Silent Partner Part 12

Angela nodded slowly, the awful memory of the woman's naked body wrapped around Sam's flashing back to her. She had realized at that moment that her world was falling apart, that the risks had turned out to be too great after all, and that the choice she had made had been terribly wrong. "Yes," she answered, her voice hoa.r.s.e.

"I had a private investigator friend approach the woman before the trial, but she refused to testify. She told him that she would simply deny everything. That there were no objective witnesses, and we'd never be able to prove anything, which my friend confirmed."

"Of course I remember."

Kate swirled the wine in her gla.s.s. "That woman called me today, too. After you and I spoke this morning."

Angela glanced up, a shiver crawling slowly up her spine. What was Jake Lawrence's agenda? Why was he going to such great lengths to help? "And?" she asked, antic.i.p.ating what Kate would say next.

"She admitted to having an eighteen-month affair with Sam that started a few months after you and he were married." Kate shook her head, as if the timing of the two phone calls was hard to fathom. "She's considering testifying to that."

"Did you ask her why, after all this time, she would suddenly be willing to come forward?"

"I did, and she just said that her conscience had gotten the better of her. That and the fact Sam had promised her marriage and children and cars and homes and he hadn't come through on any of it. I sensed there was a little bit of guilt and a lot of revenge in her motivation." Kate finished what was left in her gla.s.s and nodded to the waiter that she wanted another. "Is there anything you're not telling me, Angela?" she asked suspiciously.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm half expecting the other guy who accused you of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g him behind Sam's back to call me tomorrow."

Angela shook her head. "I can promise you that won't happen."

"How?"

"The guy's dead."

"Really? How'd you do away with him?"

"That's not funny."

"Sorry. What happened?"

"He died in a car accident. He had a blood alcohol level of .23 and drove his BMW straight into a telephone pole at ninety miles an hour."

"How do you know?"

"I saw an article in the Metro Section of theRichmond Trib two years ago. There was a picture of the accident, and his name was in the caption beneath. The name jumped out at me right away. I called a friend of mine at the paper, and she confirmed that it was the same guy." Angela paused. "I suppose I shouldn't have been happy, but I was," she admitted quietly. "I guess I'm human."

"We all are, honey." Kate hesitated. "So?"

"So what?"

"So, is there anything you aren't telling me?"

Angela didn't answer until the waiter bringing Kate's second gla.s.s of wine had come and gone. "No. Of course not."

"You sure?" Kate gazed at Angela for several moments, her smile slowly turning into a frown. "I didn't do very well in math cla.s.s so I never understood much about statistics or probability, but the odds of getting those two calls within a twenty-four-hour period seem pretty remote. Especially after all this time."

Angela shrugged and looked down. "I don't know what to say."

Kate nodded deliberately, as if Angela's caginess told her everything. "You know what I always found so disturbing about the judge in your divorce case?"

Angela glanced up. "What?"

"The fact that he could believe you had affairs with two men while you were pregnant."

Hunter had been born seven months after her wedding to Sam Reese, a wedding held before a justice of the peace in a small town just outside Durham with one of their business school cla.s.smates as the only witness. She hadn't told Sam until after the wedding that she was pregnant because she hadn't wanted to forever wonder about his motivation for marrying her. But in the end, it hadn't mattered anyway. In the end, the two men who had testified to affairs with her had been able to convince the judge that they'd slept with her while she was as much as eight months pregnant, based on their testimony, based on the days they claimed to have been with her. Days, it turned out, Sam could conveniently prove he'd been out of town.

Kate had argued that there was no way the affairs could have taken place, that Angela loved Sam, and that no one could bring any credible evidence to bear of physical contact between either man and Angela. And that the notion that Angela would sleep with two men while she was eight months' pregnant made the accusations categorically absurd.

The elderly male judge had stared down from his bench and, when Kate had finished her closing argument, awarded custody of five-month-old Hunter to the Reeses. Angela had simply stared at the man in his flowing black robe as he'd disappeared into his chambers after announcing the decision, which had been greeted with loud cheers from the Reese camp. Stared after the first person in her life she'd actually wanted to see endure horrible pain.

"That was despicable," Kate continued, glancing toward the bar. "I have to tell you that there is one very large fly in the ointment here."

"What's that?"

"The judge doesn't have to listen to any of this."

Angela shrugged. "We'll just have to see what happens." She watched Kate take a long look at an attractive young man at the bar.

As Kate's eyes drifted back to Angela's, her expression brightened. "So what's your deal these days? I figured you'd be remarried by now, but I don't see a wedding band." She tapped Angela's ring finger.

"I'm still single."

"You must be beating the men away with a stick."

"No, I've been focused on my career lately."

"Have you sworn off men because of your Sam Reese experience? Which would be understandable. I've seen it happen before."

"No, nothing like that. I'm dating someone, but it isn't serious. I doubt it'll go anywhere." She wasn't really dating anyone, but this explanation seemed more convenient. "What about you?"

"Still playing the field." Kate pushed the bangs from her eyes once more. "What are you doing?" she asked as Angela gathered her things.

"I apologize," she said, taking a twenty out of her wallet and placing it down on the table by her empty gla.s.s, "but I've got to go."

"I was hoping we could have dinner."

"I'd love to, but I can't tonight." Angela stood up and slipped into her coat. "How about next week after you meet with Danny Ford and his lawyer?"

Kate nodded. "Great. I'll look forward to it. I'll call you Monday after I've met with them."

"Call me the minute you finish," Angela urged her.

"I will. I promise."

A moment later Angela was out of Castro's and into the quiet, cold Richmond evening. Most of the sidewalks had been shoveled, but the trees and buildings were still covered, and the Fan was a glistening winter wonderland in the faint rays of the streetlights. For a moment she took it all in-Richmond didn't get snow very often. Then she pulled her collar up and walked briskly down a dark side street away from the wide avenue on which Castro's was located.

In the middle of the block Angela stopped and turned around, convinced someone on the other side of the street was pacing her. She peered into the darkness but saw nothing except an unbroken string of snow-covered cars on both sides of the narrow lane. She began walking again, checking over her shoulder every few steps as she headed toward the next avenue, the Fan's next spoke. There she stopped again, expecting someone to appear on the other side of the street. But no one did. She hurried a few more paces, reached the next avenue and the next tavern, walked into the crowded establishment, and moved directly to the back of the smoky room. She'd been to this place several times and knew there was a back door she could slip out of.

When she reached the narrow hall outside the restrooms, she glanced back through the crowd at the front door. Again she saw nothing suspicious, no lone wolf with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and probably a pistol beneath his coat. She sighed at her paranoia as she sidestepped a young man coming out of the men's room. Then she exited the tavern through the back door and headed down the alley toward Tortelli's, an Italian restaurant a few blocks away, where she was meeting Liv Jefferson for dinner.

At the restaurant door she hesitated, moving back a few steps after touching the handle. Maybe she needed to back off on her friendship with Liv Jefferson, she thought. At least for a while. Or perhaps not be so obvious about it. Ken Booker had warned her about speaking to the press. Even Jake Lawrence had accused her of being Liv's source for the negative articles about Sumter. How could he have known that?

She'd chosen Tortelli's because it was off the beaten track. It was not a place any of Sumter's senior executives were likely to frequent. But maybe at this point she needed to worry less about chance encounters, and more about other possibilities. She glanced around the area in front of the restaurant, then up and down the avenue. She shook her head. What had happened in Wyoming was affecting her. And screw the bank's policy about talking to the press. Liv had been a loyal friend for years. They couldn't tell her whom to talk to, much less whom to be friends with. She reached for the handle, pulled the door open, and stepped inside.

Liv Jefferson sat at a table in the back of the quiet restaurant. There was only one other occupied table in the place, and the couple seated at it appeared too young to be served alcohol. Neither of them bothered to look up when Angela entered.

"h.e.l.lo, there," Liv called, waving as Angela handed her coat and briefcase to a white-ap.r.o.ned waiter.

"Hi." Angela sat down across the red and white checked tablecloth and smiled. Liv was mercurial. Elated or irate, but never mellow. "How are you?"

"A little put off," Liv said.

"What's wrong? Man trouble again?" Angela asked. Liv had cycled through three husbands in the last fifteen years. Fortunately, as she often said, none of them had stuck around long enough to get her pregnant. "Is that it?"

"Honey, I don't let men be trouble for me anymore," she answered, shaking her head emphatically and wagging a finger. "I've become trouble for them. You know that. Mmm, mmm, mmm. They see this fine body and they just have to have it."

Angela recognized a glint in the other woman's eye. There was a nugget of wisdom on the way.

"Want to hear my new motto?" Liv asked.

Angela rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "I can't wait."

"Itease but I do notplease ."

Angela laughed loudly. Typical Liv. In the years since they'd met, Liv had become the older sister Angela had never had. She often sought Liv's advice on difficult issues, both personal and work related. And Liv always made a point of inviting Angela to dinner on those Sunday nights when she had to drop Hunter off at the Reese estate after her paltry forty-eight hours a month had expired. Somehow Liv could always raise her spirits when she was down. Or calm her when her world seemed to be falling apart.

She glanced across the table, thinking back on Jake Lawrence's reference to Sally Chambers. Liv was a lot like Sally: self-a.s.sured and confident. A lot like Sally should have been.

"What is it then?" Angela asked. "What's wrong?"

"Well, I was irritated that you walked right past me this morning in front of the Sumter Tower," Liv explained, picking up an open bottle of Merlot standing on one corner of the table and pouring each of them a gla.s.s. "That wasn't very nice."

"I'm sorry."

"No way to treat someone who's-"

"I said I was sorry," Angela repeated, glancing around at the couple a few tables away. They were holding hands and gazing into one another's eyes, oblivious to what was going on around them. "Lord."

"Well, what's the matter? First you don't return my calls, then you ignore me on the street this morning."

"I told you. I was away a day longer on business than I antic.i.p.ated, and, besides, I didn'tignore you."

"Pretty close."

"I was late for a meeting," Angela explained lamely.

"Isn't that convenient?" Liv asked sarcastically, her expression turning serious. "Are they starting to get to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Have the senior executives at the bank started telling you to stay away from me?"

"Why do you ask?"

"It's happened before. A company's senior management not wanting employees to talk to me after I write something negative about them or their firm. As long as I'm saying good things, everybody's my best friend. But as soon as I say something nasty, as soon as I write the truth, they all-"

"And that comes as a surprise to you after being a reporter for twenty years?" Angela interrupted. "Less than two weeks ago you might as well have called Sumter Bank's most senior executive the grand imperial wizard of the KKK."

"What are you talking about?"

"The article you wrote about him. The one accusing him of shutting down branches in black areas of the city. About him arbitrarily denying mortgages to blacks. 'A carefully planned strategy to keep blacks imprisoned in undesirable areas of the city, to keep them out of traditionally white neighborhoods that offer safe streets and good schools.' Wasn't that what you wrote? 'An atrocious sixties-style strategy formulated and carried out by the highest levels of Sumter Bank management.' Do you really expect Bob Dudley to encourage employees to speak freely with you after reading that?"

A satisfied smile spread across Liv's round face. "No, but he could nominate me for a Pulitzer. That was one of the best pieces of my career."

"Uh-huh. But you made some a.s.sumptions you shouldn't have."

"I just wish I could have been there the first time Dudley read that column," Liv said, ignoring Angela's rebuke, "when that a.s.s-kissing Carter Hill brought the morning newspaper to Dudley like the yapping little lapdog he is. I'd have paid a lot of money to see Dudley's reaction."

Angela hesitated, wondering once more if she should have come tonight. "You'd better watch out," she warned. "You'd better keep your eyes open and your head down."

Liv waved as if she wasn't afraid. "I'm not worried about Bob Dudley. We've hated each other for a while. I told you that story, right?"

Six months ago, Angela remembered Liv telling her, the University of Richmond business school had convened a panel of important local business leaders-including, as the most senior business reporter in Richmond, Liv Jefferson-to discuss the effects of the Internet on the Richmond economy. The program had turned out to be so popular that the university's auditorium was filled to capacity an hour before it was to start. At one point Liv had stated that the Internet's positive effect had been less p.r.o.nounced on low-income families because they needed to spend what little money they had on essentials-as opposed to computers and Internet access. That, in effect, the Internet was actually broadening the divide between rich and poor.

Dudley had quickly remarked that low-income people needed to work harder and not constantly seek handouts from those who were successful. The exchange had turned heated, and quickly intensified until the program's moderator had imposed a ten-minute, unscheduled intermission. After the break Dudley had not reappeared on stage due to a "sudden pressing engagement."

"Yes, you did," Angela answered.

"Did I tell you that he called the owners of theTrib and tried to have me fired for writing the article?"

Angela looked up. "No."

"He tried, but it didn't work. The owners know what kind of man he really is." Liv took a large swallow of Merlot. "Of course, I wouldn't have been able to print that story without a copy of the memo," she added, her voice low. "Thanks again."

Angela gazed across the table. She'd thought long and hard about giving the memo she'd found behind the shredder in Ken Booker's office to Liv. It had been late one night a month ago-past ten and she'd been the only one left on the floor. She'd been looking for a client file Booker had taken from her workstation earlier in the day, a file she needed to process a time-sensitive loan she was trying to get through the bank's credit committee. Angela had stood there in Booker's office, shaking as she read the memo. It had come from "The Chairman" to Booker, Russ Thompson, senior managing director for all Sumter funding and security trading activity, and Glenn Abbott, senior managing director in charge of all Sumter retail banking activity. Booker, Thompson, and Abbott comprised Sumter's executive committee, or ExecCom, as it was nicknamed. They were the men who ran the bank on a day-to-day basis.

The strange thing about the memo was that it had been sent directly from Bob Dudley to the members of ExecCom. But ExecCom reported to Carter Hill, not Dudley, as Booker had pointed out to Angela this morning. Dudley had announced the reporting change to all employees with an e-mail. The e-mail had cited Dudley's need to focus on external matters-primarily new acquisitions-as his reason for handing over ExecCom reporting responsibility to Hill. But Hill's name hadn't been anywhere on the memo Angela had stumbled on in Booker's office.

The chairman's recommendation in the memo had been clear. Sumter needed to make it as difficult as possible for people in low-income areas to get loans, whether the loans be in the form of mortgages, credit cards, or small business loans. And mortgage applications needed to be carefully scrutinized to stop "certain" people from moving into "certain" areas of the city.

She'd hustled back to her desk with the evidence tucked into a pocket of her blazer, aware that she had unearthed a stick of dynamite and, perhaps, the tip of an iceberg. Aware that she would have been fired immediately if anyone found out that she had pa.s.sed the memo on to Liv. But she'd been so d.a.m.n insulted that a man as important as Bob Dudley would use his influence to manipulate the poor, too d.a.m.n insulted just to let it go in order to protect her career. It made her furious that Dudley's kind still existed in what was supposed to be an enlightened society, and so she'd handed the memo over to Liv.

"You went too far in your article, Liv."

"How?"

"You shouldn't have turned the article into a race issue."