High Profile

“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.

1 8 7

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“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.

1 8 8

H I G H P R O F I L E

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. 1 8 9

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“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.

1 9 0

42

Ithought I’d ask Sam to sit in with us,” Tom Nolan said.

“If you think you need a lawyer,” Jesse said.

“I’m an entertainment lawyer,” Sam Gates said. “If we were concerned about criminal matters, I wouldn’t be the one.”

“It’s just that I know Walton’s business from one side,”

Nolan said. “And Sam from the other.”

“Sure,” Jesse said. “What’s the future for Walton’s business now?”

“We plan to carry forward with Alan,” Nolan said.

“Hendricks?” Jesse said.

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Yes. The enterprise will still be called Walton Weeks, but now it will be Walton Weeks, with Alan Hendricks.”

“The market will bear that?” Jesse said.

“Yes. Alan has sat in for Walton in the past. People like him. We’ll market it as the legacy renewed.”

“So the beat goes on,” Jesse said.

“Of course there’s only one Walton Weeks,” Nolan said.

“But yes, the enterprise will continue.”

“And this was predictable?”

Nolan looked at Gates.

“Predictable?” Gates said.

“If I told you last winter that Weeks would die, would you have known that the, ah, enterprise would survive?”

“Well, of course, no one was thinking about that last winter,” Gates said. “Walton was not an old man. He was in good health.”

“But if you had thought about it?” Jesse said.

“I assume we would have concluded that the franchise was still viable,” Gates said.

“That would, of course, have been up to Mrs. Weeks,”

Jesse said.

“Of course,” Gates answered. “She being the sole heir.”

“And she’s in Hendricks’s corner,” I said.

“She thinks Alan would be a suitable replacement,” Gates said.

“Would it have been apparent that she thought so six months ago?” Jesse said.

“What are you getting at?” Nolan said.

1 9 2

H I G H P R O F I L E

Jesse smiled and shrugged.

“I’m just floundering,” Jesse said. “You know, small-town cop in over my head.”

“I’m sure you’re doing your best,” Gates said.

Jesse looked grateful.

“So did Lorrie and Alan get along okay?”

“Yes,” Nolan said. “Of course.”

“How well?” Jesse said.

Nolan looked away.

Gates said, “Are you implying something?”