She gave a slight giggle and said, “I’ll have to take the fifth.”
I wasn’t sure how to interpret that, so I just assumed it meant that she was crazy about me, and I took a seat on the forest-green leather sofa across from her desk. Looking around the lobby, I could see that while Chaney and Cox might be a fairly small firm, it was definitely a prosperous one. The walls in the reception area were all dark-paneled oak, the beige-colored carpeting was rich and deep, and the artwork looked both expensive and original. Melanie, for that was the name on the plaque in front of her desk, fit right in with the surroundings. Tall and slender, long blonde hair, artfully-applied makeup, a tan two-piece suit with white, open-necked blouse, gold necklace and earrings, and, I would be willing to bet, the legs to match the rest of the look.
Ten minutes went by. I assumed that the purpose of the wait was to impress upon me that Mssrs. Chaney and Cox were far too important and busy to manage to be on time for little old me. I didn’t mind. I was looking at Melanie. If you’re going to try to make a man impatient by forcing him to cool his heels in your lobby for ten minutes, putting him in there with Melanie pretty much defeats the purpose. Finally, the phone on her desk rang, and she got up and walked down the hall behind her desk. I was right about the legs. She returned within thirty seconds and asked if I would follow her to Mr. Chaney’s office.
“Even if it’s at the ends of the Earth, Melanie,” I told her.
“It won’t be that long a trip,” she said, but I’m almost sure I noticed a twinkle in her eye as she spoke.
The hallway was a long one, with several doors along the way on both sides. Melanie seemed to be putting a little something extra into her walk as we made our way towards the two doors at the end. The door on the right had a gold plaque that said “Mr. Cox.” The door on the left had a similar plaque that said “Mr. Chaney.” Melanie opened the door on the left and motioned for me to go inside. As I passed her, I whispered, “I won’t tell the big cheeses about us yet. It’s too early in the relationship.” She didn’t say anything, but I believe I detected a bit of color in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. Some days I’m just irresistible.
The office was huge. Two of the walls were all glass, with breathtaking views of both the downtown area and, in the distance, Mount Washington. Many years ago, a developer wanted to put a nine-story apartment building up there, but the city had an ordinance banning multi-story structures on the hilltop. The developer got around the problem by putting up a two-story building with seven sub-basements that cascaded down along the mountain below. The idea caught on, and now Mount Washington is dotted with expensive condominiums and restaurants and homes that drape down over the hillside like so much urban ivy.
Directly ahead of me was a massive desk with one of those banker’s lamps with the green lampshade. To the left, right inside the door, was a small wet bar, and further along was a large sitting area with a sofa identical to the one in the lobby, two matching chairs and a substantial-looking coffee table. There were also various lamps and artwork scattered around the place, with the overall impression being one of subdued wealth and elegance. I was impressed, which, of course, was the idea. I assumed that Mr. Cox’s office would be a mirror image of this one.
Two gentlemen in their mid-sixties were standing in front of the desk as I entered. They were both wearing dark-colored, expensive-looking suits. One of the men, the taller of the two, approached me with his hand out.
“Mr. Barnes, so good to meet you. I’m Elias Chaney, and this is my partner, William Cox.”
We all shook hands and then moved over to the sitting area. The partners sat at opposite ends of the sofa, so I made myself comfortable in one of the chairs. Chaney was about my height but very thin, whereas Cox was maybe 5’9” tall and carrying about twenty pounds more than he needed.
“May we offer you some refreshment, Mr. Barnes?” asked Chaney. “Melanie can bring some coffee or tea, if you’d like.”
As much as I enjoyed the idea of seeing Melanie again so soon, I declined.
“Well, then,” said Chaney, “what can we do for you, Mr. Barnes?”
“I’m not sure,” I told him. “I’m looking into the death of Terry Pendleton, and at the moment, I’m just trying to gather information.”
“When you called last week to make this appointment, you mentioned that you were working for Terry’s wife. Do you mind my asking why Mrs. Pendleton felt it necessary to hire a private investigator?”
“She’s got some reservations about the official police version of the manner in which her husband died,” I said.
“I’m not sure we understand,” said Chaney. I assumed Cox could speak, but so far I had no strong evidence of that. Even when we’d shook hands, he’d just murmured hello.
“Mrs. Pendleton says that her husband would never have tried to fight off a mugger, that he would have just given his money to the guy.”
“Well,” said Cox, who apparently could speak for himself, “who knows how one will react when faced with a crisis situation.”
“Who knows, indeed,” I said, “although Mrs. Pendleton was pretty firm on that point. Another thing that troubled her was the fact that her husband was expecting to be made a partner in the firm pretty soon, so why risk his life for the few bucks he had on him that morning.”
The two looked at each other.
“Partner?” said Chaney. “Whatever gave her the idea that Terry was to be made a partner in the near future?”
“The night before he died, he told her that he’d met with you gentlemen that day, and he thought a partnership tender was in the offing. Are you saying that wasn’t the case?”
Chaney straightened the crease in his pants and said, “Mr. Barnes, Terry had been with us for just a few years. He may very well have achieved partner status someday, but not just yet.”
“Hmmm,” I said, “why would he tell his wife he thought he was on the fast track if he wasn’t?”
“I assure you,” said Chaney, “we have no idea.” Then, after a pause, he added, “Sometimes, the associates have exaggerated opinions of their worth to the firm.”
“Okay, let’s try something else. What kind of work did Pendleton do for you?”
“Oh,” said Cox, “the same as most of the junior associates. Mostly contracts and mortgages for development deals here in the Golden Triangle area.”
“Any problems with any of that? Anybody who maybe was upset with Terry because of some trouble with a mortgage?”
“I can’t imagine how,” said Chaney. “The banks approve the mortgages and set the terms. We simply make sure that everything is in the proper form, all the legalese, you know.”
I suspected there was more to their jobs than that, but I didn’t pursue it.
“What about an angry client, someone who’d lost a court case and blamed Terry?”
“Court?” said Chaney, with a frown. “Terry never went into court, Mr. Barnes. Chaney and Cox isn’t that type of law firm.”
He said “court” as though it were a place where one would be likely to contract a variety of venereal diseases.
“Terry get along all right with everyone here?” I asked.
Chaney smiled and said, “Here at Chaney and Cox, we pride ourselves on our nurturing and supportive work environment.”
“Mind if I talk to a few of Terry’s former colleagues before I go?”
Chaney hesitated, and then said, “By all means, Mr. Barnes, do what you think is necessary. However, I would ask that you be brief, and that you try to handle the situation with the delicacy it deserves. Terry’s death came as a shock to all of us.”
I assured him that I would be as delicate as possible, and then we all shook hands again, and as Chaney walked me to the door, I heard Cox say into the phone, “Melanie, please give Mr. Barnes whatever assistance he requires.”
As I walked back down the hall, I allowed myself the pleasure of speculating upon several of the more imaginative interpretations o
f that directive.
Chapter 14
When I got back to Melanie’s desk, I gave her my medium-to-high-wattage smile. I would have gone up a notch, but there was no need to have her disrobe right there in the lobby.
“Okay, Melanie,” I said. “You heard the man. I require assistance.”
“You certainly would appear to,” she replied, but, again, the twinkle in the eye. “What can I do for you, Mr. Barnes?”
“First, call me Jeremy. Second, who were Terry Pendleton’s closest friends here?”
She cocked her head to one side and then said, “I don’t know how close a friendship they had, but Mr. Pendleton and Mr. McKenzie sometimes went out to lunch together.”
“Is Mr. McKenzie in?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, no, he isn’t,” she said. “He’s meeting with a client this morning, and this afternoon he has two closings at a bank on the North Side.”
“What about someone who worked with Terry recently, someone he would have spent some time with here at the office?”
“Oh,” she said, “that would be Ms. Richardson. She and Mr. Pendleton were working on a big development project together, some kind of shopping mall on the old Gimbel’s site.”
“Any chance Ms. Richardson is in?”
“She came in just a few minutes ago. Let me give her a buzz.”
I stood by Melanie’s desk and managed not to look down her blouse while she called Ms. Richardson. A steely will, is all it takes.
Hanging up the phone, Melanie looked up at me and said, “She’ll be right out.”
I frowned and said, “I was kind of hoping for another ten-minute wait. I think we’re ready to take our friendship to the next level.”
“As much fun as I think that would be,” she said, “I fear it would be looked upon with a certain degree of disapproval by my boyfriend.”
I grimaced and said, “The story of my life. Always a bridesmaid.”
At that point, the door closest to Melanie’s desk on the left side of the hallway opened, and a stunning-looking woman in her early thirties walked out and extended her hand.
“Mr. Barnes? Hello, I’m Sandra Richardson. Please come into my office.”
As I walked by her desk, I looked at Melanie and raised my eyebrows. She just smiled and shook her head.
Sandra Richardson was model-tall, probably 5’10”, with medium-length reddish hair, green eyes, and, with apologies to Nicole Kidman, a body to die for. She was wearing a short brown skirt with matching fitted jacket, pale yellow silk blouse, understated but obviously expensive gold jewelry, and high-heeled pumps the color of her suit. After I followed her into her office, she closed the door and motioned for me to have a seat in one of the two wing chairs in front of her desk. I expected her to walk around and sit behind the desk; instead, she sat down in the other wing chair and crossed her legs, causing her skirt to ride several inches up her thigh. I did not disapprove.
“I know this is going to sound sexist as all get out,” I said, “but based on my admittedly limited exposure to this law firm, I think I know at least some of the criteria the partners use when hiring female employees.”
She smiled and said, “I graduated first in my class from Cornell law school, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Chaney hired me over the phone.”
“Then he and Mr. Cox are to be applauded for their willingness to hire talent for talent’s sake, and for their good fortune in acquiring the beauty that occasionally accompanies that talent.”
She nodded and asked, “What can I do for you, Mr. Barnes?”
“I’m a private investigator. Rachel Pendleton hired me to look into her husband’s death.”
“Oh, my,” she said. “I assumed you were, well, a normal client.”
“I’m not a client,” I told her, “and there are those who would tell you the jury’s still out on that normal thing, too.”
She smiled again before saying, “I’m a little confused here, on several fronts. I thought Terry was shot by a mugger, so why would his wife hire a private detective? And how could I possibly be of any help to you?”
“Mrs. Pendleton thinks it’s possible Terry’s murder wasn’t just a botched mugging. She says there’s no way Terry would have done anything but hand over his money.”
She thought about that for a moment and then said, “His wife would know Terry far better than I, of course, but that sounds right to me.”
She shifted in her seat and crossed her legs the other way.
“Look, Mr. Barnes – ”
“Jeremy.”
“Jeremy. I didn’t know Terry all that well, but we did work together on a project over the past few weeks, which meant we spent a fair amount of time in each other’s company, and I do recall him saying something about life being too short to screw up your odds by taking unnecessary risks.”
“So he wasn’t a risk-taker,” I said.
There was a brief hesitation before she replied.
“Not in that sense, no.”
“Not in that sense,” I repeated.
She was quiet for a minute.
“Jeremy, I have a lot of work to do, and, frankly, there are some things I don’t feel comfortable discussing in the office. I’m going to be here until about six o’clock tonight, and then I’m going to grab a light supper at Station Square. Would you care to join me?”
“I’d love to,” I said.
She gave me the name of the restaurant where I could meet her at six-thirty, and then she walked me to her office door and shook my hand again.
As I waited for the elevator in the reception area, I looked at Melanie and said, “When you think of me, and you will, all I ask is that you remember the good times.”
The elevator arrived, and as I stepped inside, Melanie said, “Jeremy?”
I held the doors open and looked at her.
“My boyfriend’s a pretty good guy, and I don’t expect this to happen, but if he ever does anything stupid, well, I’ll keep you in mind.”
As the elevator doors closed, I gave her the full-power smile. She would just have to hope that nobody wandered by and saw her sans clothes.
Chapter 15
It was just a little after ten when I walked out of the building housing the offices of Chaney and Cox. I needed to think, and doing it while walking around the downtown area was as appealing to me as anything else I could think of at the moment. Although I enjoy being out in the country, I’m a city boy at heart. No one knows better than I that the future is, at best, a picture waiting to be developed, but one of the few things that I do believe with a strong degree of certainty is that I will always reside in or near a fairly large urban area. I love visiting small towns in New England and vacationing on exotic islands and communing with nature deep in the forest primeval, but always in short bursts, never more than several days or, at most, a week at a time. Then I have to get back to civilization, back to someplace that feels more alive to me. I know Pittsburgh hardly qualifies as a world-class city, not when the downtown area pretty much shuts down after nine or so most weeknights, but it works for me. We have good college and pro sports franchises, excellent live theater, great museums, tons of ethnic neighborhoods, each with a flourishing number of dining establishments, a civic commitment to maintaining a balance between urban sprawl and local greenery, and, most important, the city is large enough that it provides room for several hours of walking, but not so huge that it simply overwhelms you.
As I wandered past the storefronts and theaters and restaurants on Penn Avenue, I thought about my meeting with Chaney and Cox. On the surface, they’d been cooperative and forthcoming, yet when you got right down to it, they really hadn’t told me much. The main thing I’d learned from the session was that, according to them, there had been no partnership on the immediate horizon for Terry Pendleton. If that was so, then what to make of his wife’s assertion that Terry had said he was expecting to be made a partner, and soon. I couldn’t think of a reason why Rachel Pendleton would have made that st
ory up, nor could I think of a reason why her husband would have lied to her about it. I mean, if he had been lying, it would have become pretty obvious once the partnership didn’t materialize. So if Rachel wasn’t lying, and Terry hadn’t lied, I was left with Elias and William. Why would they lie to me? For that matter, why would anyone lie to me? You’d think that my smile alone would encourage total honesty from all who encountered it. Sadly, such was not the case. There was something else, too. Too many of the responses I’d gotten from Chaney and Cox had been preceded by a quick glance from one to the other, as though they were agreeing on an answer. That bothered me.
Around noon, I grabbed a hot dog and a Coke from a hole-in-the-wall joint near the city-county building, then walked back to the garage where I’d left the 4Runner, paid the king’s ransom demanded of me to rescue my vehicle, and drove home. Along the way, my thoughts turned to Melanie and Sandra. My initial reaction to both of them had been to notice their physical appearance. Did that make me a chauvinist? If so, I was probably one for life, because I doubted the time would ever come when I wasn’t instantly aware of a beautiful woman in my presence. I deplore discrimination in any form, but if I believe that a woman should have the same opportunity as a man to be, say, the CEO of a large corporation, is that belief mutually exclusive of my also noticing that that same woman has a nice figure as she chairs the annual stockholders’ meeting? I’m just not sure what I think about this issue, or even if I know what I should think about it. I asked Angie once if noticing pretty women made me a sexist, and she said no, it made me a man. Then she added that she always notices good-looking guys, so she figured whatever label applied to me, it probably covered her as well.
I pulled into my garage without having resolved the problem, and so I decided to put it aside for a while. Maybe tomorrow, I’d buy one of those ubiquitous self-improvement books that seem to litter the best-seller lists, and, in a burst of self-actualization or something, I’d somehow manage to raise my intellectual awareness to the level required to fully comprehend the various subtleties involved in relationships, vis-a-vis the genders of the human race. But first, I had birds’ nests issues.
Small Bytes Page 6
