I, Richard - Elizabeth George [67]
What did it mean that Biosyn, Inc. was located here, of all places? And what did it mean that Eric Lawton was talking to someone from CBS?
Charlie had no answers. Only more questions. And the only option available to her was to find the tea house in the Los Rios district of San Juan Capistrano and hope that Sharon Pasternak was as good as her word.
She was. Seventy-one minutes after Charlie left Biosyn, Eric's colleague walked into the tea house, a building from the early 1900s, once the home of a founding family of the town. It was a good place for an assignation, the least likely spot any individual would choose with surreptitious activity on her mind. Coyly decorated with lace, teapots, antiques, hat stands, and chapeaux for the sartorial entertainment of its customers, it offered, at exorbitant prices, an American version of English afternoon tea.
Sharon Pasternak looked over her shoulder as she came into the building, where Charlie was seated at a table for two just inside the door. There was another table occupied in the room, a round one at which five women in hats borrowed from the establishment were having a merry birthday tea, looking in their anachronistic chapeaux as if Alice and the March Hare were about to join them.
“We need a different table,” Sharon told Charlie without preamble. “Come on.” She led the way to a second room and from there to a third at the back of the house. This was furnished with five small tables, but they were all empty, and Sharon strode to the one that was farthest from the door. “You can't come to
Biosyn again,” she told Charlie in a low voice. “Especially if you come asking for me. It's risky and obvious. If you'd come to talk to the Human Resources people—about Eric's retirement package or insurance or something—you might have gotten away with it. You and I running into each other in the hall or something. But this? No way. Marion's going to remember and she's going to tell Cabot. She's worked for him for thirty-five years— since he was just out of grad school, if you can believe it—and she's more loyal to him than she is to her husband. She calls him David, all stars in her eyes. By now, he knows you've put in an appearance and asked for me.”
“You said CBS,” Charlie began. “You said Sixty Minutes.”
“He came to me about Exantrum. His lab was working on something different, but he knew about Exantrum. Everyone in Division II knew. Everyone knows even if they pretend they don't.”
“His lab? Whose lab?”
“Eric's.”
“What're you talking about?”
“What d'you mean?”
“Why would Eric have had a lab? He was director of sales. He had meetings and business trips all over the country and… Why would he have a lab? He isn't… He wasn't…”
“Sales?” Sharon asked. “That's what he told you? You never knew?”
“What?”
“He's a molecular biologist.”
“A molecular…No. He was director of sales. He told me.” But what had he told her? And what, from his behavior and allusions, had she merely assumed?
“He's a biologist, Mrs. Lawton. I mean, he was. I ought to know since I worked with him. And he… listen, I have to ask this. I'm sorry, but I don't know how else to make sure … Did he die the way they said he died? He wasn't… ? I wouldn't put it past Cabot to have him snuffed out. He's a secrecy freak. And even if he weren't, this stuff's so nasty that if Cabot knew Eric was taking it to CBS, believe me, he'd do something to stop him.”
“To stop him from what?”
“Contributing to the exposé. Eric was blowing the whistle on Biosyn. He was scared shitless to do it—we both were scared shitless—but he'd made up his mind. I smuggled out a sample of Exantrum one night—and I can't even tell you how freaked out I was to get close to the stuff without a safety suit on—and I gave it to Eric. He was set to meet with the journalists, to hand it over so they could get it tested for themselves