Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 by Dead Man's Island Page B

have guessed his last vacation had been in junior high school.
    He did laugh at that. “Okay. Truce. The boss says you’re writing his life. Why?”
    “Money, of course.” This is the kind of answer that usually embarrasses the asker enough to shut down further questions on the subject.
    Not Lyle Stedman. He lifted one thick red eyebrow. “I know who you are. You’ve won every award there is. Covered the world. Then successfully madethe switch to big-time fiction. You don’t need money.”
    I tried evasive action. “But Prescott Communications does need money. In a bad way. Want to tell me about it?”
    “If the boss heard that, he’d can you on the spot.” Lyle leaned back in his chair and regarded me shrewdly. “I don’t get this. The party line at the office is: Everything’s swell, don’t ask stupid questions, the money will come in, Prescott Communications forever with a drum roll and a trumpet tattoo in the background. So what gives?”
    I crushed the honeysuckle in my hand, savoring the sweet, thick summertime smell. “Do you think the money’s not coming in?”
    “Goddamn. You’ve either got more guts than anybody I’ve ever met or you play it the way it lies. But in case you’re carrying tidbits back to Chase, no, I don’t think he’s delusional. If the boss says the money’s coming in, it will come. So I’m telling everybody to cool it. I’m telling everybody to concentrate on the job. Leave the high finance to the boss. It won’t be the first time he’s worked a miracle.”
    Lyle was trying to convince himself, not me. But it gave me a nice opening, and I pounced on it. I learned a lot more that I didn’t know about Chase. Lyle got into the spirit of it, and I soon saw that this intelligent, impatient, ambitious young man was one of those rare creatures—a dispassionate observer. He was quick, yes, to say when he thought Chase was at fault—the celebrated unauthorized-biography libel case, for example—but just as quick to extol virtues,painting a vivid picture of a man fanatically devoted to the company he had built from nothing, an impatient, quick-tempered man with an unerring eye for what popular taste craved and a fierce determination to be the first to satisfy that hunger.
    “That, in sum, is why he’s richer than Croesus.” The heir apparent hunched forward in his chair, his voice admiring. I could read the rest of his thought. One of these days, he, too, was going to be just as rich. When it was his turn. “Yeah, the boss was one of the first to get the idea that the simple life was back in style. He started new sections in every paper and a segment in the morning talk show’s about back-to-basics, down with conspicuous consumption. People loved it. The letters poured in. Now everybody’s on the bandwagon.”
    “The simple life.”
    He flashed a surprisingly charming grin. “Just because it’s in his newspapers doesn’t mean
he’s
taken a vow of austerity. Here we are on Prescott Island, in a little grass shack for his buddies. But why the hell not?”
    “So why did he ask you here this weekend?” My fingers felt sticky from the honeysuckle.
    His smile slid away. “You heard the man at dinner last night. He knows I’ll lay it out straight. I do, you know. He’s fired me twice, but he always hires me back. I’m the only son of a bitch Chase knows who doesn’t stand at attention when he comes into the room.”
    “But you’d rather be in Atlanta.” I waved away a wasp, tossed the crushed honeysuckle onto the grass.
    “God, yes.” He twirled the towel into a taut line and snapped it twice. “Jesus, this is boring. No offense. But I want to be in the newsroom. I want to know what’s going on. And this goddamned island—we’re out here like it’s a century ago. What’s wrong with him? Maybe he’s getting old.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not it. But, for God’s sake, anything could happen in Russia. The damn Libyans could knock down another