Dennis piped up. “That makes the outstanding shares worth roughly $73,750,000.”
My throat tightened and I was sure I was choking. Just to make sure, I fumbled in my purse and found my cigarettes and quickly lit one. Seventy-three million dollars. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Now I had to know. Up until now, I hadn’t thought about what this inheritance meant. In terms of dollars. Not more than a month ago, I was unemployed, and worried about whether I should spend the money for an oil change on my old clunker. I smoked my cigarette and stared at Dennis and Cleve.
I finally popped the question. “What was Tommy’s percentage?”
“Thirty-three percent.”
My old boss used to tell me I didn’t have trouble with math, I had trouble with arithmetic. I didn’t even try to make the calculation.
I thought it rude to ask the next question, but I pushed on.
“And that would be approximately what, Einstein?”
“A little over twenty-four million dollars, Kate.” Dennis said this proudly. He’d probably never had a client who’d left someone so much money.
“On paper,” Cleve added.
Of course, on paper. I couldn’t believe Tommy had been worth so much. On paper, of course.
“And, then there’s the matter of the life insurance policy,” Dennis said.
“Why would Tommy have a life insurance policy when he was worth so much?” I asked.
“The stock market is never a sure thing, and as he said in his will, he wanted to make sure he provided for you,” Dennis told me.
Why Tommy felt he had to provide for me was beyond my comprehension. I had never asked for, and in fact I would not have even accepted, alimony. I was too proud and besides, I was self-sufficient. My job had supported me before I met Tommy, and my job continued to provide for me. All of this wealth was overwhelming. To say nothing of the responsibility that went along with it.
I stood up and started pacing the room, chain-smoking.
“Cleve, I can’t take this all in. The money, the responsibility, it’s impossible. And unbelievable.”
Here I was suddenly very rich, and very depressed. And I certainly didn’t like the way I had inherited it all.
Dennis coughed to get my attention.
“The life insurance policy is valued at one million dollars,” he quickly spit out. He’d been dying to tell me that.
“Ha. A measly million? Peanuts,” I said sarcastically.
Dennis coughed again but this time it came out as a squeal.
“She’s joking Dennis, joking,” Cleve assured him.
I finally sat at the table and put my head down on my arms. I wanted to go to sleep now. Waves of fatigue rolled over me and I felt my eyes closing. I wanted to curl up in a ball under my duvet in my little apartment, and go to sleep. Sleep comes easiest to me when I’m stressed but I reluctantly forced myself to sit up and pay attention.
“Can I have some coffee? Is there a machine around where I can make some?”
Dennis jumped up. “I’ll get it for you. Decaf?”
“No way. I need high test.”
When Dennis left the room, Cleve quietly asked me, “How are you feeling about all of this, Kate?”
“How the fuck do you think I’m feeling?” I shouted. “Do you want me to jump up and down and yell, I’m going to Disney World? This is terrible, it sucks. I never asked for all of this. I’ve never even dreamed about winning the lottery. I have no idea what to do about all of this. I don’t want it.” I had a sudden thought. “I can refuse to take it, can’t I?”
Cleve slowly shook his head.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Because I don’t want it. What part of that don’t you understand?”
“Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. You take the money. And the responsibility. And the eleven hundred employees. And the fucking exotic fish.” At that, I burst into tears. I was so incredibly mature.
Dennis arrived at that moment with a thermos of coffee in one hand and a stack of Styrofoam cups in the other.
“Dennis,” Cleve said. “Can you give us a minute?”
When Dennis had left the room, again, Cleve told me to sit down and get a grip on myself. The man was definitely the strong, sympathetic type.
“You can’t change what’s happened Kate.”
“No I can’t.” I wiped my nose in a very unladylike manner on a balled-up Kleenex that I found at the bottom of my purse. “But I don’t have to like it. In fact, at this moment, I’m more pissed off at Tommy then I’ve ever been. Didn’t he have a favourite charity or something?”
“Kate, you’re missing the point. Phoenix Technologies was his life. And he said in his will that he wanted it left in the capable hands of the one person he trusted implicitly. You.”
“Well, Phoenix Technologies is in deep shit. Sure, I can type like a demon, transcribe dicta-tapes until the cows come home, organize a mean meeting, but I have no idea how to chair a board of directors and run a multi-million dollar company.”
Cleve reached across the table and covered my hand with his huge paw.
“You’ll just have to learn.”
I turned up the air conditioner full blast, and stood naked under the ceiling vent. When I was chilled sufficiently I crawled under the covers on the king-size bed, curled up in a ball and tried to sleep but I could still feel the caffeine coursing through my veins. The digital alarm clock on the bedside table read 1:45 a.m. and I cursed the amount of coffee I had consumed over the past several hours.
It had been just after midnight when Lou returned me to the hotel. The lobby was quiet and I was overwhelmed with feelings of loneliness as I trudged to the elevators.
After the meeting with Dennis, Cleve and I had returned to the Phoenix offices for the emergency board meeting. Cleve introduced me to each of the directors and then he conducted the meeting because I had told him I had absolutely no intention of chairing the meeting and that the onus was on him to get through the business at hand. I had sat mute throughout most of the meeting, trying to pay attention and understand everything going on.
It was the first time in my life that I remember feeling completely intimidated and shy. Shy wasn’t even a word in my vocabulary but the overwhelming enormity of what had happened to me in the last twelve hours rendered me helpless in front of these people.
The names of the directors were familiar to me when I was introduced but my mind was too full to try and remember their backgrounds. A couple of them I remembered from my dealings with the company when it had first gone public. One of the directors was a vice president of the company.
Cleve had started the meeting by introducing me formally and then explaining the terms and conditions of Tommy’s will. There were no gasps of surprise so I was sure everyone had been brought up to speed before I arrived. Cleve then put forth a motion to appoint me chairperson of the board and it had been carried unanimously.
The next item for discussion was the content of the press release that would be sent out first thing in the morning. The release set out in vague verbiage how I had come to be appointed to the office of chairperson. Several directors were quoted with bon mots about the tragedy of the loss of life and how pleased they were that I was joining the company and that I’d be a great addition to the team.
There was a paragraph about me, outlining my illustrious career in law and high technology. I had trouble believing that what had been written was actually about me. It was all factual but it gave me an uneasy feeling. Whoever had written it made it sound too good.
I held up the draft press release and pointed to the paragraph about me.
“Is this necessary?” I asked Cleve who was sitting beside me at the boardroom table.
“Absolutely. The shareholders are going to want to know who’s running the ship.”
“It’s too flowery. Almost unbelievable. Tone it down a little. I don’t think we should oversell me.”
/> “We’ll rewrite it. But we have to put in your background.”
“Fine. I’d rather we didn’t have to do any damage control when someone takes a close look at it. We should be up front from the beginning. Full, true and plain disclosure,” I reminded him, stating the strong, basic principle of securities law.
“Absolutely,” Cleve agreed with me. I wasn’t going to play any of the games with press releases that I had witnessed in my years at TechniGroup Consulting.
A short press release had gone out earlier in the day announcing the death of Tommy and the shares of the company had closed down about half a dollar. Cleve warned me that we could expect that the stock would be down again the next day and that it would be impossible to predict what the market’s reaction was going to be.
We finished up the meeting quickly, covering off the approval of the financial statements because the company had a deadline for filing the various documents with the OSC and the SEC and the stock exchanges. I abstained from voting.
Before leaving the office I asked for a copy of all press releases from the last two years and the last two annual reports and 10K’s. I had some serious studying to do and some fast catching-up. And I was probably going to have to hire a tutor to help me through the financial stuff.
After the meeting I made a quick exit and Cleve escorted me down in the elevator to the waiting car. In the elevator I broached the subject I had been avoiding all day.
“I want to speak to the police about Tommy’s death. I need to find out what happened. Has anyone been in contact with you?”
“Yes,” he responded slowly. “In fact, there’ve been several messages from the detective in charge. They want to meet with you as soon as possible.”
“They have no idea who was responsible?”
Cleve didn’t answer me.
“What’s happening with the investigation?” I pressed him.
We were outside the building now, beside the car, and Cleve conveniently ignored my question and opened the back door for me.
“Do you realize, I know nothing about how Tommy died. Except that he was shot in the back of the head. Now, if you have some more information, I’d be grateful if you’d share it with me.”
Cleve gave a visible sigh and a fatherly look came over his face.
“The investigation is continuing. Obviously. I have no hint of what’s going on.”
“You’re patronizing me Cleve. Don’t do that.”
“Fine. You’ll find out soon enough. I understand they’re investigating Tommy’s death as a homicide, as you know, and that they suspect it was someone who knew him. They have definitely told me it wasn’t a random mugging.”
“Thank you. What was so hard about sharing that information?”
Cleve stared at me hard, for a few moments.
“Because it seems you’re the obvious suspect.”
chapter nine
Sleep finally came to me but I woke up restlessly several times in the night. I dragged myself out of bed around seven and immediately made myself a pot of coffee. While I waited for it to brew I brushed my teeth and dunked my face into a sink of cold water to try and revive myself. I wondered if this is how drug addicts felt in the morning.
The red light on my phone was blinking and I checked for the messages I had ignored last night. There was only one and it was from Jay.
I called his studio apartment and woke him up. Told him I needed to see him before he went to work and asked him to come to the hotel and have breakfast with me. When he arrived forty minutes later I gave him a long, hard hug.
“Nice digs,” he said as he looked around the suite. “Certainly coming up in the world,” he joked.
“Comes with the territory. That’s what I need to talk to you about.”
We sat at the small dining room table where room service had laid out muffins, croissants, jam in little jars, fresh fruit, juice and coffee. I poured myself another coffee and explained to Jay what had happened over the last day. He didn’t speak throughout my whole explanation and when I finished, he had an amused grin on his face.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
“Yeah, well neither do I.” I lit my third cigarette of the day and blew the smoke at the ceiling, away from Jay. He hadn’t said anything when I first lit up in front of him and I was grateful. One doesn’t need to be reminded of one’s weaknesses.
“What’re you going to do, Kate?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Are you up for this?”
“What do you mean? The challenge? The new job?”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Jay said. “I know you. I’ve known you all my life and I’ve never known you to back away from a challenge. You’re incredibly bright and you’ll have no problem catching up with the business. I meant the wealth that comes with the challenge. Are you up for handling it?”
“I have no idea. You know me. I live from paycheck to paycheck. I barely have anything in my RRSPs. Last night I told Cleve I didn’t want it. I’m still thinking that way. Do you happen to know if sudden, new-found wealth changes people?”
“No idea. We were dirt poor as kids and I’m just glad to have a job and have enough money left over each week to send my mom. I’d have no idea how to handle what you’ve got now. I read somewhere recently that they’ve done a study on people who’ve won large sums of money in lotteries and they all say they aren’t any happier. But you’re a well-adjusted person now. Are you looking to be happier? Why would all this money change you?”
“The responsibility. It’s making me miserable already.”
“Scared of a little responsibility?” he challenged me.
I shook my head.
“Then dive in. Have fun with it. How many years have you been telling me you could do a better job than the monkeys at the top?”
“That was fantasyland. This is reality. And reality sucks.”
“Well, welcome to reality.”
As much as I felt like calling in sick on my first day on the job, I thought it would be prudent to at least show up and make an effort. I had no idea what to expect and no inkling of what lay ahead of me.
Carrie was at her desk when I arrived at 9:30 and I asked her to join me in my office.
“I’ll need your help with today with a few things,” I told her. “I need to get the lay of the land, so to speak. So, first things first. Can you show me where the coffee room is?”
She looked a little surprised but pleased.
I followed her through a maze of corridors to a large kitchen which resembled coffee rooms in offices around the world. Microwave oven, large refrigerator with an ice-maker on the front of the door, coffee-maker with several pots on the go, bulletin boards on the walls, and several Formica-covered, round tables with chairs. The room was empty of people and after I poured myself a cup we returned to my office. We didn’t bump into any staff in the hallways and I was surprised at how quiet the place was.
“The police have been calling?” I asked her.
She nodded.
“Well, let’s call them back and set something up. I need to talk to them.”
Two detectives arrived about half an hour later and I put aside the Wall Street Journal where I had been looking for financial news reports on Tommy’s death.
To my surprise, both detectives were women. They were complete opposites but that’s where the similarity to Cagney & Lacey ended. The one who introduced herself as Detective Bartlett was African-American and not much taller than me. The kindest way I can think of describing her physically would be rotund. She was round. Her face was circular and she wore her hair in a perfectly-shaped Afro. She was sporting two extra chins.
Detective Shipley was so tall I wondered if she had thought about playing professional basketball. My best guess put her at about six foot two. Her mousy brown hair was cropped short and it looked like she cut it herself. She was wearing brown, plain clothing which suited her just fine.
They wer
e strictly business and after a fashion got right to the point.
“Thank you for seeing us so quickly Ms. Monahan,” Shipley said as she rummaged around in her purse. “Ha,” she finally said, and flourished a dog-eared notebook. She put her head back in the purse and I glanced at her partner who just shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes.
“Pen, a pen,” I heard her mumble and I offered one across the desk to her.
She grabbed at it gratefully and flipped over several pages in the notebook. Shipley was not impressing me and I checked out her overcoat to see if there were any more resemblances to Peter Falk’s Detective Columbo. She finally settled down with the pen poised over her notebook and looked me in the eye.
“Could you let us know your whereabouts on the night Mr. Connaught was murdered?”
Nothing like getting right to the point.
“I was in Toronto.”
She noted that in the notebook.
“Exactly where?”
“In my apartment,” I replied.
“Can anyone verify that?”
“No.” I didn’t like the direction she was heading with this line of questioning, but I wasn’t surprised. When Cleve had told me that I was a suspect, my immediate reaction had been horror at the thought.
“Initially Kate, you’d be the best bet for a suspect. The ex-wife who stands to inherit.”
Cleve had watched the gamut of emotions run across my face and then had done his best to calm me down.
I snorted. “What, are they nuts?” I said.
“I know it’s ridiculous. We both know it. But they still have to question you.”
So, when Shipley started asking me very direct questions, I had my answers ready.
“When was the last time you saw your husband?”
“My ex-husband.” I stressed the ex.
“Your ex-husband. When was the last time you saw him?” she repeated.
“I think it was about six months ago.” I had been thinking a lot about that the night before and I had remembered fondly the last time he came to town. As usual, Tommy’d been on a tight schedule but made time to call me and we went out for dinner. I couldn’t remember the exact date but it had definitely been before all the trouble at TechniGroup.
Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions Page 5