The Jezebel Remedy (20 page)

“How long have you been here, in Stuart?”

“Fourteen years now,” he answered. “Can I get you some coffee or a soft drink?”

“No. Thanks, though.”

“Let me know if you change your mind.”

“I will.” Lisa looked at him and was quiet. The silence didn't seem to bother him or make him uneasy. He waited for her, didn't force the conversation or clutter matters with chitchat or press her with some trite reassurance. “Well, I…” Her mouth was grainy and sandpaper dry. Her tongue was mutinous. She caught herself twisting her rings, tapping her foot. “I have a question, I suppose.” She sighed. “I was just wondering if you—your church I mean—might be able to let my clients, especially the juveniles, work off their community-service hours here. It's getting harder and harder to find places that will help.”

“Oh, well, certainly. Depending on the charge and the person, we'd be very open to it.”

“I'd do my best to screen them,” Lisa said.

“Sure. Just let me know. We have plenty of work we need done.”

“Thanks,” Lisa said, her mouth still dry. She'd pop a Tic Tac as soon as she got to the car.

“And that's what you wanted to ask me?” Hunsicker slanted his head slightly.

“Yes. That's it. I'm grateful.” She could hear her own breathing. Looking down, she noticed the bottom of the desk was nicked and scratched. “I'll be in touch. I appreciate your speaking with me.”

When she returned to the office after a lunch in Stuart, Joe made a production of knocking on her closed door, five rhythmic beats followed by the “two-bits” coda, and instead of pissing her off, it made her grin, and he smiled as soon as he saw her reaction and said, “See, I knew you secretly, deep down, liked it. Next, you'll finally admit
Black Swan
was a ninety-minute gulag. An utter failure as a date movie, despite the girl-on-girl hook for husbands on a forced march.”

“I like you. The knock remains obnoxious. The movie won awards. So what's up, Joe Stone?”

“Two things. I took your intuition seriously and called my law school buddy, Paul Yarbrough, in Florida. He was kind enough to send a paralegal to check out the Ross Sanctuary. It's real and legitimate. Big-ass place, saves hundreds of animals every year. Yarbrough's guy
asked if they'd gotten the donation from Neal. They did. He sent them a check.”

“Clean so far,” she said.

“So far.” Joe put his hands in his pants pockets. She noticed his belt buckle wasn't centered, was stuck behind the first loop. “But guess what? They never received a single animal from Virginia in our time frame. Nothing from Neal, nothing under Lettie's name, zilch.”

“I knew that whole freaking production was fishy. It didn't make any sense why it would be, but I damn well knew it. Still, why would anybody go to the effort to collect all of Lettie's curs and strays? What possible gain or advantage could there be?”

Joe answered quickly. “It had to happen to make the deal go down. I wasn't going to sign the estate over to Neal unless he made arrangements for the animals.”

“I guess,” she said. “But why not just go ahead and take them there? It's not the donation or the cost—Neal paid for that.”

“Beats the hell out of me.” He took his hands from his pockets. “Here's the more interesting tidbit. When I went to their website to find the address and so forth, I checked on our friend Don Beverly, and—how should I put it?—he's gone missing.”

“What?”

“The same bio, but a different picture now. A completely different man. Sort of similar, but clearly different.”

“Huh?”

“See for yourself,” he said.

She put on her reading glasses and typed in the Web address. “Yeah, you're right. This definitely isn't the guy we met.” She removed the glasses and set them on a stack of files. “Do you think we're at the point where we need to alert the cops?”

“We don't have much of value—legal value—to tell them. If we don't hear from Benecorp, I'll try to prod them some more. Item number two: On the Dr. Downs front, I sent him a coded message on Token Rock. We'll see if anything comes of it. Short term, I can't think of any other options.”

“Short term,” she said, “I have an idea.”

“Okay.”

She stood and walked past him and locked the door to her office, and he watched her pass by him and tracked her as she returned to where he was standing instead of her desk chair, his expression quizzical the whole time.

“You want to sit or stand?” she asked, the words slow and languid. She cocked a hip so that her skirt tightened around her thigh, more than enough to communicate the remainder of the question to her husband.

“No shit? Seriously?”

She took hold of his belt buckle and tugged the leather free from the metal pin. She put her lips against his neck, pulled his shirt loose, separated the clasp at the top of his pants.

He stepped sideways and dipped into a chair, settling mostly against its rounded edge. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“Consider it a preanniversary gift.”

“Thanks,” he said. “You think you could take your top off while you're doing it? Really ring the bell?”

Joe was not at the law office on the final day of spring turkey season. Instead, he was in the reborn woods trying to coax gobblers toward his position behind the lip of a small swale so that he could blast them with a shotgun. He'd left the house before sunrise, dressed in camouflage, carrying a thermos of black coffee and a bacon biscuit wrapped in wax paper, the paper's folds and creases etched white. For months he'd been practicing his turkey calls, at home, at work, in the car, using a box-scrape to imitate the bird's sounds. Lisa would hear him from the kitchen while she was cooking a meal. At the office, he'd show off yelps, cutts, purrs and kee-kees for his clients who also hunted. He reminded her that any fool could kill a deer—the newspaper ran pictures of twelve-year-old girls posing with high-powered rifles and stiff, dumb-ass bucks—but your turkeys are smart and wily as hell.

Every year, he'd spend most May mornings in the woods and hollows, tricking the birds with his bogus talk while the sun sopped up the early mists and the sky came into focus. He'd wait until almost his last legal chance, barely under the wire, before he'd finally return to the farm with a huge dead turkey. He'd fetch Lisa out to the tailgate of his Jeep and comment on the tom's beard and impressive fan and oddly iridescent feathers, then clean and skin it and cook it in a special fryer he'd bought from Cabela's, and they'd eat it for dinner that very evening, along with sliced tomatoes and cowboy beans.

When Anton Pichler phoned, he first asked for Mr. Stone but informed Betty that Mrs. Stone would do just fine if he was unavailable. Lisa was with a client, a scruffy layabout from Figsboro who was explaining that the pot and cocaine the cops had found in his pocket
weren't his, you see, because he'd by mistake put on his cousin's jeans before moseying over to the Eagles Club for darts and a pizza. She was just letting him fib, taking in his wide, dramatic eyes and the occasional “I swear” and, somewhere near the middle of his spiel, the obligatory “I know this sounds hard to believe, but…” After Betty buzzed to tell her who was on the phone, she stood and announced that she had to leave for a moment. “While I'm gone, please reconsider your story,” she said forcefully. “Judge Gendron has heard this fiction before—several times, in fact. He'll be insulted you think he's so stupid, and he'll jack your punishment because of it. Try to compose a more creative lie, or give some thought to telling me the truth. Okay?”

She walked down the hall to Joe's office and took the call there, the door closed.

“I appreciate you interrupting your meeting,” Pichler said. “Thank you.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“I imagine you already know why I'm contacting you and your husband.” Pichler spoke in a contrived, mechanical voice, very restrained. He sounded like HAL the computer from
2001: A Space Odyssey
, a few of the accents vaguely British, and Lisa surmised he was the kind of man who never lost his temper in public, never ranted and screamed, but bullied and intimidated his underlings by speaking more and more softly, all menacing whispers and bullshit Zen.

“Lettie VanSandt,” she replied.

“Yes,” Pichler answered. “Miss VanSandt.” He briefly hesitated but didn't give Lisa a chance to talk. “I don't intend to waste your time, so let me see if I can take us to the bottom line. I work for Benecorp. You're evidently already aware of this. Additionally, you now know we were—and are—interested in a compound connected with Miss VanSandt.”

“All true,” Lisa agreed. She was standing. Brownie's pad was empty. She'd left him at the farm.

“I also assume you've been in touch with Dr. Steven Downs. I regret that.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why would you assume we've spoken to Dr. Steven Downs?”

“Because it's how he operates. He's contacted numerous individuals and agencies about Miss VanSandt, and they've alerted us. He's filed reports with the Virginia State Police and the police here in Dade County.”

“And they in turn called you?”

“Mrs. Stone, Dr. Downs is mentally ill. Truly. So you'll understand, I'm having a series of documents overnighted to you and your husband. Reciting his entire history would take too long, but here are the highlights: He has been hospitalized for psychological problems on three occasions in the last seven years. By court order, he is barred from entering our property or having any contact with us. In the past, he has accused this company, me and his co-workers of criminal behavior. Because of Dr. Downs, we have been needlessly investigated on several occasions for everything from attempting to poison him to stealing his nonexistent inventions. We have been subjected to inquiry from local law enforcement, the FBI and the EEOC. I'm sending you the results of those investigations along with telephone numbers for the state and federal agents involved. Both the reports and the investigators will tell you that he is unstable, untruthful and unreliable. He is paranoid and, well, quite crazy.”

“You have a valid court order barring him—”

“From any and all contact with us or our employees,” Pichler finished. “Absolutely. Entered three months ago by the court here in Miami. It'll all be in your hands by tomorrow, and I hope it resolves any doubts you might have. If you spent any amount of time with Downs, you should have a sense of how fragile he is. If you have questions, please contact our local sheriff or Agent Bev Larson with the FBI. I'll include their numbers.”

“Fair enough. But I suppose he's a bit peripheral to the reason for your call.”

“True,” Pichler said, “but I worry his bizarre accusations might complicate our business. Do you mind telling me what he is saying about us? I am correct that you've heard from him?”

“My husband spoke with him, so I only know the generalities. I understand you and Benecorp are interested in Lettie's estate, particularly a wound medicine. Of course, your lawyer was very mysterious
about his client. We simply assumed it was Benecorp.” She debated revealing more but decided to see what this might tease from Pichler. “And erratic as Downs might be, he was working for you as recently as last year.”

“Yes. But try to discharge an employee because he or she has a mental ‘sickness.' Not the easiest task in the business world. We attempted to assist him until it became impossible. Our owner and founder has a soft spot for him.”

“Okay,” Lisa answered noncommittally.

“But yes, we're interested in Miss VanSandt's compound. Before we leave the subject, please also understand that Downs is not the stereotypical cuddly genius with a few quirky habits. He was simply a low-level chemist here, average at best and, not to beat a dead horse, certifiably mad.”

“Of course, at least a portion of his information is accurate—you guys do want the wound medicine, obviously.”

“My only point is that we didn't steal it from him, or discover it by testing it on kidnapped teens, or murder Miss VanSandt, or whatever else he might be peddling from his roster of wild accusations. Once we discharged him from our company, he upped the ante in his vendetta against us.”

“What exactly does Lettie's concoction do?” Lisa asked.

“We consider that proprietary information. Am I to understand that she placed the rights to this creation in some kind of trust before her death? Legal tells me we might not own it.”

“Well, my husband would know more about those particulars than I do. I heard him talking to his assistant the other day about Lettie's files, and I know he was trying to track down whether this Wound Velvet belonged to her or one of her trusts. He'd spoken to her son, Neal, and there was some question.”

“Neal told us. Yes.”

“But you have to realize, Mr. Pichler, that we would never sell or transfer any of Lettie's assets until we know precisely why you want them. We'd be complete idiots to do otherwise. Especially when you begin this dialogue by having your lawyer treat us like we're a couple of pinheads.”

“Yes,” he answered, his voice lower, almost a hiss. “A temporary impasse.”

“Did you say ‘impasse'?” she asked, even though she'd understood him. “I'm having trouble hearing you. Could you speak up?”

“Yes, an impasse. If in fact we don't own the rights already. When do you think you or Mr. Stone could either confirm or deny the holdings of these trusts? Legal tells me they've searched Virginia records and did find a few corporations associated with Miss VanSandt, but that most of them have lapsed.”

“Why would we tell you anything, sir? We're wasting each other's time. Joe is on the board of every trust or foundation Lettie ever created. There's no chance he'll give you any information, and an even smaller chance he'll sell you the rights unless he knows the value of what the trust has. If you won't tell us what it is that we own, we certainly won't sell it to you.”

“I see. You're not being unreasonable there. Yes. Well, how about this: We have a standard confidentiality agreement we use to cover any number of situations. I'll have our lawyers fill in the blanks and include it with my package. Once you and Mr. Stone review and sign it, we can discuss Miss VanSandt's formula in more detail. Fair enough?” He intoned almost every word without inflection or emotion.

“Sure. We'll take a look at it.”

“Mrs. Stone, I hope you understand we're doing our best to be ethical and transparent. You must realize it would be easy for us to avoid this rigamarole and use Miss VanSandt's creations and no one would ever be the wiser. You and the rest of the world would never know the difference. We're simply doing everything in our power to be a good corporate citizen. I
can
tell you that the application for the VanSandt formula is rather minimal and completely internal.”

“Really? It seems inconsistent, then, that you'd twice dispatch people up here to knock on Lettie's door and badger her about her invention.”

“Pardon?”

“If this is so insignificant, and you're just being charitable with us, then why did Benecorp send people here to strong-arm Lettie?”

“Ma'am, I promise you this is news to me. We did not send anyone to…to impose on Miss VanSandt.” The jagged jump between
his words reminded Lisa of a skip in a Victrola record. “I myself talked with her on two occasions, and I can promise you the conversation from my end was polite and professional. She was rude, but I was as pleasant as any human could possibly be under the circumstances. She was highly profane. Irrational too.” Pichler began to speak even more softly. “We never had any other contact with her. We never had any further discussion about her property until she died and we located her son.”

“Huh.” Lisa had spent twenty years in courtrooms and earned a living from gauging the truth of people's claims, protests, promises, assurances, denials, stories and oaths, and she was surprised that Pichler sounded so genuine and honest, so convincing. “You didn't send people to Henry County to lean on her?”

“No.”

“Is it possible that you have competitors who know about Lettie's invention?”

“I hope not.”

“Interesting,” Lisa mused.

“Why do you think Benecorp sent people to visit Miss VanSandt? When is this supposed to have happened? Did Downs tell you this?”

“I would consider that proprietary information, Mr. Pichler.” She said it flatly, without any spite or smugness. “Joe and I will review your package and get back in touch. I don't see why we can't settle this on terms we're mutually comfortable with. I'm all for selling it to you if we can establish what's what and if your company offers a fair price. Why wouldn't we?”

“Thank you. I'll look forward to hearing from you and Mr. Stone. I appreciate your willingness to negotiate with us.”

The package arrived the next morning, shortly before noon, and after she and Joe perused the court orders and law enforcement reports and confirmed the number for FBI Special Agent Bev Larson and spoke with her, Lisa asked if he still believed Dr. Downs. They were in her office, both seated on the client side of her desk.