Chapter 30
Kennedy
I peer over my shoulder as I stride down the hallway to one of the open conference rooms.
Blackmon winks at me, that grin still on his face. He knows he’s surprised me by showing up out of the blue.
“This one is open for the next hour,” the receptionist says as she extends her arm and shows us into the room.
“Thank you.” I nod before entering. “Please have a seat, Mr. Blackmon,” I say cordially.
Blackmon chooses to sit at the head of the table.
Once we’re alone, I take my own seat halfway down the long boardroom table.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Blackmon?” I ask.
He glances around the room before a frown appears on his face. “Newspapers aren’t bringing in the money like they used to, huh?”
“This is one division of an entire media outlet,” I remind him, a phony smile on my face. “But the news does just fine.”
He snorts. “Television news, maybe. Internet videos, maybe, but written press?” He shakes his head. Then he meets my gaze. “Which is probably why reporters like you are running around trying to invent stories and throwing good businessmen like me under the bus.”
His tone loses the fake friendliness with each word.
I sit forward. “Mr. Blackmon, why would I want to invent anything when the truth is damning enough?”
Any semblance of a smile completely disappears after that question.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replies.
“I don’t? Then why would you come to my office out of the blue?”
“You reached out to my office months ago for an interview,” he says.
“To which I got no reply.”
“Consider this your reply.”
“Thank you,” I say without a hint of gratitude. “Did you come here to confess to the reason why one of your chain employees chose to commit suicide inside one of your restaurants?”
A shadow crosses his face, but he looks away, and when he turns back, it’s gone.
“That young girl was troubled. It’s a shame she didn’t get the help she needed before she chose to end her life.”
He shakes his head.
“But I don’t see where that has any bearing on my business or me as a businessman.” He sits forward and points a finger in my direction. “In fact, as soon as I learned of her tragic passing, I offered to pay for her funeral services and any additional costs her poor mother might acquire to get her body back to her home state.”
“After you found out about her death?” I ask.
He nods. “Yes, I didn’t learn of the tragedy until weeks after it happened. As CEO, I’m not privy to all the low-level events in my restaurants. That is what managers are for.”
“I wouldn’t classify a person taking their life in your place of business as a low-level event,” I retort.
His cocky expression falters. “I didn’t mean it that way, and you know it.”
“How did you mean it, Mr. Blackmon?” I pull out my phone. “Since you came willingly, do you mind if I record this conversation? I want to make sure I don’t misquote you.”
He looks from me to the telephone I’ve placed in record mode, sitting on the table.
“I don’t have anything to hide.” His eyes shift from my phone to me to my phone again.
“Excellent. So, you offered to assist Ms. Dalton with the funeral costs for Erika and to have her body sent back to her home state?”
He sits up straight, poking out his chest. “Yes. As soon as I found out what occurred, I had my team make those arrangements.”
“That’s very generous of you. And when exactly did you find out about Erika’s passing?”
Another shift of attention back to my phone.
“About a month after her she died.”
“Is that so?” I ask. “Because I spoke with the coroner six weeks after Erika took her life, and she was, unfortunately, still in the morgue. Her mother hadn’t made any arrangements to have her body relocated, and there certainly wasn’t a funeral.”
Clearing his throat, he shifts in his chair. “It was possibly more than a month after her passing, then. But we did make those arrangements, and you can call Erika’s mother, and she will confirm everything I’ve said.”
“I plan to. I’m sure she appreciated the gesture,” I lie. Erika’s mother was as hard as a stone when I tried to talk to her about her daughter. “Tell me something, Mr. Blackmon. What is the name of the church you attend?”
His eyebrows raise slightly. “What does my church have to do with anything?”
“I’ve heard wonderful things about the services you do via your church. I’m looking into your business due to an unfortunate situation with an employee of yours, but I always do my best to form a complete profile of the subjects of any article I write. It’s only fair. Don’t you agree?”
He nods, his gaze shifting away from me toward the window. I can see the gears in his head churning as he thinks of a way to spin my question to his advantage.
He snaps his fingers and points to me. “Ah, yes. The name of my church is New Beginnings Church. We have a congregation of almost three thousand due to our dynamic,” he answers. “We do a lot of great work through the church. Especially with troubled teens and adolescents.”
“Is that so?” I ask with as warm a smile as I can muster.
“Yes, it is. And come to think of it, Erika Dalton was a member of our troubled teens program. That’s how she came to work for my company.” He shakes his head. “Unfortunately, I believe even she was beyond the help we could provide.”
Even though he gives a convincing pity-filled expression, his words ring hollow. There’s no heart in them. He doesn’t believe in what he’s saying.
Blackmon goes on for the next five minutes, talking about all of the charitable work his church does and the number of teens who’ve been saved from themselves—his words not mine—but I don’t believe a word of it.
If anything, the drive behind Blackmon’s charitable work is ego. It makes him look good, and it’s yet another prop he can use to boost himself in the public eye.
“One more thing, before I let you go,” I say. “Is there any reason the food critic Richard Wright would have to claim that you’ve bribed him to give La Vie favorable reviews for the past two years?”
Blackmon’s eyes bulge so wide that I want to tell him to be careful or he’ll pop a socket.
“You …” He peters off and glares at me. After a few beats of silence, he starts to laugh. “That is what this whole thing is about.”
He wags a finger at me. “I knew that snake was up to something.”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“Do not play dumb with me, Ms. Kennedy.” He leans into the table, hands clasped in front of him. “You’re helping him, aren’t you?”
“Helping who?”
“Dae Kim. This is why you’re investigating me. Trying to build more evidence to feed to him to get me kicked out of the Global Group.”
He rises from his chair and begins pacing back and forth.
“I knew that sneaky bastard was up to something.”
I don’t say anything. I’ve heard of the Global Group, an international realty company, I believe. I have no awareness of Dae’s affiliation with the company. More importantly, Dae told me he no longer has any business affiliation with Blackmon.
Did he lie to me?
Finally, I ask, “What are you referring to?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know, Kennedy. Your boyfriend tried to have me kicked out of this joint venture deal, and I refused to back off. So now he’s having his reporter girlfriend do his dirty work?”
He shakes his head and clicks his tongue. “What’s the matter? You didn’t think you were the only one able to do research, did you? I know your relationship and how you got this position.”
“What the hell did you just say?” I demand, my voice darkening.
He smirks, and my hand balls into a fist because the urge to punch the cocky look off his face rises in me.
“Blake Madison is a member of the Black Opal.”
Blake Madison is the Vice President of the news division at Regal. I ran into the same VP a few months ago on the elevator, which made me question whether my father had something to do with my getting hired here.
I shake my head because what Blackmon’s implying can’t be true. Dae couldn’t have had anything to do with me getting my job.
Shrugging off the thought, I lift my chin, meeting Blackmon’s stare. “I earned my position here at The Regal fairly. But the same cannot be said about the reviews you’ve received at La Vie.”
His eyes narrow, and I know I’ve hit him where it hurts. I decide to thrust the knife deeper.
“And once I have all of the evidence I need to prove what you’re really using those charities at your church for and why Erika Dalton killed herself at one of your chains, the world will know exactly the type of person you are.”
“You fucking—”
I stand from my chair. “I’m sure you know where the exit is. Or do you need security to help you out?” I glare at him.
He rises from his chair, his face red with anger. “This isn’t over,” he threatens.
I look him in the eye, saying, “Not by a long shot.”
He wordlessly exits the room, face beet red with anger. I know he thought he would throw me off my game by coming here.
If anything, his visit only proved that he has secrets he doesn’t want to be exposed. I’m on the verge of uncovering them. If what Nicole told me about his church network and how he and other business associates use them to essentially force child labor, I’ve got this bastard.
I’ll expose his secrets.
I’m determined to finish this case. But as I walk back to my desk, his mentioning working with the Global Group and having business ties with Dae still rings in my head.