CHAPTER fifty-six
“The bastard," I whispered to no one in particular. "He did it. He killed Evelyn." My eyes filled with tears of anger and the dead phone hung limply from my hand. Jay got up from where he was sitting and put a hand on my shoulder.
"Kate, he’s drunk. You can’t believe anything he said." I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and looked at Vanessa who was leaning against the wall hugging herself.
"Vee, he did it. He said he was sorry. That it was an accident." I was yelling. "The only accident that ever happened in that sorry son of a bitch's life happened the day he was born."
Vee was shaking her head now. "No. No way."
"Don’t Vee. Don’t defend him. This’ll turn out to be just another quirk in his miserable personality. The capability of killing someone."
"He couldn’t have Kate," Vee said with disbelief in her voice.
"Are you defending him?" I demanded.
Vanessa hesitated before answering. "Yes. And no," she said slowly.
"Yes?" I repeated.
She nodded.
"He just as much admitted to me that he was responsible," I said angrily. "And you’re defending him?"
"He’s drunk Kate. You should know better than to believe anything he says."
"Stop it. Stop defending him." My blood was boiling and anger was bubbling up in the back of my throat. I took a step towards Vee and Jay stepped between us.
"Cut it out," he said.
"What is going on Kate?" Vee asked me. "I don’t understand. You show up here tonight looking like you’ve been through a battle and you don’t have the decency to tell me what happened. You just demand my car and money. And now you’re accusing Chris of murder! Care to fill me in?"
"I can’t fill you in," I answered her. "Because I don’t know myself what’s going on. What I will tell you is that Philip Winston hit me over the head and knocked me out and tried to lock me up in a room at his mother’s house. I got away and came here. Why’d he do it? I don’t know. And now Chris as much as admits that he had something to do with Evelyn’s death. Why? I don’t know. Maybe you know. Maybe you have some idea." My breath was coming in short gasps now and Vee was just staring at me.
"Me?"
"Yeah you. Everyone else at TechniGroup seems to be involved in all of this. Why not you?"
"Get out. Get out of my house," she said as she pushed past me. "How dare you?"
"How dare I?" I yelled at her. "My friend Evelyn is dead and I came close to it the other night. Like it or not, we’re all involved in this and it’s all about to come tumbling down around us. Because I’m not giving up until I find out what is going on."
"It’s time to get the police involved," Jay interjected. "This has gone too far." He tried to take my arm but I shook him off. I backed away from the two of them and balled my hands into fists.
"You do what you want Jay," I told him. "The police are involved and obviously they haven’t figured out anything. I’m not going to the police. Yet."
"They don’t know about Philip. And we should tell them about what Chris said. Let’s leave it to them," he pleaded with me.
I stormed to the front door of the house and yanked it open. Over my shoulder I yelled, "Go ahead. You’re on your own." The door slammed behind me and I quickly realized that if I was on my own, I would be doing it by foot. My car was still parked at Sadie Weinstein's house and after the things I’d said to Vanessa, it was highly doubtful that she’d loan me her car again.
I stood there stupidly for a moment until I heard the front door open quietly and I turned around to see Jay silhouetted in the light.
"We made a promise the other day you know Kathleen," he said softly and I nodded my head mutely, knowing full well what he was referring to.
"I made a promise to stay out of it. I know that. But the moment Philip Winston waved a gun in my face and hit me on the head with it, things changed." I gave Jay a challenging look, almost daring him to back out.
He raised his hands in the air and shrugged his shoulders at the same time. "Fine. Just tell me what we’re doing before we run off half-cocked."
"I want to see Oakes. Confront him."
"That could be dangerous."
"No more dangerous than things have been in the last two weeks. Only now, we can be aware of the danger. Not let it creep up on us. Okay?"
Jay nodded his agreement and dug in the pocket of his jeans for his car keys and I went back to Vee’s door and knocked timidly. The door opened immediately and I knew she’d been standing on the other side.
"Sorry," was all I said.
"I know. Ev was my friend too, so do what you have to. Everything’s about to crash about us, isn’t it?"
"That’s a fair assessment, Vee. With what’s happened, I can’t see that things’ll stay status quo. And for that, I’m sorry too. We’ll all have to get new jobs, you know. I’d already made up my mind, but I don’t know what’s going to happen to you, because I think Oakes has worked his last day there."
"I was working up to that anyway, knowing about the take-over. He already told me that one of the conditions from the other side is that he’ll be gone within six months. He thought he was laughing all the way to the bank because of his options. I knew I’d be out of a job, with him anyway, before too long. So don’t worry about me, Kate. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to help."
"You make it sound like I’m going off to war," I joked.
Her response was dead serious. "Maybe you are." We hugged each other tightly.
The only response we got from ringing the doorbell was the frantic, high-pitched barking of Baby on the other side of the door. When the dog finally quieted down, we could hear him snuffling and scratching at the bottom of the door. There was still no response from Chris so I rang the bell again. The dog started up again and Jay said, "Oakes must be passed out if he can’t hear the dog going crazy."
I tentatively put my hand on the ornate brass door handle and pushed down the latch with my thumb. The door opened and I looked up expectantly at Jay, waiting for him to say something. Instead he pushed past me into the lobby entranceway calling Chris’ name. Baby leapt up at me and his claws scratched at my knee where the scrapes from the roof of Sadie Weinstein’s house had only just stopped oozing. The pain of Baby re-opening the wound brought a metallic taste to my mouth and I gasped. My reaction was normal under the circumstances but when I batted him away from my legs, he yelped. He had a stupid, red bow, tied to his topknot and another one under his chin, like a bow-tie. It must be tough enough being a miniature poodle, but to add insult to injury, the male dog was decked out like a foo-foo.
"Quiet, Baby," I said as I looked around the lobby for signs of life. The house was very familiar to me and I knew the layout from memory. I had been there many times on different errands and knew exactly where we’d find Oakes.
"Downstairs," I told Jay, pointing to a Colonial style door inset in the curved walls. He looked at me with a question mark on his face.
"Television room. That’s where he hides when he’s drinking."
A couple of years ago TechniGroup had been about to close a debenture issue and Oakes had disappeared one afternoon. There was no response to his telephone at home, urgent voice messages were not returned, and Harold started to panic about nine o’clock that night. We were at the lawyers' offices at a pre-closing and all the documents were neatly arranged in piles around a long, rectangular boardroom table that sat thirty people. The junior lawyers from both sides were working their way methodically around the table checking the documents against the closing agenda, making sure all the i’s were dotted and all the t’s were crossed. The senior lawyers from both sides were huddled in the corners of the room, ironing out last minute "deal stoppers". The chairs had been removed from the table and placed against the walls where the accountants sat, biding their time and watching their fees grow. The only thi
ng missing from all the documents prepared was Chris Oakes’ signature.
There were over sixty separate documents on the closing agenda and ten original copies of each document had been prepared. Chris Oakes had to sign over six hundred documents before the deal could close as scheduled at ten the next morning. Usually in a closing such as this, all documents were signed before the pre-closing started and were held in escrow until all conditions had been met. The actual closing would then take only minutes when the lawyers from both sides would position themselves on either side of the table and with a few silent nods back and forth, it would be agreed that the deal was closed.
Didrickson cornered me where I was standing in the boardroom watching the lawyers, praying they wouldn’t find any typos or other mistakes in the documents I’d prepared.
He smelled slightly sour and his breath was stale. "Where the fuck is Oakes?" he demanded through clenched teeth.
"I have no idea, Harold. I’ve put out an APB on him and I’m waiting to hear back from Vanessa." Vee was relatively new to the position of keeper of the CEO, but she was quickly catching on to his quirks. She’d assured me I’d hear from her within the half hour.
One of the legal secretaries who belonged to the law firm where we were holding the closing approached me at that point and I looked over at her. "Phone," she mouthed silently. Without a word I slid out from where Harold had practically pinned me against the wall and followed her out of the boardroom. The news hadn’t been good and the plan I put forth to Harold was one of desperation.
The phone call had been from Vanessa, who’d told me in a small voice that she was at Oakes’ house and he was passed out drunk. There was an empty quart bottle of Scotch on the floor beside the easy chair where she’d found him.
Harold had hit the roof when I told him but he calmed down somewhat when I told him my plan. "We’ll sober him up so he can at least hold a pen and I’ll get him to sign a copy of each document."
"Two of each," he’d said. "One for them, one for us." I quickly marched around the table taking two originals from each pile of documents and stuffed them in my briefcase.
Vanessa had been in the basement television room trying to force coffee down Oakes’ throat when I’d arrived around ten o'clock that night. It was after two in the morning before he was in any shape to sign the documents, let alone hold a pen. He had no idea what he was signing but knew from experience that when Kate put a document in front of him to sign, he signed. No questions asked.
Harold had given the other side some bullshit story about Chris Oakes being detained at some other important meeting and the closing went off without a hitch. Until later that day at the luncheon celebrating the closing of the transaction. Everyone was being civil to each other and all of the acrimony and pettiness that had been evident over the last couple of weeks among the lawyers had evaporated. By the time everyone had eaten and the champagne had disappeared, it was well past four in the afternoon. As usual, I was the only sober one in the crowd, but we were all having a good time. Until Oakes showed up. He was drunk but in control and as usual, he was wearing his public persona and everyone loved him. He was a different man in front of people who didn’t work for him and they all enjoyed his company. I remember giving Harold a knowing look and leaving the party immediately.
When Jay and I entered the basement room, it was a familiar scene to me. There was an empty bottle of scotch on the floor and Oakes was passed out in his La-Z-Boy chair, hugging a half-full bottle and clutching a small white booklet that I recognized as our internal voice mail directory in his hand. The phone on the table beside him was off the hook and a loud busy signal was coming out of the receiver.