“This just doesn’t make any sense!” Isobel paced the perimeter of Liz’s office. “I know Aaron thinks I’m lying, but somebody else must have called the AP.”
“It wasn’t necessarily someone from Dove & Flight,” Liz said.
Isobel paused in her perambulations. “What do you mean?”
Liz swung her booted feet down from her desk and rolled her chair forward. “Who else knew about the deal?”
“Jayla and her team. And the people at MacBride’s, of course, but it sounds like this was exactly what they were hoping to avoid.”
“Okay, what about Jayla? We know she wanted to be done with us, but she was getting pressure from above. Maybe she didn’t know another way to manage it.”
Isobel plopped down in Liz’s visitor’s chair and leaned back. “Personally, I’d love to make Jayla the bad guy, but this will probably cost them a major piece of business. What could possibly justify engineering that kind of hit for your own company?”
“Then who was it?” Liz ticked off the possibilities. “Aaron looked like someone had just groped his mother. Katrina, well, let’s just say that if she wants to sabotage the ICG takeover, there are other, more personal avenues open to her. Me? I don’t care enough. I’m out of here in a few months anyway.”
“I don’t know.” Isobel sighed and stood up again. “I think I’ll take a walk. I still can’t bring myself to follow up on those stupid press releases. You want anything from the outside world? More crackers?”
Liz held up a big box of saltines. “I’m good.”
As Isobel hustled down Lexington Avenue, welcoming the bursts of cold wind, she contemplated what Liz had said regarding Katrina. Were there really other, more personal avenues open to her? Barnaby certainly seemed to think Katrina had enough influence over her father to steer the merger back on track. But from what Katrina had told her, Isobel doubted she had her father’s ear any more than she had his respect. So maybe she had seen her opportunity to derail the merger and seized it. If it was Katrina, she had set it up neatly by assigning the phone calls to Isobel. But she couldn’t have known that Isobel would be so meticulous in her note-taking. Sooner or later, the person responsible for the AP leak would be pinpointed.
Isobel detoured over to Third Avenue, pausing to look in the window of a cheap boutique. A green flowered blouse caught her eye and she went inside to try it on.
“But if it wasn’t Katrina, who was it?” she asked her reflection.
“You need something in there?” called the clerk.
“No, thanks! Just talking to myself.”
She emerged a few moments later and draped the ill-fitting blouse over the counter.
“Sure you don’t want that?” the clerk asked. “It’s cute.”
Isobel shook her head. “No. And right now that’s just about the only thing I’m sure of.”
The clerk held the blouse under her chin, and then ducked into the fitting room. Isobel left the store and walked back over to Lexington, where she stopped at Starbucks. The fresh air and unsuccessful retail therapy had done little to unfog her brain; it was time for the heavy artillery. Armed with a tall house blend, and unable to think of any more distractions, Isobel gave up and returned to the office. She set her coffee on her desk, and then followed the hall to the coat closet. As she approached, she became aware of raised voices behind Kit Blanchard’s half-closed door.
“How could you do this to me?”
Isobel paused to listen.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Kit snapped.
“Nothing to do…” Aaron’s voice quivered with disbelief. “Do you have any idea what this means?”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little melodramatic?”
“I’ll tell—” Aaron said.
“No, you won’t.”
“I trusted you,” Aaron said, his voice breaking. “I thought you…I thought we were…”
“Done, Aaron. We’re done,” Kit said.
Isobel heard the door creak open, and she quickly hid in the coat closet. When she dared peek out, Aaron was slinking away, his head bowed, his hands clenched at his sides. Wilbur Freed came out of the office across from Kit’s and followed him. Had Wilbur been delivering magazines or eavesdropping? She wondered what he’d made of the argument. There was no question in Isobel’s mind what it meant: Kit and Aaron’s affair had been more than just rumor, and now it was over. Poor Aaron. One look at Kit, and he should have known how it would end.
Isobel was so preoccupied as she walked back to her desk that she missed her mouth while trying to sip her coffee. She cursed as it trickled down the front of her sweater, and continued straight to the kitchen. She was blotting the spilled coffee with a napkin when she heard Katrina behind her.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Isobel gestured to her chest. “Apparently I have a drinking problem.”
Katrina ignored the joke, a grave expression on her face. “Tell me exactly what he said.”
“Who?”
“The AP reporter. What were his exact words when you called?”
Isobel set her Starbucks cup down and sat at the table, stretching her legs out. “I never reached him. Didn’t Aaron and Liz tell you? After you left, I showed them my press list. I never got him on the phone. It wasn’t me.”
Katrina pulled out a chair and joined her. “I had a feeling it was something like that.”
“You did?”
“I know you pretty well. And I know you know how to stick to a script, which is why I gave you one.”
Isobel rolled her napkin into a ball and tossed it aside. “What are you getting at?”
“Somebody tipped off the AP guy, right?”
“Right.”
“And what was the result?”
“Schumann’s deal with MacBride’s is off.”
“But more importantly…”
“Dove & Flight’s merger with ICG is off,” Isobel said.
Katrina waggled a hand from side to side. “At best, it’s in jeopardy, and at worst, it’s off. So who was most upset about selling the company?”
Isobel looked at her squarely. “You.”
Katrina waved her off. “It’s easy for me. I don’t want to work for my father? I get a new job. But who is fully and personally invested in keeping Dove & Flight independent? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not Barnaby.”
“Angus?” Isobel blinked in surprise. “Did he even know about the MacBride’s deal?”
“Of course,” said Katrina. “Who do you think brought it in? Those Scots stick together. And he was working on it with Jason before he died.”
Isobel rotated her coffee cup absently. “I got the impression Angus just sat in his office and…” Took his meds, she filled in silently.
“No, he works. Not a lot, but he’s one of the grand old minds of PR, and he still gets brought in on top deals.”
Isobel had to admit it made sense. Nobody was more invested in seeing ICG’s acquisition of Dove & Flight fail than Angus Dove.
“So you think Angus tipped off the reporter?” Isobel asked.
Katrina shrugged. “Who else could it have been?”
“But how could he have known we’d be making calls yesterday?”
Katrina wound a stray lock of hair around her finger. “I think that was coincidental. All he needed to know was the basic timing of the deal. Either Jason gave him the rollout before he died, or Angus called Jim MacBride to confirm it.”
Isobel shook her head emphatically. “No, he must have known. If he had called on a random day, then everyone would be buzzing, wondering who had made the call. Better to wait until someone else could take the fall for it. It couldn’t have worked out better. Easy enough to blame the stupid temp.”
“Except that you’re still here,” Katrina said.
“Only because I showed Aaron and Liz my notes. They saw I hadn’t reached the AP reporter.”
“Do you think one of them went upstairs to defend you?” Katrina scoffed. “I doubt it.”
“But Barnaby—”
“Barnaby assumes it’s one of us, and he’s probably up there right now trying to decide who to sack.”
Isobel regarded Katrina for a moment. “How far do you think Angus would be willing to go to protect the company?”
Katrina frowned. “What do you mean?”
Isobel dropped her voice to a whisper. “What if Jason didn’t have a heart attack? What if I told you he was poisoned with the same medicine Angus takes for his heart condition?”
Katrina let out a long, deep breath. “How did you find that out?”
“The other day when I wasn’t here, I was actually temping at the Office of the City Medical Examiner. I happened to see his file.” Isobel’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t seem all that surprised.”
Katrina shook her head slowly. “I just—I never really believed Jason had a heart attack.”
Isobel drummed her fingers on the table. “The only thing is, the coffee I served him was clean, so unless they met before work or something—”
Katrina’s hand flew to her mouth. “They did! The morning he died, Jason met Angus for coffee at Starbucks before coming here.”
Isobel felt her temples tingle. “How do you know?”
“I saw them together. So did Penny and Dorothy, for that matter.”
“Which Starbucks?” Isobel asked stupidly.
“The one around the corner on Lex.” Katrina stood up and indicated the Starbucks cup in front of Isobel. “ So you might want to switch back to the house brew.”