Foolproof (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  When Iris passed Rick, one of her junior brokers, he quickly switched to another window on his computer monitor, but not before she saw that he was playing Suckers Finish Last while talking to a client. She didn’t care. As long as he was selling, he could stand on his head in his cubicle and whistle “Dixie.” Besides, the Slade Slayer games were Bridget’s work. Long live Slade Slayer!

  “Good morning, Louise,” Iris chirped as she entered her office, where Louise had already unlocked the door.

  Iris took off the jacket of her Anne Klein suit, hung it behind the door, and stashed her handbag in the top drawer of a filing cabinet. Instead of sitting at her desk, she walked to the floor-to-ceiling window that faced south. Her view was blocked by a tall office building on the other side of the street, but if she pressed her cheek against the glass, as she did now, she could glimpse the hills of northeast L.A. where she had grown up. She took a quick look, as was her habit at least once a week. It grounded her. She then turned to look out the other window behind her desk which faced west.

  “Brought you some coffee,” Louise said behind her.

  “Thanks. It’s hazy today. I can’t see Catalina. The Santa Anas have finally stopped.”

  “You must have a tremendous view of Catalina from your new house.”

  Iris turned and picked up the mug of black coffee Louise had set on her desk and gushed, “It’s wonderful. I woke up Sunday morning after spending my first night in the house and the first thing I saw was the ocean.”

  “You’re all moved in?”

  “Hardly. I have so much shopping to do. I need to buy a washer and dryer, and I never replaced my living room furniture after the earthquake.”

  “You poor dear. All that dreadful shopping,” Louise clucked in ersatz sympathy.

  Iris’s eyes glittered at the visions of superstores dancing in her head. “Yes,” she said, trancelike. “The world of consumer durables is opening before me like a flower.”

  They both turned when they heard barking. An apricot toy poodle skirted past Louise’s legs, ducked under Iris’s desk, and leaped onto her chair where it trembled and yipped with excitement.

  “Thelma!” Iris exclaimed.

  Shortly afterward, Liz appeared in Iris’s doorway, with Thelma’s black counterpart, Louise, wriggling and barking in her arms.

  “Iris, I’m so sorry.” Liz walked around Iris’s desk and retrieved the errant dog. “I was hoping to slip them into my office until lunch, then leave them at the vet’s for their shots and grooming and no one would be any the wiser.” She put her face close to the dogs, who licked her wildly. “But you two had different ideas, didn’t you?” she baby-talked. “Mommy’s little itsy-bitsy puppies.” Her face now covered with dog spit, Liz addressed Iris. “I promise they’ll be quiet.” She walked across the suite to her office, drawing the attention of everyone in the sales department.

  “Sam-I-Am will have fun when he hears about this,” Iris commented.

  “There’s no reason he should hear about it,” Louise said.

  “But he will. He has a little spy who has big ears and big eyes.”

  “The better to hear and see you with, my dear.”

  “There she is now, checking out the situation firsthand.”

  They turned to see Amber Ambrose sidle into Liz’s office and coo over the dogs.

  “Bottom line, as long as Liz continues producing over two million a month, she and I are untouchable,” Iris said. “Money talks and BS walks. It’s the law of the jungle.”

  Iris’s phone rang and Louise reached to answer it. “Iris Thorne’s office.” After briefly speaking, she told Iris, “Mr. Connors is here.”

  Iris nodded.

  “I’ll come get him,” Louise said into the phone.

  “He’s Bridget’s attorney,” Iris explained. “I still don’t know why he wants to meet with me. Something about her estate. He wouldn’t discuss it over the phone. I can’t imagine she left me anything of any monetary significance.”

  Louise left, then returned followed by a well-dressed, squat, balding man. Behind him was Natalie Tyler, Bridget’s mother, and Brianna.

  “What a surprise!” Iris exclaimed as she hugged Natalie.

  “Hi, Aunt Iris,” Brianna said quietly.

  Iris bent over to hug the little girl. “Hello, Brianna. I’m so glad to see you. Now I know it’s going to be a good day.” Still tightly holding Brianna around the shoulders with one hand, Iris extended her free hand to Mr. Connors. “I’m Iris Thorne. Please come in.”

  After Natalie and Connors were seated in the two chairs facing Iris’s desk and Brianna was settled on the couch, Connors got to the purpose of his visit.

  “About two months before Bridget Cross’s passing, she and I revised her will. At that time, she also drew up a living trust covering some of her property. Are you familiar with living trusts?”

  “Slightly. Please give me an overview.”

  “A living trust differs from a will in several respects. An important difference is that property subject to living trusts avoids the cost and delay of probate. Avoiding probate and potential challenges to her desired disposition of her property after her death was important to Mrs. Cross. She was especially concerned about one including one piece of property in particular in the trust—her block of eight thousand shares of Pandora Software Corporation preferred stock, representing a sixty percent ownership stake in the firm. She named herself as trustee.”

  Iris nodded, becoming more curious by the moment. She had assumed, as she knew Kip did, that Bridget’s shares would go to him. So why was Connors talking to her about this?

  Connors went on. “Bridget Cross named Brianna Cross as successor trustee.”

  Iris was perplexed. Bridget had left Pandora to her daughter? “A five-year-old can’t run a company.”

  “Mrs. Cross named you, Ms. Thorne, as administrator of the trust.” Connors sat quietly as if waiting for the effect of his announcement to sink in.

  “Administrator?” Iris echoed. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that you’re in charge of managing the property.”

  “Managing the property?” Iris grew more confused.

  “Doing whatever Bridget did to manage the property,” Connors roughly explained.

  “Me? Run Pandora?” Iris looked at Natalie. “Instead of Kip?”

  Natalie shrugged. “I was surprised too, Iris. I was also surprised that Bridget didn’t mention anything to you.” She turned and touched Brianna’s legs, which the girl was wildly swinging. “Honey, please.”

  Omnipresent Louise was suddenly at Iris’s door with a suggestion. “Brianna, would you like to draw? I have some colored pens and paper.” Nothing in the office, not even the slightest ripple, got past Louise.

  Brianna looked eagerly at Natalie.

  “Go ahead,” Natalie said. “Go with the nice lady.”

  “Thanks, Louise.” Iris slowly exhaled. She rested her fingertips against her cheeks and looked from Connors to Natalie and back. “But I don’t know the first thing about running Pandora.”

  “Bridget Cross was a savvy businesswoman,” Connors said. “She was confident in her decision regarding Pandora and”—he shot a glance out the door and lowered his voice—”was very clear that she did not want to turn control of the firm over to her husband.”

  Iris and Natalie exchanged a long look. It was unnecessary to vocalize what they were both thinking. Natalie’s eyes grew glassy and Iris had to look away.

  “When is this effective?” Iris asked Connors.

  “Technically, it was effective at the moment of Mrs. Cross’s death.”

  Iris swiveled her chair to look at Brianna, sprawled on the floor outside her door, coloring with felt-tipped markers. “Does Kip know?”

  Connors crossed his legs. “Mrs. Tyler and I decided, as a courtesy, to speak with him before our meeting with you. We went to the jail yesterday.”

  “How did he take it?”

  Natalie
raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “Not well. He was angry. He felt Bridget betrayed him. He accused you of having known about the trust the entire time and not telling him.”

  Iris stood and looked out the window at the hazy day. “What about T. Duke Sawyer, Pandora’s other shareholder?”

  “We thought we’d leave that to you,” Connors said to Iris’s back.

  She turned again to face them. “And Pandora’s employees?”

  “Again, we thought it best if it came from—”

  There was a piercing scream. It was followed by another and another.

  Iris looked at the floor where Brianna had been playing. Only the papers and pens were there. Louise bolted past. Natalie flew from her chair, knocking it over, and ran out. Iris struggled to get past the slower-moving Connors. All the while, the screaming continued.

  When Iris finally got out of her office, she saw Natalie on her knees, clutching Brianna. “What is it, honey? What is it?”

  Brianna continued screaming as she stared with horror into Rick’s cubicle. The junior broker sat as if petrified, babbling, “She just started screaming. I don’t know what I did.”

  Gradually, Brianna started to calm down, her screams subsiding into sobs. Iris walked to Rick’s cubicle where his screen displayed the office E-mail program. She pressed the ALT and then the TAB keys and changed the window. Slade Slayer’s image filled the screen.

  Brianna started screaming again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The sight of the open casket on display at the front of the chapel almost drained Iris of her resolve. She had planned on approaching the funeral as a business function, which it was in large measure. T. Duke Sawyer, the Pandora employees, and the press would be there, and she had to maintain her composure lest everyone think the reins of Pandora were held by a babbling, emotional wreck. Iris had told herself that she had already grieved over Bridget, both alone and with others, so any histrionics at the funeral were an unnecessary and costly indulgence.

  Besides, Bridget herself had told Iris in a dream that she was okay and not to worry, and Iris had taken comfort from her message. But the sight of the casket and a glimpse of Bridget’s profile inside it changed all that.

  Iris had arrived slightly late to the rustic stone, hillside chapel. A few reporters were hanging around outside and several dozen lookie-loos. Bridget and Kip weren’t nearly as sexy as Nicole and O.J., but the bizarre circumstances of the Cross case and the latest twist—the victim’s daughter’s repressed memories being jogged into consciousness by an accidental encounter with a computer game—provided a few sound bites. And the Crosses did represent money and power, which the public found endlessly captivating. Then there was Summer Fontaine, suddenly everywhere on the airwaves, who cut a profile that was intentionally hard to ignore. Iris would have found the Cross case as fascinating as the next couch potato if she weren’t smack in the middle of the whole mess.

  As Iris walked down the aisle between the pews, Toni spotted her and made Mick Ha and Today Rhea shove over to make room. Iris sat, grateful that Toni had found her a space so that she didn’t have to take the one next to T. Duke. He was sitting a few rows closer to the front than Toni and was watching the door when Iris entered, as if he’d been waiting for her. There was an empty seat next to him, one of the few remaining in the crowded chapel, and it occurred to Iris that he had been saving it for her.

  The pastor from Bridget’s church was speaking. Bridget had been raised as a Presbyterian. She’d let her involvement in organized religion lapse until Brianna was two years old, when she began taking her daughter with her to church in spite of Kip’s objections. In Kip Cross’s world where reason and logic were revered, the existence of God occupied the fuzzy world of things that could not be proven by the rational mind and were therefore spurious.

  Toni patted Iris’s leg, and Iris noticed her eyes were red and swollen. Next to Toni, Mick was sketching on a small pad of drawing paper. Next to him, Today was sitting restlessly, stiffly wearing his conservative dark jeans and white shirt, crossing and recrossing his legs, and beating a rhythm against his knee with his hands. Iris cocked her head to see what Mick was drawing. It was a fine-line pencil sketch of the open casket with a hint of Bridget’s profile.

  The pastor recounted the events of Bridget’s life, but Iris could not pay attention to him. To do so would go to that sad place. She even avoided looking in his direction so the casket wouldn’t enter her line of vision. Instead she studied the many sprays of flowers and the mourners. She saw the wives of Bridget’s brothers and their children, whom she remembered from Natalie and Joe Tyler’s the day she had visited. She recognized a few friends from college. Baines was sitting stiffly next to T. Duke Sawyer. Near the back, she spotted Tiffany Stubbs and Jess Ortiz, the homicide detectives who were investigating Bridget’s murder. She did not see Bridget’s parents or brothers. They were probably sitting in an area, designated for close family members to the right of Bridget’s casket, that was shielded from public view by a gauzy pink curtain. Brianna wasn’t here. Natalie decided it would be too much for the already distraught little girl. Kip had been released from jail to attend his wife’s funeral and was probably sitting behind the pink curtain with Bridget’s family.

  Someone touched Iris’s arm. She turned and was surprised to see her boss, Sam Eastman, standing in the aisle. He somberly nodded and proceeded into the chapel. To her knowledge, Sam had met Bridget for the first time when she had come by Iris’s office the day before her murder. It was a slender reason to attend the woman’s funeral.

  Iris was staring holes into Sam’s back when he plopped down next to T. Duke Sawyer. She didn’t think too much of it—the seat was on the aisle and almost all the others were taken. She began to grow suspicious when she saw Sam shake T. Duke’s hand but stopped herself from reading too much into a handshake. In the office last week, Sam had expressed his admiration for T. Duke. Sam was a bit of a social climber. Maybe he thought Bridget’s funeral was a good place to meet the infamous takeover king. Now Sam and T. Duke were chatting into each other’s ear, much longer than necessary to exchange banal pleasantries, especially while the service was going on. Something was definitely up.

  Iris was roused from her thoughts when Toni squeezed past her to walk to the podium at the front. Iris whispered to Mick, who was now sketching Toni, “She’s giving a eulogy?”

  “She wanted to,” he replied.

  Toni cut a surprisingly sedate and mature figure as she stood at the podium. She’d traded her trendy clothes for a tailored black suit with a modest hemline. Her thick hair was tied at the base of her neck with a black ribbon. She cleared her throat and began.

  “I met Bridget Cross five years ago when I applied for a job answering phones at Pandora. I had just dropped out of college after two years. My life was without direction and in many ways, without hope. I was involved with drugs—”

  Iris raised her eyebrows with surprise at Mick, who sagely nodded in reply.

  “—and a fast crowd, and my life was spiraling out of control. But I needed money and I saw the ad that Bridget had placed. Over the years, I’d express to Bridget and Kip my amazement that they’d hired me.” Toni chuckled. “There were a few times when Bridget almost fired me, but we managed to work it out. With Bridget’s help, I grew up at Pandora. She had faith in me when I didn’t have it in myself. I came to admire her determination, vision, intelligence, guts, and above all, passion for the business that she and Kip built. I’m now Pandora’s manager of sales and marketing. I owe my success to Bridget Cross.”

  Toni’s voice broke. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. Already during the past week, I’ve wanted to ask her advice a million times.” She pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her jacket and dabbed at her eyes. “In addition to her busy schedule running a company, and being a wife and mother, Bridget Cross gave selflessly of her time to schoolchildren and the improvement of childhood education. My two close frien
ds at Pandora, Today Rhea and Mick Ha, and myself want her work to continue. We’re establishing the Bridget Cross Foundation, the goal of which will be to promote computer training in public grade schools. Our activities will include purchasing hardware, software, and funding teacher salaries. Bridget knew that high technology is the future and that we must do a better job of putting this powerful tool into the hands of our children if the country is to prosper in the decades to come.”

  Iris lost it. She snatched the wad of tissues she’d shoved into her pocket in case something like this happened. But she wasn’t alone. The level of weeping escalated throughout the chapel. Iris looked at Mick, who was intently focused on his drawing, then at Today, who was quietly watching Toni. He quickly wiped away a tear that was caught in his lashes.

  Toni continued, “So don’t be surprised when you get a letter from us hitting you up for a donation.”

  There was scattered laughter. Toni made a few closing remarks, then walked back to her seat next to the weeping Iris. Toni grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

  The pastor made a few more remarks. Then there were some prayers and music and more prayers. Then the time arrived to view the body.

  Iris didn’t want to go, but made herself. She looked down at Bridget’s corpse. Look what they did to you, Iris said in her mind to Bridget. You hardly ever wore makeup and they’ve got you painted like a Hollywood Boulevard hooker. You wore your hair carefree and loose and they’ve got it curled, teased, and frozen with hairspray. And that dress! All those ruffles and lace. Bridget, you wouldn’t be caught dead in that getup. Iris snickered at the irony. She imagined Bridget’s response. But, Iris, I am caught dead in this dress, for all eternity. Iris laughed out loud as the people nearby paused in their weeping to look askance at her.

  Get a grip, girl, Iris chided herself. Earlier you were afraid of what people would think if you became too emotional, now here you are laughing at the corpse. How inappropriate is that, Ms. Thorne? But no one knew that she was sharing the joke with her friend. She then grew solemn. I won’t let you down, Bridget, she vowed. I promise. She moved on and quickly left the chapel.