Bad Publicity

by Joanne Sydney Lessner

  Without stopping to consider what she was doing, Isobel rushed into Dr. Daley’s office, startling Wanda momentarily.

  “I just remembered something else I’m supposed to check!” Isobel cried, her face flushed. “Right there!”

  Isobel pointed to the bright red, preprinted record number on the top of her forgery, but her eyes darted to the autopsy results on Jason Whiteley’s real death form. Dr. Daley’s scrawl was among the least legible she had grappled with all morning, but she willed the letters to take sensible shape. It took all her acting training to conceal her reaction from Wanda as she deciphered the words and committed them to memory.

  Stomach contents: coffee, eggs, toast.

  Blood tested positive for meperidine, digoxin.

  Cause of death: poisoning.

  FOURTEEN

  James was surprised to see Isobel waiting for him in front of his office building when he emerged at six forty-five. His surprise gave way to suspicion when he saw the feverish look in her eyes.

  “What?”

  Isobel glanced up and down Madison Avenue. “Not here. Can we get a drink or something?” She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, sorry!”

  He patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, I can handle it.”

  They settled themselves at the lobby bar of a hotel on Madison and 52nd Street, where he used to meet Jayla. As the bartender served his Coke, James realized he hadn’t been there since he and Jayla had broken up.

  Isobel took a long sip of her wine. Then she set the glass down and looked at him squarely.

  “He was poisoned. I saw the autopsy report. There were two things in his blood.” She closed her eyes, as if trying to recall the words. “Meperidine and digoxin.” She opened her eyes. “And coffee, eggs and toast in his stomach.”

  James felt his chest tighten, and the dim lights in the bar seemed to flicker. Why should it bother him to know beyond a doubt that Jason Whiteley had been murdered? Hadn’t he at one time felt like murdering the guy himself? Maybe that’s why it bothered him.

  “Shit.”

  Isobel rubbed her hands together nervously. “What am I going to do? What can I tell them that will make them believe it wasn’t me? I served him the coffee!”

  James massaged his brow and tried to think. He was, unaccountably, flashing back to the night of the frat party when that Barnard girl had died. She and Jason had been dating, and he had given her a bottle of tequila as both a present and a dare. Jason had been mixing kamikazes California-style, right in her mouth, and when she’d passed out, he’d started making out with her roommate. He had served the girl the alcohol that killed her, and then cheated on her. And James had taken the rap. Jason deserved to have someone serve him poison in return.

  “James? James! You’re not helping.” Isobel snapped her fingers in front of his face, jolting him back to the present.

  “Maybe it wasn’t in the coffee,” he said reflexively. “Maybe it was in the eggs or the toast. Maybe his girlfriend or wife, or his roommate, whoever—maybe one of them poisoned him.”

  Isobel’s brow furrowed. “Do you think? I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “What are those substances? Where do you get them? How do they work?

  “No idea. What I really want to know is if the rest of the coffee in the pot tested positive.”

  “You won’t get that from the medical examiner. Only the police will know.”

  “Okay, so I’ll call Detective O’Connor.”

  James stirred the ice cubes in his empty Coke glass. “Don’t do it. Believe me, if you’re a suspect, you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “But I want to know beforehand. I want to be prepared. Doesn’t it look good for me to be proactive?”

  James gave a mordant laugh. She was such a little go-getter. “This isn’t like trying to get an acting job. Nothing makes you look guiltier than trying to stay ahead of the cops.”

  “But O’Connor seemed nice,” she insisted. “Well-educated, too.”

  “Never trust the nice ones,” warned James. “They can turn on a dime, and when they do, they’re meaner than the mean.”

  “Then I’ll call the surly one. The short one with the beady eyes.”

  “Isobel!”

  “What? I suppose you’re going to tell me I’m being racist?”

  “No, I’m going to tell you you’re being naïve!”

  She crossed her arms petulantly. “You also told me I was wrong about Whiteley being poisoned.”

  “Who got you into the medical examiner’s office?”

  “Just to prove me wrong, right?”

  He threw up his hands. “You got me there.”

  “When are you going to start believing in me, James? I believe in you, you know! My friend Sunil asked me if I trusted you, and I said absolutely, yes, no question.”

  He looked into Isobel’s lake-colored eyes and found himself saying, in a shakier voice than he intended, “You’re just saying that.”

  She took his hand and he felt a flash of warmth rush up his arm. “I know you think I’m silly and flighty and all that, but I’m not stupid. Can’t you trust me like I trust you?”

  He felt suddenly as if he existed in a hundred different parts, each with a different possible answer and none of them the response he most wanted to give. He wanted to say that he trusted her, but he didn’t. He didn’t trust himself, which meant her trust in him was utterly misplaced. Therefore, he didn’t—he couldn’t—trust her judgment. How could he, when she was so wrong about him?

  He shook her off. “Do what you want. I can’t stop you. You always just go off and do your own thing anyway.”

  From the stricken look on her face, he knew he’d picked the worst of all possible responses. Isobel inhaled sharply and paused, half on and half off her barstool, her lips drawn back in a pained smile.

  “I only made it through one box of death records. Sharon Press can finish the morgue job. I’m going back to Dove & Flight.”

  FIFTEEN

  “We missed you,” Liz Stewart said from her perch on Isobel’s desk. “The other girl was fine, but kind of serious. You’re much more fun.” She underscored her point by noisily scraping the bottom of her milk carton with her straw.

  “Oh, that’s me. Bringing murder and mayhem wherever I go,” Isobel said, setting down her coffee.

  Liz lobbed the empty milk carton into Isobel’s trash can. “Except that it wasn’t murder, although it did cause a fair amount of mayhem.”

  Isobel bit her tongue. She found herself wanting to confide in Liz, but she wasn’t even sure she was going to tell Katrina the truth about Jason Whiteley. Delphi knew, but only because she had caught Isobel looking up the two substances online. It turned out that meperidine was the generic name for Demerol, and digoxin was a heart medication derived from the foxglove plant. Delphi had reminded Isobel that while she’d undoubtedly served Jason the coffee, somebody else had dropped the poisons in it, and until she knew who it was, it paid to proceed with caution. And to keep buying her coffee at Starbucks.

  “To tell you the truth,” Liz went on, “nobody’s talking about Jason anymore. The merger has knocked everything else off the table.”

  Isobel settled herself at her desk and switched on her computer. “So, what’s the scuttlebutt?”

  Liz leaned forward eagerly, and Isobel realized that she’d been bursting with a nugget of gossip this whole time.

  “The big rumble is that it’s Barnaby’s dream, and Angus is totally against it. Barnaby tricked him into it somehow, and now Angus isn’t speaking to him.”

  Anyone catching Angus Dove’s expression at the staff meeting the other day could have seen that he was less than pleased, but before Isobel could point that out, Liz continued, “And Kit Blanchard is fit to be tied. Did you see the look on her face when Barnaby made that comment about consumer PR not being our strong suit?”

  “Kit? Why?”

  Liz tsked. “Sometimes I forget you don’t actually work here, and I mean that as
a compliment. Kit essentially is our consumer PR department. She gets to do whatever she wants. Has for years. I’m pretty sure she and Barnaby had a thing for a while. It would shock me if they didn’t.” Liz whispered, “Let’s just say Kit’s real specialty is acquisitions and mergers, in that order. If you know what I mean.”

  “Isn’t she married with kids?”

  Liz sighed. “So young, so innocent.” She beckoned Isobel closer. “The current rumor is Aaron.”

  “What?!”

  Liz put a warning finger to her lips. “Unconfirmed, but the signs are there. And, as you may have noticed, he is even more married with even more kids than Kit.” Liz leaned back. “Told you she was trouble.”

  Isobel took this in. “I thought he didn’t like working women.”

  Liz held up her hands. “Far be it from me to try to psychoanalyze Aaron, but I would say his feelings about women—especially forbidden ones—are probably extremely complicated. But I digress.” Liz smoothed her blouse over her burgeoning belly. “After ICG buys us and we merge with The Peterson Group, Kit will be absorbed into Peterson’s lineup. Even if she keeps her title, she’ll have to answer to a higher power. No matter how you slice it, it’s a comedown for someone who’s accustomed to running the show.”

  “What do you think she’ll do?”

  Liz shrugged. “Beats me. I try to steer clear of her. I don’t trust her not to sniff out my handsome husband from traces of his aftershave on my sweater.”

  “What about Dorothy Berman? Doesn’t the other PR firm ICG owns do something in healthcare?”

  “Yes, Fisher Health Strategies. If ICG ever decides to fold them in and make one, giant, über-PR firm, that’ll be the end of her, too.” Liz glanced at her watch and slid gingerly off the desk. “Speaking of which, we’re about to find out if it’s the end of us with Schumann, Crowe & Dyer. One of their senior consultants is coming in this morning. You should probably sit in on the meeting. On the off chance that they don’t fire us, we may need your help.”

  “Sure.”

  “We’ll be in Conference Room F. Nobody wants to go back into the one down here after the other day. Too creepy.”

  “Which one is F?”

  “The one upstairs, across from Harm’s Way.”

  “What’s Harm’s Way?” Isobel asked, alarmed.

  “That’s what we call the executive suite,” Liz said, making a protective vampire cross with her fingers. “I hope you never find out why. Oh, and can you order pastries and stuff? A spoonful of sugar and all that.”

  Liz returned to her office, and Isobel picked up the phone.

  “U-Like Deli, please hold.”

  While she was waiting for her order to be taken, Dorothy Berman appeared.

  “Penny’s out today, and I wondered if you might have time to follow up on a press release for me.”

  “Sure, although I was just asked to sit in on a meeting. But if it can—oh, wait!” She turned from Dorothy and placed her order with the deli. Then she hung up and returned to the older woman. “Sorry about that. I was on hold.”

  “That’s all right. You can do it this afternoon. It’s an executive appointment, nothing earth-shaking. Just call the top trades and make sure they got the release, and then ask if they can give it a brief mention. If they seem interested, see if they’d like a bylined article.”

  Dorothy handed Isobel the release and a stapled spreadsheet. Her heart sank when she saw it had close to 150 names on it. This, she had learned, was a popular managerial ploy: getting her to agree to a small assignment, only to have it morph within seconds into an all-day behemoth. She was still examining the list, when Aaron sidled up to her desk and cleared his throat.

  “I have a press release I’d like you to follow up on,” he said, addressing his shoes. “Oswald Insurance. It’s a new product.”

  “I already did that one,” Isobel said, relieved that she wasn’t about to be hit with more work.

  He held out the release and a press list. “This is a different new product.”

  Isobel glanced at the names. “But I just called all these people the other day.”

  “Call them again.”

  As he retreated, Isobel tried to imagine stiff, conventional Aaron with Kit Blanchard, cougar extraordinaire. It seemed impossible. Liz had to be wrong.

  Isobel set Aaron’s press list next to Dorothy’s. There were easily 300 names between them. After her mind-numbing experience at the medical examiner’s office, the thought of another daylong, detail-oriented task—not to mention the strain on her voice from all those phone calls—was not appealing.

  But she had to do something. Despite Aaron’s directive, she couldn’t bring herself to bug the same people again so soon, so she picked up Dorothy’s list and dialed, determined to take a good long break after every ten calls.

  “May I speak to Joel Ripkin?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Oh, hi! This is Isobel Spice from Dove & Flight. We sent you a release this morning announcing…”

  She trailed off, realizing that she had forgotten to look at the release to see what she was pitching. She shuffled the papers.

  “Um, it’s a new directors and officers insurance policy for—”

  “We’re a medical trade,” Ripkin snapped and hung up.

  Isobel looked down and saw she’d grabbed Aaron’s release by mistake. “Brilliant.” She slammed down the phone.

  “Not going well?” Katrina asked from behind her.

  Isobel swiveled her chair around. “How do you do this all day?”

  “I don’t. I get someone like you to do it. Can I talk to you in my office?”

  Isobel, relieved to have an excuse to defer her current tasks, followed Katrina, who shut her office door behind them.

  “Do you want to stay here?” Katrina asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m leaving Dove & Flight, and I want you to come with me.”

  “Whoa! What are you talking about?”

  “I vowed a long time ago that I wouldn’t work for any of my dad’s companies. He’s making that really difficult, because he keeps buying more.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like you’d be working for him directly. He’d be more of a figurehead, right?”

  “You don’t understand.” Katrina paced over to her corkboard and began rearranging the colored pushpins into a circle. “I worked really hard in school, but it was never good enough. If it was an A-minus, it should have been an A. God forbid I ever saw a B. And then when I didn’t get into Harvard or Yale, my dad decided I was always going to need his help. Which is ridiculous!” She stabbed a pushpin with such force that the bulletin board swung back and forth.

  “Of course it is! You’re totally capable and very smart,” Isobel reassured her, although she couldn’t help but enjoy a teeny bit of schadenfreude at the discovery that Katrina had been rejected by the Ivies.

  Katrina settled the corkboard and began pulling out the pins. “I got this job all by myself. And you know what my dad said?”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘You should have told me. I could have gotten you in there.’ As if I hadn’t just done exactly that on my own!” She stalked over the desk and dropped the pushpins into a container. “Do you know he wanted me to be a model?”

  “I thought that was your idea.”

  She shook her head fiercely, and her russet hair swung back and forth like a shampoo commercial. “He suggested it. He thinks my looks will get me farther than my brain. He thinks my looks are unique. My brain…not so much.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t get me wrong—I love my dad. I do,” Katrina said, sitting down heavily. “I just don’t want him in any position to pull strings I don’t need pulled.”

  “So you’re leaving?”

  “I called a headhunter this morning. She had something that just came in—corporate communications at a big international bank. They’re also looking for someone to fill the assistant posi
tion.” She looked hopefully at Isobel. “Are you interested?”

  Multiple thoughts jockeyed for supremacy in Isobel’s mind. The first was that she wasn’t about to abandon a hot murder trail. The second was that she didn’t dare work for another international bank, because the last time she did that, someone died. The third was that number two was a ridiculous reason, because it had already happened again. The fourth, which she realized fleetingly should have been the first, was the one she finally articulated to Katrina.

  “I’m really flattered, but I can’t commit to anything full-time. I know I’ve gotten comfortable here, but it’s still a temp job. I have to be free to audition and take an acting job if I get one.”

  Katrina stared at her as if she had answered in a foreign language. “Are you sure? I mean, a bird in hand and all that. Especially in this economy.”

  “I know,” Isobel said. “But I’m not a bird-hunter by profession.”

  They regarded each other in perplexed silence. With her father’s track record of snapping up communications companies, Katrina was probably always going to be on the run. No matter what she did, people were likely to cry nepotism. It was an occupational hazard of being heir to an international communications conglomerate, which, it occurred to Isobel, Katrina would probably inherit whether she proved herself elsewhere or not. Given that, it was a little hard to feel sorry for her.

  Katrina waved Isobel off. “Okay, forget I said anything. It might not even work out, and I don’t want word getting out that I’m looking to leave.

  Isobel nodded. “Sure. But I’m curious—why do you want to bring me so badly?”

  Katrina shrugged. “If I can bring someone, it makes me a more attractive candidate.” The phone rang. “Yeah, she’s in here. I’ll tell her.” She hung up. “Your deli order is here.”

  Isobel returned to her desk to collect her delivery, still smarting from Katrina’s admission that she wanted Isobel only to improve her own chances. She should never have gone looking for a compliment. Tray in hand, Isobel carefully navigated the spiral staircase. As she snuck a chunk of melon from under the plastic, she couldn’t help wondering whether having her father breathing down her neck was the real reason Katrina suddenly wanted out of Dove & Flight so badly.