“Right,” he said. “Lots of people knew Rachel. The more curious question I have involves a dead woman by the name of Samantha Stamp, also known as Chase. She was a dancer at a strip club called Cheeks. But that’s not what interests me. What interests me is that she also worked part-time at a place called Tops amp; Bottoms. Have you ever heard of that place? Tops amp; Bottoms?”
The smug expression was gone now.
Teffinger could tell that the man was trying to decide if he should lie or not.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because we talked to the proprietor of that establishment. Certain names came up during that conversation. Yours was one of them.” He sipped coffee, letting the implications hang. “The rumor is that you like to stick pins in the girls.”
Bennett shot out of his chair, his hands balled in fists, and violently pushed a pile of papers off the desk.
They landed halfway across the room.
Teffinger didn’t move.
Instead he took another sip of coffee.
“Get your ass out of my office!” Bennett said. Then he looked directly at Sydney. “That means your ass too.”
Teffinger stood up, drank the last of the coffee and set the cup gently on the desk. Then he looked Bennett directly in the eyes. “You really shouldn’t talk to ladies like that. It could come back to haunt you.”
Sydney didn’t speak much on the walk back to the car. Then, right after they almost got run over at Welton by a car bursting through the wrong end of a yellow light, she said, “I think it worked.”
Teffinger agreed.
“He’s running scared. Hopefully scared enough that he’ll think twice about doing anything else stupid. I almost decked him when he talked to you that way,” Teffinger added.
“I want to be there when we catch his ass,” she said. “I want to look him right in the eyes.”
On the drive back to the office, Teffinger flicked the radio stations as he pulled his phone out to call Aspen Wilde. He paused at a song he’d never heard before. The singer had a nasally voice that sounded like Bob Dylan. The lyrics were something about a pump that didn’t work because the handles got taken by the vandals. He waited until it finished, then dialed Aspen.
“I don’t know if you heard,” he said, “but me and Sydney were at the firm just a little bit ago, meeting with Derek Bennett. We put some heat on him.” He filled her in on the details, including the fact that he’d been careful to keep her out of it. “Here’s the reason I’m calling. The guy’s a powder keg and he’s going to start exploding. If you hear of him doing anything out of the ordinary, and want to tell us about it, that would be fine with us.”
“Done deal,” she said. “Count on it.”
“Thanks.” Teffinger almost hung up, but said, “Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he added. “Just keep your ear to the ground. And don’t let anyone know you’re doing it. Things are going to start getting really dicey from this point on.”
82
DAY TWELVE-SEPTEMBER 16
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
Aspen brought Christina Tam up to speed on the noose that Teffinger was dangling around Bennett’s neck. Then they took turns going up to the 45th floor, ostensibly to visit the dead-files room but actually to see if anything weird was happening in Derek Bennett’s neck of the woods.
Nothing was.
Nothing obvious, at least.
Bennett was in his office with the door closed.
Mid-afternoon, Aspen took a stroll down the 16th Street Mall to clear her head, hugging the sunny side of the street. The city vibrated, with lots more people around than usual, poised on the edge of the weekend.
A deep blue cloudless sky floated overhead.
She ended up sitting on a bench by California Street.
Someone sat down next to her.
When she looked over, she couldn’t believe who it was.
Jacqueline Moore.
Cruella.
Clearly this wasn’t a chance encounter. The power lawyer must have discovered that Aspen was feeding information to Teffinger. She was here to fire her.
“We need to talk,” Moore said. The tone of her voice was serious. Aspen bit her lower lip and tried to appear as if she wasn’t afraid.
“Sure,” she said. “What’s up?”
Moore didn’t answer.
Instead she looked around. Her hair appeared to be slightly disheveled and her makeup wasn’t as crisp and sharp as normal. Her blouse sagged out of her skirt and could have been tucked in better. The normal confident look in her eyes wasn’t there.
“I’m leaving the firm,” she said.
Aspen studied her, to see if this was some kind of a joke, but found no lies.
“You are?”
Moore nodded. “As soon as I leave here I’m heading back to the office to type up a resignation. With the grapevine the way it is, I have no doubt that everyone will be celebrating by the end of the day.”
“Why are you leaving?”
The woman let out a nervous chuckle, as if there was so much to the answer that she didn’t even know where to begin. “That’s not the question,” she said. “The question is, why am I telling you before anyone else?”
Aspen cocked her head.
Good point.
“Okay, why?”
“Because I want to be sure I get a chance to warn you before all hell breaks loose. You need to get out of the firm. My advice to you is to go and go quickly, while you still can.”
The words shocked Aspen.
“Why? What’s going on?”
Moore shook her head. “I can’t get into it. Just trust me. Your life is in danger.” Then she stood up and looked at Aspen one last time. “I’ve done what I could to warn you. If something happens after this, it’s not on my shoulders.”
Then she walked away.
Aspen sat there for a few moments and then stood up and walked in the direction away from the firm. She called Teffinger from Civic Center Park and told him what had just happened.
“My suspicion is that this is some kind of fallout from the heat we put on Bennett,” he said. “Something’s going on and I have no idea what it is. But I do know that things are in motion and that I can’t have you in harm’s way. I don’t want you snooping around anymore.”
“But…”
“No buts,” he said. “At this point you’re officially out of it.”
“But I’m your only inside source.”
“Forget it,” he said. “It’s not going to happen. If I were you, I’d think very seriously about getting out of the firm. Right now. Today. In fact if you don’t, you’re crazy.”
She headed back to the firm, walked into Christina Tam’s office, closed the door, and filled her in on everything. Then added, “I had a stray thought, walking back here.”
“Oh? What kind of stray thought?”
“It relates to the dead guy in New York-Robert Yates,” she said. “Do you remember when we were talking about who might have a motive to kill him, if he was successful in taking over Omega and then merging it with Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I thought of someone else who has a motive.”
“Who?”
“Derek Bennett.”
Christina tried to find the connection but couldn’t. “I don’t follow,” she said.
Aspen stood up. “I got to make a run to the restroom. You’ll figure it out by the time I get back.”
But Christina didn’t figure it out, so Aspen told her. Bennett spent almost all of his time working on Omega cases, his bread-and-butter client. In the antitrust suit brought by Omega against Tomorrow, Bennett had been Omega’s pit bull, the dirty dog who didn’t play fair, the driving force behind the mega-judgment in favor of Omega and against Tomorrow. If Robert Yates succeeded in his goal of gaining control of Omega and bringing it under the umbrella of Tomorrow, then he’d control Omega’s legal work.