Best Enemies

by Jane Heller

  “The question is, Why would Stuart have to pay him at all?” said Jimmy. “If Sergei’s been selling Lasher’s caviar, the money would come out of the company’s pocket, not my brother’s.”

  “Not if they had a side deal,” said Tony.

  “A side deal? That would mean Stuart’s been ripping off his own family.” Jimmy shook his head at the grim possibility.

  “Tell you what,” said Tony. “I’ve got a pal who’s got a pal who works in Fish and Wildlife. I’ll do some checking around and see what I can find out. Meanwhile, Jimmy, if you’d give me a couple of invoices from the caviar company Stuart’s been buying from, I could run them by the feds. Maybe the company will turn out to be a totally reputable distributor and we can take our search for Stuart in another direction.”

  The next morning, Scott breezed into my office. “Guess who Betsy had lunch with the other day?”

  “I don’t know, Scott.” I have more important things on my mind than Celebetsy’s eating partners.

  “Guess.”

  “Tell me. I’m really busy.” I was just about to return a call from Barbara Biggs, the host of Today’s Woman. She’d left word on my voice mail that she wanted to confirm the details of the segment she was taping at the party and had made specific mention of Stuart’s participation. I was going to have to do some serious tap dancing.

  “Patty Beecham, publicity director at Forster Books. Sounds like everybody in town has been interviewing to be your replacement.”

  He stood there beaming. It occurred to me at that moment that he was more interested in snaring a good piece of gossip than being my “loyal servant.” Or maybe he actually wanted me replaced and wasn’t as loyal as he pretended. Either way, I didn’t have time for his nonsense. There was work to be done.

  “We’re not going to comment?” he said, pouting.

  “We’re not, no. Could you close the door on your way out?”

  Looking extremely miffed, he started to walk out, only to have Celebetsy walk in. My lucky day.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said, tapping her Manolo Blahniks on my floor, arms crossed over her chest.

  “Is there something I can do for you, Betsy?” I asked wearily.

  “Yes. Your job,” she barked. “I had lunch with Ginny Siegal at Lifestyle Weekly yesterday and she said you put her off about interviewing Tara Messer and her husband. I’d like an explanation, because I was under the impression that you were hired to try to get publicity for our authors.”

  She had me there. It was true that I’d pitched Ginny about an interview with Tara, and the conversation had gone well until she said, “And I think it would be fun to get the husband’s take.” Well, what was I supposed to do? The husband wasn’t around to offer his “take” or anything else.

  “I’m waiting until publication,” I told Betsy. “If we give the magazine the interview now, we can’t be sure they’ll hold it until books are in the stores.”

  “Oh. Well, don’t wait too long, Amy. These editors hold grudges if they think you’re ducking them.”

  She turned and strutted out of my office. Talk about grudges. Lately, she seemed to have one against me, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.

  Two days later, Tony’s contact put him together with an inspector at Fish and Wildlife. Tony showed him a couple of the invoices Jimmy had let him borrow. They were from a company called Caspian Classics.

  “According to the inspector, there is no Caspian Classics,” he reported when I met him at his loft after work. “It’s a bogus company with a PO Box in Brooklyn. Definitely not on the government’s list of approved importers.”

  “Oh God. Where does that leave Stuart?” I said.

  “In really big trouble. Instinct tells me that he’s the brains—or lack thereof—behind Caspian Classics and that Sergei’s got a smuggling operation that feeds into it. The two of them have probably been billing Lasher’s for top-dollar beluga, then taking a huge chunk of change for themselves.”

  “But how?” I asked. “I still don’t get it.” I knew Stuart was a jerk, but I had no idea he’d turn out to be a crooked jerk.

  “Jimmy said Stuart has a habit of going for the shortcuts and that these shortcuts inevitably lead to trouble, right?”

  “Right.”

  “He also said Stuart’s finances were stretched thin, so your ex-fiancé was probably looking to make fast money. A lot of it. From what the federal guy told me, bootlegged caviar can deliver fast money.”

  “How?”

  “Easy. Legally imported beluga sells for fifteen hundred a pound. Smugglers—and we could be talking about the Russian Mafia here—sell the same stuff for as little as ten dollars a pound. So let’s say Stuart set up this phony company and Sergei smuggled in the caviar. Then Stuart invoiced Lasher’s for the full amount, took his cut, and gave Sergei his—in cash.”

  “Unless he missed a payment or two and didn’t give Sergei his cut. That would explain the threats.” I sighed. “It’ll break Jimmy’s heart if Stuart’s been stealing from Lasher’s. His parents will be devastated, too.”

  “Which is why we’re not going to broadcast this theory of mine until we have proof. No point in getting everybody all upset.”

  “Sounds like you already have proof. The inspector said Caspian Classics is a bogus company.”

  “Yeah, but we need proof that it’s Stuart’s bogus company.”

  “How will you get that?”

  He smiled. “We crime writers have our ways.”

  32

  It was Tara who provided the proof—or at least helped to provide it. Tony asked her to go to Lasher’s and get one of the canceled checks they’d paid to Caspian Classics so he could see where the check had been deposited. Sure enough, it had gone into a bank in Brooklyn—into the Northeast Bank of Brooklyn, to be specific.

  “Okay, so now we know exactly where Lasher’s money went,” Tony said when the three of us had assembled at his loft. “The next step is to tie the account to Stuart.”

  “You want me to go to this bank and demand that they open their records?” Tara asked. “I’m his next of kin. I could do it, couldn’t I?”

  Tony shook his head. “Not if your name isn’t on the account. I’ve got another idea.”

  “Which is?” I said.

  “After all the books I’ve written about Joe West, I’ve managed to make a few friends at the NYPD,” he said. “I’ll just call in a favor.”

  “No way. The whole point of imposing on you, Tony, is to avoid bringing in the police,” said Tara. “We have to keep Stuart’s disappearance quiet.”

  “I said I was calling in a favor, didn’t I? The favor is that whatever this friend does will be strictly off the record.”

  “Yes, but—”

  I interrupted before Tara could protest further. “Tony knows what he’s talking about. I trust him completely.”

  And I did. Despite his reputation as a love-’em-and-leave-’em type, he had proven how dependable and steadfast he could be. He had promised to stick by me as my supposed fiancé and he’d done it. Then, once the the charade was over, we’d grown even closer. And now that Stuart had vanished, he was giving up his precious writing time in order to help us find him. That was enough to merit my trust, wasn’t it?

  Tony’s buddy, a cop with twenty years on the force, went with him to the bank in Brooklyn, told the manager he was investigating a missing person’s case, and, after a little flashing of his badge and a lot of vague references to a search warrant, asked to see the file on the Caspian Classics account. Lo and behold, the account holder was Stuart. Even more startling was the fact that he had two other accounts at the bank: one in the name of a company called Truffles Magnifique; the other, a company called New Life Organic. Still more startling was that all three accounts had been closed on the day before his abandoned car was discovered in the alley.

  Tony and I took the information to Jimmy and Tara for another after-hours meeting at Lasher’s.<
br />
  “But Truffles Magnifique was supposed to operate out of Provence, not Brooklyn,” said an understandably devastated, not to mention bewildered, Jimmy.

  “I hate to break this to you,” said Tony, “but, according to what we uncovered at the bank, the truffles themselves didn’t even come from France. Lasher’s has been selling the cheaper Chinese variety. Stuart’s been running a scam with some guy named Ho.”

  Jimmy was speechless. But Tara wasn’t. “So this Ho could show up at my house next, demanding his money? Wasn’t Sergei enough to give me a heart attack?”

  “Actually, you could be getting a visit from someone named Miguel, too,” said Tony.

  “Who the hell is he?” wailed Tara.

  “He’s the Sergei/Ho equivalent at New Life Organic. It seems that Stuart was importing garden-variety produce from Mexico, selling it to Lasher’s as organic, and paying Miguel a substantial cut of the profits.”

  Jimmy pounded his fist on his desk. “You’re telling me my brother set up three dummy companies so he could funnel money out of his own?”

  “He never thought of Lasher’s as his company,” said Tara. “He resented that you were the one running it, Jimmy. This was probably his twisted way of proving himself to you, to all of us.”

  “And then his overspending caught up with him,” I mused. “He probably stiffed Sergei, Ho, and Miguel, cashed out what was left of the money in the accounts, and took off before they all came after him.”

  “Right. I’m guessing he trashed his car, sprinked a few drops of his own blood on the seat, and abandoned it in the alley to make it look like a homicide,” Tony said. “But guys like Sergei and the others are too smart to buy that scenario.”

  “Then he is alive?” asked Jimmy, as if he wasn’t sure whether that was good news or not.

  “Probably alive and living in the lap of luxury somewhere,” said Tony.

  “He’s not holed up in a shack, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” said Tara. “He likes the good life too much for that.”

  “God, how am I going to tell my folks?” said Jimmy. “They were aware of Stuart’s problems, but they’ll be brokenhearted about this.”

  “You’re not going to tell them,” said Tara. “Not yet anyway. For now, you’re going to keep selling your customers caviar and truffles and organic produce—from reputable distributors—and they’ll never be the wiser. And my book will come out and Today’s Woman will cover the publication party, and nobody will be the wiser there, either.”

  “If we can find Stuart and drag him back here for the party,” I said. “I can only keep pretending he’s out of town for so long. He’s got to put in an appearance at the party or it’ll look bad. The media will make a stink about it and your credibility will be as pitiful as the book’s sales.”

  “Before you start worrying about book sales,” said Tony, “there’s one other problem you should be aware of. You and Amy.”

  Tara and I sat at attention.

  “My cop friend tipped me off that the detectives who were first assigned to Stuart’s case are finally stepping up their investigation.”

  “Oh great,” I said. “Are they going to lock us up or something?”

  “No. But they’ll be digging into your whereabouts on the day Stuart went missing.”

  “That does it,” said Tara. “We’ve got to find that lousy husband of mine and we’ve got to find him fast.” She looked pleadingly at Tony. “How do we even start to search for him?”

  “The first thing for you to do is check around the house, Tara. Go through every drawer, every piece of paper, everything he touched. Hunt for clues. Then do the same at Lasher’s. Talk to the people who worked with him on a daily basis. He had a secretary, right?”

  “Please,” said Tara, rolling her eyes. “He had all his secretaries, in a manner of speaking.”

  Jimmy gave her a look.

  “Come on, Jimmy,” she said. “Let’s not play games anymore. You know as well as I do that your brother slept around. Mandy, the latest one, even made house calls.”

  “Yeah, I know all about Stuart’s flings,” he said. “I’ve always known about them. But you can forget about wringing information out of Mandy.”

  “Why?” asked Tara. “Did Stuart swear her to secrecy?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “I only meant that she’s not at Lasher’s anymore. She quit last week.”

  “She quit?” Tony said.

  “She lost her boss,” Jimmy reminded us. “We offered to reassign her to someone else, but she told Human Resources she wanted to leave to pursue other interests.”

  “Could one of those interests be Stuart?” I asked. “Is it possible that if we find Mandy, we find him?”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” said Tony.

  Jimmy instructed his Human Resources person to give Tara Mandy’s home phone number and address. She called Stuart’s former assistant but got no answer. Not her voice mail. Not a roommate. Nothing. When she drove to White Plains to try to confront Mandy face-to-face, she didn’t fare much better. There was nobody home at the condo. What there was, however, was a neighbor. Tara asked the woman if she’d seen Mandy recently, and she said Mandy had moved away. When Tara asked where, the woman said she didn’t know. Then, just as Tara was walking to her car, the woman shouted, “Wherever she did go, it’s gotta be someplace warm, because she gave me all her winter clothes.”

  “No doubt about it. He went to Florida and she went there to join him,” said Tara after Tony and I arrived at her house that night to brainstorm what to do next.

  “What makes you so sure?” he asked.

  “Amy, remember when I told you that he and I were down in Palm Beach looking at houses with a Realtor?”

  “I do,” I said. “You’d decided you needed a second castle.”

  “He was the one who’d decided. And now I’m willing to bet that the trip was his cover,” she said. “He was probably looking at houses for himself and Mandy, so they could hide out together.”

  “They don’t call the state of Florida ‘debtor’s heaven’ for nothing,” said Tony. “People who file for bankruptcy, for example, buy property there so the government can’t seize their assets. It’s very possible that Stuart put his money into a house, just like O.J.”

  “And Mandy could be there, keeping him company,” said Tara.

  “Do you still have the name of the Realtor you dealt with?” Tony asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “His address, too.”

  “Good,” said Tony. “We’re going to pay him a surprise visit.”

  “Hey, this is great,” I said. “The search is moving faster than I expected. There’s only one problem: I can’t go to Florida now. Betsy is on me every minute about Simply Beautiful, never mind all the other books I’ve got on my plate. For me to just take off would be suicidal.”

  “Of course it would,” said Tara, looking entirely too cheerful all of a sudden. “Tony and I will go by ourselves. My radio show’s on hiatus, and he’s been kind enough to interrupt his writing for the moment, so we have more free time than you do, Amy.”

  “We know you have a lot of work to do,” he said sympathetically. “We’ll have to manage without you, that’s all.”

  I couldn’t speak. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Yes, Tara and I had made up. Yes, we’d cleared the air about our respective gripes. Yes, we’d pledged to move forward with our friendship, to stop reverting to our childhood behaviors, to approach the future with a spirit of cooperation, maturity, and—here was the biggie—honesty. We were going to give up all the lying and posturing and back-stabbing and trust each other. That’s what we’d said.

  But now I wasn’t so sure about any of it. I mean, how could I let her fly off to Palm Beach with Tony? My Tony. The Tony who was not only her favorite author and a certified stud muffin but the person who was poised to rescue her. Talk about a turn-on. The Tony who’d been incredibly attentive to me but who also had a tendency to j
ump from female to female. The Tony I loved—yeah, loved. Why not say it? I’d probably been in love with him since the beginning. But now I was supposed to send him on a trip with the same woman who’d stolen the first and only man who’d ever wanted to marry me? It was a ghastly idea. Completely unacceptable.

  “Amy? Are you okay with Tony and me going to Florida without you?” she said, sounding all sweet and innocent but looking trampy in her nearly up-to-the-crotch red miniskirt.

  No, I wasn’t okay with it, but what was I supposed to do? It was either stay behind in New York and do my job or chaperone the two of them in Florida and risk Betsy’s wrath.

  “Sure I am,” I said, even as it dawned on me that I was now stuck playing second fiddle to Tara yet again. “The important thing is finding Stuart, getting the police off our backs, and making sure your book is launched properly.”

  She squished me into a hug. “Oh, I knew you’d understand.”

  “That’s what best friends do,” I said, forcing my face into a big stupid smile.

  33

  I couldn’t bring myself to tag along with them to the airport. That’s how messed up I was about their trip. Tony asked me to come, so he and I could have one last goodbye before he boarded the plane, but I begged off, claiming I had a meeting with an author. I mean, did I really have to watch her walk through the security checkpoints with him? Watch her take his arm as they trotted down to the gate? Watch them cuddle up next to each other in their first-class seats, sip their drinks, eat their meal, do the dopey airline magazine crossword puzzle together, hold hands during pockets of turbulence—

  Okay, so I was getting carried away.

  “Hey, if my spending even five minutes alone with Tara upsets you, tell me and we’ll figure something else out,” he said as we lay in bed the morning of their flight.

  “I’ve got a demanding job with an equally demanding boss,” I said. “I can’t just take off whenever I feel like it.”

  “I didn’t ask if you could go. I asked if you wanted me to stay.” He kissed me. “Look, I’m not a complete jerk. I know you must have mixed feelings about the trip, even though you begged me to help Tara find Stuart and even though you and she have mended fences. So if you’ve changed your mind, tell me now.”