"What?"
"Love – there was never any between us. And yet I'm the one he was most content with. Cold, scheming Wendall, the power broker. The master of control. But once outside of our life, he was at sea. Vulnerable. That's why he killed himself, of course. For love."
"What do you mean?" Taylor heard herself ask, her heart pounding fast.
"He killed himself for love," the widow repeated. "That's the one thing Wendall didn't understand and couldn't control. Love. Oh, how he wanted it. And as with so many beautiful, powerful people it was denied him. He was an alcoholic of love. He'd go off on his benders. With his chippies. His little sluts. And there were plenty of them – women would flock to him. A few of the men, too, I should tell you. How they all would want him."
"He'd spirit them away on carriage rides, buy them roses, have a breakfast tray put together at Le Pengord and sent to their apartments. Wendall goes a-courting. They were all disasters, of course. The girls never quite lived up to what he wanted. The older ones they turned out to be every bit as superficial and material and cold" – she laughed again, dropping a worm of ash in the ashtray – "as cold as I was. Or he'd pick a young puppy, some ingénue, who'd cling to him desperately, rearrange her life around him. Then he'd feel the arms around his neck, dragging him down. Someone relying on him. My Lord, we couldn't have that, could we? Then he'd dump them. And back he'd come to me. To nurse his wounds."
Taylor jumped in to steer the conversation back on course. "What do you mean about his suicide? Killing himself for love?"
"It's the only thing that makes sense. He must've fallen madly in love with somebody and he was sure she was the one. When she told him no it must've devastated him."
"But the note he left said he was under pressure at work, stress."
"Oh, he wrote that for my benefit. If he'd mentioned a girlfriend, well, it would have embarrassed me." She laughed. "The idea of Wendall killing himself because of pressure? Why, he lived for pressure. He wasn't happy unless he had ten projects going at once. I've never seen him happier than over the past few months working on the merger, doing deals for his clients and then planning the other firm."
"What other firm?"
She looked at Taylor cautiously then pushed out her cigarette. "I suppose it doesn't matter anymore. In case the merger didn't go through, he was going to leave Hubbard, White & Willis, take his boys and a couple of dozen partners and open his own firm. It was his alternative plan. I think he almost preferred that to the merger. Because he'd be a named partner. He always wanted to have his name on the letterhead Clayton, Jones & Smith, or whatever."
Another firm? Taylor wondered.
The widow resumed her examination of Central Park flora. Then smiled. "That note. He could have said in the note how unhappy he was with me as a wife. With our life together. But he didn't. I was very touched."
Rising, Mrs. Clayton looked at her watch. "I'd like to talk to you longer." She picked up her Dunhill cigarette case. "But I have bridge club in ten minutes."
Aristocratize
Taylor Lockwood was sitting at Wendall Clayton's desk.
It was late afternoon and a yellow-gray illumination lit the room from the pale sun over New York Harbor. The office lights were out and the door closed.
She looked at the jotting on a faded piece of foolscap.
Aristocratize
Was that a word? Taylor glanced at the brass, the carpets, the vases, the tile painting, the wall of deal binders, the stacks of papers like the one that had held the note and tape recordings of her conversations with Mitchell Reece. The huge chair creaked as she moved.
Men of most renowned virtue
Spinning around once more to face the window, she decided that, whether it was real or not, "aristocratize" certainly described the essence of Wendall Clayton.
There was no reason for her to be in the firm. Technically she was still on vacation, courtesy of Donald Burdick. She could leave at any moment, smile at Ms. Strickland and walk out of the front door with impunity. She was, in fact, due at Mitchell Recce's loft right about now. (It turned out that he could cook after all and was planning to make them a tortellini salad for dinner, he was currently baking the bread himself.) She wanted to lie in his huge bathtub, a wonderful bathtub that had claw feet, to luxuriate in the water holding a thin-stemmed glass of wine and smell him cooking whatever went into a tortellini salad.
Instead, Taylor slouched down in Clayton's chair and spun slowly in a circle, 360 degrees, once, twice, three times.
Alice spinning as she fell down the rabbit hole, Alice buffeted on the ocean of tears, Alice arguing with the Queen of Hearts.
Off with their heads, off with their heads!
Taylor stopped spinning. She began what she'd come here for, a detailed examination of the contents of Wendall Clayton's desk and filing cabinets.
A half hour later, Taylor Lockwood walked slowly downstairs to the paralegal pen. She made certain that no one was in the cubicles surrounding hers then looked through her address book and found the number of her favorite private eye, John Silbert Hemming.
He stopped suddenly, jolted, as he watched her slip out of Wendall Clayton's office, looking around carefully as if she didn't want to be seen.
Sean Lillick ducked into a darkened conference room where Taylor Lockwood couldn't see him. It had scared the hell out of him, as he was walking toward Clayton's office, to see the sudden shadow appearing in the doorway. For a split second all his chic, retro-punk East Village cynical sensibilities had vanished and he'd thought. Fuck me, it's a ghost.
What the hell had she been doing in there? he now wondered.
Lillick waited until she was gone and the corridor was empty. Then he too ducked into the dead partner's office and locked the door behind him.
It was excellent tortellini salad – filled with all sorts of good things only about half of which she recognized. The bread was lopsided but Reece had propped it up in a cute way. Whatever us shape, it tasted wonderful. He opened a cold Pouilly-Fuisse.
They ate for ten minutes, Taylor nodding as he told her about the impending settlement conference in Boston during which Hanover & Stiver would transfer the bulk of the principal of the loan back to New Amsterdam. He told anecdotes about some of Lloyd Hanover's shady business dealings. Normally, she liked it when he talked about his job because, although she didn't always understand the nuances, the animation and enthusiasm that lit up his face were infectious.
Tonight, though, she was distracted.
He finally caught on that something was wrong and his voice faded. He looked concerned But before he could question her, Taylor set her fork down with a tap. "Mitchell."
He refilled their glasses and cocked an eyebrow at her.
"There's something I have to tell you."
"Yes?" he asked cautiously, perhaps suspecting some personal confession.
"I've been looking into a few things About Wendall Clayton."
Reece sipped his wine. Nodded.
"He didn't kill himself." Taylor picked a lopsided bit of bread crust off the table and dropped it on her plate. "He was murdered."
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Mitchell Reece smiled, as if waiting for a punch.
Then. "Why do you think that?"
"I went to see his widow," Taylor said. Then she added quickly, "Oh, I wasn't going to tell her what happened – about the note and everything. But…" She paused. "Well, you know, I'm not sure why I went. It was something I just had to do."
He said, "I hear she's a bitch."
Taylor shrugged. "She was civil enough to me. But you know what she told me? That if Wendall couldn't get the merger through he was going to start his own firm."