Reckless Encounter Page 13

  She smiled at him. “Maybe he was a businessman who hated travelling.”

  “No.” Max propped the case on the ground, spoke to the stall holder and counted out a few bills without bothering to haggle. “I know this suitcase has accompanied its owner around the world while he lived his dream of exploring faraway lands.” He picked up the suitcase again and wrapped his other arm around Elena’s waist, leading her down the aisle between the market stalls.

  She lowered her head to his shoulder.

  Dreams.

  She had never expected Max to be so open and honest with his feelings, so eager to find things they had in common, interests they could share. Instead of dining out last night, they had cooked together. Beef Stroganoff. Max had chosen the dish to honor his Russian heritage, but they had driven to a suburban FoodMax store together to buy the ingredients.

  He’d been sidetracked to talking to the staff and tidying up the displays on the shelves. When the manager came out to the shop floor, Max introduced her as his girlfriend. Elena could still remember the hard slam she’d felt in her chest upon hearing his words.

  Each night during that weekend, he made love to her with a tenderness she wouldn’t have believed possible from someone as reserved and rough-edged as Max Glaser. Her emotions, which had been in such a tangle about him seemed to straighten out, settling into an easy acceptance that she had fallen in love with him, and she hoped that he was falling in love with her in return.

  ****

  In addition to the two trips Elena had made to see Max, he spoke to her often, hurried telephone calls snatched during short breaks in business meetings. Their conversations were casual, but an undercurrent of trust—and a promise of a shared future—flowed in his guarded words. Elena told herself not to assume too much, but deep down she believed that something real and lasting was growing between them.

  And then everything fell apart.

  Elena saw it in the newspaper first, although Joe’s telephone call was not far behind. She was standing in her tiny kitchen with its white fronted cabinets and terracotta tiled floor, finishing a cup of coffee while she rinsed the breakfast dishes before leaving for the office.

  “Have you seen the news?” Joe’s voice was urgent, fraught.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I’ve been up since six. Because it happened here in Seattle, it’s on the local television news.”

  “The boss wants you to deal with the legal side. Sort out the lease. Terminate. Get us out of it. At the lowest possible cost, and as quickly as possible.”

  “Was anyone hurt?” Elena asked, worry twisting inside her.

  “There were two security guards on duty. One was in the office monitoring the CCTV cameras. The other one was doing the rounds, and he caught the worst of it. First degree burns, a broken collarbone, several broken ribs. A shelving unit collapsed on top of him. He isn’t in critical condition, but it will be at least a month before he can return to work.”

  “Joe?” Her single word bristled with unspoken questions.

  The line rustled with the gust of a heavy sigh. “Yes?”

  “You need to tell me what happened. Otherwise I won’t be able to do my job right.”

  “The police suspect arson,” Joe said. “It hasn’t been mentioned on the news yet. Max is trying to suppress the rumor. He’s been talking to the authorities since two in the morning. Elena, he needs your help. Will you do what I asked you to do?”

  Silence filled the cool air in the kitchen. Elena remembered the store leases Max had asked her to review. He’d asked her what would happen if a building was damaged in a fire and a store had to go out of business. He’d asked her to make sure the insurance policies were up to date.

  A terrible fear began to churn in her stomach.

  “Elena, are you there?” Joe prompted.

  “Yes. I’ll do it,” she told him, her voice hesitant as she fought to suppress the suspicion that Max had something to do with the fire at one of his grocery stores.

  “Max will call you later,” Joe said, and hung up.

  Elena replaced the receiver slowly in the cradle. What was it about her? The minute she liked a man, something happened to raise doubts over his honesty. Like Prince Charming in reverse. She didn’t kiss a frog to turn him into a prince. She kissed a man, and he turned into someone who couldn’t be trusted. It simply seemed too much of a coincidence that there was a store with a bad lease, and suddenly an incident that would allow Max Glaser to walk away without any financial penalty took place.

  Too convenient. Too easy. And too predictable after he’d asked her questions about how he could get out of the onerous lease.

  Gathering her briefcase and snatching her raincoat from the rack in the hall, Elena rushed out and drove to the office. The townhouse, originally built as a middle class family home, had been converted into business use only a year ago. An insurance company occupied the first floor, a wedding planner shared the second floor with her, and two architects had a practice on the top floor. Each landing had a restroom, and everyone shared the small kitchen on the ground floor.

  Elena picked up her mail from the wire rack by the entrance and climbed up the stairs. The landing doubled up as a waiting room. Three chairs stood lined against the wall, and magazines in neat stacks covered the small coffee table. Elena unlocked her door and dumped her briefcase by her feet before shrugging off her long raincoat.

  A piece of paper lay on the carpet inside the door. She recognized the spindly writing of Meg, the wedding planner next door. "Two couples want to meet you." Meg’s brides and grooms brought in a steady trickle of business in prenuptial agreements. Elena had only been doing it for six months. She already dreaded the day when the first couple would come back for their divorce. She hated the thought of all that love and optimism she’d witnessed coming bouncing back as disillusionment and bickering.

  In her email she found a note from Joe, and her telephone had a message to call Max on his cell phone.

  She dialed Max first.

  “Hello.” His voice was gruff with strain.

  “Max? It’s Elena.”

  “Elena. Where are you?”

  “In my office.”

  “I’ll call you back on a fixed line. Ten minutes. Okay?”

  Elena lowered the receiver, uneasy thoughts coursing through her mind. Max had sounded like someone under enormous pressure. His distress seemed too acute, too deep for the circumstances, and it added to her doubts.

  It was almost an hour before the telephone on her desk burst into life.

  “I want you to call all staff members and remind them of the confidentiality clause in their contracts,” Max said, without pausing for a greeting. “Joe has emailed you their names and telephone numbers.”

  Elena gripped the receiver. Disappointment weighed her down, and she slumped in the swivel chair. There was no warmth in the conversation, none of the lingering sense of belonging that had made the rushed telephone calls with Max during the previous week so special. She told herself that he needed to focus on the problem at hand, but it didn’t ease her hurt over how he seemed to have withdrawn from her.

  “Max, I’m not comfortable about this,” she told him. “Why do we need to hush it up? There’s been a fire in a store, which is a public place. People have the right to be informed.”

  “What exactly do the people have a right to be informed a about?” Max asked curtly.

  “The truth, I guess, whatever it is.”

  “They’re welcome to hear the truth. The problem is that at the moment we don’t know what really happened. What will be reported is rumors and speculation. By the time the truth becomes known, everyone will have lost interest.”

  “But surely, you have nothing to hide, nothing to fear?” Elena hoped her words didn’t sound like an accusation.

  Max’s laughter was so harsh she had to ease the receiver from her ear. “Elena, you’re not thinking.” Impatience edged his voice. “I have everything to fear. Did Joe tell you
what the police think?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “He said that they suspect arson.”

  “Let’s assume they’re right. Let’s assume that someone torched the place. Next thing we know, there’ll be all kinds of conspiracy theories floating around. What was the arsonist’s motivation? A hate campaign against FoodMax? A personal vendetta against me? Which store will be next, and will it happen during shopping hours? Who would go into a store and risk being trapped inside by flames? Nobody. If the rumors start to circulate, we might just as well close down the remaining stores tomorrow. The outcome will be the same. We’ll be dead, and we avoid six months of slow suffering. Unless we can keep it quiet, I’m out of business, and four hundred people will join the unemployment line. You get the picture?”

  In silence, Elena digested Max’s words. They made sense, although they didn’t fully dispel her fears. She was a good lawyer, and one of the skills of a good lawyer was to know when people didn’t tell the truth.

  Max was hiding something. She was sure of it.

  They finished the call without any personal comments that might have restored her trust in him. Reluctantly, Elena started dialing the numbers on the staff list Joe had emailed her. The job was easier than she’d expected. Most of the employees thought like Max and wanted to protect their jobs.

  Later in the day, Tony Harris called, inviting her to use an office at the firm, where she would have access to administrative support. Elena drove over to McKenzie and Harris and settled into one of the poky rooms of an associate lawyer. She worked until late that night, reviewing the lease agreement for the burned-out store, as well as the employment contracts, the supplier contracts, and the insurance policies.

  She’d never really thought much about what went on in behind the scenes in a grocery store. It was a complex business—sourcing products and getting them delivered, and then displaying the goods on the shelves for customers to purchase—and the whole thing turned around on a rapid cycle, providing food for thousands and employment for hundreds.

  By the end of the day she understood Max a little better.

  He was right. If rumors started to circulate, his business would be finished.

  ****

  The ringing of the telephone tore Elena from an uneasy sleep. She fumbled in the darkness until she had located the receiver and mumbled a greeting into it.

  “Why did you do it?” Max said. He sounded tired, resigned, and very angry.

  Elena scrambled up on the bed. A sharp sense of alarm jolted her fully awake. “What are you talking about?” she asked as she reached out with one hand to snap on the bedside light.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Max replied. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. God help you if you don’t have some explanation.”

  “What—”

  The line clicked dead. Elena lowered the silent receiver and rushed into the bathroom. Max was on his way over, and for whatever reason, he was seething with fury. He’d never been to her house, so he must have looked up the directions.

  She’d barely finished in the bathroom when the doorbell buzzed. Elena glanced down her front. The baggy T-shirt came to the top of her thighs. Not daring to keep Max waiting while she changed, she hurried out to the hall and opened the door.

  Max stood outside, dressed in jeans and a sweater. His black hair was disheveled, and a dark shadow lined his unshaven jaw. A bundle of newspapers was tucked under his arm. He barged in without a hello. Elena followed him through the hall into the living room, where he sat down on the plump green sofa and slammed the newspapers on the glass and chrome coffee table in front of him.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked, scowling at her.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Max picked up one of the newspapers he’d brought with him and flicked it open. The front page carried a bold headline. "Supermarket fire suspected arson". Underneath, in smaller letters "Attempts of cover-up by owner".

  “Oh my God.” Elena reached for the newspaper.

  Max yanked it from her grasp. “There isn’t anything quite libelous. It’s true that the police suspect arson, and statistics show that a large percentage of fires started deliberately are linked to owners of burdensome assets who want to collect on the insurance. I’m being served to the public as a bastard who runs a crooked business—who almost killed an innocent man for financial gain.”

  Max threw the newspaper back on the table and rubbed his face with his hands. “I’m finished. What I need to understand is why you did it? Is this some kind of payback? Revenge for what I’ve put you through?” He raised his head and stared at her, pain in his eyes. “Or is it about money? I know you’ve cashed my check. I wanted you to, but I know that you struggled with your conscience. Are you so short of money that you’re willing to betray me by selling a speculative story to the gutter press?”

  Elena reached for the newspaper. This time Max didn’t stop her. She scanned through the article, looking for some kind of accreditation. All she could find was "Sources closely connected with Maxwell Glaser". That didn’t help. It could be anybody he’d ever shaken hands with.

  “Max, I had nothing to do with this,” she pleaded. “Why do you think I’m responsible?” She studied him, taking in the deep lines of worry that bracketed his mouth. Her chest tightened at how distraught he looked. Elena reached out to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder, but he brushed her fingers away.

  When he spoke, his voice was harsh. “You have the information. You have a motive. You have the track record.” He shrugged, an angry, bitter gesture. “I can’t think of anyone else it could be.”

  A cold shiver rushed over her, as if the front door had been left open to a draft of winter air. “Track record?” she asked. “Did Joe tell you why I left McKenzie and Harris?”

  “No. Tony Harris told me when you first started working for me.” Max stared at the pile of newspapers on the table. “He said that you’d leaked confidential information about a deal your law firm was working on, and as a result the client was hung out to dry.”

  “Did Tony explain that an investigation cleared me of any responsibility?” Elena circled the table to stand in front of Max. Her arms hung limp at her sides, her hands curling into loose fists as she fought the urge to reach out and touch him.

  Max refused to meet her gaze. “Tony said they never found out who was to blame, but your boyfriend was convinced it had been you. If the person who loves you most thinks you did it, how can anyone else believe in your innocence?”

  “Do you think I did it?” Elena stared at him, willing him to look up.

  “Then or now?” Max finally raised his head. He looked beaten. Worn out and without hope. Elena desperately wanted to cradle him against her chest and protect him from the world, but she knew that she couldn’t.

  To start with, he wouldn’t let her.

  “Either,” she told him flatly. “Do you think I leaked information to the press?”

  Max contemplated her. He appeared to give the question proper consideration. “Yes,” he said in the end. “I think you did it then, and you did it now.”

  “And why do you think I did it?”

  “Because I’ve caused you embarrassment, and you wanted to pay me back. Because you think I’m dishonest and deserve to be exposed. Because you think I’m an arrogant bastard. Because you had an opportunity to make money by selling me out. Because you plain and simple dislike me. I can think of plenty of reasons.”

  Her heart gave a painful jolt. “Dislike you? How can you say that after last weekend?”

  “You must be a better actress than I gave you credit for. You really had me fooled. I guess all you wanted was to snoop around my house, to find something that you could use to destroy me.”

  The dull ache of disappointment seized her entire body, making her numb. She could have tried to explain to Max how much he meant to her, but there was no point. She’d lost any chance she might have had to win his love, and nothing bu
t humiliation would be gained by making him aware of how she felt.

  “What happens now?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I’ll call Tony Harris and tell him to take you off my business. Get your billing up to date. Then I’ll get on with my life, and you’ll get on with yours.”

  Max rose to his feet and stalked to the front door. Without thinking, Elena followed him. In the hall, he turned to face her. “What beats me is that you paid such a high price a year ago, and now you’ve done it again. Your job prospects will be nil, and your practice is as good as dead. Was it really worth it to get back at me?”

  “First of all, I didn’t do it. Secondly, you have no idea of how high a price I’m paying this time, and I expect that you never will. Goodbye, Max. I hope that somehow it works out for you.” Elena found the strength to slam the door after him before the tears came. She crumpled down to the floor and cried, for him, for her, and for everything they’d lost.

  Like the burned out store, all her hopes and dreams had turned to bitter ashes.

  Finally she got up, her limbs aching from sitting on the floor. She took a hot shower and got dressed. She might have lost what she had regarded as a chance for happiness with Max, but she wouldn’t accept another stain on her professional reputation without a fight.

  ****

  Elena’s first stop was the red brick building that housed the Seattle Echo. The by-line had been that of Ken Eastman, just like in those other articles a year ago. It took her an hour of pleading, cajoling, and threats of legal action, but eventually she got a name from Ken—Nancy Anderson, her former assistant at McKenzie and Harris.

  Elena left Ken’s cramped cubicle with the steady background noise of rattling keyboards, and drove to the offices of McKenzie and Harris. A stack of newspapers covered the coffee table in the large, airy reception. Elena grabbed a copy of the Echo.

  As she marched through the open plan area, her eyes raked over the desks, looking for the petite blonde with a fluffy fringe. She couldn’t find Nancy. Either the girl had a day off, or she had been promoted and now sat in a private room outside a partner’s office, or she just happened to be out of sight.