Dead File (5 page)
And reminding her not to go into a stranger’s house alone.
P
oole . . .in my office!” Pete Capra bellowed across the news room with a jerk of his head toward his office door. Maxi was just walking in from the Carter Rose news conference.
“So what’d he say?” Capra blurted before she’d cleared his door.
“Good morning to you, too,” Maxi said with mock sweetness.
“Yeah, yeah. So—
what?
”
“You haven’t seen the tape?”
“Not yet. I’m up to my ass in crap.”
Charming, she thought, but that was Pete. “He said he thinks Gillian was murdered. And that somebody broke into his home yesterday and tried to attack him. He said he’s convinced it was whoever killed his wife.”
“So who was it? A man? Woman?”
“A man, I guess, but he refused to elaborate. Wouldn’t take any questions. I talked to him after the press conference, off the record, and he still wouldn’t give details.”
“Well, guess what—the whole thing’s turned into a non-story, anyway. The LAPD just issued a statement that the coroner’s office found no evidence of foul play. The ME’s still doing tests, but it’s looking like Gillian Rose just keeled with a heart attack or something.”
“What about Carter Rose? He says an intruder broke in, someone he thought was a murderous intruder.”
“Could have been somebody trying to rob his house, figuring the man was still out of town, or at work in the middle of the day, and Rose surprised him. ’Course a mansion like that’s bound to have help. Maybe it was some pissed-off nutcase employee who was jerked around too much—I hear that working for the Roses was no day at the beach.”
“We’re going to stay on it, aren’t we?”
“Sure, if anything new breaks. But till then the story’s relegated to the business news. Did you see what’s going on with Rose International stock?”
“I heard, early this morning. It’s still dropping?”
“Like deadweight.”
“Isn’t that unusual? I mean, Carter Rose is still at the helm, and the business seems solid. I see Rose vitamins, supplements, nutrition bars, and what-all in every drugstore and health-food store on the planet. And they sell it in catalogs and on the Internet.”
“Who the hell knows with Wall Street? Anyway, go ahead and cut what you shot this morning for the Noon and for the early block, then you’re off the story. I want you to start working on a series for sweeps. Wendy has my notes.”
“You got it,” Maxi said, and she left his office to cross to her own. A non-story? Maybe so, but she wasn’t convinced. She’d decided not to mention to Capra that she was having dinner with Carter Rose tonight. At his house. Her boss would probably go ballistic, and that was never pretty.
In a small nook off the main dining room of the massive Rose villa in Beverly Hills, Maxi sat opposite her host over fillet of broiled red snapper and fresh baby vegetables, excellently prepared by Angie and elegantly served by two unobtrusive waiters. Pensively sipping a dry Balatoni Chardonnay, Maxi was appraising the man. She couldn’t help being somewhat intrigued by the magnetic Carter Rose.
He told her he was devastated by his wife’s murder. That he needed to find her killer. His seeming candor, his projected earnestness, his pained expression, his surprising shyness with her, his still boyish good looks coupled with a playful wit and keen mind, made for a deadly attractive package. She remembered, then, rumors of womanizing that had floated around the man from time to time, always deflected in the media with dignity and humor by his attractive and intelligent wife.
Startling her out of her musing, his metallic blue-gray eyes piercing hers, Rose said, “Maxi, I want you to help me find my wife’s killer.”
“The police are saying there was no foul play,” Maxi said.
“The police are wrong.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I could have been killed too. Somebody tried to get to me. I’m sure whoever it was got Gillian.”
“Do you have enemies?”
“Everybody has enemies.”
“I mean enemies that you know of.”
“A few.”
“Do the police know about them?”
“Of course. They questioned me for hours.”
“Well, if Gillian’s death does turn up suspicious, they’ll be all over it,” Maxi said, something she was sure he already knew. The case would be top priority. A veritable
crowd
in law enforcement had lost top jobs over the O. J. Simpson debacle. They were beyond cautious now. The Police Commission, the chief, the DA, the homicide detectives, and on down the line—all of them would need this one investigated meticulously, solved, tried, and won.
“The police are bunglers,” Rose responded soberly to her comment. “They waste time, they contaminate evidence, they go down false roads, and meantime the trail gets cold. It’s been two days now, and yesterday somebody tried to kill
me,
” he said again.
Maxi continued to study him. His frustration seemed palpable. Was it feigned? If so, she decided, the man was good.
“If you want me to help,” she said, “you have to tell me exactly what happened here yesterday.”
“I can’t. At least not yet.”
“Then how can I help?”
“Tell me what you find out. And I’ll tell you what I find out. That simple.”
“And what do you propose to do with the information?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I really don’t know. I just have to do
something.
”
“Some kind of vigilante justice?” Maxi asked, tilting her head and looking at him askance. “Now that you’re carrying a loaded gun?”
“Oh, no, no, no … that’s for show. To scare the killer off
me.
I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been in a daze since it happened—first Gillian, then the break-in at my home. I don’t even know how to
use
a gun—”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t have one—I just have a
permit
for one.” He laughed at that. He was charming in his confusion. Not at all the stony, reclusive business mogul she’d heard about over the years.
“Do we have a deal?” he asked.
“Deal,” she said, and lifted her glass to his. She had nothing to lose, she figured, and definitely something to gain. Even if nothing else came of this pact, she’d have access—to him, to his company, to friends of his and his wife’s.
Her boss had declared the death of Gillian Rose a non-story, for now. If down the road it reared its head as a major murder case, she’d be on the inside. This, she concluded, was a propitious meeting for her. And besides, the fish was delicious.
T
ell me what’s going on with Rose International stock, Doug.”
“It’s in semi-modified free fall. Nothing like Enron, but it’s in definite downward mode.”
Maxi was sitting with Doug Kriegel, Channel Six’s business editor. His office was clean, clear, and minimal, furnished only with two high-backed visitors’ chairs along with his own leather chair and broad desk, on which rested three computers, all awake and streaming information, plus a printer, a scanner, a fax machine, three phones, and a photo of his wife and two boys.
“Because of Gillian Rose’s death, do you think?” she asked him.
“No. Rose’s downward spiral started about, oh … four months ago. Here, let’s check.”
Kriegel drew his chair up to one of his computer terminals and clicked through several screens until he found what he was looking for.
“Okay. Rose International—its history over the last year: a steady decline, but that was the entire economy. Then, in the first quarter of this year, Rose introduced a new line of what they called gym-bag nutrition products and saw a spurt in its stock that carried through most of the third quarter. In September the stock price leveled off, then started going down. Slowly, but definitely down. Then, with Gillian Rose’s death on Monday, the last four days have seen a precipitous drop. Umm … twenty-two points. Down to sixty-five today.”
“What do you think it means?” Maxi asked.
“No way to know. It could be just a correction. Profit-taking by investors after the stock’s rise due to the infusion of new product.”
“Or?”
“Or something’s going on. Some inside thing. Whatever it could be, I have no information.”
“If you had to guess?”
“There’s no guessing, Maxi. It could have been triggered by any number of things. A sell-off by the principal shareholders, the Roses. Some outside activity by a takeover prospect, known or not known.”
Kriegel was scanning computer files. “Nothing jumps out. Their expansion has been steady, but not inexpedient. Their profit projections are on track. So if something’s going on inside Rose International, Wall Street is sniffing it, is reacting to it, but hasn’t made it public. What did Carter Rose say about it at his news conference yesterday? I’m sure the newsies were all over him about his stock.”
“He refused to comment.”
“So that’s why I didn’t see anything about the stock dip in your story.”
“Can we find out what’s causing it?”
“By
we
do you mean
me?
” Kriegel asked with a grin. “You know I’d do anything for you, Max, but that would take legwork that I just don’t have the time for and still get my regular business reports done for every show.”
Maxi counted Kriegel as a friend. He was straightforward, right up front; you always knew exactly where you stood with him. “But Rose International is actually one of the stocks I’ve been tracking,” he told her now, “partly because of Mrs. Rose’s death, but mostly because of the big plunge since it happened. Tell you what—I’ll print up any pertinent info on RI for you that surfaces on the business wires.”
“That would be great, Doug,” she said, giving him an air kiss as she got up to leave his office. “Just drop it in my mailbox.”
M
axi’s phone was ringing when she walked back into her office. She snatched it up, answered, “News—Maxi Poole.”
“Ms. Poole? Kendyl Scott. Please hold for Carter Rose,” said an efficient-sounding, chilly female voice.
“Okay,” Maxi said. Then she was left on hold, listening to the taped voice of a woman extolling the health and beauty benefits of Rose International products. She tucked the phone between her ear and her shoulder and booted up her computer to check the wires. Half listening, she actually found herself mustering up a little interest in Rose’s Hawaiian Kiwi-Banana facial mask as Carter Rose came on the line.
“Maxi, can you come down here?”
“Down where?”
“To my office. On Wilshire.”
“No. I’m working. Why?”
“I have something to tell you.”
“Well … tell me.”
“Not on the phone.”
Maxi mentally rolled her eyes. “Mr. Rose, I can’t get out of here until after the Six O’clock News, and then I’m doing a shoot for the Eleven.”
“Then can you stop by the house on the way to your shoot? Angie’s making a shrimp salad. You could come by for a half hour, have a bite, and we’ll talk.”
Maxi hesitated. What if he really did have something to tell her? And maybe she could nudge some information out of him about why his company’s stock was doing a nosedive. Not to mention that Angie was a terrific cook.
Bad idea. Too cozy, twice in a week. “I can’t stay for dinner,” she said, “but I could drop by after I do the story, on my way back to the station. Would that work for you?”
Maxi often did reports for the Eleven, usually live from the location, but tonight’s piece would be on tape, which she would have to bring back and edit in-house. Then she’d do a live intro on the set. She still couldn’t believe where Pete Capra had assigned her: to the opening of a club called Adonis in West Holly-wood. It was a Chippendales wanna-be where nearly naked men danced and women stuffed money into their G-strings. Oh,
please.
“Not me, boss,” she’d pleaded. “Anybody but me. I won’t be able to
not
put the whole scene down. No matter what I say on tape, the subtext, which our viewers won’t miss, will be ‘This is
way
too stupid.’ ”
“Wear something sexy,” was his only response, then he was out of her office.
She made a mental note to have a private, woman-to-man chat with Pete Capra about his blatant sexism, and soon. She needed to tell him that one of these days he was going to get his ass sued for sexual harassment. It was amazing that it hadn’t happened already. Given that he was in charge of a major market news operation, the employees of which were at least half women, was it possible, she wondered, that in today’s highly charged politically correct climate, he was not
aware
of that?
The thing was, most of the staff got a kick out of Capra, recognized his status as a bona fide character on the local news scene. They also knew that he was arguably the best and most serious journalist in the city. Still, Maxi knew, it would take just one employee, disgruntled, or with an agenda, or one who was actually sincerely offended, to file a lawsuit. She intended to enlist Wendy’s help to try to make him see that.
As she’d predicted, the Adonis club was tacky, tawdry, pathetic, and loud. She wore the same tailored black wool pantsuit with a white blouse she’d had on all day at work, the polar opposite of sexy. Her camerawoman tonight, Monica Drew, shot B-roll of the male dancers and the female revelers, pictures to lay over the sound, and Maxi interviewed the owners, a pair who could have come right out of central casting for this role, with the slicked-back hair, the tanning-bed glows, the gold chains and pinky rings, the drinks in their hands, the cocky swaggers.
She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. While Monica headed back to the station to log in the tape, Maxi pointed her Corvette toward Carolwood Drive in Beverly Hills. She’d have a quick chat with Carter Rose, find out what was on his mind, then race back to Burbank to write her piece, edit it, intro it live on the Eleven O’clock News, and go home. And take a shower, she mentally added, blocking out mind-pictures of wriggling naked men slicked down with bronze-tinted oil, and women in poly-ester panting over them, while the greasy-looking owners pranced around looking like refugees from the seventies.
