“Okay,” I hear.
Finally.
“Here’s the statement,” the detective says. “Vermont State Police confirm the death of McKenzie Xavier Briggs, age seventy-three, of Cullodon Harbor, Vermont, at 16:30 this date. Cause of death—motor vehicle accident. As per standard practice, the accident is under investigation.”
I sit back in my chair, almost dizzy. Franklin is frantically making questioning gestures, silently mouthing, “What? What happened?” but I don’t answer him.
“Was there anyone else in the car?” I manage to ask, my mind now regaining equilibrium. “Was there another vehicle involved?”
“That’s not in this statement, miss,” the detective answers. “What I told you is all we’re releasing.”
Then I get an idea. A big one.
“I understand, just doing your job,” I say calmly. Then I go for it, speaking slowly and confidently. “But we have information,” I lie, “that this was a one-car incident, no other cars found on the scene, and also that Briggs was alone in the car. Off the record, not for attribution, can you just confirm that for me?”
Nothing.
“I’ll never say it was you who confirmed it,” I entreat. “I won’t even say ‘state police sources.’”
There’s a sigh. “You’re not wrong, miss,” he says. And then he hangs up.
Franklin stands over me, looking as if he’s ready to rip the phone from my hand. “Good Lord, Charlotte,” he says. “What the hell happened?”
I look him square in the eye. “Mack Briggs is dead,” I say. I can hear how surprisingly flat my voice is. “Mack Briggs is dead, and I just confirmed he died exactly the same way Brad Foreman did.”
Chapter Eleven
I
can’t hold out another minute. I need to check my e-mail. The station’s entire system had once again crashed and was still down when we left last night. If it’s not back up and running, I am going to be in serious communications withdrawal. I know I should be enjoying the hot water coursing over my hair, the scritch of Marie-Rosina’s fingers on my scalp. The coconut fragrance of the lavish shampoo. But this isn’t vanity, it’s required maintenance, and after so many years, a salon visit is as glamorously exciting as an oil change. I’m obligated to be washed, conditioned and blown dry here three times a week, and gray-preventioned every fifth Saturday. My real hair color? I have no idea.
The second M-R wraps a fluffy white towel around my head, I scramble for my BlackBerry. Maybe Franklin uncovered something about Mack Briggs.
My name is Charlie, and I’m a workaholic.
A few quick taps and I’m online. It’s the weekend. But it’s almost November, and we still don’t have a story, and—I’m staring at an impossibility.
I’ve received an e-mail from a dead person.
My brain scrambles to understand this. A typo? A mistake?
I scroll down, reading as fast as I can, not grasping how I could be reading a note from someone who—according to yesterday’s info from the Vermont State Police—is soon to be six feet under. But there it is: the signature line says Mack Briggs.
I slip into the salon’s massage room, desperate for privacy. Perching on the sheet-draped table, I click my BlackBerry back to the top and devour the flickering words. This is…a joke. A trick. A scam.
Ms. McNally, I read, by now you will have gotten the box of files Brad Foreman sent me. He was a student in my class at Wharton. I was taken aback when I received those files, because we hadn’t been in contact for years.
I scoot back against the wall, tucking a quilted pink pillow under my towel-wrapped head. I hold the BlackBerry up and keep reading, struggling to understand.
Reason for this e-mail: I should have mentioned he alluded to his search for a mortgage interest-rate reduction, and apparently had found some similarities among refinancing advertisements.
I jump to my feet and dig out my cell. Got to call Franklin. He answers on the second ring, and before he finishes saying hello, I’m telling him about the e-mail.
“Spam.” His voice crackles through his speakerphone. I can hear him clicking into his home computer as he talks. “It’s about the spam. Keep reading,” he demands.
Before I can continue, there’s a knock on the door—then a voluptuous henna-haired woman in a black smock peers in. She’s holding a pile of towels and an orange bottle of massage oil.
“Nancy at eleven-thirty?” she asks in what sounds like a French accent.
Merde. “No,” I say brightly. Go away. Go away. “Not me.”
She clicks the door closed. I figure I don’t have much time left in my rosemary-scented hideout.
“Charlotte?” Franklin calls out. “You there?”
“Yup, sorry,” I reply. “Let me read you the rest. ‘He didn’t explain, just told me he wanted me to do original research, not influenced by his ideas. He e-mailed me those citations I assume are Bible verses. I gathered he was feeling some sort of pressure, even fear, though I could be mistaken.’”
I hear Franklin typing and clicking his mouse.
“Are you listening?” I ask, exasperated. “He thought Brad was afraid of something, did you hear that?”
“I haven’t missed a word,” Franklin says, “but wait till you see what I just found. How fast can you get over here?”
Course they don’t teach in J-School: Say So Long to Saturday—There Are No Weekends in TV.
I grab the wrought-iron railing, run up Franklin’s front porch steps and give three quick buzzes on his intercom. He clicks me into the spotlessly chic foyer and into his front door. When I arrive in his study, my still-wet hair hidden under the stripey wool cap I just speed-purchased at the Gap, Franklin’s hunched over the computer on his antique rolltop desk.
“Show me the rest of the letter,” he instructs, without so much as a hello. “Then you’ve got to see what I found.”
I hang my coat on the back of the door, grab my BlackBerry and click open Briggs’s letter. If it is from Briggs. “Can this be—real?” I ask, holding it out to him.
Franklin almost yanks the device from my hand. He looks as confused and concerned as I feel.
“Sit,” he commands, pointing me to a leather-and-chrome chair-sculpture contraption Stephen must have chosen. “Let me read this. Love the hat, by the way. Good for your street cred.”
“Okay, but read it out loud,” I insist, ignoring the hat crack. “From where I left off. Briggs must have sent it right before his car crash.”
“Yeah,” Franklin says, grimacing. “Anyway, it says, ‘I must warn you Brad asked me to tell him if I received any unusual phone calls.’”
He sits back in his special ergonomic desk chair, swiveling slowly from side to side, and keeps reading. “‘Before I could ask what was troubling him, he was killed. Perhaps you can make some headway. If I can assist you, let me know. You know where to find me. Sincerely, MX Briggs.’” Franklin looks up. “That’s all.”
I pause for a moment. “And I guess we do know where to find him.”
“Yeah.” Franklin nods his head. “Morgue.”
“Two sets of identical files.” I hold up my fingers. “Two car accidents. Two people dead. It all has to be connected,” I say. “Doesn’t it?”
Franklin gestures toward his monitor, the Web site he’d been reading. “Remember I had something to show you?” he replies. “Well, these,” he continues, pointing to the screen, “are the specific courses Mack Briggs taught at Wharton. And look,” he says. “All stock market stuff. Rules and regs, practices and procedures, securities law. So, seems like Brad suspected someone was doing something wrong, or illegal, and figured Briggs could confirm it.” He pauses, still thinking. “Some stock market thing.”
But I suddenly feel as if I’m seeing the other side of a coin. “Or,” I say deliberately, “could it be some sort of…test? Brad has a get-rich-quick scheme, maybe. And who better to try it out on than his old securities professor. See if he catches on.”
&nb
sp; Franklin raises his eyebrows. “You think?”
“And that means,” I continue, beginning to get worried, “Brad might not have been the whistle-blowing protector of the taxpayer’s pharmaceutical dollars, but more like a money-hustling market-manipulating bad guy. And he was floating the scheme to Briggs, to see if he picked up on it. If someone with that deep level of experience and knowledge didn’t catch on, of course, Brad might have figured he could get away with whatever it was.”
“You could be right,” Franklin agrees. “Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”
I bang the back of my head against the sleek chair, deflated, defeated. “Oh yeah, a real hoot,” I say. “All this research, all this e-mailing back and forth, this mysterious Mack Briggs. The poor widow Melanie. The stupid Miranda. Either just the random acts of an uncaring universe or the fallout from a small-time stock scheme gone wrong.”
“Could be,” Franklin grudgingly agrees. “Remember, Brad and Melanie were in some sort of financial straits. Maybe it was Brad, the failing businessman, trying to save the family home and his marriage.”
“So his car accident was just an accident,” I say slowly. “Or even truly a suicide.” I pause, my realization coalescing into a lead weight in my stomach. “And at the end of it all, just one conspiracy-crazed, career-challenged reporter, desperately trying to make something out of nothing.”
“Charlotte?” Franklin watches my melodrama with amusement. “Yoo-hoo, Camille. Just this once, see the glass as half-full.”
I flutter my eyelashes, doing my best Garbo. “Vy?” I ask. “Ve’re doomed.”
“It’s a reasonable theory about Brad having a stock scheme,” he says earnestly, “but maybe it’s wrong. Look again at the courses Mack Briggs taught.” He moves the cursor arrow up and down on his computer screen. “Nothing about market trends, or predicting stock prices.”
I squint to read over his shoulder. “So?”
“Look at what he did teach,” Franklin says. “Securities law.” He turns back to me. “It’s not about Brad, it’s about the companies in his files.”
“Thanks for trying to make me feel better,” I say, sliding away from the computer. “But I still think this is about Brad’s frantic need for money. Maybe he got inside information by hacking into Rasmussen’s e-mails, you know? And decided to parlay that into some quick stock market bucks.”
“Well, that would be insider trading,” Franklin answers. “He wouldn’t have to check with Briggs to see if he could play the market based on information from stolen e-mails indicating it was a good time to buy or sell. These days, even teenagers know you can’t do that. Martha Stewart, that whole deal.”
Suddenly Franklin’s study gets very quiet. I can hear the hum of his computer, the rumble of an electric trolley rattling through the streets of his downtown neighborhood, a hint of music from his upstairs neighbors.
I dig Brad’s spams out of my tote bag and hold the pages carefully in my lap.
“Franklin?” I say, gazing blankly at his wall of classical music CDs. “Say that again?”
He sounds confused. “Martha Stewart?”
“The other part,” I say, turning to look at him.
“Whatever.” He’s scratching his head. “I said, that would be insider trading, if Brad were using info he got from swiping Rasmussen’s e-mails.”
“Yeah,” I reply, keeping my voice even. “And then?”
Franklin is now acting as if I’ve totally lost it. “I said—he wouldn’t have to ask whether it was all right to play the market if he had inside info indicating it was a good time to buy or a good time to sell. It’s illegal. Everybody these days knows that.”
Each of the Bible verse e-mails slides slowly from my lap onto the floor, most fluttering into a scattered pile at my feet, one piece floating over toward Franklin’s desk. I hardly notice—because now I think I know what may be going on. At least, I think I’ve figured out what these spams really are. I just don’t know how to prove it.
Chapter Twelve
T
he landscape exaggerates as I head north. The mammoth evergreens get even more lofty, and the hills grow to craggy mountains, picturesque against the intense blue sky. My directions say it’s a straight shot to Vermont, and I should be there within the hour. I pull out the newspaper article I tore from today’s paper and check the time. I’ll make it. I try to appreciate the brilliant New England morning, but the sun’s in a losing battle against the light-sucking black hole of my disappointment.
Josh. Hasn’t called me.
I don’t know why I expect millions of news viewers to listen to me, trust me, when I don’t listen to myself. I knew I should never have gotten involved. I wasn’t looking to meet anyone, I was doing an interview. And it wasn’t my fault that the interview subject was so attractive. And smart. And funny. And single.
Becoming more irate with every memory, I dig into my tote bag for gum.
I certainly didn’t do anything to encourage Josh Gelston to ask me out. My tirade escalates as I pop a few sugar-free Chiclets. I wasn’t the one who pulled out the shooting-star line.
A souped-up convertible, with the top down in October for God’s sake, whips in front of me across two lanes and whizzes off the exit ramp. My heart races with a surge of adrenaline. If my Jeep had been going just a little faster or if I hadn’t been such a good driver, I would have crashed into some midlife-crisis sports car. Or, I realize, wind up like Brad Foreman: dead on the side of Route 128. I mentally replay the video our six o’clock news showed of the accident scene: swirling blue lights, the ambulance doors swinging wide, emergency crews quiet, in postures of defeat. Brad’s white sedan, upside down, charred to black, all four doors unnaturally twisted open, windows shattered. Demolished. No longer a car. Just an aftermath.
My buzzing mind goes quiet with the relief of escape. And then I remember—Mack Briggs didn’t escape. His name was on Brad’s e-mail. And mine, too. And, I also remember, no one knows where I am. I need to check in with Franklin.
Then I remember one thing more. Josh’s name was also on that e-mail. As the traffic blurs into the background, a sinister reason for Josh’s silence begins to nag, unpleasantly, at the back of my mind.
I laugh out loud. The old “he didn’t call because he must be dead” excuse has never been true.
But wait. Is it possible I’m being unfair? Possible that I’ve been out of the dating give-and-take for so long that I’m expecting too much too soon?
Or maybe Josh is intimidated. Maybe he thinks I only attended his little school play to see if I could score more information for my story. But now he’s afraid to call because someone like me, Emmy awards, TV personality, recognized in restaurants and all, must have a teemingly crowded social life.
He was all over the Miranda name, even had a fairly intriguing theory about it. He brought up Briggs’s name, and Rasmussen’s. Which proves he must have at least been listening to me, or how else would he have remembered them?
Just. A Darn. Minute.
The road signs flash by as I play back my conversation with Josh, in fast-forward, without the romantic parts. I check the rearview and see my own expression. I look like Little Red Riding Hood when she realizes there’s a wolf in Granny’s bed.
I had never mentioned Wes Rasmussen to Josh.
So how did he know about him? And why?
I can’t breathe. I can’t drive. I have to think. I have to pull over. I look at my watch and calculate: no time. No time to stop, and no time to panic.
I read somewhere that new pilots aren’t allowed to fly at night because they can’t tell which way is up. They fly through the darkness, instruments useless, their horizon lost, totally confused and incapable of telling whether they’re upside down.
As I head toward my destination, I know just how they feel. Could I have been completely and totally duped?
I reconstruct our evening, seeing in neon lights each moment when the diabolical Josh, suave manipulator of honest, t
ruth-seeking reporters, pulled the pashmina over my eyes.
Didn’t know Mack Briggs? Of course he did. Didn’t know why Brad was asking about the e-mails? Of course he knew. Didn’t know the origin of the spam? Sure he did. Didn’t know what was going on at Aztratech? Didn’t know Brad was ready to blow the whistle? He was probably in on the whole thing, whatever it is.
I hit the steering wheel with the heel of my hand, annoyed with myself. And Brad and Josh met at a big dinner party, I remember. Probably hosted by Wes Rasmussen.
It’s so frighteningly clear he was trying to figure out how much I knew. And I was so…lusting…for romance and affection, I didn’t even see through the deception.
I close my eyes in self-loathing, before I remember that I’m driving and that closing my eyes is not the best idea.
And there’s my exit.
When I arrive at the cemetery, a long, slow-moving caravan of cars is snaking down a narrow, unpaved road, each car puffing up a plume of gravel dust as it curves past a stone-and-masonry sign that says Eventide. I ease my Jeep onto the end of the line, and pushing my conscience out of the way, flip the switch to turn on my headlights.
It’s Mack Briggs’s funeral procession, and now I’m part of it.
The cars line up to park, one after the other, on the side of a grassy rise. Beyond that, I see a dark-green canopy set up on metal poles, rows of folding chairs underneath. The first arrivals file into the seating area, men in substantial overcoats, hatless, braving the cold. Women wrapped in extra shawls and close-fitting hats against the increasing chill, their faces somber and serious, some holding flowers and small prayer books. A little boy carrying a fire truck stumbles a bit in the gravel and he grabs the hand of the man walking next to him. I can tell they’ve both been crying. A flock of gray birds wheels gracefully over the mourners, gliding through the sky then leaving the cemetery silent.
It’s almost time for me to turn into the parking area, but now, sneaking into someone’s funeral, my conscience kicks its way back in. Questioning my own motives and attempting to retrieve my moral compass, all I can think about is getting out of here. This is a hideous invasion of privacy. This is why people hate reporters. It’s shocking, unacceptable, certainly a no-refund, no-exchange ticket to hell and eternal damnation.
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