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I got mad and told him I was going to sleep with anybody I wanted. But I didn't. And last month when I
flew over to Paris for a few days, I was definitely planning on having a good time. I have a friend there.
He's a playboy, but he's nice. Anyway, I never called him. God, Suze, it's been forever."
"Celibacy must be catching. Even Mitch seems to have given up all those dreary women he used to date."
The moment the words were out, Susannah wished she hadn't brought up his name. Of course Mitch had
stopped dating. He was moving in on her sister. She recovered quickly. "Maybe you just needed some
time off from men for a while."
"I guess. But I'm starting to think about sex a lot. Which is really ironic, because I didn't use to like it very
much."
And then Paige got up from the couch, almost as if she wished she hadn't said so much. "I I think I'd
better sleep at home tonight. I have to meet with Cal early tomorrow about the FBT party. If I stay at
Falcon Hill, I won't have to fight rush-hour traffic."
Susannah nodded. She knew she wasn't the best company right now and she didn't blame Paige for
taking off. They walked to the door together. Paige grabbed her purse and jacket, kissed Susannah's
cheek, and left the town house.
It was a beautiful night. The moon was full, the air sweet. As Paige drove home, she tried to concentrate
on how pretty the sky was so that she wouldn't start to cry. But she had barely reached the highway
before the tears were dripping down her cheeks. She hated to cry. It was weak and stupid and
completely infantile. But from the time Yank Yankowski had walked into her life, it seemed as if she had
been doing a lot of it in her private time. God. She had been like a crazy woman for months. Every time
she opened Susannah's door and she saw him standing there, she felt as if someone had shot heroin
straight into her veins.
All she had to do was shut her eyes and she could see him. She tried to read messages into every change
of his expression, and to transform those short cryptic statements he uttered into complex sonnets of
passion, but it never worked. She was too much a realist. Of all the jokes God had played on her, this
was the biggest. She, a woman who could chose among the most fascinating men in the world, had fallen
in love with the nerdy, absentminded geek who was so obviously in love with her stupid, blind sister.
Susannah carried the file on Edward Fiella upstairs. She decided that she might as well do some work,
because she certainly wasn't going to fall asleep easily, not with all those dirty dreams waiting for her.
After she had gotten ready for bed, she propped herself into the pillows and flipped open the file. She
had been through this material months before, and she didn't really expect to find anything new, but she
still wanted to take one last look.
There was a coffee ring on the first page, which held a copy of his employment application. She skimmed
through the rest. They had hired Fiella right out of college. He had been with them six months and then
left. She knew that he had a degree from San Jose State, and she glanced through his college history. No
fraternities. No professional associations. The summer before he had graduated, he had taken a job
programming the computer billing system at the Mendhan Hills Yacht Club.
Her eyes stopped moving at the reference to the yacht club. Why had she never noticed that before? She
had visited the Mendhan Hills Yacht Club many times. Although it was a small club, it was one of the Bay
Area's most prestigious.
And Cal Theroux had been a member for as long as she had known him.
Her pulse was racing. Moments before, the bedroom had seemed cool, but now she was burning up.
Don't leap to conclusions, she told herself as she threw off the covers. Cal wasn't the only high-ranking
FBT official who was a member of the club, and she couldn't make assumptions just because a former
SysVal employee had been in the same room with a competitor. She reminded herself that FBT and
SysVal hadn't been rivals until the Falcon 101 had gone on the market. Even then, winning the contract
with the state of California had been far more important to SysVal than to FBT.
But all of the logical arguments in the world weren't enough to convince her. Snatching up her telephone,
she called Hal Lundeen and told him what she had discovered.
It took two days for Lundeen to report back with the information she needed. He flipped open his
notepad. "You definitely stumbled on to something, Miss Faulconer. Cal Theroux headed the committee
at Mendhan Hills Yacht Club that put in the computerized billing system Fiella worked on. The two of
them definitely knew each other."
Susannah's hand tightened around the pen she had been holding. Now she felt free to acknowledge her
instincts. The moment she had seen the reference to the yacht club in Fiella's file, she had known in her
guts that Cal was responsible for sabotaging the Blaze. She thought of all that hatred festering inside him
for so many years. Had she really imagined he had forgotten what she had done to him? That he
wouldn't, at some point, strike back at her?
"We need something that will stand up in court," she said. "It'll have to be more substantial than this."
"Give me a few more days, and let's see what I can dig up. The more I find out about your Mr. Theroux,
the more I think he's a pretty slippery operator. He's left a lot of dead bodies at FBT on his way to the
top."
As soon as Lundeen left her office, she called a meeting with Mitch and Yank and told them exactly what
she had discovered. But both men had been trained in the scientific method, and neither was impressed
with her conclusions.
"These are serious accusations," Mitch said, "and everything you have is circumstantial. If you're not
careful, we'll be facing a lawsuit for slander on top of everything else. Unless Lundeen comes up with
something more definite, I don't see how this will help."
"He'll come up with something," she said. "He has to."
But a week later Hal hadn't unearthed anything more than unpleasant anecdotes from former colleagues
about Cal's ruthless but effective climb to the top of FBT.
Susannah stopped sleeping. She couldn't eat. The first week of July slipped into the second, and the
weekend arrived. She spent all of Saturday at her desk. Mitch's children were in town, and he had taken
them to a Giants game. Because Paige was committed to hostessing the annual FBT party that evening,
Mitch had postponed the barbecue he had planned until the next afternoon. Susannah looked forward to
seeing the children, but she dreaded watching Paige and Mitch together.
By seven that evening she was exhausted, but she didn't want to go home. She got up from her desk and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]