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53
CLARKSON UNITED INDUSTRIES
WEDNESDAY MORNING
Mrs. Frazier looked up to see Rebekah, Agent Hammersmith, and a tall, tough-looking man she’d never seen before step off the elevator.
“Rebekah, you’re back so soon? I saw you yesterday—” Mrs. Frazier’s voice fell off a cliff. She stared at three stone faces. She knew something was very wrong, and it involved Mrs. Clarkson. And the company? Mrs. Clarkson hadn’t been her usual self these past weeks. She’d gone from euphoric, which was rare at the best of times, to pacing her office, quiet and brooding, to sharp and curt. Olivia had heard her speaking with the Clarksons’ senior accountant, heard raised voices. She’d nerved herself up and asked Mrs. Clarkson if there were any problems and could she help? Mrs. Clarkson had given her a long look and said only, “Yes, Olivia, but they’re my problems. You’re not to worry.” And she’d walked back into her office, chin up.
And now the FBI was here again with Rebekah. What had Mrs. Clarkson done?
She slowly rose and automatically straightened her suit jacket. She looked briefly at the closed door, then turned back. “Rebekah, what is going on? Who is he?”
“Mrs. Frazier, this is Special Agent Savich, FBI, and you remember Agent Hammersmith. We’re here to see my grandmother.”
Mrs. Frazier nodded and held out her hand to the big man she’d never seen before. Savich stepped forward, shook her hand, and gave her his credentials. He had a hard hand, and were those scars on his finger pads? She studied his ID, handed it back to him. He smiled at her, and it changed his face utterly, made her wonder if her divorced daughter might take him out for a drink. He said, “Mrs. Frazier, a pleasure. Rebekah has told us how kind you’ve been to her over the years.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, only smiled and nodded. She saw Agent Hammersmith was still looking hard as a hanging judge. And Rebekah? She looked resolute, ready for battle. They were here to deliver bad news. She knew trouble when she saw it, and trouble was standing in front of her. She said slowly, “So you’re here to see your grandmother? All of you, together?”
“Yes. Please see we aren’t disturbed, Mrs. Frazier. I—I’m very sorry about this.”
Olivia could only nod. She watched Rebekah open Mrs. Clarkson’s door, watched her chin go up as she marched in, followed by the two agents. The door closed. Olivia sat back down and did what she did best, according to her daughter—she pulled the knitting out of her bottom drawer and worried.
Gemma Clarkson slowly rose as Agent Hammersmith and Rebekah walked into her office, a stranger flanking them. She made no move to come out from behind her desk. She said, “You must be Agent Savich? I spoke to you by phone on Monday. I pictured you in my mind, you know, I always do when I have only a voice to give me clues.” She paused, studied his face, and said slowly, “I imagined you’d be a big man.”
He stepped forward to hand her his creds. “I’m Agent Savich.”
She waved them away. “Why are you three here so early on this chilly Wednesday morning?” She paused, pointed to chairs. There were only two set in front of her desk. She waited until Agent Hammersmith fetched another chair, carried it over, and sat down. All three looked at her a moment, unspeaking. Savich leaned forward in his chair. “Mrs. Clarkson, we’ve been looking into your company finances. Since Clarkson United Industries is privately held, it took time and effort to put together some of the pieces, but we now know your company has suffered financial setbacks recently, severe ones. But your own situation is rather desperate because you expanded by borrowing, which didn’t work out at all for you. You have a large bank loan due in several weeks, and you’ll be hard-pressed to pay it.”
Gemma gave him a rictus of a smile. He had no clue as to what she was thinking. “You have been busy, Agent Savich. Let me just say that this company has been in business longer than you’ve been alive, and our books are really none of your business.”
“Perhaps not, Mrs. Clarkson, except it might explain the puzzle of why you’re suddenly so interested in getting your hands on a great deal of money. It’s a puzzle that started more than twenty-five years ago, before Nate’s murder in 1995.”
“There is no puzzle,” Gemma said. “Nate wasn’t murdered; his death was ruled an accident. He was drunk and fell overboard. Now, I want to know why you three are here. I have a budget meeting shortly, so say what you have to say and leave.” She shot a look of ill-disguised dislike at Rebekah, a look from Rebekah’s oldest memories. She felt her familiar child’s guilt that it must be her fault. She remembered the endless questions she’d wanted to ask but was too afraid to, and then she’d simply closed her grandmother out of her mind and her life.
Gemma said, never looking away from Rebekah’s face, her voice hard and flat, “Particularly you, Rebekah. Look at you, a little Joan of Arc, leading your troops into battle. What did you come to complain about this time? I know it’s not about where your next meal’s coming from or how you will pay the rent. Did someone try to kidnap you again? Were you saved by another strong man?”
Savich saw Rebekah was used to the barely veiled venom. Then he saw her draw herself up taller in her chair. She said easily, “No, ma’am. No more attempted kidnappings and believe me, I know how lucky I am. I have a man who loves me and a grandfather who loved me, too.”
Good, Rebekah was standing up to this intimidating woman, but they were getting off track. Savich said, “We’re here to talk about a number of things, Mrs. Clarkson, and we can begin with Zoltan. You said you’d never met her, but we ran a facial recognition program and found a photograph of the two of you together at a benefit for the Spiritualist Society in Baltimore earlier this year.”
For only a brief instant, Gemma’s face went blank, then she shook her head and said smoothly, “Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do recall meeting her. We run in some of the same circles, contribute to some of the same causes. But that doesn’t mean I hired her to do anything nefarious. From what you told me, she tried to help Rebekah communicate with her grandfather, and even if she misrepresented what was happening, it wasn’t illegal, was it? Some believe; some don’t.”
“Ah, but you knew what Rebekah’s grandfather would say, what he didn’t know, what he would ask for.”
“That is nonsense. How would I know such a thing?”
“From the private nurse who attended Congressman Clarkson in the last months of his life at the sanitarium.”
A patrician eyebrow went up. “I hired many nurses to attend him. What’s your point?”
Savich said, “Mrs. Clarkson, we know there had to be a trigger point, a recent one, when you realized Rebekah knew about the Big Take. She never believed it was real, at least not until after her meeting with Zoltan. I doubt your husband ever told you about the Big Take, but you found out about it regardless. From Nate Elderby.
“The trigger point was Heather Aubrey, the private nurse you hired three months before your husband died. She told you what Rebekah knew. Heather Aubrey, like all the other private nurses you hired over the years, presented herself at your office once a week to give you reports about the status of your husband, who his visitors were, what the doctors were saying. No doubt you usually heard all the same answers from the nurses throughout the years Congressman Clarkson lay in a coma at the Mayfield Sanitarium.
“But what a surprise when Mrs. Aubrey told you one incredibly valuable piece of information. That’s when everything began to fall into place.”
Gemma said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nurse Aubrey was nice enough, appeared genuinely upset when Johnny finally died. She never told me anything I didn’t already know. He was unresponsive, and Rebekah was there visiting three, four times a week, hanging all over him. There was nothing more, Agent Savich. And when he finally drew his last breath, it was a formality.”
Savich continued, “We spoke to Mrs. Aubrey, and she repeated to us what she told you. I imagine you tried not to show your excitement, but she saw it, nevertheless, and wondered.”
Griffin turned on his cell phone recorder. “I’m sure you’ll recognize Mrs. Aubrey’s voice.”
