her
alone, so I went to her room last night. She wasn’t there. I
had no idea she was waiting for Leon in his room. That’s
when you must have seen me in the corridor.”
Judith felt surprise register, but desperately tried not to let
it show. “Last night. Yes, that’s what we must have seen.”
She flashed a warning glance at Renie.
Max stretched his long legs out towards the hearth. “I
suppose she was going to show the file to Frank. Or maybe
she was just going to hold it over my head. Blackmail comes
in some weird forms.”
“Why would Andrea want to blackmail you?” Renie asked.
“Well…” Max seemed genuinely puzzled. “I honestly don’t
know. Like everybody else in the company, she felt marketing
types aren’t real telecommunications people. We’re mavericks, and as vice president, I get to wear the black sheep label.
Plus, my wife, Carrie, and I’ve been having some problems.
We fight a lot, we always have. Carrie hates company functions. She’s a master gardener and has her own career.
Playing the part of corporate helpmate makes her puke. As
you might guess, a wife with an attitude really pisses off
women like Patrice Killegrew. It pissed off Andrea, too. She
liked to fit everybody into their own little niche.”
“What about Mrs. Haugland?” Judith inquired. “I understand she’s too sickly to take part in company social gatherings.”
Max waved a big hand. “That’s different. Helen Haugland
thrives on sympathy. She got plenty of it from poor Ward,
and most of the others. Oh, some of them saw through her,
but Helen can pull the wool over lots of eyes. I wonder
what’ll happen now that Ward’s dead. She might have to
get off her dead butt and
While Judith was interested in Max’s assessment of his
colleagues and their spouses, she realized he hadn’t answered
the original question. “You mentioned blackmail,” Judith
said. “Do you mean that Andrea would have used the
hooker ring files to make you do something you otherwise
wouldn’t do?”
Max seemed to consider Judith’s somewhat garbled suggestion. “Maybe originally. She and Alan have a couple of
kids. One of them is out of high school, I think. It might be
that she wanted me to hire him. Anyway, that can’t be true
now. I mean, Alan’s going to run WaCom, right? And WaCom wants to merge with OTIOSE. So now I figure that
Andrea was going to use that file to get me canned.”
Renie leaned forward on the footstool. “And replace you
with someone hand-picked by Alan? That makes sense.”
“I’m afraid so.” Max assumed a brooding expression as
the lobby grew silent.
The silence was short-lived. A sound came from somewhere, unexpected and distant. Judith, Renie, and Max all
tensed.