He held out the device, put it on speakerphone, then replayed the message. A male voice with a slight lisp announced: “Mr. Payne, Mason Morgan calling. My executive assistant just phoned me with some disturbing news, if true . . .”
[ FOUR ]
One Freedom Place, Fifty-sixth Floor
Center City
Philadelphia
Friday, January 6, 7:21 A.M.
“I’m not surprised at all that I wouldn’t be listed as her next of kin,” Mason Morgan said, solemnly. “As a matter of fact, I would be surprised if I was listed at all. As far as she’s been concerned, I’ve long been dead.”
Matt Payne and Tony Harris were seated in a pair of overstuffed, leather-upholstered armchairs in front of a gleaming desk made of highly polished granite. Morgan’s residence took up the entire fifty-sixth floor, three floors shy of the top of the glass-sheathed skyscraper, which was midway between Rittenhouse Square and City Hall. Payne estimated that the high-ceilinged office alone was at least four times the size of his garret apartment. He smelled a light vanilla-like fragrance and decided it was from the blooms of the potted plants in the corner of the room.
Behind the desk, Morgan, wearing a baggy suit and tie, paced the enormous wall of windows that reached floor to ceiling. His hands were clasped behind his back as he focused on Rittenhouse Square. Bright rays from the sunrise cast a warm, reddish orange glow over the city. From unseen high-fidelity speakers, classical music was playing at a low volume. Payne picked up on the distinct strings and thundering percussion of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor and wondered if Morgan had chosen that or it was simply coincidence—and thought it to be dark irony, in either instance.
The forty-four-year-old chairman of Morgan International was big-boned and carrying at least two hundred fifty pounds on a five-foot-seven frame. He was pyramid-shaped—thick, tree-trunk legs and wide, heavy hips and narrow, sloping shoulders. He had a pointed head, bald except for a band of thinning, close-cropped hair that wrapped from ear to ear. His cleanly shaven face was florid, with pronounced jowls that tended to bounce at the slightest movement.
Payne idly wondered how someone the size of Mason Morgan managed to navigate the lobby’s revolving glass door without getting wedged in it. And how he could possibly share any of the family genetics that had created the incredibly beautiful Camilla Rose.
Mason’s mother must have been a gnome.
No wonder the old man dumped her for a younger model.
Morgan had had an elaborate coffee service waiting on the desk when they arrived, and now Payne leaned forward and picked up the silver-plated carafe. After Harris waved him off, declining more, he refilled his cup.
He returned the carafe to the desk, then sat with his elbows resting on his spread knees and sipped from the cup.
“From Camilla Rose’s viewpoint,” Payne then said, “she felt fully justified. She believed you were behind her being cut out of the family business. And responsible for the changes in how her trust was structured.”
Morgan turned and looked at him. Then he walked past a credenza, on top of which were at least a dozen framed family photographs, and over to the gray granite desk. He wedged himself in the high-backed black leather chair. He locked eyes with Payne.
“You’re calling my reputation into question,” Morgan said, coldly, “and I will not stand for it.”
“I’m not calling you out at all,” Payne said, uncowed. He casually took a sip of coffee, and added, “I’m simply repeating what Camilla Rose told me yesterday. Actually, one phrase she used was ‘brazen betrayal.’”
Morgan blurted, “I will—” then caught himself.
He narrowed his eyes as he looked off in the distance. Then he looked back at Payne.
“Don’t you even begin to suggest where I may have failed my sister,” he said, his voice trembling. “Everyone knows Camilla Rose as gregarious, larger-than-life. While her kindness and selflessness were genuine—she got that from our father—almost no one saw the other side of her that we did. No one, including her own mother.”
He paused to let that sink in, then went on. “It was my wife who took time away from our young children to help Camilla Rose when her mental demons became too much. We accompanied her to see the doctors, and when the diagnosis pinpointed that she suffered from bipolar affective disorder, we then escorted her through the hell of rehabilitation clinics. Not once, but five times—and once after she overdosed!”
Morgan spun in his chair and went over to the credenza. He opened a wide lower drawer and dug around and then produced a brown folder. He opened it as he returned to the desk and spun back around in the chair.
The folder held a photograph, which he put on the desktop and slid toward Payne.
“Look at her!” Morgan said.
Payne put down his coffee cup and took the photograph in hand.
Two women, smiling awkwardly, stood on a curved concrete path leading up to an elegant light blue, two-story Mediterranean-style building. Above the red-tiled roof, tall palm trees soared into a cloudless, bright blue sky. The female on the left looked to be in her mid-thirties—and, clearly, the same woman who appeared in the family photographs on the credenza—and the other was an overweight strawberry-blonde in her mid-twenties who held a bouquet of yellow flowers. Beside them was a small wooden sign on a four-foot-high post. Its carved lettering read SANCTUARY SEASIDE GUEST PICKUP.
Jesus! The fat one’s Camilla Rose?
She looks terrible. At least fifty pounds overweight.