Mistress of Justice Read online

  A spasm of anger passed through her. Why can't he understand? "I was so stupid." Taylor looked at him briefly. Wondering how Clayton had felt lifting the gun. Had it been heavy? Had there been pain? How long had he lived after pulling the trigger? What had he seen? A burst of yellow light, a second of confusion, a wild eruption of thoughts, then nothing?

  "Taylor," Reece said with measured words, "Clayton was crazy. No sane man would've stolen the note in the first place and no sane man would've killed himself if he'd been caught. You can't anticipate people like that."

  She gripped his arm firmly. "But that's the point, Mitchell. You're thinking the problem is that Wendall outflanked us--that our fault was we weren't clever enough. But the fault was that we shouldn't've been playing the game in the first place. That firm's like Wonderland--it's got its own set of rules, which don't even make sense half the time but you never think about that because you're so deep in the place. Topsy-turvy.... Everything's topsy-turvy."

  "What're you saying?"

  "That we should've gone to the police. And we should've let the chips fall wherever. So New Amsterdam would've left the firm. Well, so what? And you? You're one of the best lawyers in New York. You would've landed on your feet."

  He rose and walked to the window.

  Finally he said softly, "I know, I know.... You think I haven't been living with exactly what you're talking about?" He turned to face her. "But if I don't lay part of the blame at Clayton's feet, it undermines all my beliefs as a lawyer." He touched his chest. "It undermines all that I am. You know, this is something I'm going to have to live with too. I mean, you did what I asked you to do. But ultimately it was my decision."

  So here was another aspect of Mitchell Reece--not all-powerful, not in control, not immune to pain.

  She walked next to him, lowered her head onto his shoulder. His hand twined through her hair. "I'm sorry, Mitchell. This is very odd for me. It's not the sort of thing Ms. or Savvy prepares the working girl for."

  He rubbed her shoulders.

  "Can I ask a favor?" she said.

  "Sure."

  "Can we go back?"

  He was surprised. "You want to leave?"

  "I've had a wonderful time. But I'm in such a funky mood. I don't want to spoil our time together and I think I'd be a drag to be with."

  "But I haven't learned to ski yet."

  "Are you kidding? You're a graduate of the Taylor Lockwood School of Skiing Injury. You can go out now and break arms and legs all by yourself. With that kind of education there's no telling how far you can go."

  "Let me see when I can get the jet."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Thursday afternoon, Taylor Lockwood stood in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue, looking up at a brown brick apartment building across the street, about as far from the wilderness of New Hampshire as you could get, conceptually speaking.

  She checked the address again and verified that she had found the right building. Inside, a solemn doorman regarded her carefully and then called upstairs to announce her.

  She was approved and he nodded toward the elevator.

  "Sixth floor," he said.

  "Which apartment?" she asked.

  He looked confused for a moment then said, "It's the whole floor."

  "Oh."

  She stepped into the leather-padded elevator and was slowly transported to a private entryway. She smoothed her hair, looking into a brass mirror, a huge thing. The foyer was in dark red and filled with Georgian yellow and white dovetail trim. The pictures were old English hunting scenes. Plaster scrolls and cherubs and angels and columns were everywhere.

  An ageless, unsmiling woman in a plain navy shift answered the door, asked her to wait then disappeared down the hallway. Taylor glanced through the doorway. The rooms were larger versions of the foyer. She looked back into the mirror and stared at herself, at a person who was thinner than she'd expected. Thinner and ... what else? More drawn, gaunter, grimmer? She tried smiling; it didn't take.

  A shadow passed across her and Mrs. Wendall Clayton stood in the doorway: a middle-aged woman, wearing the stiff, straight-cut, big-patterned clothes that people who learned style in the sixties still sometimes favor. Her straight hair was swept back and sprayed perfectly into place. Her thin face was severe. The foundation makeup had been applied thickly but her skin wasn't good and Taylor could see red patches beneath the pancake.

  They shook hands and made introductions.

  Taylor followed the woman into the living room. Why the hell am I doing this? she wondered suddenly. What possible point could it have?

  I'm here to give you my deepest sympathy.

  I'm here to say I worked with your husband.

  I'm here to say that even though he's dead don't feel too bad because he tried to seduce me.

  Mrs. Clayton sat upright in an uncomfortable satin wingback, Taylor in a spongy armchair.

  I'm here because I helped kill your husband....

  The widow asked, "Tea? Coffee?"

  "No, thank you," Taylor said. And then realized that the woman's dress was red and that this was hardly a household in mourning--the room was festooned with antique Christmas decorations and there was a faint but rich scent of pine in the air. Classical Christmas music played on the stereo. Taylor looked at the woman's cocked eyebrow and her expression, which wasn't one of bitterness or sorrow. It was closer to curiosity.

  "I worked with your husband, Mrs. Clayton."

  "Yes."

  "I just came to tell you how sorry I was."

  And Taylor understood then, only at that moment, that uttering those words was all she could do. Watching this stolid, lone woman (Taylor couldn't picture her as one half of the Claytons) light a cigarette, she understood that the spirits of Donald Burdick and Vera Burdick and Messrs. Hubbard, White and Willis themselves had accompanied her here and were laying cold fingers on her lips. She could not, even here, in Clayton's home, do what she desperately wanted to do: explain.

  Explain that she'd been the one who'd uncovered the terrible secrets about her husband, that she was the cause--the proximate cause, the law would say--of his death. No, there'd be no confession. Taylor knew what bound her. In this joint venture Hubbard, White & Willis had secured her soul.

  "That's very kind of you." After a pause the woman asked: "Did I see you at the funeral? There were so many people."

  "I wasn't there, no." Taylor eased back in the chair, uncomfortable, and crossed her arms. Wished she'd asked for coffee to keep her hands busy.

  Now she looked around the room, aware of its size. The ceilings were twenty feet high. It reminded her of National Trust mansions and palaces in England. Taylor said, "He was an excellent lawyer...."

  Clayton's widow said, "I suppose." She was examining a tabletop. It seemed to be a dust inspection. "But then we didn't talk much about his career."

  Taylor was counting the squares in the carpet. Trying to figure out the designs. Finally: St. George and the dragon, she believed.

  Beware the Jabberwock ...

  The widow paused. "The truth is, Ms. Lockwood, I'm a little bewildered. I don't know you--though we may have met before. But you seem genuinely upset by my husband's death and I can't quite figure out why. You're not like the little sycophants who've come by since he died--the associates at the firm. They thought they were covering it up but I could see through them--in their eyes you could tell that they were amused at his death. I know they'd chuckled about it over their beers when they were alone. Do you know why they were here?"

  Taylor was silent.

  "They came because they thought word would get back to the firm that they'd done their duty. They'd made an appearance that might earn them another point or two, get them a step closer to being partner." She pressed out her cigarette. "Which is so ironic, of course, because they didn't grasp the situation at all. They should've been avoiding this house as if it were a leper colony. If word gets back to Burdick that young Samuel an
d Frederick and Douglas were paying respects to me, well, then, my God, they're in Dutch. At worst, they'd had the bad judgment to pick the wrong side; at best, they were displaying an oblivion about law firm politics.

  "So you see, Ms. Lockwood, I am a little perplexed by your sympathy call." A smile. "That sounds appropriately Victorian, doesn't it? Sympathy call. Well, you aren't here to toady. You aren't here to gloat. Your dress and demeanor tell me you couldn't care less about what the Donald Burdicks and Wendall Claytons of the world think of you. You're clearly not one of the little malleable things he picked for his, dare I use the euphemism, girlfriends.... No, you're genuinely upset. I can see that. Well, you may have respected my husband as a lawyer and an ambitious businessman. But I doubt very much if you respected him as a human being. And I know without a doubt that you didn't like him."

  "You had a loss in your life and I'm sorry," Taylor said evenly. "I didn't mean anything more or less than that." She fell silent, watching this shrewd woman light another cigarette with bony, red hands. It seemed as if the smoke that floated out of her nose and mouth had over the years taken with it her weight and softness.

  Mrs. Clayton finally laughed. "Well, I appreciate that, Ms. Lockwood. Forgive my cynicism. I hope I haven't offended you. But don't feel sorry for me. Heavens, no. You're young. You don't have any experience with marriages of convenience."

  Well, let's not go that far, Taylor thought, replaying many images: her parents' twin beds, her mother with her glass of wine sitting alone in front of the television, her father calling at midnight saying he was staying at his club. Night after night after night ...

  Clayton's widow said, "I guess you'd say our relationship wasn't even a marriage. It was a merger. His assets and mine. A certain camaraderie. Love? Was there any love between Williams Computing and RFC Industries when they consolidated? To name just one of the deals that took so much of Wendall's time ..." She looked out over the park, spindly with branches, the residue of snow faintly surviving in shadows. "And that's the irony, you see."

  "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 Perigord 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 ingenue, 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 Reece'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 proppe
d it up in a cute way. Whatever its 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 line.

  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."

  "What?" Reece frowned.

  Nodding, she said, "He had it all planned out. I went through his desk at the firm. I found business plans, bank loan applications. He even had the firm name selected. Clayton, Stone & Samuels. He had a sample letterhead printed up and he'd been talking to a broker about space in the Equitable Building."

  Reece too had put down his utensils. "But if he was ready to start his own firm it makes no sense for him to risk his career to push the merger through."