High Profile

41

Jesse had lunch with Stephanie Weeks in the hotel coffee shop. The room was noisy with families. Scattered among them were a few businessmen, sitting alone, hunched over their meals. Stephanie ordered a Grey Goose martini. Jesse had coffee.

“You don’t drink?” she said.

“Not at lunch,” Jesse said.

“You’re actually staying here?” Stephanie said.

“Yep.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who stayed here.”

“The poor sometimes have to travel,” Jesse said.

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I must have sounded so snooty.”

“A little snooty,” Jesse said. “We have a bit of new information about the murders and we’re reinterviewing everyone.”

“What is your new information?” Stephanie said.

“We were wrong on the time of death. When is the last time you saw Mr. Weeks?”

“Oh God, I don’t know. A year? I mean, we were divorced a long time ago. We aren’t enemies, but we’re not pals...” Stephanie smiled faintly.

The waitress came with salads. Stephanie ordered a second martini.

“Goes good with salad,” Jesse said.

“Goes good with anything,” Stephanie said.

“Why the smile?” Jesse said. “When you said you weren’t pals?”

“Except once in a while,” Stephanie said. “We’re pals.”

“How so?”

Stephanie smiled again.

“Old times’ sake?” she said.

“What did you do?” Jesse said. “For old times’ sake.”

“Well,” Stephanie said. “Aren’t you nosy.”

“I’m the police,” Jesse said. “I’m supposed to be nosy.”

Stephanie colored a little. The waitress returned with her martini. She sipped it and took out an olive and ate that.

“Sometimes I think it’s all about the olives,” Stephanie said.

“So what did you do, for old times’ sake?” Jesse said.

“Walton was in many ways a sexual athlete,” Stephanie said. “He never tired. He never ejaculated. He could do sex, it seems, forever.”

“Not always a bad thing,” Jesse said.

“Twice a year, it was good,” Stephanie said. “Not on a daily basis.”

“Did his failure to ejaculate bother him?” Jesse said.

“He never said.”

“Even when you were married?”

“Children were an issue early on, but then...” She spread her hands and shook her head.

“His current wife know about this?”

“About me?” Stephanie said. “I don’t know. I was the least of her problems anyway.”

“He was a philanderer,” Jesse said.

“Relentless,” Stephanie said. “But, hell, so was she.”

“Lorrie?” Jesse said.

“Sure.”

“Revenge?” Jesse said.

“Maybe, but I think she would have fooled around even if Walton were Goody Two-shoes.”

“She promiscuous or did she have a favorite?” Jesse said.

“I don’t know. I didn’t follow it all that closely. Tom Nolan said she was pretty hot and heavy with Alan Hendricks.”

“The researcher.”

“You could call him that,” Stephanie said.

“What else could you call him?”

“Power behind the throne.”

“Tell me about that,” Jesse said.

“More and more, Alan did not only the research but the writing. More and more he decided what the subject matter would be. More and more he was doing the interviews, and writing the stuff, and Walton would say it.”

“How do you know,” Jesse said.

“Tom Nolan.”

“You’re friendly with him.”

Stephanie smiled again.

“Yes, I am,” she said.

“How’s Tom’s staying power?”

Stephanie smiled widely.

“Sufficient,” she said.

Jesse smiled with her.

“How come you didn’t tell me all this stuff when we talked before?” he said.

“In front of all those people?”

He nodded.

“What else is there?” I said.

Stephanie drank the rest of her martini. She hadn’t yet eaten any of her salad.

“He left me ten thousand dollars in his will,” she said.

“Old times’ sake,” Jesse said.

“He left ten thousand dollars to Ellen, too.”

“And the rest?” Jesse said.

Stephanie was looking for the waitress. When she saw her she gestured with her empty glass.

“Lorrie,” she said.

“How much?”

“Thirty million, give or take. Plus the whole Walton Weeks enterprise.”

“Is that worth anything without Walton?”

“There’s always Alan.”

“TV, radio, the whole thing?” Jesse said.

Stephanie ate a bite of her salad. The martini came. She turned her attention back to it.

“I don’t know. You’d need to ask Tom about that.”

“Nolan, the manager,” Jesse said.

“Yes, and Sam.”

“Gates? The lawyer?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nothing in the will about Carey Longley,” Jesse said.

“No.”

If the martinis were affecting Stephanie, she showed no sign of it. Except that she had slowed down on the third one, interspersing a sip with the ingestion of salad. The hotel coffee shop was not a place of lingering luncheons, and most of the tables had emptied.

“Do you know Conrad Lutz?” Jesse said.

“I’ve heard the name. He was Walton’s bodyguard, wasn’t he?”

“He wasn’t with Walton when you were?” Jesse said.

“No.”

“Do you know any reason,” Jesse said, “why Walton would need a bodyguard?”

“Well, he annoyed some important people, certainly. But, no, not really. When I was with him he never seemed to need one.”

“Who would,” Jesse said.