Too Rich and Too Dead (31 page)

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

Join the club
, Mallory thought morosely.

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

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

“Does that mean Carly stole it from you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What about Sylvie?” she demanded.

Harriet looked startled. “What
about
Sylvie?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The more Harriet spoke, the more confused Mallory became.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mallory was wishing she could climb into the file drawer and hide when he glanced in her direction. “You, too.” With a smirk, he added, “That'll teach you not to go around digging up old friends from your past.”

“I understand that you feel you have no choice but to kill us, Brett,” Harriet said matter-of-factly. “But surely you're not going to do it here.”

“Why not?” Brett demanded gruffly.

“Because you'd get blood and all kinds of other stuff all over the company's financial records, which you'll need once you're the owner,” she explained. Glancing at Mallory slyly, she added, “you're much too smart for that.”

“Ri-i-ight,” he agreed uncertainly.

Mallory stared back at Harriet, trying to telepathically communicate,
You have a gun! Use it!

But Harriet wasn't showing any signs of fighting back. Mallory wasn't sure what she was up to, but she suspected that someone as clever as Harriet had to have something up her sleeve. And whatever it was, it was probably related to the gun that, at least for the moment, was stashed away in her pocket.

So when Harriet suggested, “The hot tub, Brett. that's a much better place,” Mallory chimed in, “But Harriet, that way Brett can clean off all his fingerprints!”

“Quiet!” he cried. But she could practically hear the wheels turning in his head. “Okay, you two. Into the Hydro-Salon.”

“that's what we call the hot tub,” Harriet noted.

“I told you to be quiet!” Brett repeated. To emphasize his point, he jabbed his gun into Harriet's ribs. “Now start walking!”

Hanging her head meekly, Harriet stepped into the hallway. Mallory shuffled after her, aware that Brett was following close behind. She suspected he
was still gripping his gun, but at least he resisted the urge to poke her with it.

Harriet led the way along the hallway, making the turn that led the threesome to the back wall of the spa building. For a fleeting moment, Mallory hoped the fact that it was made entirely of glass would make them visible enough that someone,
anyone
, would notice what was going on and call the police. But then she remembered that Tavaci Springs was located in the middle of nowhere.

Her stomach lurched when she spotted the sunken hot tub surrounded on three sides by mountain views. The first time she'd seen it, she thought this unbelievably scenic setting was the height of luxury. Now, she nearly sobbed over the likelihood that here in this breathtaking spot she was about to meet a fate that was horribly similar to that of her high school acquaintance.

“Stand over there, right in front of the hot tub,” Brett barked, gesturing with his gun.

Dutifully Mallory headed in that direction, taking baby steps. Harriet scuffed along behind her.

“Brett,” Mallory asked, trying to buy herself some time as she turned to face him, “I can't help asking you why you killed Carly. Even if you didn't care about her, she was responsible for the fabulous lifestyle you've been enjoying.”

“The only reason you're saying that is because you have no idea how uncertain our financial future was,” he grumbled. “The woman had such a huge ego that it completely got in the way of whatever
minuscule amount of business sense she happened to possess.”

“What do you mean?” Mallory asked. “I didn't really know her as an adult, of course, but from what I could see she'd done really well.”

“Hmph! Except that she was too stupid to recognize a good thing when she saw it. A reliable thing—one that would have set us up for the rest of our lives.”

“What was that?” Quickly Mallory added, “You might as well tell me. You have nothing to lose at this point.”

“HoliHealth, that's what!” he replied angrily. “They were dying to buy Rejuva-Juice—but that idiot had no intention of selling, even though it would have made us multimillionaires.” With a contemptuous snort, he added, “She saw the stupid company she created as her baby and she intended to hold onto it. In fact, we had a big fight about exactly that, right before I decided I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands.”

“You mean that night Carly gave her talk at the Wheeler Opera House?” Mallory asked without thinking.

“Yeah, that's right.” A look of surprise crossed Brett's face. “How did you know?”