Dead File

by Kelly Lange

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

* The Reporter, Kelly Lange's most recent novel, was published in Mysterious Press hardcover in 3/02 and is a Featured Alternate of The Mystery Guild(R). It will be published in Warner paperback in 4/03. * Lange is also the author of Gossip (1998) and Trophy Wife (1996), published by Simon & Schuster. A well-known television anchor-reporter in Los Angeles, Lange is the recipient of numerous honors. * Lange's protagonist is engaging and outrageous, and fans of Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, and Lauren Henderson will welcome another contender to the mystery shelves.

Release date: February 28, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 330

Sample

1

Max, I found a new ‘miracle pill,’” Wendy Harris said to Maxi Poole, holding up a white plastic container of dietary supplements. “Check this out—Zenatrex.”

“What does it do?” Maxi asked her.

“Cuts your appetite.” Wendy was a believer.

Wendy tossed the bottle of tablets over to Maxi. The two journalists were sitting across from each other in the newsroom at L.A.’s Channel Six in Burbank, during a rare lull in the usual bedlam that passed for business as usual. Maxi Poole—thirty-two years old, tall, angular, outdoor-girl fresh with short-cropped blond hair—was the station’s highly rated anchor-reporter. Wendy Harris—thirty, pert, diminutive, with a mane of willful red hair and a sprinkle of freckles across her nose—was Maxi’s longtime producer and close friend.

“Just what you need, Wen, an appetite suppressant,” Maxi commented dryly, examining the container in her hand. Usually without bothering to leave her desk, Wendy might consume two shrimp with a wedge of lemon and call it lunch, or a cup of steamed rice with soy sauce and call it dinner.

Maxi unscrewed the cap and peered inside at the large brown tablets. “Whew!” she breathed, wrinkling up her nose. “This stuff stinks.”

Wendy laughed. “Yah, the smell alone’s enough to kill your appetite—you don’t have to bother taking the pills.”

Maxi read from the label. “Guarana extract, white willow bark, citrus aurantium, magnesium phosphate, ginger powder—”

“No ephedrine. That’s the killer. Nothing terrible in it,” Wendy interrupted. “And it works.”

“How do you know it works?”

“I took one this morning with a cup of tea, and now I’m full.”

“Placebo effect,” Maxi pronounced.

“See, that’s fine with me,” Wendy countered, flashing the signature grin that reflected mischief in her eyes. “If it fools me into thinking I’m not hungry, then it works for me.”

“Wendy, you eat zip as it is,” Maxi said, glancing at her friend’s petite frame.

“Yeah, but I want to eat the world. This stuff makes me not crave three jelly doughnuts on a coffee break. Especially this time of year, when everybody’s bringing in cholesterol-packed Christmas goodies.”

It was mid-December. Christmas in Southern California meant no ice, no snow, no freezing cold, but Yuletide music, gaudy decorations, and loads of food.

Wendy came from a family that made food an art form. Her dad was Tommy Harris, owner of Tommy’s Joynt, the world-famous San Francisco rathskeller on the corner of Geary and Van Ness Avenue in the city by the bay. All through her growing-up years, Wendy endured her ebullient Jewish mom and dad urging, “Eat, Wendy, eat.” Until she ended up with—her term—a “humongous fear of food.”

For Maxi’s part, her father was a pharmacist who put in long hours navigating the small East Coast chain of drugstores he owned and had never been concerned with dinner being on the table at any special time, and her mother was a dance instructor who still maintained her dancer’s lean body. Except on holidays, food was never much of an issue with the Pooles, and in fact nobody in the family was a particularly good cook, Maxi included. They joked about that. Takeout, both plain and fancy, had always been king at their New York brownstone.

Maxi twisted the cap back on the container of Zenatrex and handed it back to Wendy, who set it on her desk in line with an army of other bottles and jars labeled GINKGO BILOBA, DHEA, ST.JOHN’S WORT, MELATONIN, MILK THISTLE, GINSENG GOLD, SLO NIACIN, ECHINACEA & GOLDENSEAL, GLUCOSAMINE & CHONDROITIN, NATURAL ZINC, CHROMIUM PICOLINATE, and a dozen or so other purported health monikers.

Rob Reordan, L.A.’s longtime anchor patriarch who co-anchored the Six and the Eleven O’clock News at Channel Six, ambled down the aisle toward them. Peering down his nose with a look of disapproval at the vitamins and supplements Wendy was now doling out into her palm, he intoned in his resonant anchor voice that was familiar to all of Southern California, “Is there anything you don’t take, Wendy?”

“Yah, Rob,” Wendy flipped back. “Viagra.”

Rob sniffed, tossing his generous head of white hair, and kept walking.

“Not nice,” Maxi scolded, stifling a giggle.

“Oh, please!” Wendy blurted, rolling her eyes. “Eighty-something, and he’s even more of a horn-dog since Pfizer foisted Viagra on the world.”

“You don’t know that he takes Viagra—”

“The whole newsroom knows he takes Viagra.”

“That’s gossip.”

“Nope, that’s Rob bragging to Laurel.” Laurel Baker was a handsome, savvy, cynical, fortyish reporter who had become the object of Rob Reordan’s romantic quest since he’d recently divorced his fourth wife. Laurel’s response fell somewhere between disgust and disdain.

“Laurel told you that?” Maxi asked.

“Laurel told everyone that. She might as well have posted it on the computer bulletin board.”

“Doesn’t Rob know that if he actually did get involved with Laurel, she’d chew him up and spit him out to the coyotes in her canyon?”

“Doesn’t stop him.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s his nature.”

“Which reminds me, did you hear the one about the black widow spider?” Wendy asked, the impetuous grin lighting up her face again.

“No, but I’m about to, right?”

“Well, you know the black widow spider has sex with her mate, then she kills him.…”

“Yup—that’s why she’s called the black widow.”

“Right. So imagine this conversation. The male spider says, ‘Uhh … let me get this straight. We’re gonna have sex, then you’re gonna kill me?’ And the female flutters her spidery eyelashes and purrs, ‘That’s right. It’s my nature.’ So the male spider thinks about it for a beat, then turns to her and says, ‘But we are gonna have sex, right?’ Well, that’s Rob.”

Maxi laughed. “It’s his nature,” she reiterated.

“The man can’t help it. Meantime, each of his wives made a baby or two, then split and took half his money. Which leaves Rob with seven kids, more than a dozen grandchildren, and about eight dollars a month left over after living expenses, taxes, agents’ fees, alimony, child support, college payments, new cars for the kids’ graduations, et cetera, et cetera. Rob’s gonna have to work till he’s dead just to make his personal nut.”

“And now he wants Laurel, the original black widow spider,” Maxi said thoughtfully. “Men like Rob never learn. It’s about their egos.”

“It’s about their dicks,” Wendy shot back.

Maxi laughed. Wendy Harris was one of the few women Maxi knew who professed to actually understand men, and for Wendy, the explanation of all things male was simple. Not so for

Maxi, who made no claims to fathoming the complexities of the male gender. Maybe someday, she thought, idly rubbing both her shoulders with opposite hands.

“Oh-oh, you’ve been lifting again,” Wendy accused solicitously, watching Maxi knead her upper arms. “Are you supposed to be lifting weights this soon after surgery?”

Maxi had been badly injured not long before on a story that had turned deadly, and she was only a few weeks out of the hospital; she probably wasn’t supposed to be lifting weights so soon, she knew. “I’m not supposed to be doing a lot of things,” she said. “Neither are you, Wendy, now that you bring up the subject.”

“What did I do?” Wendy protested.

“How about beating up on poor Riley just because he didn’t get a crew to that second-rate garage fire in Pasadena before Channel Seven got there?”

“Really. Tell me, how am I supposed to beat up an assignment editor who’s six-foot-four and weighs two hundred and forty pounds?” Wendy was four-foot-eleven and weighed ninety pounds.

“Oh, you beat him up, all right,” Maxi reprimanded, smiling. “You beat him up verbally, mentally, emotionally, and bad. Now, unlike Rob Reordan, whom you’ve just informed me is our Channel Six Viagra poster boy, Riley will probably never be able to get it up again in this lifetime.”

“If he ever did,” Wendy tossed out of the side of her mouth.

Wendy didn’t hate men, she just loved news, and she had a passion for getting it right. She always got it right, and she had a very low level of tolerance, or even understanding, for anyone in the news business who didn’t always get it right. Which, of course, applied to every other mortal in the business at some time or other. Her ire was usually explosive, but fortunately it was never lasting. Still, it could have a lasting effect on the meek. But then, the television news business was not for the meek—only the tough survived for the duration.

A tinny ding-ding-ding-ding sounded through the newsroom, and both women’s eyes immediately dropped to their computer terminals as, simultaneously, their fingers clicked on the wires. An URGENT banner scrolled across the top of the Associated Press file, followed by a story that was in the process of painting itself in print across their screens.

“Jeez,” Wendy exhaled. “Gillian Rose—dead!” Gillian Rose of Rose International, the country’s largest manufacturer of vitamins, supplements, and health foods, headquartered in Los Angeles.

Both women cast an inadvertent glance at the lineup of vitamins and supplements on Wendy’s desk, most of which bore the familiar red-rose logo of Rose International on their labels.

Within seconds, a walla-walla of excited talk erupted in the newsroom, and managing editor Pete Capra came bounding out of his glass-enclosed office and leaped up on top of the desk nearest his door, scattering files and papers and startling the reporter who happened to be sitting there—no mean feat for a burly Sicilian who was fifty-something, who’d never grasped the concept of regular exercise, who cooked gourmet Italian for his family and ate most of it himself, washed it down with cases of Chianti, and chain-smoked Marlboros when he wasn’t in one of his “I quit” phases, during which he was unfailingly, insufferably, cranky. Nonetheless, leaping up on a desk and barking orders was Capra’s MO whenever a huge breaker hit the wires.

“Riley, get a crew down to Rose International,” he roared, pointing at the assignment desk. “Maxi, you roll with the crew. Simms, Hinkle, hand off whatever you’re working on and get on the horn—I want us all over this, now.”

Maxi waited a few seconds until the story finished scrolling, clicked on the PRINT button, grabbed her purse, and headed for the elevators, stopping only to snatch the story off the nearby printer she’d directed it to as she scooted by.

Her crew, in the person of cameraman Rodger Harbaugh, was already waiting in front of the artists’ entrance when she got there, in the driver’s seat of a big blue Channel Six News van, motor running, passenger door open for her. Maxi jumped in, yanked the door shut, and buckled up as Rodger slammed the bulky truck into gear and rolled toward the station’s exit gates.

“What do you think’s fastest?” Rodger asked. He knew, of course, but had the courtesy to consult with his reporter on the route they’d take. Rodger Harbaugh was in his late forties, medium height, medium build, dark hair beginning to thin on top, and a face liberally creased with sun and laugh lines. He was a toughened veteran of the L.A. news beat—fast, efficient, a man of few words, even-tempered in the clutch, and he always got the shots.

“I’d go up over Barham and south on the Hollywood Freeway—inbound shouldn’t be too heavy right now,” Maxi answered.

She liked working with Harbaugh. She especially liked what he was not: He was not a totally self-absorbed alpha dog, which prototype, she knew from long experience, was legion among competing shooters out on the street every day in the frenetic L.A. news “gang bang.”

As the unwieldy van hurtled at seventy miles an hour on the freeway toward downtown Los Angeles, she clung to the grip bar while scanning the AP wire story she clutched in her other hand.

Gillian Rose had been found dead on the floor of her office, the copy said, in the glass-and-steel high-rise that housed the billion-dollar business she’d created and built with her husband. Gillian’s body had been discovered at 1:36 P.M.—a little more than twenty minutes ago, Maxi noted, glancing at her watch. Besides the usual police personnel, detectives from the LAPD’s elite Robbery-Homicide Division had already arrived at the scene—a tip-off that foul play hadn’t been ruled out.

The victim’s longtime assistant, Sandie Schaeffer, had come back from lunch and found her body, the story said. In a preliminary report, none of the several employees in proximity who were questioned saw or heard anything unusual. The deceased’s husband, the powerful Carter Rose, who had a suite of offices adjoining Gillian’s on the penthouse floor of the Rose building, was currently away on business in Taiwan.

“What do you know about Carter Rose?” Maxi asked her cameraman.

“Not much,” Rodger said.

“Me either.”

As Maxi reflected on the fabulous Roses, she realized that while there often seemed to be a swirl of publicity revolving around Gillian Rose, very little was reported, written, or even spoken about Carter Rose. Touted as the business genius of the operation, he put up a very private front, leaving publicity and newsmaking to his stunning and articulate wife. And now, Maxi thought ironically, Gillian Rose had taken the spotlight again.

2

Kendyl Scott’s beautiful eyes narrowed as she looked up to see her co-worker, Sandie Schaeffer, appear in the doorway to her office. Kendyl was Carter Rose’s personal assistant, had been since the company started eight years before. Statuesque, with burnished skin the color of rich molasses and dark ebony hair drawn into a sleek knot at the nape of her neck, she was head-turning gorgeous. For eight years she’d protected Carter Rose and his inner sanctum with proprietary fervor, like the mythical Cerberus guarding the entrance to Hades.

And for nearly eight years, she’d been sleeping with him.

Sandie Schaeffer, the personal assistant of Carter Rose’s now dead wife, was blond, sweetly pretty, five-foot-six, curvy, and quietly efficient. She, too, had been with the company since its inception. There had always been an unspoken air of rivalry between Kendyl and Sandie, heightened for Kendyl when she recently began to suspect that Carter Rose was also sleeping with Sandie.

Kendyl looked at the other woman without a smile and raised her eyebrows quizzically.

“Does he know?” Sandie asked.

“He knows.”

“And … ?”

“And he’s coming home.”

“Did he get a chance to meet with Chen Shui-bian?” Chen was the new president of Taiwan, and Rose had gone to Taipei for meetings to initiate distribution of Rose International products in that country.

“Of course not. He’s only been there a few hours.”

“When will he get back here?”

“I’m not sure,” Kendyl said with a hard look, which was code for I’m not telling you. It was not for any pressing reason that she withheld information from Sandie other than that from long habit, neither woman would easily give up a whit of control to the other. And Sandie knew the code; she knew there was no way she was going to get anything more out of Kendyl. She turned abruptly and exited the suite.

Kendyl resumed fielding phone calls—people reacting to the shocking news of Gillian Rose’s death, which was just getting out on radio and television.

When the police talked to her after Gillian’s body was found, she gave them Carter’s cell-phone number and one of the detectives called him at once, used the phone on her desk to do it. Kendyl heard only the officer’s side of the conversation. Heard him telling Carter that his wife was dead. Heard the questions he asked, could not hear Carter’s answers. When the officer was finished, he handed the receiver to Kendyl. “He wants to talk to you,” he’d said.

Carter sounded stricken. He asked her what she knew about what happened. Nothing, she told him. He asked her to make a return flight reservation for him immediately. She did. He was in the air now, and she’d scheduled a car to pick him up at 5 A.M. tomorrow at LAX. She would accompany the driver out to the airport to pick up her boss. Her lover.

Lowering her eyes, she allowed herself a hint of a smile. Now that Gillian was dead, Carter Rose was going to be her husband. That was her plan.

3

As the Channel Six News van screeched to a halt outside the Rose building at Number One Wilshire in downtown Los Angeles, members of the press had already begun to gather around the entrance, dragging cable, planting lights and tripods, jockeying for prime position to shoot the comings and goings of personnel relevant to the story, and waiting for the inevitable press briefing.

The Rose building boasted twenty-six floors of prestigious office space in the heart of downtown, nine floors of which, the ground floor and the top eight, housed the offices, showrooms, conference rooms, and laboratories of Rose International. While Rodger Harbaugh hauled equipment out of the back of the van to set up, Maxi whispered in his ear, then quickly slipped around the building to the underground garage entrance.

She’d known Gillian Rose, had interviewed her several times for stories on the couple’s business, their political activism, their philanthropy. She’d been to some of the lavish charity dinner parties the Roses had held at their Beverly Hills home, and she’d lunched with Gillian a few times when their schedules jibed. She’d never completely warmed to the woman, Maxi reflected as she darted between the phalanx of cars, trucks, SUVs, and such lined up in the dark parking structure. It wasn’t that she’d disliked Gillian Rose, she’d just never counted her as a friend. Theirs had been a symbiotic relationship: For Maxi, the powerful businesswoman was a valuable contact; for Gillian, Maxi Poole was an effective conduit to the press.

Gillian had once given her the code to the building’s back elevator, which was tucked in a corner at the far end of the parking structure on the street floor, an express that soared nonstop to the penthouse. Back then, Maxi and crew had come to Gillian’s office to get a quick sound bite from her on a state bill to regulate dietary supplements, a bill that would greatly affect the Rose company’s business. Gillian had been rushing out to catch a plane, but it was important to her to voice her opinion on the news that night, so she’d directed the journalists to the express elevator to save time. Now, at that same elevator door, Maxi had no trouble remembering the code, because it spelled out “Rose” on the keypad: 7673. She punched in the numbers and the stainless-steel doors parted immediately and soundlessly.

There was just one button inside, labeled PH. She pushed it, and the small, darkly mirrored car whooshed upward at high speed. In seconds the doors opened, and Maxi found herself on the penthouse level, which housed the upper-echelon executive suites. As working press, she was not authorized to be there.

Maxi put one of her personal aphorisms in play: Act like you know exactly what you’re doing and people will think you know exactly what you’re doing. She walked purposefully past desks and cubicles to Gillian Rose’s suite, then brushed by the unoccupied desk of Gillian’s assistant to the open door of the inner office, blocked off, now, by a double strip of yellow crime-scene tape. Although there’d been no specific mention of it in the wire story, the police were treating this death as a crime, Maxi noted.

She peered over the tape. A few feet to the right of a broad, black slate-topped desk, the body of Gillian Rose lay crumpled on the floor, police personnel working soundlessly around it. From her vantage, Maxi could see no wounds, no blood.

Gillian was dressed in her usual style—minimal but expensive, hip but offbeat. No uptight Laura Bush–boring nubby wool designer suits for her, Gillian had joked to Maxi once; she draped her long, lean, well-toned body in simple chic. But she did wear uptown jewelry, and loads of it, important, pricey pieces. Characteristic Gillian Rose, of the understated, skintight, thigh-high little black skirts and dresses, which Maxi had always seen as simple backdrops for her opulent jewels. Now Maxi took note of the gargantuan diamond earrings, the lavish gold necklace, the slim, gemstone-encrusted bracelet guards to the diamond-studded Patek Philippe watch, and Gillian’s highly publicized ten-carat emerald dinner ring on the impeccably manicured hand that was splayed out in front of her.

Still, studying Gillian’s lifeless body now, lying on her stomach, her face turned toward the outer office doors, her eyes half open, something about her bothered Maxi. Something looked off, somehow. Out of sync with the woman’s larger-than-life public persona. What was it about Gillian Rose in death that she was missing? Maxi asked herself.

Distracted by footsteps behind her, she turned to see the coroner approaching—not one of the many medical examiners who worked in the coroner’s office, but Sam Nagataki, the Los Angeles County coroner, the top dog himself, in a well-cut black silk suit, crisp white shirt, gold cuff links, expensive shoes, designer tie. Big priority death scene, this one. There would be a lot of publicity.

As Nagataki approached the crime-scene tape, Maxi edged close to him. “Dr. Nagataki,” she whispered, “may I have just a word—”

“Not now, Maxi—you know better,” he said in terse undertones. Maxi did know better, of course, but that never stopped her from taking a shot. As Nagataki stooped under the tape, he slipped the reporter the slightest hint of a smile, which signaled to her that of course he’d talk, later. Nagataki loved the press.

Nobody had ordered Maxi out of the area yet. Act like you know exactly what you’re doing. … Would be nice if she had Rodger behind her with his camera. But then they’d both be thrown out of there for sure.

The swarm of police personnel backed off as Nagataki knelt beside the body, touching nothing, his eyes slowly scanning the inanimate form, starting at the feet: black suede four-inch Manolo Blahnik heels, the right one still on, the other kicked to the side, revealing bright red polished toenails showing through sheer, dark gray hose.

Maxi followed the doctor’s gaze as it traversed long legs that traveled up to the hem of a skimpy, black leather skirt, made even shorter because it had been forced upward underneath the body, presumably in Gillian’s fall to the floor. Then up over the tight black chenille sweater, also pushed up, displaying a couple of inches of well-tanned, perfect midriff. Nagataki’s eyes continued slowly upward to the long, slim neck, and over the expertly made-up oval-shaped face, its right cheek ground into the carpet—the face not classically beautiful, but exotically attractive. The mouth, open as if in disbelief, baring large, flawless white teeth. Bright red lipstick, still fresh. The softly rounded chin, the angular nose. The eyes . . .

The eyes! Maxi flashed. Partly open. Dusky, charcoal brown eyes. That’s what’s off! The eyes of Gillian Rose, eyes Maxi knew, eyes that for years had been photographed in newspapers and magazines, in the company’s commercials and print ads, larger than life on billboards at times. The Gillian Rose Maxi Poole and countless millions knew, or had seen pictures of, had eyes that were not dark brown—they were vivid, sparkling, cerulean blue.

A voice just behind her ear uttered a low, raspy, “Yo, Max.” She jumped and wheeled around, bumping into a grinning Rodger Harbaugh holding the big Panasonic DVCpro minicam down by his side, as if no one would notice it if it wasn’t perched on his shoulder.

“Jesus, Rodg!” she whispered. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry.” Rodger was clearly pleased with himself.

“How did you get up here?”

“I was your shooter on the supplement legislation story, remember? I watched you punch in the secret elevator code that day.”

He quickly hoisted the came. . .