Dawn Stewardson

by Five Is Enough

  “How,” he said, shaking his head, “could they appoint a complete incompetent as the director of a foundation? Even if she is family?”

  “Will you take it easy?” Otis said quietly. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

  “Take it easy? Otis, you weren’t there. You weren’t the one she conscripted to help catch a soaking-wet cat. You aren’t the one who’s got a ten-inch gash in his arm.” He brandished the scratch at them again.

  “We really should get that cleaned up,” Grace told him. “You don’t suppose there’s any chance of rabies, do you?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if the woman had rabies, never mind her cat. I mean, she’s simply not a normal person. Who would think of bringing her cat to the office, let alone bathing it there?”

  “Well, it does sound peculiar,” Grace admitted. “But maybe she had a reason.”

  “Right,” Sully muttered. “The reason is that she’s a total wing nut. I’ll bet she’s lived her entire life without having a reason for anything she does. We’re a perfect example of that. She doesn’t have a clue what goes on up here, yet she merrily chops our funding.”

  “I thought she said the decision was the board’s, not hers,” Otis pointed out.

  Sully shot a glare in his direction. “Stop trying to be so reasonable. The woman’s a liar. She straight out denied having phoned you, and there’s no doubt she did, is there?”

  Otis shook his head. “I talked to her for a good half hour. And as I said at the time, the more questions she asked, the more it seemed she was trying to unearth problems.”

  “Exactly. Which tells us how much faith we can put in anything she says.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter anymore,” Grace said, “because we’re obviously through dealing with her. But where do we go from here?”

  The worried expression on Grace’s face made Sully suddenly wish he’d soft-pedaled things. Eagles Roost was her home. And Otis’s, too, of course.

  “Maybe,” Grace murmured to Otis, “we should postpone our vacation for a while. Until we get this sorted out.”

  “No,” Sully said firmly. “It’s me who has to sort it out, not you, so you’re leaving on Saturday as planned. I’ll bet your relatives have a ton of things organized for your visit.”

  “Well…you’re probably right,” Otis admitted. “They usually do.”

  “Exactly. And you both need a break from here. So you’ll go and have a good time, and by the time you get back, I’ll have other funding lined up.”

  “Sully…what if that doesn’t turn out to be easy?”

  He shrugged, trying to look as if that possibility wasn’t worrying him at all. “You know the answer as well as I do. If we don’t have funding, the authorities will shut us down just as fast as they can find new placements for the kids. But that’s not going to happen. It’s just a matter of figuring out…” He paused, hearing a noise on the other side of the door.

  “Sully?” Billy the Kid called a second later. “Okay if I let Roxy in there? I think she wants a drink or somethin’.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he absently called back.

  The door swung open from the lodge’s main lounge—which these days served as a family room—and Roxy lumbered in. At a hundred-and-twenty pounds, with a rottweiler mother and a Saint Bernard father, she wasn’t a dog who normally moved very fast.

  “Is dinner gonna be soon, Mrs. Plavsic?” Billy asked politely.

  She nodded. “Half an hour or so. Can you last till then, or would you like an apple?”

  “No, I’m okay, thanks.”

  AFTER BILLY HAD BACKED out of the kitchen and shut the door again, he realized he was shaking. He was almost afraid to believe they hadn’t known he’d been standing there listening. Sully was always suspicious about stuff like that.

  Turning to the rest of the kids, he whispered, “That was close. I told you not to make any noise. They mighta caught me.”

  “So what was they sayin’?” Freckles asked. “What happened in New York?”

  Billy nodded his head in the direction of the bedrooms. If they stood here talking, they’d get caught for sure. He started off across the lounge, glancing back to make sure the others were following. They were, of course. He’d been at Eagles Roost the longest, so that kinda made him the leader.

  Besides, he was twelve, so he was oldest. Freckles was eleven. And the terrible twins, Tony and Terry, were only ten. And Hoops…well, Hoops was twelve, too, but he never said much unless it was about basketball. So when something was happening, it was Billy the Kid everybody mostly listened to.

  And they were really listening to him about this, ’cuz if he hadn’t been practicing up on his detective stuff they wouldn’t know nothing ’bout what was going on. But after he’d snuck into Sully’s office the other day and read that letter, he’d told the rest of them that the rich lady wasn’t giving the chief eagle any more money to run Eagles Roost.

  He led the others into the room he and Hoops shared, and plopped down on his bed. Hoops grabbed his basketball and started slapping it back and forth between his hands, but the rest of them just stood waiting.

  “So?” Freckles asked. “What’d they say?”

  Billy shrugged. “The chief eagle said he couldn’t make her change her mind. She just ain’t goin’ to give him no more money.”

  The twins looked at each other, then Tony said, “So what’s gonna happen to us?”

  “We’ll hafta go someplace else,” Freckles muttered. “That’s what’ll happen to us.”

  Terry looked like he was going to start crying, but Tony gave him a sharp jab in the ribs that kept him quiet.

  “I don’t wanna go no place else,” Hoops said.

  His dark face almost never showed what he was feeling, but right now Billy could tell Hoops was scared. It made the flip-flopping in his own stomach even worse. He was scared, too, but he couldn’t let the rest of them know. Leaders weren’t supposed to get scared.

  “We don’t wanna go no place else, either,” Tony said. “We heard about some of ’em other places.”

  “Okay, don’t worry,” Billy told them. “We’re all gonna stay right here.” At least he sure hoped that was what would happen, ’cuz he didn’t want to go no place else, either. Not unless he could go back home, and Sully said that wasn’t on. Not as long as his mom was still living with Uncle Brian—with his big drug deals and his even bigger fists.

  “So what are we gonna do, Billy?” Freckles asked.

  “Well, see, from what Sully was sayin’, I think that lady could give him the money if she really wanted to. But I think when he went to see her he kinda blew up. You know how he does sometimes. So maybe she didn’t understand that’s just his way. Maybe he made her so mad she wouldn’t listen.”

  “So…?” Tony said.

  “So, if she did listen…see, Sully said she doesn’t have a clue what goes on up here. But if she did, she’d give him the money, right?”

  “You sure?” Freckles said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. And I got a plan, too. But everybody’s gotta help with it.”

  LAUREN CLOSED the Eagles Roost file and set it aside. After yesterday’s visit from Jack Sullivan, she’d been strangely curious about him—and had realized she didn’t know the history of his program.

  When she’d first taken over as director, there’d been so much to learn that she hadn’t had time to read all the material in any of the files. And the Eagles Roost file had been intimidatingly thick.

  But now she’d read every detail, even though that seemed a lot like locking the door after the thief had left. It had kept her mind off the threat to Elliot, though, and had also gone a long way to satisfying her curiosity.

  Matthew Grimes had collected a lot of detailed information about Jack Sullivan, undoubtedly because of his criminal record. But from what she’d read it didn’t seem that Sully had an innately criminal character. He’d simply had some in
credibly bad breaks—a father he’d never known and an alcoholic mother who’d died when he was eighteen were two of the worst. At any rate, she now knew a lot more about Jack Sullivan’s life story than she had before.

  She glanced at her watch, wondering if she should phone over to Nate’s and get something delivered for lunch. Hunter Clifton was so late for their appointment she was starting to wonder if he was coming at all. But she definitely wasn’t going to leave the office and risk missing him…which was really pretty ironic when he was her least favorite board member. After Sully’s visit, though, she had to talk to Hunter.

  She couldn’t shake her sense of guilt about that funding being cut off, because as far as she was concerned it should have been continued. So even though Sully was obnoxious as all get out…

  And he really was. He might look as if he belonged in a dream, but his personality was nightmare city. She could still hear the way he’d snarled at her. And that remark about her snooping behind his back had been absolutely dripping sarcasm—whatever he’d meant by it.

  But it was the kids at Eagles Roost who’d be hurt if his program went under. So the least she could do was talk to Hunter about it. Because if she could get him to do an about-face, then convincing the rest of the board members they should at least try to find some extra money would be a piece of cake.

  As if on cue, there was a knock on her door.

  “Who is it?” she called.

  “It’s your father.”

  She headed over to unlock the door. With the corporate offices of Van Slyke Enterprises on the top floor of the building, her father was always dropping in. And now that the family was threatened, he’d probably be doing it even more frequently. He and her mother had kept her on the phone for an hour last night, warning her about a thousand and one different things. Then they’d done the same thing to her sister. Marisa had called later, to compare notes.

  “Rosalie’s not at her desk,” her father greeted her when she opened the door.

  “No, she usually goes out for lunch with a friend on Fridays.”

  He nodded. “Well, I’m glad to see you had your door locked. I’ve put extra security in the building, but there’s not much more I can do. What about the idea of your taking some time off, though? Did you give that any more thought?”

  “Dad, as far as I’m concerned we finished that discussion last night. Elliot said the chances of anything happening were really remote, remember? So I’ll be fine. I’m sure we’ll all be fine. Elliot included,” she added, hoping she was right.

  Her father didn’t look happy, but changed the subject, saying, “Your mother asked me to stop by and tell you Marisa’s invited herself for dinner tonight. So if you’d like to come, too…”

  “I’ll call Mom later and let her know,” she said absently, tucking the idea of dinner into the back of her mind. At the moment, she had something more pressing to think about. How to politely get rid of her father.

  As much as she loved him, the last thing she wanted when Hunter got here was an audience. Especially an audience who didn’t believe she was capable of doing anything right.

  “Well,” she said at last, having come up with no better excuse than the truth, “if there’s nothing more, Hunter Clifton’s coming by to see me any minute, so—”

  “Hunter? Oh, well then, I’ll just wait and say hello.”

  She silently groaned as her father sat down across from her and began smoothing his already perfect gray hair.

  “You know,” he said, “I don’t think I told you, but Hunter and I have worked out the most interesting financing on that project in SoHo. He’s much more of a risk-taker than most bankers. He’s a good man.”

  “Mmm.” She smiled again. Her father didn’t actually know Hunter very well. They’d only met about six months ago, when Hunter had volunteered for the board. But Roger Van Slyke had always been one to judge a book by its cover. She clearly recalled him telling her, years ago, that Brandon was a good man, that she’d be a fool not to marry him.

  Her failed marriage, though, was a whole other story. Unless her father had any ideas about…no, Hunter was married, plus at least ten years older than she was. And even her father would never think Hunter Clifton was her type.

  Roger Van Slyke was just launching into the details of his SoHo financing when Hunter finally appeared—looking, as he always did, like one of the older male models from GQ. She suspected he had his hair trimmed weekly and spent at least fifteen minutes a day in a tanning salon.

  He and her father greeted each other before Hunter even glanced in her direction.

  “I’ve got your papers all ready,” she said when he did. Then she hesitated, reluctant to raise the other issue. But her father clearly wasn’t going anywhere, and Hunter was a genius at avoiding phone calls, which left her little choice.

  “Hunter,” she began, “there’s something I’d like to ask you about while you’re here.”

  “Uh-huh?” He pointedly checked his Rolex.

  “I had a visit from Jack Sullivan yesterday. The Foster Alternatives program at Eagles Roost,” she elaborated at Hunter’s blank look.

  His expression went from blank to annoyed in the blink of an eye. “I guess he wasn’t very happy.”

  “No. And it started me wondering…what would you think about the board reconsidering his application? After all—”

  “I think,” Hunter interrupted, “that would set an extremely bad precedent. And, frankly, in my opinion Jack Sullivan shouldn’t even be licensed to run a program like that, never mind get money from us. Why the Foundation’s been funding an ex-con is beyond me.”

  “An ex-con?” Roger Van Slyke said. “We’ve been giving money to an ex-con? That’s ironic, isn’t it, considering this problem Elliot has.”

  Lauren mentally screamed in frustration. Her father had never really been interested in the details of the projects the Foundation funded, and she’d just as soon keep things that way.

  “Your son has a problem?” Hunter said.

  Roger shook his head. “It’s nothing.” Then he looked at Lauren again and demanded, “What kind of ex-con? What did he do?”

  She shrugged and said, “Nothing much,” hoping he’d let it go. The tight set of his mouth, though, said she’d have to tell him what she knew. “He broke into a few apartments,” she explained. “But he was only nineteen when he went to prison, only twenty-one when he got out. That was thirteen years ago, and he’s been straight since then.”

  “You mean he hasn’t been arrested since then,” Hunter said. “I know,” he added, turning to her father, “that I haven’t even been a board member for a year yet. And I’ve tried not to criticize what’s been done before, but I really felt I had to object to that program.”

  Roger Van Slyke looked across the desk and pinned Lauren with his gaze. “Did you support it?”

  “Well…yes. All the reports Matthew Grimes wrote on it were very positive.”

  “Lauren, what your predecessor approved is past history. You’re the director now.”

  “I know that, but I understood why Matthew liked the Eagles Roost concept. Jack Sullivan had a rough childhood, just like the kids he takes on. They’re all at high risk for messing up their lives, and he tries to ensure they won’t, that they’ll never end up in jail the way he did. And the program has a lot of things going for it.”

  “Such as?” her father asked skeptically.

  “Well, for starters, the place he owns used to be an isolated fishing lodge, so he’s able to take these kids away from the problems in the city and put them in a completely different environment.”

  “A lodge? How did an ex-con get his hands on something like that?”

  “I wonder,” Hunter said snidely. “Maybe he broke into a few apartments after he served his time. Or maybe he pulled off something even bigger.”

  Lauren resisted the urge to glare at Hunter and kept her eyes on her father. “Sullivan inherited the property.”

  “From?
”

  She shrugged again. When she’d read that, she’d wondered the same thing, but the file hadn’t specified.

  “Humph…inherited it,” her father muttered, as if he’d forgotten how he’d gotten all his property. Not to mention all his money.

  “At any rate,” she pressed on, “Jack Sullivan provides a strong male role model that most of the boys have never had and—”

  “A strong male role model?” Hunter interrupted. “Lauren, the man’s a criminal.”

  “He was, Hunter. Back when he was only a kid himself.”

  “He’s still an ex-con, which is hardly what I’d call a good role model. The idea of him being responsible for a bunch of impressionable boys would have struck me as absurd even if there hadn’t been that trouble.”

  “What trouble?” Roger demanded.

  “Oh, Lauren hasn’t mentioned it? Well, it’s quite the story. Back in January, one of Sullivan’s kids went into the nearest town and robbed a bank.”

  “Fantastic,” Roger muttered. “And you thought we should continue funding the man?” He eyed Lauren critically, obviously certain this was yet another of her little errors in judgment.

  When he finally looked away, Lauren shot a few daggers at Hunter Clifton. She knew exactly why he’d been so concerned about that trouble. The bank Sully’s kid had robbed just happened to be a branch of the bank Hunter was a vice president of.

  Clearly oblivious to her daggers, Hunter said, “Let me offer you a little advice, Lauren. I know you have the paper qualifications for this job…”

  Pausing, he glanced over to where her master’s degree hung on the wall. His gaze lingered long enough to let her know he considered it to be from a second-rate school. Or, more likely, a ninth-rate school.

  “But you don’t have much practical experience,” he continued, focusing on her again. “And you’ve got to keep in mind you’re an administrator, not a social worker. And that there isn’t enough money in the world to make everyone happy. So you simply have to trust the board’s decisions, and not worry about the people we turn down.” He concluded his lecture by flashing her a phony smile, then looked at her father. “Had lunch yet, Roger?”