It didn’t take long at all to identify Ellen Wiley. She was a tall, attractive woman in her seventies who looked easily twenty years younger. She had the figure of a woman who did a lot of Pilates. She was wearing a long-sleeved gold evening dress with a diamond choker. Her hair, light brown with blond highlights, was styled in a short, flattering shag. She was talking to a silver-haired man who looked ex-military, and she was laughing, a deep swooping laugh.
“Now what?” Mandy said.
“We drink, we talk, we suffer through the inevitable pitch for money, and then we wait until we can get her alone.”
Mandy and I talked for a long while, keeping to ourselves, like you weren’t supposed to do at a party like this. Someone clinked a glass, then others clinked in response, and the room quieted. Ellen Wiley — we’d identified her correctly — made a speech about how for every US soldier killed in war, seven are wounded. She talked about the invisible wounds of war, like post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and major depression. She introduced one grievously wounded soldier, recently back from Iraq, and he spoke a few words and reduced a few people to tears.
She finished speaking, and a few minutes later I saw her approach us. Her hand was extended. “You’re the Grants, I’m told,” she said, a smile lighting up her face. Her eyes were a bright blue.
“James Grant,” I said and shook her hand. She’d been briefed. James Grant was a major donor to conservative causes.
“Lisa Grant,” Mandy said and did the same.
Up close you could see the skillful plastic surgery she’d had, particularly in the tight lines around her eyes when she smiled. She turned toward me. “I understand you wanted to talk to me, Mister, uh Grant.” She raised her eyebrows as she said Grant. “Happy to do so, when the guests have gone.”
She smiled again and turned away.
A young guy in a blue blazer came up to us a few minutes later, introduced himself as Rico, and escorted us out of the great room and down a hallway to the library, which was only slightly smaller than the great room. It had large windows and whitewashed stone walls and built-in bookcases. The floors were painted wood. He gestured toward a round tea table with chairs around it in front of a large painting, a big red square that looked like a Rothko. “Mrs. Wiley will be with you soon,” Rico said. When we took our seats, he turned without a word and left.
As we sat, uncomfortable on the hard wooden chairs, we said nothing to each other, because of the possibility of recording devices.
We waited uneasily.
Somehow she knew we wanted to see her. We hadn’t said anything to anyone else at the party, or to the blond girls with the name tags.
I thought back to the folder that Merlin had left in the locked file room at the law firm and wondered whether someone at Norcross and McKenna had made the connection and warned Ellen Wiley. That seemed the likeliest explanation.
But if she knew we were there under false pretenses, why was she still willing to meet with us?
Mrs. Wiley appeared about an hour later. She began speaking as she entered the library, a good fifty feet from us.
“Finally!” she said. “Now the party gets interesting.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Oh, I know every single name on my guest list. I didn’t invite anyone I don’t know. When I’m hitting people up for money, I prefer to know them personally.” She tipped her head to one side, placed a hand on her hip, and smiled coquettishly. “The least you could have done was use your real names.”
59
I stood up, and then Mandy did. “You’re absolutely right,” I said. “I’m Nick Heller and this is Mandy Seeger.”
“So you’re the one who torched my website,” she said to me, wagging a finger, mock-stern. “I know who you are. You’re a real troublemaker. And of course I know who your father is.” She turned toward Mandy. “And you — aren’t you the reporter?”
“Until yesterday,” Mandy said, “I used to be an employee of yours. I wrote the piece on Jeremiah Claflin.”
“I thought so. Ash Norcross warned me someone might be coming. But he didn’t say they’d be crashing my party. Ballsy of you two to show up like this. I love it.” She flashed a bright smile. “All right, somehow you two figured out who owns Slander Sheet. Now you know my deep dark secret. So what the hell do you want?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said. “What the hell do you want?”
“Excuse me?”
“Either you or your people are covering up the death of a twenty-two-year-old girl. Whether you ordered it or not, it’s going to come back to bite you.”
Mandy stared at me. I could almost see the cartoon thought bubble above her head: So much for going in at a slant.
“I don’t know what on earth you’re referring to.” She seemed genuinely baffled.
“There was a call girl named Kayla Pitts, who was—”
“That poor girl killed herself!”
“I’m afraid not. Your people killed her because they were afraid she’d start telling the truth about the Claflin story.”
“My... people? What in God’s name—?”
“We know you hired the Centurions to eliminate a threat.”
“Oh, do you? I know who the Centurions are, and no, I certainly didn’t hire them.”
“Then someone did.”
She put out her hands, palms up, arms wide. “Well, then, you crashed the wrong party, because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“You wanted to bring down Jeremiah Claflin by any means necessary.”
She pointed an index finger at me. “Oh, now, please. That’s an exaggeration. Did I want to bring Claflin down? Hell, yes! Guilty as charged!” She gave a long sigh. “Do you mind if we sit down? I’ve been on my feet for three hours. No, not on those chairs. I don’t have enough padding on my butt.” She waved toward a grouping of overstuffed lounge chairs in front of a tall fireplace.
We walked over there, waited for her to sit, and then I sat closest to her, because my instinct told me she was one of those women who just prefers men. My instinct on this was rarely wrong.
She shifted in her chair until she was facing me, and only me.
Now she spoke more quietly. “That girl — the little trollop Heidi or whatever her name was — how do you know it wasn’t a suicide?”
“I have sources inside the police.” That was about as close to the truth as I wanted to give her.
“But why in the world — who? — I don’t understand.”
I answered her question with a question. “How did you first get the Claflin story?” I already knew the answer to that question, but I wanted to see if she knew, too.
“I own the website; I don’t run it. I didn’t get it. Julian Gunn told me about it. The prostitute contacted” — she turned to look at Mandy, seeming surprised she was still there — “you! Right?”
“That’s right,” Mandy said.
“We didn’t search it out. It came to us. You didn’t make it up, right?”
Mandy said, “Right.”
“You didn’t know it was fake when you wrote the story, right?”