“I did ask for comment! You declined!” Claire insisted.
“I never even received a request for comment from you, Miss Heart! So, let’s stick to the truth here.”
She narrowed her eyes in displeasure. “I contacted your office, Mr. Sinclair, and was informed that you were unavailable for comment. Guess what: I took that to mean you were unavailable for comment,” she said snidely.
Daniel wasn’t sure the reporter was telling the truth. His assistant Frances was extremely reliable and would have passed a message like this along, even though he had instructed his office not to disturb him during the week before his wedding. “Never mind that now. The issue remains that you published a story that simply has no basis in fact.”
“I have a very credible source who convinced both me and my editor.”
Daniel leaned forward. “Who?”
“You know as well as I do that I have to protect the identity of my sources.”
“Your source is lying. My fiancée never was and never will be a call girl. She is a respectable attorney.”
Claire crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m afraid, Mr. Sinclair, I’ve been shown concrete proof that Miss Parker worked as a call girl in San Francisco. And I also have concrete proof that you hired her as such.”
Inside, Daniel was seething. “I will find out who your source is. My lawyers—”
The ringing of Claire’s phone interrupted him.
“One moment,” she said, looked at the number on the display, and reached for it. “I’ll have to take this.”
She lifted the receiver to her ear. “Yes, Rick, what is it now?” Impatience colored her voice.
Daniel heard a loud male voice through the line, but couldn’t make out the words.
Claire shoved a hand through her hair. “I told them already! I met my source on . . . hold on.” She leafed through the day planner on her desk, searching for an entry. Finally, she tapped onto a spot on the paper. “There! I met with my source on the twenty-third.”
Again, the man on the other line said something, while Daniel stared at the day planner. She noted her meetings with her sources on this calendar? Interesting.
Claire sighed. “Fine! I’ll be up in a few minutes.” Then she put down the receiver and looked back at him. “As I said, the story is solid. I won’t retract it, because it’s the truth. And just because you don’t like it, won’t make it otherwise.”
“Fine, Miss Heart. If that’s how you want to play this.” Daniel stood. “The New York Times wouldn’t be the first newspaper to get destroyed by a libel suit.”
“It’s not libel if it’s true. I stand by my article and my source.”
“Very well. I’ll see myself out.” He turned to the door and left her office, closing the door behind him.
His eyes scanned the doors along the corridor as he hurried in the direction of the elevator. Finally he saw what he was looking for: the men’s room. He dove into it and was relieved to find it empty. No sounds came from the three stalls.
Daniel remained at the door, keeping it ajar so he could spy into the corridor. He didn’t have to wait long. Moments later Claire Heart walked past the door in hasty steps, heading for the elevator. When he heard the elevator ping, he counted to five, then stepped back into the hallway, his eyes immediately scanning the area near the elevators. Claire was gone.
Relieved, he walked back in the direction of her office, adrenalin pumping through his veins. He’d never in his life done anything illegal, but he had no choice today. He needed to find out who the reporter’s source was. He felt like a burglar when he slid back into Claire’s office and walked around her desk. With one eye he scanned the pages of her day planner, with the other he watched the door.
The annotations in Miss Heart’s calendar were cryptic. She used lots of abbreviations, and the names of her sources, or whomever she met with, were only initials. Clearly, she wanted to make sure that if this date book fell into the wrong hands, she wouldn’t reveal the names of her confidential sources.
Daniel worked backwards, knowing that no reporter sat on a juicy story for very long. Claire would have to have met her source sometime within the last two weeks. It would have given her enough time to verify whatever evidence had been presented to her. Evidence? He huffed. There was no evidence. Whatever Claire had received was fabricated. Daniel would find the source and prove that the claims were a lie.
With determination, he read each and every entry for the last two weeks, when he suddenly stumbled over initials that triggered a memory in him. A suitcase with the initials AH engraved on the lock appeared before his mind’s eye. He’d seen that suitcase so many times, had in fact carried it often.