Read Online The Deadliest Option by Annette Meyers - Free Book Online

through the papers.” The Wall Street Journal and The Times lay on the floor near her door, demanding to be read.
    He pressed the down button of the elevator and came back to stand in her doorway. “What’s your afternoon like?”
    “Don’t know. Fridays are slow when the weather is like this. Everyone takes off early for the Hamptons. Why?”
    “I might want you to come over to the precinct and talk to us about these investment bankers of yours.”
    “Oh, Silvestri—”
    “Don’t oh-Silvestri me. You’ve always wanted to be involved; now I’m involving you.”
    “I have to think about this.”
    “No, you don’t.” He closed the door on her.
    She poured the last dregs of coffee from her Melitta pot and buttered the second half of her bagel, wondering where the borders of confidentiality could be crossed. What was right and what was wrong. Was she obligated to tell her client? She smeared Sarabeth’s wonderful apricot orange marmalade over the bagel and raised the mug to her lips.
    What about Smith? She would have to tell her. Damn. Here she was trying to be virtuous and uninvolved, and both Silvestri and Smith kept pushing her into a homicide investigation. She set the cup down on the counter and opened The Journal , skimming over the articles on the front page. The headline in the center of the page read “Barnes Death Deemed Murder.” The article quoted John Hoffritz’s statement as she had overheard it, and no new information except that the New York Stock Exchange would observe one minute of silence at twelve noon today in memory of Goldie Barnes.
    Under What’s News—Business and Finance , Wetzon stopped to read a small item. S&S Sedlet Securities, a small Atlanta-based brokerage house, had made a buy-out offer for L. L. Rosenkind.
    “Oh, no!” she said out loud. There went the Howie Minton job search. He’d probably hang in and see what kind of bonus he was going to get to stay. And he’d get a nice one, she was sure, because no firm could afford to lose a big producer. S&S Sedlet would probably follow the Street and offer a contract for two to three years with a bonus on the front end for big producers to keep them stationary and another bonus on the back end based on production at each year end for the length of the contract.
    She was just thinking that Smith was right again when her phone rang. She wiped her sticky fingers and answered just before her machine clicked in.
    “Wetzon!” It was Smith, breathless, as if she’d been running, which was totally out of character. Smith never exercised, didn’t believe in it, and had the metabolism to reinforce this. “Wetzon?”
    “Yes.”
    “You saw the item about Sedlet buying Rosenkind?”
    “Yes. Don’t say it, please.”
    “Say what?”
    “I-told-you-so about Howie Minton. Now he’s going to wait and see what he’s offered to stay—”
    “Well, of course he’ll be offered a bonus to stay, but he wasn’t going anywhere anyway. I wasn’t calling you about that. I know Seth Sedlet and his brother Sean.”
    “You do? How?”
    “Don’t ask. They’re pirates. They took over the first company I worked for and sold it off piece by piece. There was nothing left that was recognizable. They’ll sell Rosenkind’s assets and wipe out the company—not that it matters, except the Street is getting smaller and smaller. If they dissolve Rosenkind, we’ll have one less place to pull brokers out of.”
    “Well, they made an offer, but they may not get Rosenkind.”
    “I wouldn’t count on it, sugar. Rosenkind has a cash flow problem.”
    “Who doesn’t?”
    “Are you on your way down?”
    “I just want to finish my coffee and skim through The Times.” She heard a phone ring. “Where are you?”
    “In the office, of course. Where else would I be? You know Jake, he likes to get up and out early.”
    So that’s how Smith had seen the Rosenkind-Sedlet item. She should have known. It was unlike Smith to do much professional reading.