Last to die

by James Grippando

  “What biases?”

  Jack stopped at the corner, almost fell off the curb. “Are you kidding me? You are one of Sally’s five remaining potential heirs. If the other four withdraw or follow in Mason Rudsky’s footsteps, you stand to gain forty-six million dollars. Don’t you think your article should have spelled that out?”

  “No. The story wasn’t about me.”

  “This is all about you, and your readers should know it. Your article puts the heat on my client to withdraw from the game.”

  “How does it do that?”

  “You know how. And don’t expect me to spell it out for you so that you can twist it into some nifty quote in tomorrow’s newspaper.”

  “I’m not being coy. I’m really at a loss. How does my truthful article about a meeting between your client and Sally Fenning put the pressure on him to renounce his inheritance?”

  “Don’t change the subject on me. You should have disclosed your bias.”

  “This story was not inspired by bias. It came from a reliable source.”

  “That’s the whole point. The source could have had the same bias. Are you really that stupid, or are you just pretending to be?”

  “Don’t insult me, Swyteck.”

  “Then get off your J-school soapbox and play straight.”

  “I’m not going to tell you who my source is.”

  “Fine. But you should at least consider the possibility that the whole story is a plant.”

  “Planted by whom?”

  “By one of the other potential beneficiaries. Any one of them could have simply made the whole thing up and manipulated you and the Tribune into printing something that would disqualify Tatum from inheriting under the will. It’s like Colletti said at the meeting: It just improves everyone’s odds.”

  “My source is not another beneficiary.”

  Jack stopped at the crosswalk. He hadn’t expected her to tell him anything, and he certainly hadn’t expected that. “How do you know?” he asked.

  “I don’t normally go to the police about my stories, but when Rudsky turned up dead last night, I made an exception. Now that I’ve told them, I might as well tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “A man called me a couple weeks ago. He’s my source.”

  “I’ll ask again: How do you know he isn’t one of the other heirs?”

  “Because he wants to split the pot with me if I win. Another beneficiary wouldn’t need to strike that deal. They’re already in the game.”

  “Well, I’m not going to argue with that, but you’re proving my other point. This person-your source-is clearly biased. He has a stake in your winning the jackpot, so naturally he would say anything that would hurt Tatum and force him to renounce his inheritance.”

  “You’re absolutely right.”

  “I know I’m right. A newspaper like the Tribune shouldn’t run a story based on a single source who has no credibility.”

  “The Tribune would never do that. That’s why I went out and got a second source.”

  He paused, almost afraid to ask. “Who?”

  She let out a condescending chuckle and said, “Normally I’d tell you to shove it in response to a question like that. But you and your cocky ‘My Client Is Wholly Innocent’ attitude have me pissed enough to tell you this much: If my source were any closer to you…well, let me put it this way, I don’t think there is anyone closer to you.”

  Jack was silent, as if she’d just punched him in the chest.

  Deirdre said, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a deadline to meet.”

  She hung up, but Jack didn’t move. He stared at his phone, still trying to comprehend what she’d just said, and the thought sickened him: No one closer.

  A transit bus rumbled past him, leaving him in a black cloud of diesel fumes. He hardly noticed. “Holy shit,” he said as he slipped his cell into his pocket.

  Forty-five

  The conversation with Theo did not go well.

  He’d get over it, for sure, and Jack hadn’t been all that accusatory anyway. The more thought Jack had given it, the more impossible it seemed. No way was Theo going to rat out his brother to anyone, much less an overly ambitious reporter. But Jack felt as though he had to at least touch base and completely rule him out as “the source” before confronting the person that Deirdre Meadows had assumed was closer to Jack than anyone else.

  “Kelsey?” he said with surprise. “I didn’t know you were coming in today.”

  She hadn’t been on the work schedule, but she was in Jack’s office seated on the couch waiting for him when he arrived. “Can I talk with you a minute?” she asked.

  “Sure.” Jack pulled up a chair and straddled it, facing her. He’d rehearsed his delivery during the drive into the office probably a dozen times, but he could see from the expression on her face that he was conveying some awkward vibes. “Kelsey, before we go off in some other direction, there’s something I need to know.”

  “Please. I know what you’re going to say. This morning-today’s newspaper. The article about Tatum.”

  “Yes?” he said tentatively.

  Kelsey took a breath, obviously struggling. “I don’t know how to say this to you.”

  Jack felt a pain in his stomach, sickened by the thought, but the words came out in anger. He looked her in the eye and said, “Did you talk to Deirdre Meadows?”

  She blinked twice, then averted her eyes. And he knew. He wasn’t trying to be judgmental, but he couldn’t help shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Why?” he asked.

  When she looked up, tears were welling in her eyes. “I was afraid to tell you. I knew you’d think I was an idiot. She tricked me, Jack.”

  “Tricked you? How?”

  “She called and told me that she already knew that Tatum met with Sally before she was killed. She had all the details that Tatum gave us-the rainy night, the meeting at Theo’s bar where she tried to hire him to kill her. The thing she had dead wrong was the timing. She claimed to have it from a reliable source that the meeting took place less than twenty-four hours before Sally turned up dead. I told her that her source was wrong. And then she got nasty.”

  “What do you mean, nasty?”

  “She made it absolutely clear that unless I told her differently, she was going to print the story as written: Tatum and Sally met twenty-four hours before her death. I told her she really needed to talk to you, but she said you hadn’t returned her call and she was on deadline.”

  “So what did you tell her?”

  “I was totally firm. I said, ‘I can’t tell you whether there was a meeting or not. All I can tell you is that there definitely was no meeting twenty-four hours before Sally’s death.’”

  “Good answer.”

  “But she wasn’t happy with it. She said, ‘Tell me when it happened, or I’m sticking with twenty-four hours.’ I didn’t know what to do, but in the heat of the moment I couldn’t imagine that the smart thing was to stand aside and let her print something I knew was false. So I told her it wasn’t twenty-four hours. It was more like two weeks.”

  Jack groaned. “Damn it, Kesley, how could you not have known that she was fishing for confirmation that the meeting had taken place at all?”

  “Because she already knew everything about the meeting.”

  “She made you think she knew about it. All she had was a rumor. She couldn’t print that. She was bluffing. But after talking to you, she had a source.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m sure you are. But for God’s sake, you can’t let a reporter manipulate you like that.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I screwed up. You have to know that I haven’t exactly been in my best frame of mind lately.”

  “We’ve all been through a lot.”

  “No, you don’t understand.” She sniffled and said, “That man threatened Nate.”

  “What?”

  “The man who attacked me outside the law library. He said tha
t if Tatum didn’t drop out of the game…” Her voice cracked, as if she couldn’t even say it.

  “He’d do what?”

  “He said-” She glanced at the framed photograph Jack kept on his desk, her boy perched on Jack’s shoulders. Her lips quivered as she said, “He told me Nate would go the way of Sally’s daughter.”

  Jack felt his anger rise. “That son of a bitch. You didn’t even have to tell me, I knew that’s the way that lowlife would operate.”

  “That’s why I sent him to stay with my mother, like you said.”

  “I wish you’d take the rest of my advice and call the cops.”

  “No. I can’t. He said he’d hurt Nate if I did, and I’m not taking that risk. But don’t you see what I’m going through, how I could have screwed up? I’m terrified. You know how a threat like that must have made me feel. It’s horrible enough what happened to that poor little girl. But Nate-I told you the whole drowning story the first time you took him on Theo’s boat. I still have nightmares.”

  “When it comes to you and Nate, you won’t find anyone more sympathetic than me. But you have to hold yourself together. You can’t be putty in the hands of some reporter.”

  “I accept that. But I hope it at least explains it. A man threatened to drown my own son if Tatum Knight doesn’t drop out of the game. I was confused, not sure what to do, what to tell anyone. Out of the blue this reporter called and started asking questions about a conversation Tatum Knight had with Sally Fenning before she died.”

  “You should have cut it off right there.”

  “I know, but I swear, Jack, she already had the whole story. I thought I was helping our client by telling her that the meeting didn’t take place just twenty-four hours before Sally ended up dead.”

  Jack gave her a hard look. He almost couldn’t believe what he was about to say, but somewhere deep inside him the lawyer had taken over. “Did you really think you were helping, Kelsey? Or did you think it was a way of giving your attacker exactly what he wanted: Get Tatum Knight out of the game?”

  Her mouth fell open. “I can’t believe you’re accusing me of that.”

  “I’m just asking the question.”

  “The answer is no. Hell no.”

  Jack was starting to regret he’d asked the question so bluntly, but as Tatum’s lawyer, he had to be firm.

  Her voice shook. “Do you really think I’d intentionally violate the attorney-client privilege? I’m not about to put myself on the blacklist of the Florida Bar before I’ve even graduated from law school.”

  Jack took a moment, breathed away some of his suspicion. She seemed too shaken by the whole experience to be able to lie about her intentions now. “Okay,” he said. “You screwed up. We’ll leave it at that. But what you did is still so wrong.”

  “Stop it, Jack.”

  “Stop what?”

  “I’ve apologized fifty times. That reporter just caught me at exactly the wrong moment. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since the attack. All I’ve been able to think about is Nate, that little girl, and some psycho holding them down in this tub of bloody bathwater, their little legs kicking and-”

  She lost control, and the tears were flowing. She was practically slumping. On impulse, Jack went to her. She rose, and she seemed to want him to take her in his arms, but he stopped. He was suddenly feeling more like her employer than her rock. “Hey, hey,” he said as he laid a somewhat reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “I feel awful. I wish I could fix this.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”

  He tried to step back and put some distance between their bodies, but she took his hand and said, “Are you sure?”

  “The truth is we were going to have to deal with this sooner or later. Tatum really did meet with Sally. And she did try to hire him to kill her. The one item of damage control we have to address is Deirdre’s failure to include Tatum’s denial that he took the job.”

  “Can I help you with that?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  They were standing just a foot or so apart, a little too close for Jack’s comfort. Kelsey had big, expressive eyes, and they were conveying a mix of emotions to him. Embarrassment. Remorse. She squeezed his hand and said, “It’s important to me that this doesn’t change the way you see me.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She forced a weak semblance of a smile. “Do you think you can forgive a worried single mom for making a law student mistake?”

  He considered it, trying to ignore the look on her face and the touch of her hand, trying to blur his memory of the one bright moment they’d shared together on her front porch and the nights he’d spent alone wondering what “might be” between them. It would take a while for him to sort out his own emotions, and it bugged him a little that she’d played the single mom/law student card in this setting. But he said what he thought she needed to hear, just words, no feeling behind them. “I can forgive you.”

  She smiled just enough to show her relief. “Is everything going to be okay between us?”

  “Sure. But the verdict is still out on the much tougher question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Will Tatum forgive you?”

  Forty-six

  The bar was packed, mostly a twenty-something crowd, young sheep who would drink battery acid so long as it was two-for-one. Deirdre Meadows was on her fourth gin and tonic, sharing a booth with her best girlfriend, Carmen Bell, a freelance journalist and self-proclaimed poet who would admit to no one but her buddy Deirdre that her true ambition in life was to write sappy greeting cards for Hallmark. They got together for drinks every Wednesday, “Ladies’ Night,” after Deirdre met her deadline, but tonight was more special than most.

  “Page one A,” said Carmen. “Nice work, girl.”

  Deirdre crunched an ice cube with her teeth and smiled. “Best is yet to come.”

  “Tell me.”

  Deirdre checked over her shoulder, as if to make sure no one was listening. The booth behind them was filled with the usual after-work crowd, three guys shooting tequila while their girlfriends took turns trying the old teaspoon hanging from the nose trick.

  Deirdre said, “Remember how pissed I was when my editor nixed my idea for a three-part investigative piece on Sally Fenning?”

  “Yeah, budget problems, blah, blah, blah.”

  “Well, no more budget problems. It’s now a green light.”

  “Woo-hoo! You are on your way.”

  Deirdre picked a peanut from the bowl of party mix. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

  Carmen leaned into the table and spoke in the low voice she used only when trading secrets. “So tell me. Who’s the source?”

  “Carmen! I’m surprised at you.”

  She smiled knowingly and said, “You don’t have any idea who he is, do you?”

  “Nope,” she said, and they shared a little laugh.

  Then Carmen turned serious. “Are you scared of him?”

  “A little.”

  “Just a little?”

  “Well…” she said with a roll of her shoulders. “I’m less scared now that I’ve talked to the police.”

  “Wait a minute. Since when does a journalist tell the police about her sources?”

  “This is different. This is a source who threatened to kill me.”

  Carmen’s eyes widened. “He what?”

  “Nothing. Forget I said that. This is a celebration. Last thing I need is for you to get me all spooked out.”

  Carmen gnawed her plastic stirring straw until the full two inches protruding from her cocktail were completely flattened with teeth marks.

  “Will you please stop that?” Deirdre said sharply.

  “Sorry. Just don’t like it when my friends are getting death threats.”

  “I’m being very careful, okay?”

  “Good. And I hope you’re being smart, too.”

  “Oh, I
am. How’s this for smart? Johnny, I’m scared, can I sleep over tonight? Johnny, can you hold me? Johnny, it would help me sleep so much better if we could wake him up just one more time and put him right-”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” she said with a smile.

  “Do you really get it?”

  “Well, technically speaking, no.”

  “Then that’s one more way in which my life beats the hell out of yours right now, isn’t it?”

  “I hope you get crabs.”

  Deirdre laughed as she fished a ten-dollar bill from her purse. She laid it on the table, then flashed the key to her boyfriend’s townhouse, and said, “Sorry to drink and run, but Johnny puts the chain on the door if I don’t get there before eleven.”

  “Shit, Deirdre. When you gonna find a man who doesn’t make you drive your own ass over to his place in order to see him naked?”

  “As soon as I inherit forty-six million dollars.”

  “Not that the money matters to you.”

  “Of course not. Who needs money?”

  They managed to keep a straight face for about two seconds, then burst into laughter. “I’ll see you later,” said Deirdre.

  She zigzagged through the noisy crowd, and she could have sworn she was getting checked out more than usual. It was all in the attitude, and as of this morning she had a new one. A stranger even opened the door for her.

  “Thanks,” she said with a smile, then stepped outside.

  The sun having long-since dipped into the Everglades, it was one of those perfect autumn evenings with just enough bite in the air to make you forget the cursed summer heat and humidity that had stuck around till Halloween. Valet was a rip-off at eighteen bucks, and as usual Deirdre had come with no coins to feed the meters on the street, so she’d wedged her little Honda into a free spot in the alley beside the drugstore. This had seemed like a good idea when the store was open, but its windows were now black and there were no more customers coming and going. Nightfall had a way of changing everything.

  She dug her key from her purse as she quickly crossed the lot. A guy in a red pickup truck was sitting behind the wheel, and the look on his face gave her concern at first, until she saw the mop of blond hair bobbing up and down in his lap. Pretty safe bet he wouldn’t be following her. Her car was just around the corner, and the muffled drone of the bar crowd faded with each step farther into the darkness.