“Ho-ly shit,” Benny said, drawing out the syllables. He reached into the cardboard box sitting on the wine room table and grabbed a file. “Artemis Falcone,” he read, flipping the file open. “Ol’ Arty sure has a fat one.”
“Not surprising with that creepster,” Nora said as Benny skimmed through pages.
“Wow. He’s been a bad, bad boy. And a lot of these are reports from a private investigator. Seems Arty was not only grabbing, kissing, and—what?—biting young female Saugatuck colleagues. He was into some sick shit off campus as well. This PI was doing all kinds of surveillance, which I gotta admire.”
“Yup, from the reports, it’s some guy named Jatinder Singh. Do they still call them ‘private dicks’?” Nora asked.
“Hope not,” Benny said, not looking up from the file. “In fact let’s agree to never.”
After a moment, he held up the thick file on Arty Falcone, using it to gesture at the box. “So Helen fucking Carmichael was spying on all of you? The plot just thickened, as they say. Did you look at the one on you yet?”
“Of course. Like three pages,” Nora said. “Just a credit report and copy of a couple news articles from when the defense accused me of withholding exculpatory evidence in the D’Amico case five years ago.”
Benny chortled. “Complete bullshit. Nothing in the world was exculpatory for a mobster like ‘The Nose,’ may he rest in peace.”
“I know, and the judge said so, but the New York Post, scrupulous journalists that they are, forgot to run articles saying that, so there aren’t any in there clearing me.”
“It’s a great country,” Benny said, shaking his head. “Who else has thin ones?”
“Rob Arslan’s is almost nothing as well.”
“Makes sense for you and Captain America not to have much,” Benny said. “Anyone else?”
“Nope,” Nora said. “She had a lot of stuff for all the other MC members. Also a pretty good amount for Louis Lambert, which is where I want to start.”
“Okay,” Benny answered. “And lemme ask something that I can’t believe I’m the one asking, but, are we cool to read this stuff? I mean, should we check with Carmen or pain-in-the-ass Raleigh?”
“I thought about that,” Nora replied. “I think we’re okay to go through it once and then talk to them. These aren’t Saugatuck records and so far as I know they aren’t covered by any kind of subpoena at this point. They are Helen’s personal property that her assistant gave me. And you and I are going to preserve them so there’s no obstruction of justice issue.”
Benny nodded. “And here’s another one I should have asked before putting my mitts all over these, but fingerprints? Should we stop touching the originals? Just in case the murderer was pawing through these before going after Helen?”
“In an office with glass walls and a hidden key? Don’t think so. So no, I don’t think fingerprints are an issue,” Nora said. “And, honestly, it’s too late anyway.”
“Okay,” Benny said, “I’ve done my due diligence. Now let’s read the dirt on the Saugatuck mopes.”
Benny paused, studying Nora. “Why the sad look?”
Nora shook her head. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I think it’s a combination of finding out a lot of bad stuff about the people I work with and finding out that Helen was a bit of a snake.”
“I get the first part. But why a snake?”
“Well, she clearly wasn’t collecting this stuff so Saugatuck could make informed personnel or security decisions. A piece of this I knew about because the complaints—like some of the stuff with Arty and the women at company parties—came through official channels and we investigated it. Helen has that information in here, but she also has all kinds of stuff I didn’t know about and issues outside work that she was digging into and not sharing. And I’ll bet Laslo knows nothing about it either. So she wasn’t doing this to protect Saugatuck. She must have been doing it to protect herself from Saugatuck in some way—somehow get control over her peers. Why else would she have it and keep it like this?”
“I don’t know,” Benny answered. “But I do know that those files may tell us why somebody killed her.”
Benny stood, walked to the whiteboard, and grabbed a marker. “So let’s pull out the big stuff on each of these creeps. Who you wanna start with?”
“I already told you—that prick Lambert,” Nora said, grabbing the file for Louis Lambert. “Helen’s PI documents that he lives far, far beyond his means and works hard to hide that. He buys expensive art that he never displays and blows huge money on travel, which he does alone. Weird as hell.”
“Got it,” Benny said as he turned from the board. “Who’s next?”
“Well, Arty, whose file seems the thickest. The off-campus stuff Helen’s guy dug up goes way beyond the nastiness at company events: dungeons, snuff-film cosplay, dark-web chats, really sick shit. And I’m guessing none of it known to the lovely Mrs. Falcone and their three kids.”
“Okay,” Benny said as he wrote. “Bad sex stuff, on and off the clock. Next.”
“Marcus Baum,” Nora said, opening the file. “Loves David Jepson and also hates him because this was supposed to be Marcus’s company years ago. Looks like it was Marcus who leaked all the bad stuff to The Wall Street Journal about Saugatuck and David a couple years back—wild parties, David supposedly being ill, employees unhappy with evil clients.”
Nora kept reading. “Whoa. It also looks like Helen helped him do the leaking.”
Benny filled the silence, narrating his own work at the board. “Okay, pissed, leaking to hurt Jepson. Next.”
“Rob,” Nora said, opening Arslan’s slim file. “He was addicted to painkillers when he first got here. Got divorced, no kids. He did therapy, got off the pain pills, and went on antidepressants. Set up a charity, which is legit. Helen helped him through all of it. Nobody besides her knew anything about it.”
“So painkillers, divorce, depression, treatment,” Benny said as he wrote. “Not the end of the world, but not nothin’. Who’s next? What about the Jepson family? Start with the boss.”
“She has lots of stuff on David’s wife. Seems the marriage is a fiction. She mostly lives in the British Virgin Islands, has attractive young men escorting her wherever she goes. Claims they’re assistants.”
“Bet I know what they assist with,” Benny said as he wrote on the board.
Nora looked up. “Kinda sad, actually. David talks so much about his wife. Yikes.”
She grabbed the next file. “Miranda Jepson. She hates her father for not leaving and giving her the company. Apparently, Miranda found out her father was spending big money on strange life-extension treatments, planning to be in charge forever. And Helen found out, too, of course.”
She continued reading. “Oh wow. Also seems she was secretly banging Marcus Baum at some point—another person who thought the company should be his. All kinds of hotel records and photos here.”
“Whoa, messing with the boss’s daughter? That shit’ll get a guy killed where I come from. Gonna add adulterer under Baum too.” Benny said. “Next Jepson?”
“The good one,” Nora replied, lifting a file. “Chip.”
She read for a minute. “Okay, not so good, apparently. Seems he date-raped a poor drunk girl who passed out in his college dorm bed. Victim went to the campus cops. They interviewed him. He was all, ‘She wanted it, she was into me, we were on a date and I bought her a nice dinner and she came to my dorm room and got naked in my bed’ and all the stuff frat boys tell themselves to justify their behavior. Of course, that was not consistent with any of the evidence, including vaginal bruising and her contemporaneous past statements to friends about not wanting to have sex with the guy. Chip’s mother paid the girl’s family off with a lot of money to keep her quiet. She transferred to another school. David never knew. Chip met his wife in grad school, so she has no idea this ever happened. Police reports, NDA with the victim, everything’s here.”
“Rapist,” Benny wrote. “Lovely family. And I’m adding his mother up here—Liar and Briber. One more?”
“Yup,” Nora said, “Jeffey the jet-setter.” She read for a bit before looking up. “Oh, I really thought his would be sex, drugs, rock and roll, and being pissed at daddy. Turns out it’s Chinese intelligence. Somehow Helen got onto the fact that the Ministry of State Security—their CIA—ran an op against Jeffey. Sent a pretty young thing in on him and she got into all his devices, then exfilled a ton of company data and implanted malicious code to spy on Saugatuck. After being the love of his life for a few months, the woman vanished back to Beijing. Saugatuck found the spyware and booted the Chinese off their systems, but never figured out what was taken. And it turns out that nobody but Helen knew it was Jeffey who let the bad guys inside the castle. Her notes say he begged her to protect him from his father. And she did.”
“Chinese spy,” Benny wrote beneath Jeffey’s picture, before stepping back to look at the full board. “Wow, what a crowd you got here. Truth and transparency, my ass.”
He turned to Nora. “I gotta be honest: Your mentor Helen doesn’t seem like such a gentle soul. Cost her a lot of money to get all this shit. Musta been a reason. Blackmail?”
Nora shook her head. “I don’t know. Clearly there was a side to her I didn’t see, but I still don’t think she was some kind of evil blackmailer. My guess? It was somehow about protecting her people, which was always her thing. You mess with one of hers, she’ll hurt you.”
“Maybe,” Benny said, “but it doesn’t exactly explain why she had one on you and Rob, who were clearly in the ‘her people’ category.”
He turned back to point at the board. “Either way, in this pile of bad behavior is our killer. Gotta be. We just gotta figure out which one.”
Benny turned back to see Nora tilting her head. “What? I know that look.”
“Should have hit me earlier,” Nora said, “but I’m pretty sure Tracey told me there was only one file that was nearly empty—mine. All the others were loaded.”
“And so?” Benny asked.
“Probably nothing, but we’ve got two folders that have almost nothing.”
“Right, you and Rob. You thinkin’ the blind girl is messing with you somehow?”
“No, couldn’t be. It’s just that she’s a really precise person—very Saugatuck that way. So is she misremembering or am I? Or is it something else? Or maybe nothing.”
“Easy enough,” Benny said. “I’ll have a chat with her. Done. What else is buggin’ you?”
She gestured toward the board. “Nothing, except this crowd is making me miss Helen, even with everything we’ve learned about her. What a world.”
“What a world, indeed,” Benny said, “filled with motherless fucks, as you may have heard.”