Killer Deal

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  Her anger crackled across the gap between us like static electricity. It’s wrenching to be suspected of murder—been there, felt that—and I can only imagine how much more difficult it is when you have a deep emotional connection to the victim. But the statistics do bear out looking at the spouse or significant other first; they usually finish quite high in the motive-means-opportunity trifecta. But Gwen Lincoln was casting herself neither as a wounded innocent nor as a potential liar covering her tracks. She was flat-out furious.

  Not the smooth, polished beginning to the interview I’d been imagining for the last eighteen hours. I could feel the weight of my expectations, Eileen’s doubt, and Kyle’s worry sitting right on my chest, making it difficult to take a deep breath, so I sat up as straight as I could and forced myself to inhale slowly and evenly. “My understanding from Mr. Trebask was you were interested in talking to me,” I said diplomatically, not wanting the interview to evaporate before it even began.

  “Emile thinks he can take care of me. That can be highly entertaining in a man, but it can be tiresome as well,” she said. She opened a heavy silver box on the end table next to her. “Cigarette?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Mind if I do?”

  “It’s your home.”

  “That doesn’t stop people from lecturing me,” she said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it with a dramatic flourish. “Everyone thinks they know what’s best,” she said, with a chill that made me fret for anyone who tried to tell her anything at all.

  Emile Trebask chose that moment to enter, wearing crisp trousers and a perfectly pressed shirt from his new collection, with a cashmere sweater over his shoulders, frat-boy style. I wondered if he ever wore anyone else’s clothes, which then raised the question of underwear, since he didn’t design any. Not wanting to dwell on that, especially as I shook his hand, I switched to wondering if I should have put on some of his perfume. No, too calculating. And Emile was the one to leave the calculating to, as best I could tell. “Molly, thank you so very much for coming.”

  “Stop pretending any of this is voluntary, Emile,” Gwen said, blowing smoke in his direction.

  “I am so glad we have our party manners on,” he responded, arranging himself on the arm and back of her chair like the spineless cat in Peanuts. “Thank God this isn’t the story Molly came to tell.”

  “Why don’t you tell it, then, so she gets the right one?”

  There was a flash of anger in his eyes, but it vanished quickly as he leaned over and kissed her on top of the head—ever so lightly, not mussing her hair at all. “You can relax, Gwen, you’re among friends.”

  “That’s the real horror of a situation like this, you know,” she said to me with a new urgency in her voice. “I can think of better ways to learn who your real friends are. Some of mine should have been given speeding tickets for how fast they distanced themselves when Garth got himself shot.”

  An interesting way of looking at being murdered—something he’d brought upon himself through provocation or perhaps carelessness. Definitely lacked even the lawyer-recommended dose of sorrow at the passing of a spouse, estranged or not. “You feel your friends have abandoned you?”

  “They’ve given her space in which to grieve,” Emile amended.

  “Or they’ve gone out of their way to insist on my innocence to all who’ll listen.”

  “That must be comforting,” I attempted, watching Emile out of the corner of my eye. At the rate his body was stiffening, he was going to be back on his feet in moments.

  “I should be flattered that a friend is so eager to prove me innocent of murder?” Gwen’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  “What would you prefer I do?” Emile asked, standing up.

  “Have a little faith that my innocence is apparent on its own.”

  Since I’d read the police documents and knew otherwise, I withheld comment. But when the pause that followed got to be awkwardly long, I suggested, “I’d like to know about the genesis of the perfume.”

  Gwen looked away from us both again, tapping the ash off her cigarette, so I looked at Emile. “How did you two wind up business partners?”

  “Let me tell you the most frustrating part of all of this,” Gwen continued, ignoring my effort to at least raise the supposed subject of the interview. “Garth’s barely in the ground and everyone’s already forgetting what a first-class shit he was.”

  Had I known her even five minutes longer, I might have suggested it was those sorts of comments that made Emile worry about her perceived innocence or lack thereof. “I didn’t realize that was Mr. Henderson’s reputation.”

  “It wasn’t. It was his personality. His reputation was the charmer, the deal maker, the lover.” She snorted derisively and a wisp of smoke snaked out of her nose. “He thought because he could find people to hang on his every word that they were worth hanging on. He never understood that some people will do anything if you pay them enough and mistook their love of their paychecks for love of him.” She took a pensive drag on her cigarette. “Maybe some of them made the same mistake.”

  Emile sighed heavily, making sure Gwen heard it as well as I did. “Molly, it has always been a dream of mine to have a fragrance line. To complement the clothes.”

  Gwen was the one who stood now, pacing over to the marble fireplace and its stunning oil of her in a green velvet strapless Valentino ballgown, hair cascading over her bare shoulders. The picture was somewhere between a royal portrait and a Hollywood cheesecake shot. “Emile, stop conducting,” she said, grinding her cigarette out in a crystal ashtray on the mantel with such force I expected the ashtray to shatter.

  “You must get past the notion that everyone who wants to talk to you wants to talk to you about Garth.” I could hear the effort he was making to keep his voice even, but Gwen didn’t seem to notice.

  “Maybe I need to talk about Garth. Has that occurred to anyone?” I was going to be touched, but then she did this Lana Turner spin-and-lean on the mantel and I wondered if they’d rehearsed this whole scene before I arrived.

  “Fine, talk about him, darling, just make sure you work your way back around to Success when you’re done weeping.” Emile dropped into the chair she’d vacated, folded his hands, and waited.

  Had I misread this relationship? I’d honestly thought that he was looking for a soft profile to build her some goodwill, if not clear her name. Was he really more interested in the perfume than in her innocence and using her momentary infamy for his own ends? Or was this a case of her image potentially overshadowing the perfume’s? Or his? Or wasn’t this about money at all?

  “I can’t get past this on command,” she snapped.

  Emile nodded wearily—they’d had this conversation before. “You’ve forgotten that you hated him, but not that you loved him.”

  Sliding away from the mantel, she walked toward me. “You can use that if you’d like. It’s quite good.”

  Answering a summons was one thing, but I wasn’t going to take dictation. I needed to do some steering here and get this visit back on productive ground. “Not being able to forget him—do you think that will pose any difficulties when you and Mr. Willis are running the agency?”

  Emile smoothly intercepted that one. “It’s going to be a difficult transition for everyone, Garth’s top creative team most of all. They were devoted to him,” he said gently.

  “Devoted? Good Lord.” Gwen extracted another cigarette from the silver box. “It was like some sick teen fan club, I hated going over there. You expected some of those girls to walk into presentations with ‘We Love Garth’ written on their palms with ballpoint pen.”

  I did my best not to get distracted by the memories of long-lashed and deeply dimpled Brent Shaw in tenth-grade English that that image conjured up. “Who didn’t love him?”

  Emile looked at me sharply, but Gwen gave me a half-smile. “Was I supposed to be keeping a list?” she asked.

  “But you wouldn’t be on it if you did.�
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  “Didn’t I make that clear?”

  “Not completely. When Mr. Trebask said you hadn’t forgotten you loved him, you said it was a good line, not a true statement.”

  Now I got a full smile, but it was icy. “What are you implying?”

  “Nothing, except that with some people, even when they’re maddening, there’s a part of them you still care about, connect with.”

  Gwen dropped the cigarette back in the box. Her whole face changed for just a moment, softening in a way I hadn’t imagined possible. “Yeah,” she breathed, “the bastards.” Reconsidering, she took the cigarette out again and let the lid of the box fall closed, her face hardening again, but that one naked flash had been enough. She still loved Garth Henderson, no matter how many reasons she had to hate and/or vilify him. But there was that whole “thin line” issue—just because she still loved him didn’t mean she didn’t kill him. “Let me tell you, Ms. Forrester,” she said, her voice having hardened, too, “if I’d killed him, there wouldn’t be anything left.”

  “Gwen!” Emile objected.

  Another statement aching to file itself in an affidavit. But then again, if she was being so injudicious with me, there was an excellent chance she was also being truthful. A liar would be more careful. “Do you have a theory about who did kill him?”

  “Another list?”

  “That many possibilities?”

  She took a deep drag and fixed me with an intense look. For the first time, I recognized the woman I was accustomed to seeing in newspaper and magazine photos. “Actually, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “His life was filled with dependent people. Which is one of the reasons I left. I wanted to be in a marriage, not a cult.”

  “It was my understanding,” I said gently, “there was indiscretion on both sides.”

  She laughed with unexpected richness. “Aren’t you polite.”

  And it was agonizing. I wanted to cut to the chase, but I could tell Gwen Lincoln was accustomed to being in the driver’s seat and challenging her was sure to be counterproductive. I could also sense Emile Trebask’s blood pressure creeping up as the conversation continued to hover around the murder and not the merchandise. “I was trying to be appropriate.”

  “Miserable, isn’t it?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I just haven’t had a lot of practice.”

  “Don’t bother. People are going to judge you unfairly no matter what you do or say, so why not do and say what pleases you? You’ll never please them.”

  “Thank you. Did you kill your husband?”

  Emile sprang to his feet. “That’s enough.”

  Gwen laughed even louder this time. “Good girl. No, I did not. Emile, sit down.”

  Instead, Emile stood over me. His hands swirled futilely in my face a moment, then buried themselves in his pockets, but not before I saw they were trembling. “Ms. Forrester, I asked you to do this article to support Gwen in our new business venture, not to cause even more ridiculous speculation about Garth’s death.”

  “Emile,” Gwen said, her voice soothing, “let’s rethink this. What’s going to get our beautiful venture more attention—a polite little chat where we avoid the elephant in the room or an article that will have everyone talking about us?”

  Was it as apparent to Emile as it was to me that he had lost control of this situation? Was this typical of their relationship or was she just being tenacious about this particular subject? She seemed to be burning to say something, but waiting for me to ask the right question. Putting a patrician hand on Emile’s shoulder and easing him back into the chair, she sat on the arm as he had before.

  I pursued. “If you didn’t kill him, do you know who did?”

  “No,” she said. Emile tensed as though he were going to get up again and I wasn’t sure for a moment if the “no” was to him or to me. But she was looking right at me even as she slid her arm around his shoulders, either to comfort him or hold him in place. “Isn’t this nicer than wasting our time playing games? And this is what you really need to know, not how Emile and I got together or why we picked this scent or what’s next on our agenda.”

  “All of that’s important, too,” I said honestly, looking at Emile. I wanted to get the best information possible for the article, but it would all be for naught if Emile got too upset and narced me out to Eileen, who would take great delight in canceling the article. A little voice in the back of my head did question whether Gwen was putting on a show for me, but I still didn’t sense any insincerity on her part. Her hands were rock steady, even if Emile’s weren’t. What was he so nervous about? “But I would like to get back to dependence. Do you feel these people were emotionally or financially dependent?” I asked.

  “Both. His little fan club at the agency couldn’t live without him on either level. And if Ronnie Willis thinks he’s just going to slip into Garth’s place—in the agency and in their hearts—he’s delusional.”

  “Why?” The joining of the two niche agencies had created a lot of buzz in the volatile advertising world, but it had all been positive.

  Emile must have felt we were headed back to solid ground, because he answered that one. “They were spinning it as a merger, but Garth was actually bailing Ronnie out. Ronnie was about to lose some major clients until Garth dangled the merger in front of them.”

  “Does that include you?”

  Emile shrugged grandly. “I was already gone. Ronnie’s terrific, but he wasn’t keeping up with me. I wanted more, and Gwen assured me Garth could provide that.”

  “Accepting Garth’s offer made Ronnie crazy,” Gwen added with a tight smile, “but at least it let him cling to his illusions of power. The only thing worse than wanting power and never getting it, is having it and losing it. It drives people to extreme behavior.”

  I looked at Emile, waiting for him to tense up again, but despite the fact that his business partner had just accused someone of murder, he did nothing but trace the crease in his pants leg with his finger. Was he agreeing with her or ignoring her?

  There hadn’t been much in the police paperwork or the press accounts to bolster the theory of Ronnie Willis as a suspect. He’d been questioned because of the merger, but it had been brief and unproductive. According to a statement released by his lawyers, anyway. Besides, even if it were painful for him to cede some of his kingdom to Garth Henderson, if Ronnie Willis had been on the brink of financial collapse, why would he have harmed the man who was rescuing him? “Mr. Willis doesn’t gain anything by Mr. Henderson’s death. He still shares control of the company. With you.”

  “You’re assuming he’s capable of rational assessment,” Gwen answered. “Again, you’re being far too polite. I don’t think poor Ronnie has ever fully accepted just how fragile his position is. It’s not too, too difficult to imagine him seeing himself taking over and guiding the new agency to great heights.”

  And apparently not too, too difficult to imagine him with a gun in his hand. I thought of a drowning swimmer who, in his panic, fights so hard that the lifeguard is the one who drowns. Could Ronnie Willis have turned on Garth Henderson, his savior, out of frustration or envy or panic? Had he known that would leave him with Gwen Lincoln as a partner instead?

  “Do you anticipate any difficulties working with Mr. Willis?”

  Emile covered his face with his hand, but Gwen smiled sadly. “Ronnie and I have been traveling in the same circles for a while. We aren’t close, but I think we have a foundation to build on. Of course, the idiot called me the morning after Garth was killed and remembered to offer his condolences first, then told me he wanted to make sure Emile and I were going to stay with the firm because he’d be sure to take great care of us. ‘In Garth’s memory.’” Eyes closing briefly, she shook her head. Even a woman who believes you should always say what you want to say had her definition of being inappropriate.

  When she opened her eyes again, they were brimming with tears. She tried to blink them back, rather th
an call further attention to them by wiping them away. “I identified the body that same morning. Now that’s part of ‘Garth’s memory, ’ too.”

  Emile was up out of the chair in a flash, linen handkerchief at the ready, arm around her. “You don’t have to talk about this part at all.”

  Gwen accepted the handkerchief, but pressed on, her voice surprisingly strong. “They tried to show him from an angle that minimized the damage I could see, but it was still so … And his mouth, his beautiful mouth …”

  “His mouth?” All I knew about was the two gunshots.

  “Cut.” She drew two nails down her top lip, indicating vertical slices on either side of the fulstrum. “I wanted to kiss him good-bye …” She drew in a shuddering breath and in a sudden sweep, walked out of the room.

  Not sure if that was my exit cue, I rose slowly. Emile stared at the floor for a moment, then looked out the door. When he looked back at me, he was smiling apologetically. “I had hoped this wouldn’t happen.” I started to blurt out an apology, but he wasn’t talking about me, thank goodness. “I wanted her to do this article because she needs to be thinking about other things, but everything is still Garth, Garth, Garth. He certainly screwed us over here.”

  So he was blaming the dead guy, she was weeping for him, and I was trying to keep my head from spinning. I’d realized this wasn’t going to be a simple profile, no matter how much Emile wanted that, but this was turning out to be more of a maze than I’d expected. Hoped for, even.

  “If she’s not back by now, I’m going to have to go get her and this could all take a while. Why don’t I call you at the magazine and we’ll set up a new appointment.”

  I gave him my cell phone number, explaining my erratic presence at my desk, and he walked me to the front door. “You see she still loves him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Too bad there’s not an off switch for that. But then, life wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if we could control our emotions, right?”

  A fascinating spin on a survivor’s grief, so I just nodded. My gut told me Gwen Lincoln wasn’t responsible for Garth’s death, but I was still troubled by how hard Emile was working to make sure I believed that.