There we were, back to laughter. I didn’t know if this was just denial, or the indomitability of the human spirit.
Chapter Five
IN THE MORNING I decreed it was back to routine. I did a grocery run and restocked the freezer. Tommy and Jamie went to leaflet the neighborhood, offering lawn care services, though our own patchy lawn wasn’t much of an ad. Normalcy was on the brink of return.
I went back to work, the sort that paid, or was supposed to pay anyway. Our storefront office was once the old depot, around the river’s bend from my house. The amenities were few, compared to the office parks I used to help develop, and all the wiring had to be replaced before our computers could work. But I got a good price for the place, so the monthly costs were low, and this first year of operation, that was all that counted.
And our clients, software developers with an instinctive aversion to conformity, appreciated the Hoosier funk. East Bank was once a village built around a dock where farmers from upriver off-loaded their crops onto the boxcars. Now the main street up from the river was lined with clubs and record shops and coffee bars. The railroad was long gone, its track turned into a biking trail. But the dock was still clinging to the bank, and Barb and I ate lunch there when the weather was nice, feeding the geese that were so happy they no longer went south in the winter, or maybe they were so fat they couldn’t manage the flight.
Concord’s first boom came with the big insurance explosion of the early 20th Century. The second came in the recession of the late 80s, when a couple of engineering students didn’t get the fellowship they needed to continue their schooling. They weren’t interested in seeking work among the shuttered factories and downsized corporations out in the real world, so they started a company soldering network servers. Netmore. Smart guys, down-sized from GM and Ford’s information-systems divisions showed up for work, or they started their own companies, and pretty soon Concord was a software haven. The Silicon Cornfield. And real estate went boom. That was the beginning of it all, the Netmore miracle success, and the Ross-Munssen slightly less miraculous but still impressive success.
And now, Barb and I hoped, a new generation of smart guys would make Lynn and O’Brian a moderate success. Sometimes I was terrified, realizing our hopes rested on geeks who thought of business as another video game. Then I remembered that I knew the Netmore founders before geeks were cool, and they could never have been considered mature, rational businessmen either.
As I entered the office, Barb was closeted with one of those new clients. I saw through the gilt-edged window that she was in her responsible adult mode—chestnut French twist and the navy power suit she wore to escort our clients to a bank for a business loan. The client, of course, wasn’t wearing a suit. Our clients never do. This one at least had a collared shirt, but his hands were twitching as if she’d made him put his iPhone away.
In my own office, I pulled up my calendar for the tasks I’d set up last week. I tackled the simplest one first: Check with Netmore re: speaker for T’s computer camp. I dialed the Netmore number and tried to track down the person who had promised to provide me a programmer.
That person had been laid off since I last spoke to her. A half hour later, my temper was fraying as I spoke to the latest Netmore executive assigned temporarily to public relations. “Look, you promised to have a programmer ready to talk to Riverside’s summer computer camp. I was just supposed to call and tell him when and where to show up. I’m calling. Tomorrow, 12 noon, the school computer center.”
“Sorry, we got a big project’s about to be released. All the programmers are working on that.”
“It will only take a half hour or so. I’ll come by and pick the programmer up. Netmore’s been saying they want to do more community outreach.”
“Outreach was the last guy’s thing. My thing is social media, getting our name in the business press and tweeted and all that.”
“So get your name in the business press for speaking to the high school computer camp.”
“The media doesn’t care about that.”
“The media don’t care about that.” Okay, so I was getting nasty. This guy deserved it. “The word media is plural. If you’re going to do media relations, you should know that.”
“Whatever. Sorry. Maybe some other time.”
I told myself that this wasn’t important enough to upset me. I had plenty of programmer clients who would be glad to schmooze with some kids. Heck, most of my clients were kids themselves, if you define as a “kid” anyone who lived on video games and Mounds bars. But it was Netmore the kids wanted, Netmore the local success story. Tommy had bragged about my Netmore connections, and I was too proud to think these had died with the divorce.
Fueled by righteous indignation, I pulled the sort of trick that I always despised in others. “Maybe I should talk to Will Bowie. You know who he is? He founded your company. And we go way back. And maybe I should just call him about this.”
“First, let me warn you.” A pause. I knew he was about to tell me something he knew he shouldn’t. “I didn’t want to say this, but I sent your request up to development. Will sent it back, with a big NO scrawled over it. Said he didn’t want anything to do with you.”
I was too shocked to say anything at first. Finally, I found my voice. “Me? He meant me specifically? Megan Ross?”
“I’ll get the memo.” In a moment he was back. “He wrote Don’t do anything for the Rosses. He’s the founder. I’m not going to push him when I don’t actually give a shit, you know?”
He hung up, and slowly, so did I. It made no sense. Will and I had always been friendly, if not actually friends. At least we were acquaintances with a long history, with our conjunction point the Netmore campus. I’d helped develop it; he’d paid for it. That meant we were in more or less constant contact. Every time in fifteen years that Netmore broke ground for a new building, both Will and I were there. We sent each other generic business Christmas gifts, but usually with funny little notes attached. We even used to double-date, Don and I and Will and whatever tall model he was dating at the moment. Now I recalled that Will and I would end up talking, and Don and the model would end up talking. I wondered what that meant. We maybe even flirted a little bit at company parties, though it’s hard to define flirtation with someone like Will.
I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, not since Netmore bought its campus from us and our company dissolved. His antagonism didn’t make any sense. I hadn’t even had a chance to offend him. Maybe this was another repercussion of the divorce, and I should just let it go.
Then I thought of Tommy, and what it was like to be 15, and all the times I’d failed him, like the time in third grade I’d forgotten to put the Valentine cards in his backpack, so all his classmates thought he was a snob; and the time I’d sewn badges onto his scout uniform just a half hour before the trip to the governor’s office, where the governor, an old Eagle Scout, asked him sharply if he was some kind of joker, with that upside-down American flag on his sleeve. And I hated to think that now Tommy might be known around school not just as the kid whose father died, but as the one whose mother didn’t keep promises.
I redialed Netmore and eventually got a human operator. “This is Megan Ross,” I declared. “Let me talk to Will Bowie.”
It must have been my take-no-prisoners tone, or my admittedly bimboish name, but she put me through. I didn’t care that she thought I was one of Will’s dates. I just wanted to get through to him and demand an explanation before I lost my nerve.
“Development.” It was Will’s voice, typically flat and spacey.
“This is Meggie Ross.”
There was a silence. Then, “Yeah?”
I pulled out the script I’d written while being routed through the automated answering system. “Hey, I heard there’s some problem with you all sending a programmer this week to talk to my son’
s class, and I just wanted to check and see if we could resolve it.”
“Resolve it? I don’t think so. Why should I help your kid, when you’re getting me sued?”
“Sued? What do you mean?” I had a nightmare flash of one of the Netmore buildings collapsing and killing twenty employees. But surely that would have been on the news.
“I mean the lawsuit.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm. “I thought you guys would take care of it. But I just got served on it.” It sounded like he was reading from a piece of paper. “Complaint for Damages. Lawsuit Pending. Injunction for relief.”
Somewhere in my brain, a bell rang. Was that the lawsuit Don mentioned? I played dumb, not hard to do, given how clueless I was about this issue. “I don’t know anything about a lawsuit.”
“Well, it says here on the cover. Murdoch Industries vs. Donald T. Ross, Primeline Development, and William L. Bowie.”
So that was why Don had been worried. It wasn’t just him being sued, but his best customer. But at least I was off the hook. “I’m not involved in Primeline.”
That stopped him. “You’re not? Why not?”
I reminded myself that not everyone was privy to the major events of my life. “Don and I got divorced last year. Primeline was his company.”
“Oh” The hostility seeped from his voice. “Don still own it?”
“No. I guess now it’s owned by his—his widow.”
“Widow? You mean he died?”
“About a week ago.” Maybe if I said it enough, I’d believe it.
That took the wind out of his sails. He almost sounded chastened. “We just had a meeting a couple weeks ago. But last week, I was up in Redmond with the enemy . What happened?”
I took a deep breath. “He fell out of a building.”
“He fell?” Will echoed. “Out a building? That was Don? I just heard someone took a header somewhere around here while I was gone. Figured it was one of our hardware engineers missed another release date.”
I could barely hear that last over the rushing in my ears. “He just fell,” I said. “From that building he’s developing.”
“Fell? That’s what they said? What else you hear?”
“What else would there be to hear?” I tried to keep the emotion out of my voice.
“Well, you know. With an accident like this, people are always talking about it. Murder, suicide. But they’re saying it’s an accident, huh?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. It was important, I thought, to kibosh this sort of speculation. “That’s what the police said. That’s what the coroner said. Just a fall.”
“But the building was—”
I cut him off. I didn’t want to go into any details or have Will the engineer start dissecting the accident. So I wrenched us back to the subject at hand. “Like I said, I don’t have anything to do with his business or this lawsuit.” I managed to put the jovial back in my voice. “So there’s no use blaming me.”
“Hmm. I noticed you weren’t at the last closing.”
He paused, giving me time to wonder. It was Will, not Netmore, who was getting sued along with Don. I couldn’t imagine how that came about. At this point, Will was just another employee of Netmore and wouldn’t be sued individually. If I knew who Murdoch was—“So what’s this about, Will?” I asked as casually as I could manage. “This lawsuit.”
“You really don’t know?” Still wary. “Well, maybe you should find out. The lawyers told me what to answer, but I’m not giving into this sort of harassment. Or intimidation.”
I remembered, from past cocktail parties, that Will was a libertarian, against government interference except that directed against Microsoft. “Intimidation? Look, the lawsuit didn’t have anything to do with—with what happened to Don.”
“You sure about that? Maybe he got in the way of the black ops guys.”
“The black ops guys?” I probably was goggling. Not really pretty, I’m sure. Lucky he couldn’t see me. “Come on, Don didn’t have anything to do with that sort of stuff.” Don’t be such a paranoid nutcase, I wanted to say, but held my tongue. “What can I tell you?”
“You can tell me why the hell this happened. Even if you didn’t have anything to do with Primeline, you know how Don did business. And if you are still involved with his company, well, you can tell me how you’re going to fix this for me.”
I felt an unexpected lurch, realizing that good old Will, whom I could always entice into sharing the appetizer platter, was now suspicious of me. I hoped the upset didn’t show in my voice. “Sure. How about we make it lunch?” That would keep it more of a social occasion and less of an inquisition. “But I’m going to need the name of the programmer you’ll be sending to Riverside High. Maybe you can introduce me to him or her too.”
“Come in tomorrow morning and settle this lawsuit thing first.”
I hung up with the clear sense that I better come up with some answers. Unfortunately, I didn’t even know what the questions were. All I knew is that Don had done it again, involving me in some disaster without my knowledge or consent.
I called down to the court and learned that lawsuit filings were public, but that I could only read them onsite. I looked despairingly at the week’s worth of neglected work on my desk, and balanced that against my inner need to smooth things over with Will and this new curiosity about what Don had gotten into with this new building. Sighing, I shut down my computer and drove downtown. I had the usual Kafkaesque half hour locating the right courtroom, the right judge, the right clerk, but eventually got my hands on the actual filing. There wasn’t much to it, just a title page and a short summary, which alluded to but didn’t explain its claim of a “conspiracy to fraudulently deprive Plaintiff of its property.”
The plaintiff was Murdoch Industries, “a farm concern and a manufacturer of fertilizer.” The alleged conspirators were Don and Will. The preliminary hearing had been set for a few weeks from now. I paid the exorbitant price of a dollar a page for a copy and headed back home no wiser. If there was a conspiracy against this Murdoch Industries, Will didn’t seem to know much about it. And Don wasn’t around to enlighten me.
But maybe Brad could. Our old partner Brad and Don had split up about the time Don and I had, but they’d stayed friendly. He might know about this lawsuit, and he’d be discreet. With Will so unwillingly involved, discretion was essential. One word to the press about the local tech star being sued for fraud, and, well, among other things, there went my Netmore connection forever.
Brad wasn’t in his city hall office, so I left a message, non-threatening and uninformative. Then I asked the department of corporations to fax me the incorporation records on Primeline. Now I could prove to Will that I wasn’t involved. There, in the treasurer slot, where my name had always been on the Ross-Munssen papers, was the name Wanda Patterson. I hesitated, reminded that even before we were divorced, Don had set Wanda up as an officer and shareholder in his company. For a businessman, that was an act of devotion akin to slaying a dragon.
I should have just pushed the thought aside. That was all in the past. But it nagged at me, this evidence that early on Wanda had insinuated herself into his corporation as well as his bed. Treasurer. Wow. Why not secretary? Why not vice-president? A treasurer was supposed to be financially trained, as I was. It didn’t make any sense to make Wanda the treasurer. But then again, maybe in Don’s mind, the treasurer was supposed to be the president’s bedmate—so when Wanda replaced me in his bed, she replaced me as treasurer too.
None of that mattered. What mattered was getting my work done today, seeing Will tomorrow, and securing a programmer to talk to Tommy’s camp.
Just in case Will wasn’t convinced, I photocopied the divorce decree I kept in my personal papers file at the office. I stopped myself just before I went on the Web to download Don’s obituary from the local newspape
r’s site. If after all this, Will still suspected I was lying, then proof of Don’s demise wouldn’t help.
Finally, I got back to work and waded through my in-box of mail. As I opened envelopes, I sorted: this pile for filing, this pile for action, that pile for the trash. Then my heart stopped. I stared down at an envelope addressed by my ex-husband. My late ex-husband.
I held it up to the window so I could see the postmark. Wednesday. The day he died. He’d mailed it from this zip code, not from his suburban house where Wanda might see it.
I had a choice. I could put it in the discard pile. I could decide there was nothing in there but pain and sorrow. I could go on with my life without any messages from the dead. But of course I couldn’t. Curiosity? Desire? Common sense? Maybe this was information about the lawsuit. Maybe this was a new will, superseding the one that disinherited Tommy. Maybe it contained a few stock certificates he should have passed on during the divorce, but conveniently forgot about. Maybe–
I slid my finger under the flap. I felt slick cardboard. I withdrew it and saw a picture of a basket of roses. “Thinking of You” was printed underneath. It was the sort of card you could get at any drugstore whenever the impulse seized. But the impulse to buy cards didn’t seize men, did it? Certainly not Don, except maybe at 4:59 p.m. on Valentine’s Day.
Inside, two lines—a message, and a postscript. “Don’t worry about me. No big deal. Nothing’s going to happen.”
No big deal. That was what he said that last time I saw him. Nothing’s going to happen.
A shiver passed through me. It was a big deal. And something had happened.
Of course, I recognized the bold handwriting. I even recognized that odd sharp line that followed each letter, crafted by his old fountain pen, the one with the broken nib.
And then, scrawled, almost indecipherable, “P.S. I missed you.” Black ink. No signature.
I dropped the card as if the paper were coated with acid. I must have made some sound, because a moment later, Barb looked in, her face concerned. “Everything okay?”
Until Death Page 6