well and my off-the-record answer is: I don’t think she could be bothered to give a flying damn. But now that I’ve been gracious enough to answer your question, perhaps you could answer mine. Who singled me out?”
Dawn comes more slowly some mornings than others. “Are you saying someone else was also sleeping with Garth?”
Tessa glared at me with frustration, like a teacher losing patience with a truculent child. “I’m saying we all were.”
MY UNCLE MIKE SAYS HE misses the Cold War because at least in those days, you knew which direction the bombs were coming from. It’s the ones that catch you watching the other horizon, sneak up behind you, that do the real damage. And you don’t have to be a retired CIA agent to appreciate that.
Even as the mushroom cloud began to dissipate, I was still having trouble grasping what Tessa was telling me. After a fumbling moment, I repeated back slowly, “You all did?”
“Not at the same time, obviously,” she said petulantly.
That took care of one batch of images I was trying to keep out of my mind. “Still,” I said, “I’m just trying to be clear. All of the creative directors were having affairs with Garth?”
“Everyone but Lindsay. Garth would never have slept with a married woman,” she said with a tone that implied such a distinction made him a man of irreproachable moral character and she would proudly defend his memory on that point.
“But the rest of you?” I said with a tone that made it clear I didn’t find much defensible here.
“You can’t understand.”
“Probably not, but I’d really like to give it a shot.”
Tessa’s hands moved to her hips, as though she were holding herself back. Or together. “We didn’t know at first and then when we did find out, no one wanted to stop because we were all afraid someone else wouldn’t quit and that wasn’t fair.”
On one level, I was impressed by her ability to look me in the eye and say these things with the same crisp professionalism she no doubt employed to address a client’s concerns in a meeting. But at the same time, I couldn’t believe she was as dispassionate about the situation as she was trying to sound. And I couldn’t believe what this did to my suspect pool. Just when I thought I was swimming the final lap, about to touch the side and score a medal, I was in the deep, deep end with only Tessa’s missing bracelet as either a life preserver or an anchor.
“Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked.
“Actually, yes. Yes, I do,” Tessa replied, getting more flustered as I got more confused. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” She marched over and opened her office door, waiting impatiently for me to exit.
I sat down anyway, which flustered her even more. She flapped the door a time or two in case I wasn’t leaving just because I hadn’t noticed it was open. “Tessa, I don’t think you want to end this conversation when I still have so many what I hope are misunderstandings about the situation.”
“I don’t care what you think. Get out.”
“Don’t you care what my readers think?”
“My lawyer will be at your office by the time you get back there.”
“I’m not saying I’ll put it in the article—I am trying to be positive about Gwen, after all, and it doesn’t paint a very pretty picture of her to discuss her ex-husband’s bizarre take on ‘employee contributions.’”
Tessa slammed the door, but it had one of those catches on the hinge that slowed its arc at the last moment and prevented it from making a very satisfactory sound. While I wasn’t comfortable with the fury in her eyes, at least I was still in her office. And there were no weapons in sight. “I.
Didn’t. Know.” Her tapered fingers clutched her sleeves again and I was sure this time, the silk was going to rip.
In return for her not bouncing me, I tried to ease up. “You thought you were the only one?” I asked gingerly.
“I was in love with him,” she said with a strength and simplicity that impressed me. “When I found out about … the whole situation, I knew most of them were doing it for political reasons. To get in good with him, get ahead, whatever. But that was never part of it for me. I loved him.”
“Did you think he was leaving Gwen for you?”
After the firmness of her declaration, the bitterness of her laugh caught me off guard. “I’m so much smarter than this, but I wished, I hoped. Even while I knew better.” She surprised me again by sitting on the couch and looking me in the eye. “And I’m sure that disappoints you because it’s not nearly as good for your story—spurned lover now forced to work for widow, or whatever spin you were going to put on it.”
Actually, it was the homicide spin I was going for, but admitting that would get me tossed out of her office for sure. I had to ease her into that corner without her suspecting. I held her gaze and asked, “How did you find out about everyone else?”
“The damn bracelets.”
“He gave them to everyone.”
“Exactly.”
She was still a step ahead of me and seemed quite content to wait there until I caught up. “And though everyone getting the same gift isn’t that unusual in a corporate setting, you found it strange?”
“I didn’t get anything else,” she said, as though I’d just stubbed my toe on the Rosetta stone and still not seen it.
“Because he didn’t single you out for special treatment, you decided everyone was getting the same treatment?”
“You have to admit, it was pretty suspicious.”
I’d been hoping for something more concrete. If this was some crazy theory of hers, all based on Garth being a bad gift giver, I was wasting my time. “But the theory breaks down because Lindsay got a bracelet, too.”
“Which is why Wendy wigged out.”
Absurdly, all I could picture was one of those old horror movies where they’re trying to do a telepathy experiment so the heroine who’s hearing voices can prove she’s not losing her mind, but the lab assistant keeps holding up a test card and the heroine keeps misidentifying it. I was trying so hard to get Tessa to talk about Garth’s murder—and eventually admit to it—but each time, she turned in a new and unexpected direction. I was staring at a picture of a ball and she kept saying “key.” I tried again. “How does Wendy fit into this?”
“She was the one who made us all realize what was going on. When Garth didn’t give me anything extra, I was sad but that was it. I kept it to myself. When she didn’t get anything extra, she was furious.”
“That seems to be her default mode.”
“You don’t get Wendy. She’s brilliant. A pain in the ass, but brilliant. And yes, she has a temper, but that’s part of her brilliance—her passions are so large and persuasive.”
Tessa was slipping into pitch mode, like Wendy was a product she was promoting. “Statement withdrawn,” I said, to get her back on track. “So what happened?”
“After we got our gifts, Wendy was throwing her magnificent tantrum in her office and Francesca and I went in there to find out what was wrong. Wendy said she was sleeping with Garth and the least he could do was give her some little thing on the side to acknowledge that.”
I refrained from pointing out that she had already been receiving something on the side, whatever the size, and instead said, “And that’s when you realized you weren’t the only one.”
She nodded. “And when Francesca started sobbing, I realized it was worse than I’d thought.”
“What happened?”
“Wendy went from office to office and got everyone to confess. Not a fun day. Not even for Lindsay, who I think was very embarrassed about the whole thing.”
“Weren’t the rest of you?”
“There were a variety of reactions. More anger than embarrassment, I think.”
“What did you decide to do?”
“Well, first we were so upset some of us wanted—” The words went through her brain just a moment before they went out her mouth, so she had time to gasp them back in. “I don’t mean that. No one meant it. No one did it. We didn’t do it.”
“As a group. But one of you did it individually.”
“No. Never. No one wanted to even leave him, much less hurt him. I thought about telling him it was over, but Wendy started telling us all that we had to break up with him, then Helen figured out that Wendy wasn’t going to and said she wasn’t going to give Wendy that kind of advantage and so we made an agreement.”
“To kill him.”
“Stop it! No! To pretend that nothing had happened.”
I tried to picture them vying for his affection—if there was any real affection involved—each now aware of the others and trying to knock them out of competition. But then, somebody hit the breaking point.
“Did anyone’s situation improve?” I asked, trying not to sound judgmental.
Tessa shook her head, but she knew the connection I was making. Someone had hoped she could change his mind, become his favorite if not his exclusive. And when that failed, she snapped. So whose breaking point had been reached? “That’s when I put my bracelet away. I told the others it was broken, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. But I never told Garth because—”
“He was murdered.”
“Stop it. You’re trying to provoke me, but I have nothing to confess, other than being really naïve and stupid and loving someone I shouldn’t have.”
She was perceptive, I gave her credit for that. And she had an answer for everything. But did that make her innocent or just well-prepared?
While I contemplated that, Tessa shifted her attention to a
different aspect of our exchange. “You can’t put this in your article. It’ll look so horrible out of context.”
“It is context. It’s the reason one of you killed him.”
The panic in her eyes was already dying down, replaced by cold calculation. “But think of how Gwen would look if you included this in your article.”
“Because she’s your victim or because she’s his victim?”
“You’d portray her as a woman oblivious to huge problems in the two areas your readers care about most—work and love. There’ll be a lack of identification for your readership which can only negatively impact your article, your magazine, this agency, and our joint interest in the launch of Success perfume.”
I considered applauding, then worried it might encourage her. “Tessa, you’re not pitching me an advertising campaign.”
“Every mention in the media is advertising,” she replied, that cold gleam in her eye working its way to the demonic end of the spectrum. “I have a brand to protect and I’ll do anything to protect it.”
“Even kill?”
“I mean suing you or destroying your magazine. You don’t care who killed him, you’re just using his death as emotional leverage to get us to talk about Gwen in some sensational way so you can make that miserable bitch interesting.”
“May I quote you on that?” I said, rising and showing myself to the door to save her the trouble. “Or would you prefer that I say, ‘Unnamed sources at the agency say she’s a miserable bitch,’ something along those lines?”
“I’m going to tell our clients to stop advertising in your magazine.”
“I’m going to tell my readers to stop patronizing your clients.”
She glared at me, I glared back, and I could swear I heard Ennio Morricone playing on the Muzak in the hallway. Instead of reaching for a pistol, I put my hand on the doorknob. No tumbleweeds blew by and Tessa didn’t backpedal, so I opened the door and left.
I needed to walk. Fresh air and time and the reassuring
clamor of Manhattan traffic to clear my head. This was the first time I’d investigated a crime where my respect for the victim was destroyed and I wasn’t sure how to absorb that. I felt ill. I wasn’t sure what bothered me more: what Garth had done or that I’d actually found myself thinking,
I see why he’s dead.
Not that the women didn’t bear responsibility, too. They’d been knowing, consenting participants, even more so after the bracelet revelation, and whatever their reasons—love, advancement, exercise—they’d kept it going. Until one of them shut down the party. The question had to be why. If finding out you’re sleeping with a serial dog isn’t enough to stop you, it’s not enough—by itself—to make you pull out a gun. What else had been going on?
I didn’t make a conscious decision where to walk. I did think about calling Tricia or Cassady at one point, but I was still trying to sort it all out and thought it would be better to talk to them later. We were supposed to be going shopping for the gala after work and I hoped I’d have a newly constructed theory by then. But with all of that going through my head, I was going on autopilot and rather than winding up back at my office, I found myself standing in front of Kyle’s precinct.
By the time he was coming down the front steps, I still wasn’t sure why I was there. But as he walked up to me and I grabbed him by the lapels and kissed him, hard, not caring who might see us, I knew I was there just for that. To reassure myself about decent men and good relationships and absent agendas.
Kyle extricated himself from my grasp and searched my face. “What’s wrong?”
“I just needed to see you.”
“What happened?”
“Something had to happen?”
“Yes.”
There was no point in trying to pretend he wasn’t on to me. “I’ve been operating under some false assumptions.”
“That sucks,” he said sympathetically.
“I thought I knew what kind of guy Garth Henderson was.”
“Found out something you don’t like?”