“Can I help you?” came a woman’s voice.
“I’m Mike Stanhope, a journalist from England. I’m here to see Eliza.”
“One moment please.”
A pause, then a different woman’s voice said, “Hello? Mr Stanhope? This is Eliza.”
“It’s Mike, yes. We talked on the phone a while back about Rob Openshaw, a man who used to work here. I was hoping I could have another word.”
“Oh, hi Mike. Well listen, it’s great that you’re here, but we don’t do face-to-face interviews. We’re not a walk-in kind of a company – we do all our business online and by phone.”
I was ready for that. I said, “I hear what you’re saying, but I’ve come all the way from England, and I’ve just driven an hour to get here. Can’t you spare me five minutes?” I paused, then added, “I’m not looking for an interview, just background information.”
She took a moment to reflect on this, then asked, “What exactly did you want information about?”
“You probably know that Rob Openshaw died recently in London. I’m researching his background – trying to understand what he was like, and why he fell out with The Spine.”
“So just remind me – you’re a journalist, right?”
“Yes, but I’m also a customer of his. I used his Magic Bookseller service. That’s my starting point.”
I heard her talking quietly to someone in the background, then she said, “OK, come on up.”
The Spine occupied the fourth floor of the building, which I reached by an old but smartly refurbished elevator. Once through the company’s front door I felt I’d entered a different world – brightly lit and cheerful, with posters of book covers on the walls, and glass partitions dividing the space into discrete sections. Young people wearing headsets were busily engaged in typing or talking on the phone.
Eliza was a mixed-race woman in her late twenties – strikingly pretty, with a cascade of black curls fringing her face and sprayed over her shoulders. She held out a hand in greeting, and led me to a kind of visitor’s lounge with square-cushioned easy chairs in primary colours. The staff might not do interviews here, but evidently personal callers were not unknown.
As she waved me to a seat she said, “May I ask where you parked your car?”
I raised my eyebrows. “On a street just round the corner from here.” I turned and pointed.
She nodded to herself. “OK, you should be all right there.” She gave me a brief smile. “Compton is a nice town these days, but it’s had its troubles over the years. Some of us have had problems with break-ins when we’ve parked our cars on the street. But hey, let’s be optimistic.”
I tried a smile in return. “Let’s.”
She seemed to relax. “So you’re over here from England. It’s a long way to have come.”
“I’m here on business, but I’m also researching Rob Openshaw’s life.”
“Do you have some personal interest in him?”
“Well, as a matter of fact yes. I was on the way to visit him in London when his body was found.” This was a slight re-imagining of the event, but it seemed legitimate.
“Mygod. That must have been traumatic.”
“You can say that again.”
I reminded her of what she’d told me previously about Rob Openshaw’s dispute with The Spine, and asked her outright if he had actually stolen data from the company.
“Oh no,” she said. “We don’t operate like that. Our data is gathered from multiple sources. A lot of it is our own, but some of it is acquired on our behalf by a data management company. It’s all stored on their servers, and they organise our mailings for us. They’re, like, a trusted third party. But we craft the email content here, of course. It’s a seamless process.”
“So what did Rob Openshaw do wrong?”
She hesitated. “We believe he may have found a way to access our data without our knowledge.”
I looked to her for further illumination, but she added nothing. I said, “Can you tell me the name of that other company?”
“I would prefer not to. It’s confidential information. Besides, once we suspected the data breach, we were able to stop it.”
The conversation continued in this vein for a while, but I soon realised Eliza was going to stonewall me on any substantive point. She’d probably been advised by a superior on the limits of her discretion. It was frustrating that I’d learned so little more than I already knew, but eventually I had to admit defeat. Instead, I asked her on a whim, “How do I get The Spine to promote my own book?”
“Of course – you said you were a writer yourself.” She gave me a perfunctory smile. “You’ll find the procedure fully explained on our web site.”
“I know. I was hoping you could give me a fast track, seeing as how I’m here.”
I said this with a glint in my eye, but for a moment she seemed about to take me seriously, then she relaxed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Yup. I know the score. I’m not asking any favours.”
“We accept promising books whenever we can.” She gave me an encouraging smile.
As I rose to leave, I said, “You probably don’t realise just how powerful you are here. Your decision over whether or not to promote a book can make or break a self-published author. Doesn’t that responsibility worry you sometimes?”
“Not at all. We’re here to sustain and nurture the best of the self-published market. We see our work as entirely positive.”
We parted company at the door to the office suite, and I made my way along the corridor towards the elevators. As I was pressing the button I heard the office door open again, and a blonde woman I hadn’t seen before hurried towards me. She said nothing, but took up position beside me, and when the elevator car appeared we both stepped inside.
She turned to me as the doors slid shut. “I overheard some of your conversation with Eliza – I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” I looked at her, intrigued. She was probably in her mid-thirties, with a round face and a warm smile. She was dressed with casual artifice, like everyone I’d seen in the office.
She said, “The people at The Spine are great to work with, but they can sometimes be … how can I put it? Unapproachable, let’s say. They stamped on Rob’s ideas, and in the end he quit. I didn’t blame him for what he did afterwards. It’s so sad the way things have ended up.” She gave me an earnest look. “You won’t quote me on this, will you?”
“Of course not. So what did Rob do?”
“You should speak to his ex-wife Dee. They split up a long time ago, but she’ll know the score. She lives over in Fullerton. Take this.” She handed me a scrap of paper with a phone number scribbled on it. “She’s a nice person. She’ll probably tell you whatever you want to know.”
Chapter 44
I sat for a while in Ashley’s car, staring down the quiet semi-industrial street and wondering what to do next. I could phone Rob Openshaw’s ex-wife, but how would she feel, having a foreigner phone her out of the blue, asking questions about her murdered former husband? It was hard to see any scenario in which she would welcome the intrusion.
It was the “ex” in ex-wife that finally convinced me to contact her. However shocked she might be by Rob’s death, I had to assume she would be less shocked than if they’d still been together. I knew this was a simplistic view, but I was conscious that my time in the US was limited, and I should be using it as productively as I could. I needed to put sensitivities to one side.
Now I had to pull together a coherent story to tell her. Announcing myself as the man who had found her ex-husband’s body might not go down too well, especially given that their daughter had immediately pegged me for his murderer.
Dee might of course be out at work during the daytime in some other part of Los Angeles, but I wouldn’t find that out unless I made the call. Taking a deep breath, I tapped out the number.
“Dee Broderick.” It was an American voice, clear and confident.
/> “Dee, this is a real off-the-wall phone call, so please tell me to go away if you want to.”
I was about to continue, but before I could start the next sentence she said, “I certainly shall. I’m glad we’ve agreed on that.”
Encouraged by the hint of humour, I said, “My name is Mike Stanhope. I’m over here on a visit to LA, but I live in England, and your husband was trying to help me promote a book that I’ve written.” I paused. “I should have said I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. So what did you want, Mike?”
“It’s difficult to explain on the phone.” I hesitated. “There were some strange aspects to my book promotion. I’m trying to understand what went wrong.”
“Strange?”
“Well, the promotion never ran. Nothing happened.”
“If you’ll forgive me, that’s hardly surprising under the circumstances. Why are you calling me about it?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not explaining this very well. The campaign was supposed to run weeks ago, long before … before what happened.”
“I hope you’re not expecting your money back? I had no involvement in Rob’s business affairs.”
“No, no, of course not.” I was floundering. “A lady at The Spine told me I should contact you. I’ve just been to visit them.”
“What lady?”
“I’m sorry, she didn’t give me her name. She had curly blond hair. Mid-thirties.” I hesitated, then added, “She was very keen that I should talk to you.”
“That sounds like Annie. So she gave you my number?”
“She did.”
She seemed to think about this, then said, “So tell me again what you want, Mike.”
I thought carefully for a moment, then decided to take a chance. I said, “The police in Britain don’t seem to know what happened to your ex-husband. I might be able to help.”
“Is that right?” There was faint irony in her voice, but I could tell she was not closing the door on me.
“I wondered if we could meet? Maybe after work today? I’m only over here in California for a couple of days.”
“I’m busy this evening, but … where are you now?”
“I’m outside The Spine’s offices in Compton.”
“Well I’m over in Fullerton, and I’m free now. It’s an easy enough drive from there at this time of day.” She told me her address, adding, “Come on over.”
* * *
Fullerton turned out to be a pleasant residential district twenty miles east of Compton. I arrived at Dee’s house half an hour later. It was set back from the tree-lined street, with a lawn in front.
The door was opened by a youth in shorts and a white T-shirt who alerted Dee to my arrival with a shout over his shoulder, then ushered me inside. On the way to the lounge I passed a toddler and a woman who I took to be a maid. Plenty of people around: I now understood why she’d been comfortable inviting a stranger into her home.
Dee herself looked a youthful forty. She had shoulder-length blond hair, and was dressed in jeans, a light-coloured blouse and shallow heels. She had an easy confidence about her, which she demonstrated as she turned to her hovering son. “I think you can leave us alone, Tim. Mr Stanhope doesn’t look like he means us any harm.”
I winced inwardly as she said this. It was too close to the reality of her former husband’s death.
She offered me a cold drink, which I accepted, then once we’d settled on her comfortable white armchairs I said, “I feel I should apologise for imposing on you at such a difficult time.”
“It’s OK, I guess. It’s a terrible thing that happened to Rob, but we parted company a long time ago, so I’m not going to put on a false show of grief. It’s much worse for the kids than for me.”
“Of course.”
She gave me an assessing look, then said, “So you’re a wannabe author who was suckered by Rob. I’m sure you’re not the first.”
I tried a self-deprecating look.
“It’s a shame Rob couldn’t help you with your book.” She gave me a flicker of a smile.
Suddenly I felt guilty at deceiving her. I said, “Can I level with you? As well as being an aspiring novelist, I’m a kind of journalist. I was looking into the book promotion world when this thing happened to your husband. So now I’m filling in the gaps.” That sounded truthful enough.
She seemed unperturbed by this information, but gave me an ironic look. “A kind of journalist?”
“I mean I’m not a hard-core newspaper man – nothing like that. I write for specialist web sites. Very low key.”
“But you said on the phone that you might be able to find out what happened to Rob.”
I shrugged. “If you could tell me a bit more about his life, I would have more information than the British police. Things might fall together.”
Her look told me she gave scant credence to this claim, but she said, “What exactly are you expecting me to say to you?”
“I’m trying to understand more about The Magic Bookseller.”
“Huh. Well, that’s easy enough. I can tell you right away that the whole idea was doomed from the start.”
“How do you mean?”
She gave me another assessing look. “Do you know much about eBook promotion?”
“I’m learning.”
She nodded to herself. “OK, well the key to doing it effectively is to have a sound database of genuine email addresses – people who have explicitly opted in, and want to be alerted to the latest free books and what have you. Without that, you might as well give up and go home.”
“I’m with you so far.”
“OK, so The Spine has an excellent database – one of the best in the business. That’s partly why they’re so well respected. I should know – I worked there in the early days. So did Rob. We both shifted over from traditional publishing.”
“But?”
“But Rob was never satisfied. He kept wanting to tell the Spine people how to run their business. In the end he fell out with them, and left to set up Magic Bookseller. And for some reason two of the other staff went with him. They should have known better, but he can be very persuasive.” She frowned. “Could be, I should say. Was.”
I gave her what I hoped was a sympathetic smile.
She cleared her throat. “Don’t misunderstand me. As I said, we split up long ago. I’d had enough of his bright ideas and his half-finished projects.” She waved around her. “I re-married, as you’ve probably gathered. My husband Ralph is a senior product engineer.”
“So about Magic Bookseller?”
“OK, well from what I hear, Rob’s problem was that he started with no database at all. He thought he could buy one or … I don’t know, magic one out of the air, for all I know.”
“Couldn’t his team have built up a database of their own?”
“Of course they could. I’m sure that was their plan. But knowing Rob, he would have been frustrated with the slow pace. He needed action, and he always needed it fast. He would have looked around for a way to kick-start the business.”
“So he stole The Spine’s database?”
“Not exactly. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not like you can download a file and take it home with you. The whole process is farmed out.”
“He must have known that.”
“Sure he did. I’m only guessing here, but I think someone at Lammies, the data management company, must have fixed things so that Rob’s mailings could go out to The Spine’s client list, and no one would know. All the content would refer people back to his own web site, of course.”
I thought about that. “But surely a lot of companies that do mailings scatter fake addresses through their customer files, don’t they? Addresses that come back to them. Then they can find out if their data has been hijacked.”
“Very good, Mike. You’re right – I’m quite sure the Spine people did spike their files. But Rob’s contact must have known all about that, and known how to filter out the dud addre
sses. Rob would have thought of all that.”
“But something went wrong?”
“I guess someone at The Spine worked out what was going on. I was out of the loop, so I don’t know what happened, but I do know Rob’s business went downhill fast. His team left him, and suddenly he moved his operation to the UK.”
“I wonder why he did that so quickly.” I looked at her warily. “You don’t think … ?”
“If you mean could Rob have made enemies who wanted to kill him, no, I’d find that very hard to believe. He was always ducking and weaving, but … no, I very much doubt it.”
We sat in silence for a moment, then I said, “This contact at the data management company – do you know who it was, or what happened to them?”
“They would have been fired, I’m sure, but I’m afraid I don’t know the details.”
I raised my eyebrows, and she added, “Toni might tell you. She worked at The Spine when I first joined, then she moved over to Lammies. I haven’t seen her for years, but I’m sure she’s still there.” She picked up her phone from beside her and scrolled through her contact list. “Toni Harper, that’s her name.” She held the phone out to me. “Do you want her details?”
As I scribbled them down, I heard the front door open and slam shut. There were footsteps in the hall, then a girl’s voice shouted, “Jesus Christ, Mom! That’s the man who killed my dad! What the fuck is he doing in our house?” Her daughter Ellie was standing in the doorway with horror on her face.
Chapter 45
I stood up abruptly and turned towards the door into the hall. Ellie continued to hover there, looking stricken. She said, “Get him out of here! I don’t believe this! It’s so gross!” The youth I’d met earlier crowded into the doorway beside her, staring at me belligerently.
Dee now stood up too. “What’s gotten into you Eleanor? Mike is a novelist from London.”
“That’s what I’m telling you! He was there when Dad died. I saw him! He was arrested, for Christ’s sake. Call the police!”
The Concrete Ceiling Page 18
