Heaven's Fire (26 page)

"On-air?"

The status question. "She used to be, but now she's producing and directing."

"Really!"

"Really!" was to Dianne, what "No, shit," was to the common man.

"Really," Simon confirmed. "Her name is Wendy Jacobus." Because that would be her next question, and he wanted to save himself a "Really!"

"Really!"

Well, he'd tried.

"Wendy Jacobus." Dianne’s hazy blue eyes were lasering in suddenly. Her firm, Simon knew, represented TV8. "Isn't she the one who--"

A cell phone rang then, and twenty people dug into their pockets or handbags to see if it was theirs.

Dianne won.
"
Dianne Aamot.
"
She’d taken his name, and then kept it after the divorce. Both moves were puzzling to him in hindsight.
"
Okay, I’ll be right there.
"

She stuffed the phone back in her bag and stood up.
"
Jury’s back, I have to go.
"

That explained why she was at Harry's. The courthouse was just down the street.

She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.
"
I’m really sorry, Simon. About the house. I know you loved it.
"

Her look said the "more than you're capable of loving a human being" part.

Simon watched her leave and then picked up his Mountain Dew and took a pull before looking down at his food. The soup had congealed and the bagel was cold and hard. The Mountain Dew was working its magic though, the shakes were going away.

Caffeine and sugar. Nature's building blocks.

Pat Firenze was listening to his mother.

"Little Pat," she said from the back seat, "I want that you should take..." Her words faded out.

"Ma, I can't hear you back there."

"Mamma," said Angela from the passenger seat next to him, "I told you that you should sit up here. I should sit in the back."

"No, no, Angela, you have the longer legs. Me, I'm little. I fit fine back here. Now Pat..."

A truck passed them, and her words were lost again. They were on the way home from St. Luke's, where his father's funeral would be held. At this time tomorrow it would all be over. His father's body would be cremated and--

"...tribute you hear?"

His mother's words came through loud and clear, her mouth being just inches from his right ear now. "Jesus, Ma," he said rubbing it, "you almost broke my eardrum."

"Little Pat," the voice was accompanied by a wagging finger. "How did I teach you? We do not use the name of the Lord Thy God in vain."

Angela captured the finger. "Mamma! You're going to poke out Pat's eye if he turns his head. You must sit back and put your seatbelt on. You're going to cause an accident."

"Well! If your father was alive--" Pat didn't have to look to know his mother was making the sign of the cross.

He glanced over at Angela. "Tudy says we have just enough stars for another blue sixteen-incher."

"Good."

Pat didn't answer.

"What is it? Why are you worried?"

Worried didn't cover it. Even the fluffy white cumulous clouds had black powder linings these days.

For reasons Pat couldn't quite figure out, he had not only received a check today for the balance owed on the Lake Days show, but also the fifty percent down on the Fourth of July show on Wednesday. He would have bet anything the mayor and Williams were going to try to replace them on that show.

Meanwhile, TV8 already was promoting the hell out of their broadcast. Pat had an uneasy feeling that everyone was just waiting for--even hoping for--Firenze Fireworks to blow something up. Something they didn't intend to, that is.

So what was Firenze Fireworks going to do? Make another big blue shell like the one that had killed his father, of course, and fire it at the end of the show. Like instant replay.

"It will be a tribute to the great Pasquale Firenze. You hear me, Little Pat?" his mother was yelling from the backseat.

"I hear you Ma." Pat said, and he did.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe they did need to finish what his father had started.

*****

When Simon got back to the office, Kathy had a message for him. "Stephen Cruise in auditing wants you to stop by."

Cruise's "office" was more a cubby-hole amongst cubby-holes than an office. Simon stopped at the corner of the maze of cubicles, catching sight of the top of Cruise's head bent over papers. He knocked on the fabric-covered wall that separated Cruise's office from the next one over.

Cruise looked up. "Simon, I think I found something here."

Simon sat down in the chair next to the desk and snagged a glimpse of what Cruise was poring over. "That paper giving you problems, Steve? Want me to knock it around for awhile?"

Cruise laughed, flattening the crumpled paper with both hands. "It appears someone has already gone a few rounds with it. And I think I know why."

"Looks like a contract," Simon said. "For a fireworks show?"

"For
the
fireworks show."

"Lake Days?"

"Yeah," Cruise said eagerly. "You know how much they paid for that show?"

Simon was looking sideways at the paper, trying to read it. "$75,000?" He whistled. "That seems like a lot of money for a small-town event."

"A small-town event, but with a deep pocket sponsor. This contract is between Refresh Yourself and Firenze Fireworks."

"Okay," Simon said. "But why are we interested in it other than idle curiosity?"

"The first thing that caught my attention," Cruise said, flipping open the front cover of one of the ring binders Simon had given him, "is where I found it. Tucked down in the front pocket of this folder."

"Balled up?"

"No, like it had been crumpled, then straightened out, folded in half and slipped in. I didn't see it at first--only found it when I slid my fingers into the pocket."

Simon didn't ask why he’d slid his fingers into the pocket. Probably an accountant thing. "So maybe somebody had salvaged it from a wastebasket?"

"That was my thought," Cruise said. "So I checked the contract amount with the amount deposited. That's when I found the discrepancy.

"What kind of discrepancy?"

"A fifteen thousand dollar discrepancy. According to the contract, a fifty percent deposit was required at the time of signing. Half of seventy-five thousand is thirty-seven five, right?" Cruise waited.

Cruise was one of those guys who liked to spring questions on you like, "Is it legal for a man to marry his widow's sister?," so Simon answered warily: "Thirty-seven thousand, five hundred. Right."

"Nope."

Damn it. "Okay, I give up."

"In this case," said the auditor, pinching the bridge of his nose, "fifty percent of seventy-five thousand must be twenty-two five, because that was what was deposited."

Ahh, Cruise was being clever. It didn't become him, and Simon would tell him that the next time they had a beer together. In the meantime: "So you're saying $15,000 is missing? That's hardly enough to kill someone over."

"It is," said Cruise, "if it's only the tip of the iceberg. I'm trying to compare other contract fees with bank records, but some of the contracts are missing."

That was interesting in itself. Simon sat back in his chair. "So you think Guida may have been doing this long-term? But wouldn't someone have noticed?"

Cruise shrugged. "Family businesses are the worst, accounting-wise. They start out small and grow gradually, but eventually the books become complicated. Complicated enough to make it worthwhile to hire somebody, but no one wants to spend the money. So they let Cousin Billy do it and don't ask questions, because they don't want it dumped back on them."

Simon could see that.

"In this case," Cruise went on, "it might have been simple. Pasquale Firenze would have signed the contract, gotten the check from Refresh Yourself, and given it to Guida to deposit."

"And who's to know whether Guida deposited all of it or took cash back out of it," Simon said. Fifteen thousand, in cash.

"Exactly. Unless," Cruise said, holding up the crumpled contract, "somebody got suspicious and checked."

"Like Pasquale." Simon said.

*****

When Jake got back to her office, there wasn't time to obsess about her confrontation with Gwen. It was nearly four, and she needed to get ready for the Five and Six O'Clock News.

Besides, what was the point of thinking about it--either Gwen would fire her or not. Censure her or not. Make her life a living hell, or not. See? Life was easy when you looked at it that way.

When she was safely through the Five and Six O'Clocks, Jake took advantage of the break before the Ten O'Clock to work on a feature dealing with fireworks accidents. She needed footage on explosions, but TV8's archives had turned up only the Firenze accident two years earlier. Not wanting to add fuel to that fire unnecessarily, she went on-line to her favorite stock footage website, instead, in search of out-of-state explosions.

She browsed the
"
F
"
s:

Fireworks: Festivals

Fireworks: Shells

Fireworks: China

Nothing even close to what she was looking for. She checked the clock. Eight-thirty, and she still had the Ten O'Clock News to get ready. Maybe a Google search would turn something up fast.

The Google screen popped up on her computer. She typed in: footage +fireworks +accidents. Then she clicked on Google Search.

The search turned up 890 items, but most of them were print references to video footage, not the footage itself. Only one of the listings on the first page held any promise:

Fireworks Accident

...exclusive footage...killed one...blast destroyed one building fireworks factory...

www.lbshotvideo/fireworks/accident

Jake clicked on it and read the description:

"Exclusive footage shot by first camera operator on the scene of a fireworks accident that killed one person. The shell blast also destroyed one building of the fireworks factory."

Below the description was a small still photo. Jake recognized the buildings immediately. It was Firenze Fireworks. This had to be footage of the same accident she had found in the station‘s own archives. Just exactly what Jake didn't want.

She hadn't been assigned to the story, since at the time she had been splitting her time between going through chemo on-camera and throwing up off-camera. She remembered it well, though, since her camera man had been called away to go the scene of the accident.

That camera man had been Luis Burns, just a month after he started.

www.lbshotvideo
LB. Luis Burns.

Jake chewed on her left thumbnail. This would explain why Luis was running tape on the barge at Lake Days. In addition to sending footage via hardwire to the microwave truck and then onto Jake's production van, he also was recording on the tape in the his camera. That way, he had a duplicate of everything he taped legitimately to sell, plus he could tape other stock footage while he was out there. Stuff that would be generic and even easier to sell. And he'd been doing it for nearly as long as he‘d been at the station.

A great scheme and lucrative. Jake routinely paid fifty dollars a second for one-time use of broadcast quality stock footage. And because Luis was selling directly to the client via his website, he was pocketing the entire amount with no outlay on his part. TV8 was not only paying for the equipment, they were paying for Luis's time.

Geez.

Jake sat back in her chair and stared at Luis’s Hot Video website.

Bless the Internet, it made research a snap.

What it couldn't do, though, is decide for you what to do with the information once you had it.

*****

Angela woke up at ten-fifteen in her parents' guest room. She had lain down with a headache after dinner and had fallen asleep. She wasn’t sure what had awakened her, but downstairs she could hear the news blasting on the television.

The noise just made Angela's still aching head hurt all the more. The telephone had been ringing all day with reporters. She and her mother had stopped answering eventually, since her parents’ house did not have an answering machine and screening the calls was not possible. Her mother fretted, though, about missing an important one.

It was Angela who remembered that the computer in her former bedroom had telephone answering capability, so she'd simply slipped the telephone line dedicated to the Internet out, and the home-phone line in. The phone would ring three times, then the computer would pick up the call, answering with its mechanical voice.

The telephone was ringing now, and Angela realized it was the ringing that had awakened her. She pulled aside the bedspread and sat up, waiting for the computer to pick up. Two rings, three, four... And who knew how many before she'd awakened.