The Red Hot Fix (9 page)

“You needn’t have come for dinner,” Ingrid said. “I don’t require babysitting.”

It was as close to a thank-you as his mother would offer. “I’m glad you had the time.”

Ingrid leaned back on her throne. “Reinhart didn’t ask you to come? Keep me company while he’s off doing who knows what?”

Pierce counted brown diamond shapes on the antique oriental carpet. He hated being the puck in their twisted hockey game. No matter which of them scored, he was the one slammed into the net. Any need to reply was eliminated when Hildy entered the room.

“You are lucky two times, mister.” Hildy waddled behind the dessert cart that had been a wedding gift to his great-great-grandmother when she married the barrel-chested Swede who, before his fiftieth birthday, would become the largest timber exporter in the world. “First you get my salmon. Now you get my carrot cake.”

Pierce rose to help but was stopped by his mother’s glance.

“Leave the tray, Hildy,” she said. “I’ll serve my son.”

Ingrid waited until her housekeeper was gone to cross to the cart. She poured coffee from a sterling pot given to her grandmother by the emperor of Japan in 1946 when the family firm negotiated the first postwar trade agreement and Stinson Lumber began rebuilding cities rotting in radioactive rubble. Ingrid took a sip from a china cup decorated in roses surrounding a gilded “S.”

“Perfect,” she declared before handing it to Pierce.

“Tell me about the Chicago expansion.” Ingrid returned to the dessert cart. “I’m proud of your ambition, Pierce. Your grandfather would be, too.” She cut a wedge of carrot cake and placed the cream-frosted delight on a plate. She removed the tip of the slice with a heavy sterling fork and tasted it. “He always was the first to spot an opportunity.” She handed the plate to Pierce and returned to pour herself a cup of coffee. “You get your business acumen from him.”

Pierce grimaced at the crimson swipe of his mother’s lipstick staining his fork. “I don’t know if ‘proud’ is the word Reinhart would use. He seems to think I’m moving too fast.”

“You’ve been running Rainy Day for over a year,” she said. “Would a leader care what Reinhart thinks?”

Pierce fantasized about making a drinking game out of his visits to his mother. A shot thrown back for every veiled insult to his masculinity. A typical evening would have him drunk before salad was served. “It’s Bird’s company, Mother. It’s in my best interests to care what he thinks.”

“Must you insist on calling him that ridiculous nickname?” Pierce imagined another drink slammed down. “The time for childish in-jokes is long past.”

He breathed in deep and slow. His mind floated back to when he first met the large man with the intimidating presence who would become his stepfather. Raised in the company of his
mother, grandmother, housekeepers, and cooks, Pierce had never before encountered such primal masculine power. Reinhart knelt down on one knee, looked the six-year-old Pierce straight in the eye, and asked him if he could do with a game of catch before dinner. It was an invitation he’d longed for but never received from his seldom-present grandfather. After dinner, when his mother handed him over to his nanny and breezed out with the tall new man, Pierce hurried to the family library, found an English-German dictionary, and learned that
Vogel
meant “bird.” Eager to impress, he shared what he’d learned the next time he saw his mother’s beau. Pierce smiled at the memory of Reinhart’s booming laugh as he ruffled his hair. “Bird” became his preferred name for Reinhart from that moment.

“Whatever I call him, the fact remains Reinhart can, at any time, step back in and take control.” He watched his mother work to scowl and wondered how many more times her surgeons would be able to stretch her thinning facial skin. “And might I add your comment sounds a bit like the pot calling the kettle.”

“Another childhood rhyme, Pierce?”

“You and I are in similar positions, Mother.” He savored a bite of cake. “You’re Reinhart’s employee with the Wings. We can imagine family equality all we want. We can even fancy ourselves to be masters of our impressive titles. But the truth is we go to work every day at jobs we enjoy because Reinhart lets us.”

Ingrid drew herself to her full height and threw her shoulders back. “Reinhart Vogel is where he is today because my father,
your
grandfather, made him. It was Stinson money that started Rainy Day. Without its success, he couldn’t have purchased the team.”

Pierce let his mind drift as his mother launched into a rant by now so familiar he could recite it word for word, albeit without the rancor his mother exhibited when she told the tale of a talented young finance graduate who’d taken his first job out of graduate school at Stinson Lumber. How he soared through the ranks thanks to the tutelage of Ingrid’s father. Reinhart was the head of the company’s international development office eight years later, when Ingrid was brought in to learn the industry. He swept her off her feet, married the boss’s daughter, and left the family business ten years later, wanting to make his own mark.

“It was my fifty-thousand-dollar investment that seeded him for the Internet business. He’s done well over the years, I’ll give him that. But never forget it’s
your
family money that gave him the opportunity.”

“Turning fifty thousand into four hundred million is a bit more than doing well.” He hated defending Reinhart to his mother as much as he hated defending his mother to Reinhart. “He paid back your investment and buys you a new Mercedes every year as thanks. The Wings he bought on his own.”

“And he makes damned sure no one else owns one piece of either Rainy Day or the
Wings.”

Pierce wondered how she packed so much venom into such a soft voice. “Can you blame him, Mother? Bird—excuse me,
Reinhart
—has told me several times that owning his companies solely and outright is the only thing that allows him to breathe his own air. All this Stinson money. You can’t drive two miles in Seattle without seeing our name emblazoned on something. He even has to drive down Stinson Avenue to get to the arena. Can you blame him for wanting the world to know he’s not bought and paid for?”

He crossed over to the window and watched the reflection of his mother, behind him on her throne, loom over the city across the bay. Her image rose and approached. She stood behind him and traced her long fingers across the back of his neck.

“Let’s not get upset,” she cooed. “It’s just that it bothers me to have you worried about Reinhart’s approval of your business plans. Call it a mother’s concern.”

He turned to her and felt a rush of affection. Pierce remembered another family story. The one where his seventeen-year-old mother prevailed against her titan father and domineering mother, who both demanded their only child abort when she became pregnant by a boy she refused to name. How the young girl stood firm against every threat of public humiliation or disinheritance by insisting the child she carried was a Stinson and as such deserved their respect and protection. He was alive today because of that implacable determination.

“And you have your son’s concern, as well.” Pierce walked her back to her chair. “I saw the game last night. I know it was Reinhart who made the call pulling LionEl out. That couldn’t have sat well with you.”

Ingrid patted her son’s hand. “It didn’t. But as you said, we’re merely employees.”

Mort walked into the Crystal at five fifteen. Mauser tossed him two copies of the
New York Times
and Mort waited for his pint of Guinness. He laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter and told Mauser to keep the change. He crossed to a corner booth, set one paper across from him, and snapped his own open. Three minutes later Larry and his beer slid in.

“Just get here?”

“We’re both early.” Mort feigned concern. “Think we’re turning into drunks?”

“I had to leave the office. I’m surrounded by narrow-minded academics so focused on the Nicene Creed or the latest social injustices in Peru they ignore the truly important events occurring right under their noses. I need kindred souls.” Larry leaned forward, more preschooler than world-renowned scholar. “You saw the game, I trust.”

“I was there. Courtside. Robbie’s agent set it up.”

Larry’s eyes went wide. “I could feel the electricity through the television. Tell me what it was like in the arena.”

“Think game six meets Namath’s Super Bowl. Add in the first time the girl said yes and multiply by ten.”

Larry fell back against the booth and sighed. “I’d trade my tenure for that opportunity. Where the hell is my own agent? Profiles in
The American Book Review
she gets me. Courtside tickets to the hottest game of the year? Not once.” Larry scooted closer. “You see the set-to between Coach and LionEl?”

“From five feet away. LionEl was as close to throwing a punch as I’ve ever seen by a man who didn’t. I don’t think he gave a rat’s ass there were more than twenty thousand witnesses.”

“Coach brought in the new kid.” Larry drummed the table in front of him. “What a performance. And the way the team responded. As beautiful as any Bolshoi production. Barry Gardener’s the future of the Wings.”

“LionEl’s still the biggest name in the league. He’s not going to take kindly to riding pine. Especially in the playoffs.”

“Morning pundits say it was Vogel himself who gave the order to pull him out.”

Mort agreed. “Wilkerson was chewing LionEl a new one when he got a phone call.”

“An age-old tale. Caesar and Brutus. New gunslinger in town. It’s a must-watch spectacle, that’s for certain.”

“I’m sure that’s what Vogel and Wilkerson are hoping for.” Mort glanced up and a flush of adrenaline rushed through him. “Will you look at that?”

Larry turned to follow Mort’s gaze. “Well, well. I’ve got a hundred dollars says she’s not here for Mauser’s beer-battered chicken.”

Mort pulled himself out of the booth and waved Charlotte Conklin over. He bent down and whispered to Larry. “Behave yourself or the next time Barbara Walters names you one of her most fascinating people I’ll make sure she sees the pictures from last Saint Patrick’s Day.”

Mort reached out to shake Charlotte’s hand.

“I had a feeling you two would be here. Last time had the aura of a standing meeting.” She smiled a greeting to Larry.

“Every Thursday since the earth began to cool,” Larry said. “How are you, Charlotte?”

“I’m fine. And thank you for remembering me.”

“Consider me smitten.” Larry’s eyes telegraphed a jibe Mort hoped Charlotte wouldn’t catch. He focused instead on how her sandy hair complemented her blue eyes. He snapped his mind clear and stepped aside as she slid into the booth. “Can I get you a pint?”

“I’ve got a Guinness coming.” Charlotte reached across and rested a hand on Larry’s wrist. “I hope I’m not intruding. I’ve been thinking about the question you two posed last time.”

“What question’s that?” Larry pointed Mort to the empty seat beside Charlotte.

“We were talking about the Trixie murders.” She turned to Mort. “You wanted my impressions of what would make a prostitute so enraged she’d torture and kill.”

Mort took a deep breath and caught her scent. Roses. “What have you come up with?”

Charlotte shook her head. “Nothing beyond the obvious. I keep coming back to a woman who’s snapped. One who’s been used too long and too callously by any number of men.” She rested her elbow on the table and held her chin. “Maybe she sees this as a way to reclaim her self-respect. Like she’s saying, ‘Let me show you how it feels to be powerless.’ ”

The waitress approached. Mort liked the way Charlotte looked Betsy in the eye and thanked her as she set the pint on the table.

Larry pulled back his sleeve and glanced at his watch. “Gotta run. Faculty meeting.” He turned to Charlotte. “My dear, you and Mort will have to solve the mysteries of Seattle’s latest serial killer without me.” He grabbed his
Times
and pushed himself out of the booth. “Be nice to the lovely lady, Morton, lest she grow bored with your ill-mannered ways.”

They watched Larry cross the room, wave to Mauser, and throw them one last salute.

“Great guy,” Charlotte said. “You don’t often see that in great men.”

“He’s been there for me every time I’ve needed him.” Mort let out a short laugh. “And even when I haven’t.”

“He didn’t have a meeting, did he?”

Mort shook his head. “L. Jackson Clark hasn’t attended a faculty meeting in twenty years. And then only because he was looking for doughnuts.” He slid out and took Larry’s seat opposite Charlotte. “You could have called. You didn’t have to chase me down to tell me your thoughts about Trixie.”

A slow smile blossomed across her lips and a warm wave tumbled down Mort’s spine. “I know how to use a phone, Detective. I was hoping I might get a burger out of this.”

Mort relaxed against the booth. “Mauser makes a mean one.”