Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 by Dead Man's Island

Author:Dead Man's Island
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, Women Sleuths, Henrie O (Fictitious Character), South Carolina, Women Journalists, Fiction
ISBN: 0553566075
Publisher: Crimeline
Published: 1993-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

I skidded into my room in a hurry. I can shower and dress in seven minutes. I had twenty minutes before dinner.

The singed book was still in place, secreted among the folders.

I carried it to the table and settled down to scan.

It didn’t take long to figure out why Chase loathed this unauthorized biography. Jeremy Hub-bard had a talent for unearthing the unattractive, including the accusations that Chase had brilliantly engineered a meeting with his first wife, Elizabeth Warren, and pursued her solely because of her father’s substantial media holdings; that Chase had deliberately forced Elizabeth’s brother Aaron out of the business and refused to help him later when he was in financial trouble; that Chase had been responsible for a market rumor that had dropped a competitor’s stock price until Chase was able to amass a controlling interest at an incredible bargain; that Chase was ruthless in jettisoning older employees no matter how long and how loyally they’d served him.

But the meat of the book—to my mind—was a series of ugly revelations about Chase’s personal relationships:

Chase never visited Elizabeth when she was hospitalized.

Chase delegated his secretary to select birthday presents for Roger.

Chase went to Europe on business when Carrie was hospitalized for a miscarriage.

Chase had no time for friends other than those who could help him in a business sense.

Chase didn’t attend Roger’s graduation from college.

There was more in the book, of course: questionable stock deals, rapacious mergers, unjustified dismissals.

Hubbard was clearly a clever, skilled writer. He’d pieced together a series of facts and the result was a damning portrait.

I showered quickly, thinking about the revelations in the book and about all the conversations I’d had.

I knew so much.

Why couldn’t I put a face to Chase’s attacker?

As every newspaper reporter knows, there comes a moment when the facts fall into place, when it is clear what matters and what doesn’t. Then the story writes itself: The lead focuses on the most important element, the follow-up paragraphs support the statement made in the lead, and the body of the story amplifies and explains subsidiary information.

I’d counted on learning a lot from conversations. I had.

I’d counted on learning a lot from the book I’d retrieved from the incinerator. I had.

But nothing jelled. The mass of data I’d acquired was as formless as a spilled deck of cards.

I couldn’t point a finger.

Say I opted for Lyle Stedman as a power-and-money-hungry executive intent on taking control of Prescott Communications.

A poisoned chocolate piece?

Shots from behind a tree?

From this type-A guy with an international reputation for naked ruthlessness?

Weren’t these two attempts much more likely to be efforts by a young woman whose passion for a man had turned from love to obsession?

Neither of the attacks on Chase, when you studied them, seemed designed to succeed. Wasn’t that perhaps the result of conflicting motives in Miranda’s subconscious, the desire to possess warring with a lust to hurt?

For dinner I chose a royal-purple cotton damask coatdress. I like bold colors. But I wished it didn’t remind me of tonight’s sky.

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