"First Class library, Helen Osborne speaking. How may I help you?" the lovely voice on the end of the phone asked.
"Hello, Helen," I said, wondering whether the phone was answered that way everywhere there: First Class advertising, First Class sales, maybe even First Class cafeteria. I was beginning to understand how inspired the magazine's name was, despite my initial tendency to sarcasm. "My name is Eliza Dwyer," I said, making it up on the spot. "I'm the lucky individual who's been assigned to finish up some of the work that Kristi Ellingham was doing before she died. I'm feeling at a disadvantage here, because I don't have all the material she asked for. I sure hope you can help me."
"I'll certainly try. Are you working on Prattle or the travel story on that antiques tour to Tunisia?" she asked.
"Both, in a way. I'm in North Africa right now, doing the tour, but I think she was also gathering material for Prattle on some of the people who are on it, if I'm not mistaken." If I was guessing right, Prattle had to be the gossip column. "Aziza and Curtis Clark and so on. I'm having some difficulty piecing all her notes together."
"North Africa. Aren't you lucky. Yes, Kristi was doing some research for Prattle on Aziza. You have the name of the modeling agency Aziza was with when she was young, don't you?"
"Yes," I said. "That I've got."
"I think that's all she needed on her."
"Emile St. Laurent?" I asked. "Anything on him?"
"I gave her the number for a publication in France. I know he's a coin dealer and he went bankrupt a few years ago, but he's back in business: ESL Numismatics. I can get that number for you again. Here it is," she said, giving me one of the numbers on Kristi's bill.
"Great, thanks. Was there anyone else she was looking into that you know of? I should probably follow up on that, too."
"Some fellow by the name of Reynolds. I didn't have anything on him. Are you going to be doing Prattle from now on?"
"No, I don't think so. I just want to make sure I've tied up all of the loose ends, you know."
"That's too bad. You seem much nicer than Kristi, I must say. Although I suppose nice doesn't cut it in a gossip columnist, does it? She also asked me to check on a dentist by the name of Cliff Fielding, and a Nora Winslow. I couldn't find anything interesting there, either. He's a dentist, or he was. I found him on the list of the professional association in Texas. I couldn't even find a phone number for this Winslow person. That's it, I think. No, wait. Just before Kristi died, she asked me to look into someone with a funny name. Hold on a sec, I'll get it. Briars Hatley. Nothing too exciting about him, either."
"Right, got it. By any chance did Kristi ask for anything on a company called Star Salvage?"
"No, I don't think so. I'm sure I'd remember if she did. Do you want me to do some digging on them for you?" That didn't surprise me.
"Thanks, Helen, but that won't be necessary." As tempting as it might be to have First Class magazine doing my research for me, I didn't think it was a good idea. "I appreciate your help with all of this, though. Now I'd better get back to the McClintoch and Swain tour."
Helen snickered. "Kristi called them McQuick Talk and Swank," she said.
"Wasn't Kristi hilarious?" I said, sticking my tongue out at the telephone. "We'll certainly miss her sense of humor." It's always edifying when someone does to you what you do to everybody else, in this case making up names for people.
Next calclass="underline" Montreal. "Rick Reynolds, please," I said.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Reynolds is no longer employed here," the voice said. "Could someone else help you?"
"Sure," I said. The call was transferred, and I was treated to a few moments of elevator music.
"Alex Mathias," the man said.
"I was looking for Rick Reynolds," I said. "I had some dealings with him a while back."
"It must have been a while," Mathias said. His tone was guarded. "He hasn't been with us for over a year. But what can I do for you? Are you looking for some investment advice, or--"
"Yes, I am," I said. "Where did Rick go, do you know?"
"I don't know where he's gone. I don't think you'd want to be dealing with him, though, wherever it is," he said carefully. Either Alex Mathias didn't read obituaries or he had a rather macabre sense of humor.
"Left under a bit of a cloud, did he?" I said brightly.
"I probably shouldn't say," Mathias said. "But I'd be happy to help you with your investment needs."
"Great. Thanks. Oh, dear, there's someone on the other line. Can I call you right back?"
Well, Rick was a total fraud, wasn't he? Feigning employment, pretending to call his office every ten minutes. No doubt Kristi thought so, too. She'd gone and checked with the Montreal newspaper right after the call to Rick's former employer. I planned to do the same, but I had other ways of getting at that one that wouldn't require quite so much lying.
I got nowhere with the public prosecutor's office in California, and nowhere with the Paris publication. Even tossing First Class magazine and Kristi's name into the conversation didn't get me anywhere. It was time to try the Internet. That was something of a problem, there being no jacks in the hotel room for my laptop. It was not insurmountable, however. I persuaded Sylvie to let me use their Internet account after promising to pay for the time.
I checked the online archives of the Montreal paper for any mention of Rick Reynolds. He was there, all right, suspended from the company pending an investigation into some of his activities. According to the clips, he had invested personally in stock offerings his firm was responsible for selling--a no-no in that business, or at least in the company he worked for--and he seemed to have misrepresented the firm. It looked to me as if he'd been trying to get people to invest in certain schemes by making it sound as if he were doing it on behalf of the company that employed him, when he was, in fact, doing it on the side. That got him suspended and then sacked. I could find no evidence, however, that there had been any formal charges brought against him. If he'd managed to find employment elsewhere, I could find no indication of that, either. He was a con man and a thief, of that I had absolutely no doubt. He'd made himself out to be a big-time operator, phoning all the time, checking the markets, when clearly he wasn't. What I couldn't figure out was at whom the whole performance had been directed. Was it a general attempt to dupe everybody on the tour, or was it for the benefit of one particular individual? I also found myself wondering how he'd managed to pay for the trip, given that he'd most likely been unemployed for a while. I doubted that under the circumstances there'd have been much of a severance package, if any. I knew what he was doing for pocket money, though: stealing valuable necklaces and selling them in the Souk des Orfevres, and picking Jimmy's wallet.
Next I checked the archives of some French publications, including the one Kristi had called. I found a little more detail about what I knew already. Emile had been a very successful coin dealer, got out of the business about eight years earlier, invested in a big development outside of Paris that had huge cost overruns, and he went bankrupt, along with the project. Nothing illegal in that, or our jails would be even more packed than they already are. He disappeared from view for a while, and then he came back to what he knew, I suppose, and started up a new business, ESL Numismatics. There was no indication of fraud of any sort.
I found a Web site for ESL Numismatics that listed coins for sale through an online auction. Hundreds of coins were listed with descriptions of quality and prices in U.S. dollars. If you wanted to pay the list price for a particular coin, you could buy it on the spot, if your credit card was up to it--mine wouldn't have been for several of the coins listed--or you could put in a lesser bid and wait until the deadline, when you'd find out whether or not you had been the successful bidder. The site was excellent. It appeared to be updated daily, and had a nifty little search feature. You could go back through three years of online catalogues, and there were nice photos of the coins, and a section on the history of money, and so on. Just for fun, I looked up Carthaginian coins, and found three of them under the current listing. The most expensive one was $12,000. I decided not to look further, or envy would definitely get the better of me.