The Renewable Virgin (19 page)

Cameron himself looked
besieged
, that's the only word for it. He made an effort at appearing calm, but his physical mannerisms revealed a lot of inner tension. When he turned from the window to greet me, the movement had a clearly self-protective posture to it.

I reminded him we'd met before, in Nathan Pinking's office. I don't think he remembered me, but he pretended to; whatever his problems, he hadn't lost his manners. ‘What can I do for you, Detective Larch? My secretary said you were investigating a murder?'

‘Rudy Benedict's murder. Did you know him?'

‘I know who he was. We never met.'

‘Have you had much contact with television people? I know
LeFever
isn't your first venture into TV advertising.'

‘We've done mostly spot advertising up to now. We've sponsored a few specials, but we've never undertaken a series before. So to answer your question—no, I haven't had much contact with television personnel before now. Rudy Benedict's path and mine just never crossed.'

‘Who made that decision, Mr. Cameron? To sponsor a series, I mean.' I was looking straight at him and I swear his irises turned invisible as I watched. He didn't move his head or anything, but the blue just vanished.

‘A great number of people contribute to a decision like that. Our advertising manager, the budget director, a demographics consultant—'

‘But ultimately somebody has to say yes or no. Whose responsibility is that?'

‘Mine, of course. Why do you ask?'

Flank attack. ‘Why is there so much hostility between you and Nathan Pinking?'

His jaw clenched; one of those giveaway signs.
Too
giveaway, it seemed to me. A successful businessman would have to hide his reactions better than that, wouldn't he? Ted Cameron made me think of a dam about to break. ‘I have difficulty in working with a man for whom I have no respect,' he said in answer to my question about Pinking. ‘But it's something I often have to do.'

‘Then why sponsor
LeFever
if you think so little of Pinking?'

‘It's the show we wanted, not its producer. We can reach millions of potential customers through
LeFever
. That's all we're interested in.'

Sounded reasonable. Okay, try the other flank. ‘What are your chances for retaining control of Cameron Enterprises? Is Augusta Cameron likely to win this one?'

I had to admire the way he took it. He didn't pretend not to know what I was talking about or stall for time or anything like that. ‘So even the police know about it.' He smiled wryly and stood up and began to pace. ‘May I ask how you found out?' Still polite.

‘One of our sources on Wall Street.'

He nodded, continued pacing. He was harried-looking and obviously under pressure, but he still managed to look, well,
graceful
as he paced the room. I could see why Kelly was so taken with him—the man had style. He was attractive in such a subtle way—nothing obvious or overstated about him. Ted Cameron had a quiet kind of magnetism I'd missed completely when I first met him. But Kelly Ingram had spotted it. She'd spotted it the first time she laid eyes on him.

Finally Cameron decided on an answer he wanted to give me. ‘For some time now, Aunt Augusta has been challenging me over the presidency. She does this periodically—about every two years, I'd say. You know she runs Lorelei Cosmetics, don't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, that's not enough for her. She wants to run the parent company instead of just one of its subsidiaries. At first she was content to try to wheel and deal her way into power—she didn't resort to frontal attack until I moved the corporate headquarters to New York. She—'

‘Excuse me—when was that?'

‘Ah, thirteen … twelve or thirteen years ago. Formerly we were headquartered in Los Angeles, where Lorelei Cosmetics is located. Aunt Augusta felt threatened when I took the business offices to the other side of the country. She changed her tactics.'

‘And this time?'

He was silent a moment. ‘This time she has new allies. Some other members of the family.'

‘Why? Why would they side with her against you this time?'

‘Because of certain matters of policy—and that, Detective Larch, is in the nature of being a company secret. Don't ask me to reveal business decisions to someone outside the firm because I won't do it. Besides, what does all this have to do with Rudy Benedict's death? It looks as if you're investigating
me
instead of him. I don't see the connection.'

Neither did I. ‘Just a standard procedure of police work, Mr. Cameron. We check everything, even things that don't seem to have any connection at all.' He didn't quite believe me, but that was all right. I made one more try. ‘This matter of company policy you don't want to talk about—it wouldn't have anything to do with the way you spend your advertising money, would it?'

‘I'm sorry, I'm just not going to talk about it.' His words were calm, but his voice was tight and pinched. He opened the office door and stood waiting for me. Our brief interview was over.

I left wondering if we could get the Los Angeles police to go after Augusta Cameron. Since she was the one who was so bothered by the ‘secret' company policy, maybe she'd be more willing to talk about it than her beleaguered nephew.

A few days later I found a note on my desk saying Kelly Ingram was back in town and wanted to see me immediately on a matter that was urgent and important.

Urgent
and
important? Well, certainly mustn't delay, then. On the way over to her place I tried to guess what might be so urgent. (And important.) Another bottle of Lysco-Seltzer? Not likely, not again. Hate mail from Fiona Benedict? Silly.

When Kelly opened the door, the first thing she said was, ‘Nathan Pinking is interfering with my sex life and I want you to make him stop.'

Well,
that
was something I certainly hadn't thought of. I invited myself to sit down and waited.

‘Nathan's blackmailing Ted,' she said bitterly. ‘He's forcing him to sponsor
LeFever
, and he's forcing him to stay away from me.'

I asked her how she knew, and she launched into a long story of improbable events and overheard conversations, all neatly wrapped up with some cause-and-effect deductions on her part that I had to admit sounded pretty plausible.

‘So he's afraid I might marry Ted,' Kelly said, still talking about Pinking. ‘He busted us up because I'd be no good to his smarmy little promo scheme if I was married. I have to stay fresh and available.'

A renewable virgin?
‘What's Pinking got on Ted Cameron?'

‘I don't
know
,' she said with real despair. ‘Marian, this is just making me sick! Can you nail Nathan for blackmail without … without …'

‘Without exposing what Ted Cameron's done that's made him vulnerable to blackmail?' I sighed. ‘If he's committed a felony and that comes out in the investigation, we can't just look the other way, you know that.'

‘But if what he's done isn't illegal, if it's just, oh, personal, or something he doesn't want the rest of the family to know about or something like that—you wouldn't have to hassle him then, would you?'

‘No, we'd have no reason to.' I couldn't quite figure Kelly. Surely she knew if she blew the whistle on Nathan Pinking the chances were that Ted Cameron would get caught in the blast too. She sounded just a touch angry when she talked about him, I thought. Because he'd allowed himself to be outmaneuvred by someone like Nathan Pinking? ‘You must be awfully sure Ted hasn't broken the law.'

‘Well, yes.' She didn't sound sure. ‘He's a
good
man, Marian. He's not like Nathan Pinking.'

‘So what's to keep
him
from blabbing—Pinking, that is? Even if the police do keep quiet.'

‘Well, I was thinking maybe plea bargaining. You know, you could promise him a lighter sentence if he'd keep his mouth shut?'

In her own way Kelly was a rather worldly woman, but sometimes she could be so naïve I wanted to scream. ‘In the first place,' I said, ‘would you trust him to keep his word? I wouldn't. Second, I don't have the authority to agree to plea bargaining, that's up to the prosecutor. Third, we have no evidence of blackmail yet and may not be able to get any. Don't worry, don't worry—we'll give it our best shot.' She'd looked panicky there for a moment. ‘But you've got to realize there's a big difference between knowing somebody is a blackmailer and finding evidence that will stand up in court. I believe you're right about Pinking—I already thought his relationship with Ted Cameron had a strong odor of fish about it. That two-sided face of Pinking's should have warned me,' I said facetiously, in a weak attempt at lightening the mood.

All it did was puzzle Kelly. ‘Two-sided face? What are you talking about? You mean two-faced?'

‘No, I mean his face has two sides to it.'

‘Hasn't everybody's?'

Why had I started this? ‘Nathan Pinking has halves of two different faces, and they don't fit together. Hadn't you noticed?'

She stared at me. ‘No.' Translation:
What are you, a crazy lady?

‘Okay, forget Nathan Pinking's face,' I sighed, pulling out my notebook. ‘Now I want you to go over it again, and this time give me all the names you can. Like that cousin who came to Tuxedo Park—which Cameron was that?'

‘Roger. He runs Watercraft.'

We kept going over it until I had everything she could give me. Kelly had been suspicious for some time; there'd been a number of incidents stretched out over several weeks that had led her to conclude blackmail was the name of the game. So she'd had plenty of time to think about it. Yet I couldn't help but notice she'd put off calling me until after she'd finished her TV pilot movie. If the Cameron-Pinking-
LeFever
world was about to collapse, Kelly Ingram would not be one of its casualties.

I promised to keep her posted and left.

CHAPTER 13

FIONA BENEDICT

Eventually I learned to ignore the ringing of the telephone, and I stopped answering the door almost entirely. The solicitous expressions of concern proclaimed, no,
de
claimed by acquaintances who spoke too loudly, too brightly—it got to be more than I could bear. Their intentions were good, of course, but they were embarrassed, ill at ease. And why not? Who among them had prior experience of such a situation? What do you say to a colleague who has just been released from jail after having been charged with attempted murder? Most of them said,
Oh, Fiona, I knew it was a mistake all along!
That's what their mouths said. But their eyes weren't so sure.

Drew Morrissey was the worst. Roberta Morrissey had been the Rock of Gibraltar when I needed her, but Drew acted as if he wished he'd never met me. He mumbled and stuttered and shifted his weight from foot to foot and managed never quite to look me in the eye. He didn't have the foggiest notion of what to say to me. I knew what to say to him.
Goodbye
.

Howard—I never will know his last name now—Howard had given me good advice.
Say nothing at all
, he'd told me.
Not even ‘I didn't do it'
—
we don't have to enter a plea yet. Say nothing
. So I'd said nothing; and when Richard Ormsby was murdered, my immediate release was not complicated by any statement I might otherwise have signed. Howard would accept no money; the Ingram woman's doing again, no doubt.

I'd submitted my resignation the day after Roberta and I returned to Washburn. The dean said he would just hold my letter for a while, in case I wanted more time to think it over. My future was in limbo; it depended upon decisions I had yet to make. But I didn't see how I could just pick up and go on at Washburn as if nothing had happened. The administration and my colleagues were all being ‘understanding'—but I'd still be pointed out to newcomers as the local criminal. I can't stand being stared at.

Too much had happened; I couldn't have remained unchanged by it. I felt a need to take my time, to wait to find out, to discover what I had left of my old self. I was plagued by feelings of uncertainty that I either had to dispel or else accustom myself to living with. There were too many unanswered questions; I was having difficulty maintaining my sense of balance.

For instance, I had no idea why Richard Ormsby had been killed. Whoever had shot him couldn't have had the same reason for wanting him dead that I'd had. If I'd just waited—oh, that's even more cynical, more reprehensible. Wanting someone else to do my murderous dirty work for me. I
had
tried; I had done my very best to remove that academic trash from the face of the earth, but I'd failed. It needed someone with a steadier hand and a more accurate eye than mine to get the job done.

And I didn't even know who. But whoever it was, he had acted as my surrogate. Some mysterious someone had appeared out of nowhere and had done for me what I'd been too inept to do for myself. I had fired Rudy's gun at that man six times—and I missed six times. Missing doesn't make me innocent; it merely makes me a bad shot. Nothing will ever make me innocent.

I was taking a bath and two showers every day. Roberta Morrissey kept insisting that I was imagining the smell. She was undoubtedly right, but that didn't make it any the less real. I'd heard of the strong disinfectant used in jails but I'd had no idea how astringent and overpowering it was. It stung my mucous membrane and made my eyes water. It permeated everything—my hair, my skin, that rough clothing I was made to wear. Roberta said the odor was long since gone, that I was the only one who still smelled it. I will always smell it.

I wondered if someone had followed Richard Ormsby to New York from London, if his death was the result of some old enmity in his home country. What kind of enmity—personal, professional? Or had my bootless attempt at murder inspired some unstable occupant of the lunatic zone into an act of emulation? An attack upon a public figure breeds further attacks. Even the self-inflicted death of a celebrity stimulates imitations—two hundred suicides in the month following Marilyn Monroe's death, I once read. Had my firing at Ormsby made him suddenly appear a desirable target to some deranged soul in search of an outlet? Where does my responsibility end?