Стюарт Вудс - Indecent Exposure

“How much?”

“That’s inside stuff, unless you’re a bank. Say, five hundred? Two hundred now.”

She reached for her purse, fished out two bills, and handed them over.

“What have you got in mind, Gloria?”

“Well, we already know that the bulk of his fortune came from his dead wife, and before that, from her first husband, the movie star Vance Calder.”

“That’s been published, sweetie, along with the details of her murder.”

“Maybe, but it hasn’t been mined for dirt.”

“What you need is pay dirt.”

“Where there’s enough money, there’s plenty of pay dirt.”

“What does it matter who he inherits from? An old man or an old lady — what’s the dif?”

“It’s sexy money, rooted in the movies. What’s sexier than Hollywood? Let’s start with who Vance Calder screwed to get it.”

“Okay, I can plow that field. Give me a week.”

“You can have three days.” Gloria stood up, smoothed her skirt, checked her hair in a gigantic mirror across the room, and headed for the door. “Oh, and one other thing, Al. Check out his wife’s murder and see if there are any holes in the story.”

“Whatever you say.”

Outside, Cantor looked around. Upstairs or down? He slipped out of his loafers, tucked them under an arm, went for up, the stairs leading to the roof. He had just crouched at the top when Parsons burst through Teppi’s door and started down the stairs, apparently unwilling to wait for the elevator. Cantor noticed that the phone box was there, and he quickly attached a remote device that would record any conversations in his van. Then he went after Parsons, got to the front door, and looked up and down the street to see her stopping at a shop window, then disappearing inside.

He started toward the shop, taking his time, window-shopping, using reflections to keep an eye on the door. He was nearly there when she emerged, carrying a tiny shopping bag. Cosmetics, he guessed.

She walked back to her office building and went inside.

Cantor figured the place to start on her would be in the pieces she had written. He found a coffee shop, ordered a pastry and a double espresso, and went to work on his extra-large iPhone, trolling for celebrity peccadilloes and journalistic outrages.

Alphonse Teppi sat in his corner computer station and Googled “Barrington Murder.” Instantly, he got acres of stuff from newspapers in New York and Virginia, where the murder took place.

The place was Arrington Calder Barrington’s recently completed country house in Albemarle County; there were four pages of photos in Architectural Digest showing nearly every part of the house, including the large downstairs foyer where the woman had been killed with a shotgun, allegedly by a former lover, an architecture professor at the University of Virginia named Rutherford.

He looked for details that were less architectural and more lascivious, and he found what he was looking for in a local Virginia newspaper, including a reconstruction of the crime scene. Barrington couldn’t have had anything to do with it because he had been out riding with his and Arrington’s son and the boy’s girlfriend, and they had all heard the shotgun go off from the stables, where they had just arrived. There was one loose end, though — the ex-boyfriend and alleged murderer had fled the scene and the state, and he had finally been shot in the head in Barrington’s office by Joan Robertson, his secretary. The dead man had never been charged with Arrington’s murder, and he told friends that he had been falsely accused and that the husband had done it. An idea began forming in Teppi’s fevered imagination. He called Gloria.

“That was fast,” she said.

“My brain got lucky,” Teppi replied. He recounted the details of the murder to her.

“Yeah, that’s about the way I remember it,” Parsons said.

“Do you remember that the alleged murderer, this guy named Rutherford, went to Stone Barrington’s office with a gun, ostensibly to kill Barrington, and for his trouble got shot in the head by Barrington’s secretary?”

“Well, yeah, I think I remember that.”

“Thus closing the case?”

“The guy is dead — they could hardly prosecute him.”

“But there’s your opening,” Teppi explained. “Officially the murder case against him was never adjudicated. What if what he told his friends was true? That he didn’t shoot Arrington, that Barrington was persecuting him.”

“So, you mean that Barrington could have killed his wife?”

“The important words are ‘could have.’”

“But he had an alibi — he was with his son and the kid’s girlfriend in the stables when they all heard the gun go off.”

“They heard something that sounded like a gun. In fact, Barrington told the police that it sounded like a door slamming. And there was no one else in the house.”

“So, how could Barrington have killed her?”

“Maybe he shot her before they went riding, or something like that. It doesn’t really matter, all you want to do is to call Barrington’s story and the police report into question. Nobody actually saw Rutherford in the house at the time, and the police never got to question him because he scampered.”

“But the local cops would see that she was shot at the time Barrington said she was. The physical evidence, like body temperature, would have told them that.”

“Yeah, but it’s a Podunk sheriff’s office in rural Virginia. Can you imagine how many ways they could have screwed up the physical evidence? Don’t you remember how Johnnie Cochran took apart the LAPD at the O.J. trial? And that was a big-city, lotsa-science police department.”

“Jesus, Al,” Parsons said, “I believe you’re actually on to something.”

“Well, I mean, they’re not going to arrest Barrington for the murder, but there’ll be a lot of press, and half the people who read it will remember only that Barrington could have done it. Do I have to explain to you how the public thinks?”

“No, Al, you don’t,” Parsons said. “I’m going to have a word with my editor.”

“And don’t forget, you owe me another three hundred.”

“Al, the five hundred was for the D&B report.”

“Picky, picky, picky!”

“Okay, if this story flies with my editor, you’ll get the other three hundred.”

Gloria sat in her editor’s office, a hip slung on the woman’s desk. “What do you think?”

“I think what I thought at the time,” the editor said, “that Barrington had nothing to do with his wife’s murder, that Rutherford did it.”

“Hazel,” Parsons said, “how do you know that?”

“Well, I don’t know it, it’s just what the police and everybody said at the time.”

“A Podunk sheriff’s office in rural Virginia — they could have screwed up the physical evidence a hundred ways. Don’t you remember the O.J. trial? The prosecution had him on the physical evidence, then Johnnie Cochran shredded their handling of the blood!”

“You’d have to handle this very, very carefully, Gloria.”

“Listen, I’m never going to say outright that Barrington murdered his wife, I’m just asking the questions that the public will demand be answered.”

Hazel looked at her appraisingly. “Gloria, tell me the truth, did you fuck Barrington?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Have you got some sort of ax to grind here? Did he dump you, or something?”

“Hazel, if I answered that question, you’d have every right to fire me for being too forthcoming. I’ll answer your first question, though. Did I fuck Barrington? Yes, I did, and it was great! But by the time anybody who reads my story gets around to asking that question, my work will be done. Half the world will think that Barrington could have murdered his wife.”