As Smith and Superintendent Borgeldt prepared to interview Peggy Sue Morrison, Jayla King arrived at Renewal Pharmaceuticals for another day of lab work. She’d called Nate Cousins before leaving her apartment but didn’t reach him. She later tried his office and was told that he was away at meetings and wouldn’t return until that afternoon.
She was eager to hear his reaction to the materials that her father had left her. She hadn’t heard from him since turning over the items and wondered why. Since they’d started seeing each other socially he’d been quick to keep in touch; the sudden lack of contact concerned her, even though she knew that was unreasonable. He had other things on his mind besides calling her. He was busy. His PR agency was growing. He was chasing new business. He’d call soon.
The call she’d been waiting for came as she was about to head for lunch in the company cafeteria. Most of the gossip that morning at Renewal revolved around Eric Morrison’s murder. Although Jayla knew more about it than the others, thanks to Mac Smith, she didn’t add her knowledge to the conversations.
“Hi,” Cousins said.
“Hi. How are you?”
“I’m okay, swamped with work but okay. I saw on the news that the guy I met at the Smiths’ apartment was involved in the shooting of Eric Morrison.”
“He didn’t shoot anybody, Nate. Someone hit him and—”
“Yeah, I know. He claims that somebody knocked him out and used his gun to kill Morrison. The whole pharmaceutical industry is in shock. Morrison was the top lobbyist for Big Pharma. Did you ever meet him?”
“No.”
“He was a powerhouse in Congress, had the ear of every House member and senator whose vote impacts the industry.”
She recalled Brixton’s cynical view of Morrison and lobbyists in general but thought better of bringing it up.
“Have you had a chance to go over my father’s research?” she asked.
He hesitated.
“Nate?”
“Yeah, sorry. I was distracted by something on my computer. I did peruse it but need to spend more time with it. Hope you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all. I just feel—I feel funny not having it.”
“I can understand that. I’ll carve out time later today to take a better look. Up for dinner tonight?”
“Yes, that would be fine, only I’ve been going out a lot lately. How about ordering something in at my apartment?”
“Sure. Whatever you say.”
“Will you have had a chance to go over it again before we get together?”
“No promises, but I’ll try. I’ve got a series of meetings today, including one with our boss, Walt Milkin.”
“Stop by the lab?”
“If I can. Have to run. If not, see you at seven.”
* * *
The TV newscasts also informed Eugene Waksit that Eric Morrison had been shot to death.
The news stunned him. While Morrison had blown him off, Waksit hung on to the belief that he could eventually convince the noted lobbyist to work with him.
Nikki Dorence also watched the TV reports as she prepared to leave for work at the embassy. As the reports played out on the screen, Waksit told her of his connection to the slain lobbyist, which he’d done before—too many times.
“I can’t believe this,” Waksit said. “We were going to be partners. Murdered? Shot by this private eye? What a tragedy.”
Nikki’s thought was that the real tragedy for Waksit was that he had lost a potential business partner, not that a man had been brutally murdered. But her less than sanguine view of her houseguest wasn’t based on his reaction to a lobbyist’s murder. She’d decided that he had to leave—and soon. Having another person sleeping in her apartment was annoying enough. She liked her privacy. But the longer he was there the more the traits that had turned her off during the period when they’d dated back in Australia were now magnified. She wasn’t trained in psychology but had decided that he had a passive-aggressive personality, cloyingly sweet one moment, grumpy and indifferent the next. And there was his ego, outsized and fed by his grandiose talk of making millions from the medical research he’d been given by Dr. Preston King. Added to those negative personality traits was her conclusion that he was an inveterate liar, to say nothing of being pathologically cheap. She’d never been particularly fond of Eugene Waksit, but her feelings had now progressed to active dislike.
“What will you do now that your future partner is dead?” she asked before leaving for work.
“I have to figure that out. Maybe one of his partners will want to hook up with me.”
“Do you know his partners?” she asked, not particularly successful in keeping sarcasm from her voice.
“Not personally, but I’ll give them a call. They’ll want to hear from me. I’m sure that Eric filled them in on everything. I’ll wait a few days out of respect for him. We were close.”
“Eugene, I hate to bring this up at the same time that you’ve lost your good friend and future partner, but when will you be leaving?”
“Soon. Soon.”
There were many angry things she was on the verge of saying. Instead, she grabbed her purse from a chair, left the apartment, and slammed the door behind her.
Waksit, too, was angry. He seethed as he went to the window and watched her leave the building and wave down a taxi. “Stuck-up bitch!” he muttered.
He poured a second cup of coffee in the kitchen and carried it into Nikki’s bedroom where he went through her dresser drawers. He did the same with her night table and searched the closet shelves for anything of value. Empty-handed, he returned to the living room and sprawled in a chair, his mind racing as he attempted to sort out his options.
He could book another hotel room, preferably one outside the city. He had money and a credit card, although he hated to use it.
It occurred to him that what he’d seen on Jayla’s computer about authorities back in PNG wanting to question him precluded returning there, or to Australia. Maybe his best move was to leave the United States and travel to a country where no one would think to look for him, Thailand, an Arab nation, maybe even Korea. But that meant giving up on turning Dr. King’s research findings into gold. He wasn’t ready to do that yet. There had to be a way. Morrison’s death complicated things, of course, but maybe he’d been foolish putting all his hopes in the shortsighted lobbyist.
Maybe Jayla was the way to go. Her father’s work was worthless to her without his notes, and he had them. Surely she would want to see her father’s work carried on by a large, reputable pharmaceutical company, and he, Eugene Waksit, could make that happen.
But could he simply call her out of the blue? How would she respond? Why did she dislike him so? He’d always been courteous with her, and he felt that her father viewed him as the son he’d never had. Did she consider him a suspect in her father’s murder, or a so-called person of interest? How could she? Such a dreadful thought would never cross her mind; she knew him better than that. He had her phone number at Renewal Pharmaceuticals and at home. Maybe she’d enjoy going out for lunch or dinner. He’d suggest it when he called—if he called. He had to plan what he would say and how he would say it, the way he’d written a script of sorts before his cold call to Morrison.
The images on the TV screen changed as fast as his thoughts. He’d mentioned Morrison’s partners to Nikki, assuming that Morrison had partners. Maybe that was the direction to take, call his agency and ask to speak with the one in charge now that Morrison was dead.
Who was the attorney, Mackensie Smith, who was mentioned on the e-mail he’d read on Jayla’s computer? Why was the PNG attorney Elgin Taylor, King’s buddy, writing to this Smith character about the authorities wanting to speak again with him concerning King’s murder? The question resurrected Waksit’s concern that they were looking for him. Staying with Nikki Dorence was ideal; who would think to look for him here? But she wanted him gone. “Bitch!”
He’d have to find another place to stay. Would Jayla let him crash at her apartment for a few days? He knew nothing about her living arrangements. Maybe she lived with a boyfriend. Had she married? He saw no evidence of either.
He poured what was left of a bottle of vodka into his empty coffee cup and downed it. It burned his throat and caused him to gag. He didn’t want to leave Nikki’s apartment but knew he’d have to. Charming her into allowing him to stay longer had its limits. He decided against staying in Washington itself, in the District, and booked a room at a Days Inn in Silver Spring, Maryland. He’d become convinced that people were watching him, judging him, waiters and shopkeepers, cops walking the beat and everyday passersby.
Check-in was at three. It was now a little after nine. He decided to linger until after lunch. Nikki had bought an assortment of cold cuts and a loaf of artisan bread. No sense wasting a free lunch.
* * *
Mac Smith met up with Detective Zeke Borgeldt at police headquarters on Indiana Avenue and rode with him in the backseat of an unmarked squad car driven by a uniformed officer to Eric Morrison’s house in Chevy Chase. Borgeldt had phoned Peggy Sue Morrison and arranged for a convenient time to interview her.
“Tell me more about Morrison arranging for an abortion on behalf of Senator Gillespie,” Borgeldt said as they crossed the line separating the District from Maryland.
“You’ve met Will Sayers, the D.C. editor for the Savannah News,” Smith said.
“At your place.”
“Right. Sayers is chasing down the Gillespie story and hired Robert to help dig up facts about it. There’s a former movie actress named Paula Silver who also knows some of the details. She was Morrison’s mistress for a time.”
“Jesus,” Borgeldt said, “this sounds like some cheap novel.”
“It does have that ring to it, doesn’t it?” Smith said through a laugh.
“So Brixton tells Morrison that he’s on that story and arranges to meet him to gather more information.”
“Right you are,” said Smith. “You heard from Brixton about the twenty grand that Morrison offered him.”
“To keep quiet about the abortion.”
“Right. But there’s another angle to this.”
“Don’t tell me,” Borgeldt said. “The abortion never happened and the baby is being raised by this former actress Paula Silver.”
“You should write cheap novels, Zeke.”
“I may do that when I retire. What’s this other angle?”
Smith gave him a capsule account of the murder of Dr. King in Papua New Guinea, the torching of his research site, and the theft of the research results from his laboratory.
After digesting what Smith had said, Borgeldt asked, “Are you saying that Morrison had something to do with that, too?”
“It’s possible, at least based upon what Brixton and his journalist friend Will Sayers have conjured up.”
“You put any faith in what Brixton ‘conjures up,’ Mac?”
“Yes, I do. I know that Robert can be a loose cannon at times, a hardhead about many things, but I trust his instincts. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have brought him back to D.C. and set him up in an office next to mine.”
“If you say so,” Borgeldt muttered.
There were half a dozen cars parked on the street in front of the Morrison home as they approached.
“I told Mrs. Morrison when I called that I wanted to interview her without others present,” Borgeldt said, not sounding happy at the sight of the cars.
“I’m sure she’ll honor that,” Smith said. “Probably family and neighbors surrounding her to help cope with the grief. She might balk at me being there.”
“I already told her that I would have another person with me,” Borgeldt said.
The driver stayed with the car as Smith and Borgeldt walked up to the front door. Borgeldt rang. They were greeted in seconds by Peggy Sue Morrison, whose face mirrored the tears she’d shed.
“Superintendent of Detectives Borgeldt,” Zeke said, extending his badge. “This is Mackensie Smith. He’s an attorney who’s involved with the investigation.”
“Yes, please come in,” she said, stepping back to allow them to enter. Voices could be heard from elsewhere in the large, impressive house.
“Friends and some family members are here,” Peggy Sue said, “but I told them that you would be coming and that I’d have to excuse myself.”
“We’ll try not to take too much of your time,” Borgeldt said. “Sorry for your loss.”
That prompted another flow of tears as she led them into the large living room where others had gathered.
“These are the gentlemen I told you about,” Peggy Sue announced through a voice that cracked. “You’ll have to excuse me.”
Smith and Borgeldt followed her from that room, down a hallway, and into a handsomely furnished and decorated library that obviously also served as a home office, a man’s refuge judging by the masculine surroundings.
Peggy Sue confirmed it. “This is where Eric worked when he was home,” she said. “He was always working.”
“I suppose being a top lobbyist demands lots of work,” Borgeldt said.
“It certainly did for Eric,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry. Let me get you some coffee or tea.”
“Nothing for us thanks,” Borgeldt said, his eyes taking in the room.
After an awkward silence, Borgeldt and Smith were invited to take seats in matching chairs; Peggy Sue pulled the chair out from behind the desk and faced them. “I hope this won’t be too difficult,” she said, her hands folded in her lap. “I know you have a job to do, and I hope you find who killed my husband.”
“We’re doing our best,” Borgeldt said.
Peggy Sue turned to Smith. “You’re an attorney involved in the investigation, Mr. Smith?”
“Yes,” Smith replied. “I represent Robert Brixton, who—”
“The man who shot Eric.”
“No, ma’am,” Smith said. “Robert didn’t shoot your husband. Someone knocked him out and used his weapon to shoot Mr. Morrison.”
Her expression didn’t say that she bought that scenario, nor did it indicate that she dismissed it. She sat silently as Borgeldt pulled out a pad and pen and said, “It’s obvious to us, Mrs. Morrison, that whoever killed your husband knew that he was meeting Mr. Brixton at eleven o’clock at Gravelly Point, and that your husband would be carrying twenty thousand dollars on his person.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Peggy Sue snapped. “Why would Eric be meeting some private detective in such a godforsaken place in the middle of the night with twenty thousand dollars? It’s absurd.”
“I understand your confusion over the details of what happened,” Borgeldt said, “but right now we need to know of anyone who might have threatened your husband recently, someone with a grudge against him.”
“Eric? Threatened? Someone with a grudge against him? He was the nicest, most easygoing man in the world. Yes, he worked hard, and I suppose he might have rubbed some people the wrong way. But enough to want to kill him? That can’t be.”
Borgeldt ignored her evaluation of her husband’s relationships and said, “What about the day he was murdered? Do you have any idea of his schedule that day, appointments he’d made, someone who would know about his meeting with Robert Brixton that night?”
“No. I have no idea.”
“He didn’t mention anyone?” Smith asked.
“No. He was unusually high-strung the past few days, as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Eric was—well, he was dedicated to his job and respected the importance of it.” She sniffled and used a Kleenex to wipe away the tears. “He told me just a day or two ago that it was time for us to get away, maybe on a cruise somewhere. I’ve been looking into cruise lines.” She cried more openly now and Smith and Borgeldt waited patiently until she brought herself under control.
“Did your husband keep an appointment book here at the house?” Smith asked.
She seemed surprised at the question. “Yes, of course. Eric was meticulous about his schedule. He kept an appointment book here and at the office.”
“Some of my detectives will be at his office later today,” Borgeldt said. “Could we see the appointment book he maintained at home?”
“I suppose so,” she said, getting up and going behind the desk where she picked up a leather-bound book and handed it to Borgeldt. Smith leaned closer to share a look with the detective. They opened it to the date that Morrison had been killed. Among other entries was “Brixton 11 Gravelly Point.”
Borgeldt turned the page back to the previous day. One entry captured the immediate attention of both men: “3-Alard.”
“Do you know what this means?” Smith asked, handing her the book and pointing to the entry.
She shook her head.
“Do you know someone named Alard?” Borgeldt asked.
“No. It must be someone in government that Eric worked with. He was so proud of what he was able to accomplish with elected officials. My goodness, they lead such busy lives and can’t possibly keep up with everything going on in the world and the votes they must make. Eric took a lot of pride in educating them about his clients, especially the pharmaceutical companies he represented.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Smith said. “You’re sure you don’t know anyone named Alard?”
“No, it’s not a familiar name.”
Two loud voices from the living room captured her attention.
“Is there anything else you need from me?” Peggy Sue asked.
“I’ll want to take this book with me,” Borgeldt said.
“I suppose that’s all right,” she said. “Is there anything else you want from me? I have family and friends here and—”
“No, ma’am,” Borgeldt said, “but I’m sure we’ll have more questions at a future date. Thank you for your courtesy today.”
“I just want to see Eric’s murderer behind bars where he belongs.” As an afterthought, she added, “You’re sure that this Brixton man, this private investigator, had nothing to do with it?”
“Positive,” Smith said through a reassuring smile.
“I heard on the TV that he’s an unsavory sort,” she said.
Smith said, “He’s a very good private investigator, Mrs. Morrison, and an upstanding individual.”
Once in the car Borgeldt said, “You call Brixton an upstanding individual, Mac?”
“I sure do.”
“He always seems to create trouble,” Borgeldt said.
As they returned to the District, Smith thumbed through the pages in Morrison’s appointment book. “Look at this,” he said.
Borgeldt took the book and looked at what had captured Smith’s interest. “Looks like he had another meeting with Alard, days earlier.”
Smith went through a mental calculation. “If I’m not mistaken this meeting with Alard precedes the murder of Dr. King in Papua New Guinea and the theft of his research.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Borgeldt as Smith noted the date and time on the back of a business card. He continued flipping through the pages until another entry stopped him. It was a notation that Morrison was scheduled to have dinner with Waksit.
“Interesting,” Smith said.
“What is?”
Mac pointed out the entry. “Waksit worked for that doctor who was murdered on Papua New Guinea. Annabel and I are friends with the doctor’s daughter, Jayla King. Waksit claims that the doctor willed him the results of his research into finding a better pain medication.”
“Did he? Will him the research?”
“Jayla finds it hard to believe. I wonder if Waksit was meeting with Morrison to try and sell the research.”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“I hope I have the opportunity someday. Let’s talk about Alard,” Smith said. “When I raised his name the last time we were together I had the feeling that it struck a nerve.”
Borgeldt, who’d been looking out the window, turned to Smith and said, “You seem to know about him, Mac.”
Smith explained how Brixton had learned about Alard through Will Sayers and had shared what he knew. He finished by saying, “Alard evidently met with Morrison the day before he was shot and killed, at least according to what Morrison had written in his appointment book.”
Borgeldt finished the thought. “As a result of that meeting Alard probably knew where and when Brixton and Morrison would be meeting.”
Smith picked up the thread: “And Alard possibly knew that Morrison would be carrying thousands of dollars to buy off Robert.” Smith’s brief laugh was an editorial comment. “Fat chance buying off Robert Brixton,” he said.
“The Justice Department is investigating Alard Associates,” Borgeldt said matter-of-factly.
“Oh?”
“Hired hands,” Borgeldt replied, “sort of a quasi–employment agency that takes on jobs too dirty for decent folks. They started in Iraq and Afghanistan but were split off from a larger independent contractor. Justice has evidence that Alard and the people he represents have been involved in assassination attempts here in the States and overseas.”
“Nice folks,” said Smith. “How far has Justice gotten in its investigation?”
“I’ll know more this afternoon. I have a meeting at Justice at five. I’ll bring to the meeting the possible connection between Alard Associates and Morrison’s murder. This is all between us, of course.”
“Of course. Thanks for sharing it with me.”
“You’ve shared plenty with me in the past, Mac. Tit for tat as they say. What’s on your schedule for the rest of the day?”
“I’ll check in on how Robert is doing, and I have a meeting with a new client. I hope Robert gets back on his feet soon. I need him on this one.”
Smith retrieved his car from where he’d parked at police headquarters and drove to his office where Brixton’s receptionist, Mrs. Warden, asked after Brixton.
“I’m just about to call and find out,” Smith said as he settled behind his desk and picked up the phone. His first call was to the hospital and learned that Brixton had been released earlier that day. He tried Brixton’s number at the apartment and reached his answering machine. “Robert must be resting and is letting the machine take his calls,” he told Mrs. Warden. “I’m sure he’s fine.”