“I like the image of that. Mine’s a bit in flux. When your coins are sold, I’m going to sell controlling interest in Bishop Chicago to Devon and Sharon and find a new challenge to tackle.”
“Getting tired of coins?”
He smiled. “We’ll have a real celebration when the last coin is sold, and I will close this chapter in my life and not even look at a rare coin for at least a few years.”
“I’m going to feel guilty if you’re burned out because of this estate.”
Bryce shook his head. “I was bored and looking for a change even before you appeared. I’m looking forward to what will be next.”
The silence between them had turned comfortable. Bryce went back to an old conversation. “Who did you kiss when you were thirty?”
She blinked, then smiled. “John.”
“Why?”
“Curiosity.”
“You could kiss me and find out what you think when you’re—what, thirty-eight?”
“I’m not giving you my exact age that easily.” She slid back her chair. “I’m going to find out what’s on TV tonight.”
Since the table was clear, and the kitchen could be dealt with after she left, Bryce picked up the plate of brownies and followed her into the living room.
Charlotte stopped by the coffee table. “What’s this?” A stack of art books sat there with a bow on top. For the delight that crossed her face, he would have gladly bought her a library of art books.
“So you have something to enjoy while I watch the Mets.”
“Nice. But we’re watching a movie tonight.”
“I can live with a movie—I’ll record the game. Find us something interesting.”
Charlotte wasn’t watching the movie. She’d closed the art book on her lap and was watching him. Bryce turned his head to hold her gaze. They were sharing the couch, and he realized with a bit of a jolt the direction of her thoughts. She was wondering about his earlier suggestion.
He smiled.
She thought for a while and smiled back.
“Want to see what it’s like when you’re thirty-eight?” he offered quietly.
“Maybe.”
He slowly leaned forward, and she jerked back.
He froze. “Did I misread the situation?”
“Changed my mind.”
He eased back. “You’re allowed.”
He tried to focus on the movie, managed it for thirty seconds. “Not my breath?”
She giggled, but he heard the nerves. He reached over for her hand, rubbed his thumb on the back of hers. “Because I can find breath mints somewhere in a desk drawer.”
“Watch the movie.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She was looking at him again.
“You’re going to drive me crazy.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” she answered absently.
He looked over and held her gaze. Nothing tentative about the woman looking back at him. She was in a serious mood.
“Would you kiss me, Bryce, carefully? I am curious.”
He slid his hand into her hair to gently ease her forward, dipped his mouth to hers, and tried for a kiss so soft it would be a first she’d remember for what it wasn’t.
Her gaze held his for a long moment, and then she put her hand on his chest and pushed herself up off the couch and to her feet. “You should take me home again tonight, so I don’t have to drive. Ellie can drop me off in the morning to pick up my truck.”
Bryce had been thinking concert to give the two of them an evening out without calling it a date. But an hour into their Saturday evening outing he realized he’d misjudged how the evening would flow. Charlotte chatted with Paul on the flight to St. Louis, talked with Ann during the quick meal, slid her hand into his during the concert and shared his soda, joined Ann in the cockpit for the flight home. Bryce accepted the shift, aware it was deliberate on Charlotte’s part.
She’d settled in comfortably with his friends, so the evening had accomplished one thing he’d hoped for. He hadn’t been sure how at ease Charlotte would be around cops, Ann being former Chicago PD and Paul head of the FBI office. But Charlotte hadn’t shown much hesitation. She apparently didn’t blame cops in general for not finding her. Bryce wasn’t sure he would have been so generous if the situation were reversed.
It wasn’t until they left the airport and he was driving Charlotte back to Ellie’s that he had her undivided attention, only now she was fighting to keep her eyes open. He gave up on the idea of having a conversation and just smiled over at her. “Take a catnap, Charlotte. I won’t mind.”
“It was a nice evening. I’m glad we went.”
“So am I.”
He turned the windshield wipers on to intermittent as the drizzle began to accumulate. The trip to Ellie’s was forty minutes even with the nearly empty roads of two a.m. It had been a good evening and useful in its own way. Charlotte was starting to relax with him. She’d genuinely enjoyed the concert.
They were nearing Ellie’s home when Charlotte stirred in her seat. “Bishop, I’ve got something I need to tell you.”
He took his eyes briefly off the road to glance over at her. Late-night drives were becoming dangerous for news. “I’m listening.”
“Fred’s will requires that I marry if I want to receive the full estate.”
“The coins and Graham Enterprises aren’t all of it?”
“No.”
“By when?”
“Three years after his death.”
“You don’t.”
She looked over at him, surprised.
“The one thing in life that should be a free and clear decision—you don’t let anyone mess with that.” He turned his eyes back to the road. “You decide you want to get married, you get married three years and a day after Fred’s death.” His hands flexed on the steering wheel. “What was the man thinking?”
She laughed. “Not exactly the reaction I expected.”
“Ticks me off to hear about the stipulation. Any other strings you’re having to deal with?”
“Nothing else as major.”
“You don’t need the money, Charlotte. Even if you did, or just wanted it, I’d still say the right answer is no.”
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
“That perfect response.”
“Fred didn’t know you very well if he was trying to force your hand with his will.”
“He meant well. His generation, there weren’t many women still single as they approached their forties. He liked John. He hoped I might marry him. A nice sentiment, even if flawed in its implementation.”
“John knows about the will?”
“Ellie and John both have copies. I don’t make decisions based on the document. But it has been useful to have their perspectives on it.”
“Why did you tell me?”
“Curiosity. I want to see what you might decide to do with the news.”
He had no idea what to do with the news she’d just given him. “Okay.”
Traffic in Ellie’s neighborhood and the increasing rain were enough that he had to focus on his driving rather than pursue the conversation.
Charlotte gathered up her things and pulled keys out of her pocket. “Thanks again for the evening and the concert. Don’t get out.” She ducked out into the light rain, then leaned back into the open door. “Saylor Chemical.”
“What?”
“My grandfather’s grandfather owned Saylor Chemical. Look it up.”
Look it up. That wasn’t such an easy thing to do, even with the internet. Her grandfather’s grandfather had Bryce trying to find business records going back more than a hundred years. Saylor Chemical didn’t exist today.
He made calls and searched out old chemical-industry trade magazines, looking for a reference to Saylor Chemical. He didn’t know which state to focus on, so he searched old newspaper archives at random, hoping to find a mention of the company in the business section. It took him a few days to ans
wer his first question. Saylor Chemical was not, had never been, a public company.
He tried approaching it from the other direction, looking for information about the man rather than the company. He finally managed to locate a birth record for Fred’s grandfather. He had been born in Wyoming. The father on the birth certificate was a man named William Graham.
His attempt to find a birth record, a death certificate for William Graham, or any other information about the man hit a wall. A search of newspaper archives across Wyoming for any mention of Saylor Chemical came up empty. What else could he do with Charlotte’s cryptic bit of information to get it to lead somewhere?
Five days after he began looking, he found a patent issued to Saylor Chemical in 1906 for a machine lubricant. Saylor Chemical was a company incorporated in Nebraska. He finally had a location to start the real digging.
William Graham sold Saylor Chemical to Park Oil in an all-stock deal in 1909. In 1914, Park Oil split into two companies, Park Chemical and Park Resources. Park Chemical merged with Tri-Ag Seeds in 1923. Bryce started a new page of notes following the various company splits, mergers, and acquisitions through the years until he reached the present day. He had found twelve public companies on his list downstream of the original Saylor Chemical sale.
If the family had held on to ten percent of the shares over the years, the estate would be worth—he looked up the stock values and ran the numbers—eight hundred seventy million. Shock rippled through him. He checked the math on the share distributions and calculations. The numbers were right.
It had been 104 years, and plenty of reasons to sell the stock, including the Great Depression and two wars. Fred had given Charlotte sixty million in coins along with Graham Enterprises. He had tied the rest of the estate to her getting married. If the Graham family had kept one percent of the stock, the rest of the estate was worth eighty-seven million. Bryce circled that number on his pad of paper with a hand that slightly shook. After 104 years, one percent was reasonable. Charlotte was probably looking at a will provision worth eighty-seven million dollars and trying to figure out what to do.
He looked at the time. She was in Silverton. He found his keys and headed to his car.
EIGHTEEN
Charlotte’s Silverton property was a two-bedroom home with an attached garage tucked in among mature trees and farmhouses, down the road from a new subdivision development. Wind chimes on the porch and the fluttering of a flag mixed in with the music filtering out from open windows. The dogs met him, leaning in against him on both sides, their coats warm from lying in the sun. He knelt to say hello, stroked their brushed coats, and rubbed their ears. She had beautiful animals. The dogs headed back into the yard.
Charlotte answered the front doorbell, her hands busy folding a bath towel, with another tossed over her shoulder. “Hey, Bryce. John called to say he’d given you directions.”
“Glad he made them detailed. Your house number is faded.”
She stepped back so he could come inside. He smelled cinnamon in the air and ginger and what he thought might be chicken baking.
He looked around with interest. The house was neutral in colors, mostly tans and browns, with generous amounts of white. Large landscapes dominated the walls, vistas of terrain from the Southwest, deserts bathed in warm sunlight. Her shoes on the entryway rug made him smile. A laundry basket was perched on the living room couch. She stepped over to add the folded towel to the stack on the coffee table, then folded the other one from her shoulder.
“How much of the stock is left?”
She gave him a long look, then took a T-shirt out of the basket and folded it with a practiced hand. “All of it.”
The music faded and the red shirt in her hand turned gray.
“Whoa!” He felt his arm being grabbed. “You’re too tall to go falling flat on your face. I’m so sorry. This is not the reaction I was expecting, Bryce.”
He sat down hard in the nearest chair. The sound of her voice surged and faded a few times as his body caught up to the fact gravity had stopped moving. “You really want to give me a heart attack, don’t you?” He took a deep breath, fought off the dizziness, raised his head, looked at her. “They never sold a share?”
She sat on the coffee table, knees touching his, and studied his face. “Not a one. They did spend the dividends,” she offered hopefully, trying to cushion the news.
He tried to laugh. All of it.
He attempted to swallow and realized his mouth was dry as dust.
She watched as he absorbed the enormity of what she had told him. “Eight billion seven as of this morning,” she said softly.
“And if you don’t marry?”
“It’s not my problem.”
It felt like someone had walloped his chest with a concrete grapefruit, and it was the oddest unpleasant sensation he’d ever felt. He wished she’d keep talking, but she just sat waiting as he got past the reaction. He rubbed the back of his neck, surprised to realize his hand felt cold. “Why did you tell me?”
“I am so sorry for this. I didn’t intend . . .”
He stopped her apology with a shake of his head. He studied her face, perplexed. “Seriously. Why did you tell me, Charlotte?”
“Curiosity. What’s the dollar amount when principles bend to reality? I don’t marry for money, or do I?”
“I don’t know how to even approach answering that, given these circumstances.”
She held his gaze and then gave an embarrassed smile. “And now allow me to make this an even bigger apology by admitting the question itself was actually theoretical, even rhetorical, rather than serious, as the decision has already been made. I just wanted to have the conversation, Bryce. So I walloped you for no reason other than the fact I’m an idiot at judging how you might react to the information.”
He could feel himself being two steps back and out of sync with the conversation. He locked on to the only point that mattered. “What decision have you made, Charlotte?”
She patted his hand, apparently relieved he looked and sounded more like himself, and went back to folding her laundry. “I’m single for life, Bishop. I’m not getting married. It’s just going to take three years for people to realize I mean it since that’s the will’s deadline. Fred left me very well off if I stay single. He just knew I shouldn’t try to deal with that Legacy Trust if I stayed single. It takes someone to share the day-to-day reality of it, the weight of it. He thought I’d marry John. That’s not going to happen. I don’t want to get married, and John loves Ellie. And I’m not going to risk my relationship with Ellie for any amount of money.”
Bryce absorbed enough of her answer and the information flowing at him to realize the woman really had made her decision. She’d told him the news because she was simply curious how he’d answer the question and had thought he’d take the information in stride and they’d have an interesting conversation. The embarrassment over having not taken the news in stride was beginning to set in. He handled money matters with regularity and skill and couldn’t explain the instant reaction that had hit him.
The stock hadn’t been sold. He unwound the last five minutes in his head. She was waiting on him to say something in reply to what she’d just told him, but he was moving back in time now and his brain was beginning to snap into gear. The stock hadn’t been sold. “Tell me that amount again.”
She shook out a pillowcase. “Ellie’s text this morning: eight billion seven hundred forty-three million. She gives me the figure and in the next text gives me the weather forecast. And since she likes those chance-of-rain graphics, she’s borrowed the idea and sends me a frowning face when it goes down and a smiling face when it goes up. It’s been frowning the last four days.”
“Okay.” He took another deep breath and blew it out. “Okay.”
He pushed against his knees and got to his feet, relieved to find the odd sensations were passing. If anything, the light-headed feeling was being replaced with the opposite, and objects around him see
med to be too acutely in focus. “Has John asked Ellie to marry him?”
Charlotte smiled. “More than once. It’s my personal soap opera, watching the two of them.” She folded the last piece of laundry and stacked it all neatly back in the basket. “Graham Enterprises, the coins, the rest of what Fred left me directly—I’m already wealthy beyond what Tabitha and I, and her kids, will need in our lifetime. I don’t need the money, Bryce.”
No one needed that amount of money. “How have you, John, Ellie been walking around treating life as normal when this is sitting out there?”
“We’ve had over two years to get past the shock of it. After a while you realize it’s just money. We’re already dealing with more cash than we know what to do with.”
“It’s the lottery ticket. And you don’t want it.”
She rested the laundry basket against her hip and just looked at him, then shrugged. “The will requires I marry. It’s a nice checkmate move, because I’m not marrying, so the next question is irrelevant.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.” She set the basket in the hall. “I’m repotting some flowers on the back patio. Do you have time to help me haul around some bags of potting soil? They’re in the back of the truck.”
He looked down at the dress slacks he was wearing, the suit jacket and tie, took off the suit jacket, tugged at the tie. He wasn’t going to be fit to do any other kind of work today with this news rattling around in his mind. “I’ve got time.”
“I find gardening is a good antidote for stress.”
He dropped his tie across her shoulder. “I think you just like to play in the dirt.”
She smiled. “That too.”
Bishop found John down by Shadow Lake, clearing away debris the overnight storm had washed into the inlet near the dock. “You should marry her, John.”
“Who?”
“Charlotte.”
John tossed another chunk of driftwood into the bed of the truck. “I gather she told you.”
“She did.”
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