could unwind. The secretary got a call to the front desk and didn’t see the guy who left Lear’s office. That was the last time anyone saw Victoria Lear alive.”
“Oh, Macguire, did the secretary say what it was they argued about? Had Victoria discovered something? Was it anything to do with assay reports?”
Macguire shook his head. “All the secretary remembers is that she heard Victoria yell something about World War Two.”
“Great.” I listened to the roommate’s violent snores, theft sighed. “You said there was something else?”
Macguire blushed. “This part is more like rumor. Hearsay. I mean, it’s pretty disgusting.”
“I think I can handle it.”
Macguire’s cheeks reddened. “Well, one day around Easter Mr. Royce asked Bitsy out for coffee, but Bitsy’s really into health food, so they went to get some tea at Alfalfa’s ? ” He took one look at my impatient face and plunged on: “Anyway. Bitsy said Royce was kind of hitting on her, and she said it was a rush since he was like, the firm partner and all that. She was thinking maybe he’d give her a raise if they had sex. I mean, she wanted sexual harassment, if it would work for her. Do you believe that, in this day and age?”
“Macguire, in this day and age, I think I’d believe anything.”
“So before long they got to talking about whether it was lonely at the top. Pretty soon he was taking her out for herb tea just about every other day. Bitsy kept thinking they were, like, two steps from the sack. But then Royce confessed that he was looking for a certain kind of girl. The kind of girl he was looking for, well, he wanted to go out with a nurse, and did Bitsy have any friends who were in nursing school?”
“And did she?” Macguire eased himself up in the bedcovers. “Better than that, Bitsy found him a med student. A woman named Elissa who’d gone to Elk Park Prep and then C.U. It was Elissa’s first year at C.U. Med School. Bitsy said that Elissa and Royce started to have this very kinky relationship.”
“Bitsy told you all this?”
“Yeah. You know why she told me? Because she was so pissed that Tony never gave her anything, like a finder’s fee, or something. I mean, she fixed them up in the first place, is the way she saw it.”
I didn’t ask Macguire why Bitsy didn’t quit Prospect and just become a pimp, but I didn’t want to distract him from his story again. “So Tony was two-timing Marla and going out with this med student. Marla knew he had other girlfriends.” Did Eileen Tobey know? I wondered.
Macguire heaved out an exasperated sigh. “Well, if I knew about this, and I was his girlfriend, I’d have shoved him into that creek.”
“Marla knew he was dating around for a while, Macguire. This is old news. I just don’t understand why he wanted a nurse or med student.”
He took a sip of water. “That’s the weird part. She would do medical procedures on him before they… you know, did it.”
I closed my eyes, then opened them. “What kind of medical procedures?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
“According to Elissa, Tony wanted his blood pressure taken, and his pulse, and his temperature ? you know, vital signs. Then she would listen to his chest, test his reflexes ? “
“Macguire, please. That’s disgusting.”
He touched his bandage. “They got together every Wednesday. Royce would have a room in his house all prepared. I mean, examination table, stethoscope, latex gloves, cotton balls, alcohol, sterile needles, blood pressure cuff, test tubes, thermometers, on and on. Bitsy was really disgusted when Elissa told her all this. Bitsy said she would have pretended to be a nurse for him, except he wanted the genuine article.”
“So he had a medical fetish.”
“The last thing the med student did before they had sex was to take his temperature. Tony wanted to know if he was really hot.?
“Macguire, enough.?
“I told you it was kinky.”
“I’ll try to follow up on the IPO stuff, anyway.”
We were both aware that a change had come over the room. It was like a siren stopping beside the car behind you. First the siren squeals in your ears, then you get used to it, then you wonder what happened to it. With one movement, Macguire and I turned our heads toward the roommate’s bed.
A gray-haired man leaned up on one blue-pajamaed elbow in the bed. His eyes were wide and his mouth gaped. Perspiration beaded his forehead.
“Are you okay?” I asked anxiously.
He rasped, “Did she take his temperature orally or anally?”
Ten minutes later I had said good-bye to Macguire and was heading toward a hospital pay phone. I had less than five hours before the general was due at the house. Less than five hours to figure out what was going on, less than five hours before I went outside the law and tried to help Marla. I would need as much information as possible before that time came. I sat down in one of the lobby phone booths and tried to think.
Except for the goat scheme a couple of years ago, everything at Prospect Financial had been going well. Going well, that is, until the firm decided to put money into the Eurydice. And why had the firm decided to put three and a half mil into a mine that had been closed for decades? Because Albert had inherited both the place and the fervent belief that it was chock-a-block with gold ore. His enthusiasm had been empirically borne out by the geology and assay reports that he and Tony had commissioned. It hadn’t been difficult to be both promoter and investment company. With Medigen, Prospect Financial Partners had already proven they had the Midas touch, and thirty-five clients had been more than eager to put up a hundred thousand each to make another killing.
But then Chief Investment Officer Victoria Lear had died suddenly while working on the Eurydice IPO. Marla had found a discrepancy in the assays. Albert had disappeared with the investors’ money. Now Tony, too, was missing under suspicious circumstances. And Marla was being made the scapegoat.
Begin at the beginning, I thought. A month ago, Victoria Lear had been working on an initial public offering of stock for the mine venture. I punched the buttons for the Bank of Aspen Meadow and asked to speak with Eileen Tobey on a matter of great fiscal urgency.
“It’s your caterer,” I said breathlessly, when Eileen finally came on the line. “Just have a quick question, but it’s really, really important. What do you know about initial public offerings? What do you have to do to make one happen?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Goldy, I’m busy!” Eileen snapped. Then her voice changed. “Look, I’ve got an important meeting in five minutes. But… I heard a nasty rumor about our mutual friend, Marla Korman.”
“Really.” My heart hardened; bad news sure traveled fast in the high country. No matter how busy you were, apparently, meetings couldn’t proceed until people were up on their gossip.
Eileen’s voice was like syrup. “I’ll tell you what you want to know if you’ll tell me it’s true she knifed Tony Royce.”
“It’s not true,” I said emphatically. “But she is in jail. Now listen,” I plunged on before she could ask any more questions, “I don’t want to keep you, Eileen. If I were a venture capital firm, and I’d done a private placement and raised a bunch of money to reopen a mine, what would I have to do to take the venture public?”
“Hmm. I don’t suppose this has to do with a certain venture capital firm we all know and love?”
“Just tell me what I’d need for an IPO. Please,” I added.
She took a deep breath and assumed an authoritative tone. “Very simply, the firm would hand the whole thing over to an investment banker, who would, among other things, hire an independent auditor to check all the facts presented in the prospectus.”
“Like what kinds of facts?”
“Oh, that you were what you said you were. Say for a mine, you’d have to have the assays done by a reputable assay lab. You’d hire an independent mining consulting firm to go in and check your geology reports. Like that. It takes a long time and a lot of paperwork, Goldy. You have to spend months on an IPO. What are you getting at?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said, dejected. “It was just a long shot.”
I hung up and considered the narrow, smeared windows of the booth. I didn’t have a copy of the prospectus, so I had no idea who the geologist of record was, or how trustworthy his or her reports were. Then go to the next thing. What had Victoria Lear discovered? If the assays could be proven to be fraudulent, as Marla had suspected,
