As the bidding surpassed the estimated value, Teller’s face grew ashen and sweat formed on his brow. Nora’s mouth went dry. She glanced at Agatha Blair and saw on her face the cruel grin of a victor without mercy. Her heart fell as she made the connection with the journal. The Agatha of Mike’s journal was Agatha Blair. Further proof of C.W.’s duplicity. And now he would have her painting. How she loved the van Gogh, and how she despised Charles Walker Blair.
The whispers ceased into silence as it grew clear that Teller could not meet the new bid. Heads turned from the side of the room to the rear, searching for a signal, any small movement that would indicate another bid from Teller. None came and Walton met Agatha Blair’s gaze.
“I have my high bid,” Walton said. “Do I hear another?”
A new bid sang out, piercing the silence in its clear-toned soprano.
As one, all the heads in the crowd swung toward the voice in the rear of the room. One woman stood at the door. She was young, blond, tall, and attractive, and on her face she wore a look of fierce determination. The room was in an uproar. Nora strained to hear the comments, trying to ascertain from the crowd who the mysterious woman was. She looked vaguely familiar, but Nora couldn’t place her.
“I thought that marriage was on the rocks,” she heard a man mutter behind her.
The crowd’s buzz echoed one name: Blair. It must be Cornelia, she thought. Teller’s wife. Another Blair had entered the bidding! Like the rest of the crowd, Nora sat flabbergasted at the unusual turn of events. This was turning into more than an auction. A family’s saga was unfolding before the crowd’s eyes.
Walton put his derailed auction back on track. In a monotone that belied the flush on his cheeks, he reopened the bidding. Immediately the crowd hushed. Cornelia took a step forward and searched the crowd. Her gaze rested on Sidney Teller, and Nora read on the woman’s face an expression of love and loyalty that she envied. Then Cornelia turned to Agatha Blair and stopped, hard, with a cold stare. A cough sounded in the silent crowd.
Walton focused on Agatha Blair. She sat stiffly in her seat; only her hands moved while they squeezed the ball of her cane. Nora looked from Cornelia to Agatha, then back to Cornelia.
Agatha Blair raised her cane. Cornelia smiled and bid again. The murmurs of the crowd rose in volume. Up came the cane, up again came Cornelia’s hand. Up went the bid. Agatha was visibly upset. The skin on her face was as taut as a drum. When Agatha raised her cane to make the record bid, she looked ready to club someone with it.
Walton looked to Cornelia. Cornelia Blair Teller gave her head a discreet shake no.
“Sold!” Walton announced with a tremendous pound of his gavel.
The crowd erupted in surprise and delight. People were on their feet, clapping their hands, slapping backs. What a good show; there would be fodder for the gossip mill for months. Men and women who had ignored Nora the day before rushed over to congratulate her now. Nora was in a daze, totally unprepared for the tumult.
Between the squeezing of her palm and the cool kisses on her cheek, she followed with her eyes Cornelia’s path to her husband. No one stood in Cornelia’s way as she wound through the aisles to where Sidney stood, silent and transfixed. Husband and wife met hands and without a word exchanged, walked together, uninterrupted, from the riotous room. Agatha Blair was gone.
Buffeted by well-wishers and gladhanders, Nora finally made her way up to Walton. He hugged her and led her from the throng into the privacy of his office. There, sitting like vultures upon the tapestry chairs, sat her lawyers. Ralph Bellows was noticeably absent.
“Well, gentlemen,” Nora began as she proffered a steely gaze. “Let’s settle our accounts, shall we?”
Agatha strode past Mrs. Baldwin’s odious expression into C.W.’s office with the attitude of a victor surveying her spoils. She paused to study the Rothko abstract on the wall, ran her hand over the Rodin sculpture, then sauntered her way toward C.W., her cane clicking on the wooden floor. Finally, she settled herself with a satisfied grunt in the deep leather chair opposite his desk, keeping her hands tight upon her ornate cane.
“Son,” she began.
C.W. was sitting in a dark leather chair before the large expanse of his polished mahogany desk. The wood was void of even a single sheet of paper. His eyes coldly swept over her, then he nodded.
“Isn’t it a tad dark in here?” Agatha asked. “Why are the drapes drawn?”
“There’s light enough for this afternoon’s work.”
She smacked her lips, savoring the moment. “I do hope you are not too disappointed that I won the van Gogh instead of Sidney. It was foolish of you to waste your time offering him the same deal. Even though you did send your sister in reserve.”
His eyes narrowed, but he did not move a muscle.
Agatha’s cane lightly tapped the floor. “Yes, yes. Thought you had me there, didn’t you? But the three of you combined could never outwit me.”
C.W. saw the glimmer in her eyes. She was truly enjoying this. He wasn’t. “Let’s get on with the business at hand,” he said wearily.
“Don’t take it so hard,” she said as she pulled out the auction papers from her bag and set them on his desk. After a dramatic pause, she inched the papers toward him with the tip of her polished finger. “You offered your controlling interest of the Blair Bank in exchange for the van Gogh. That was the deal. The deal is done. Here is the van Gogh. Now…”
C.W. leaned back in his chair and brought his fingertips to his lips. Staring over them, he impassively studied her greed and malice.
“Why do you hate me so much?” he asked calmly.
She cocked her head, obviously surprised, perhaps even amused by his question. Then she slowly spoke.
“I hate you because you always had my number. Even as a child, you were lurking, hawking my every move. You even tried to talk your father into divorcing me—of course I knew about that.” Agatha’s fingers tightened around her cane as if she were strangling it. “You never accepted me. Neither did your sister. None of the Blairs did.” She stomped her cane. “Hah! Who needs you?”
Agatha resettled herself in her seat, gathering herself as she looked to her left and her right, finally raising her nose in a haughty stare.
“Enough of this mother-son banter. Here is your painting,” she said, reaching out with her cane and tapping the auction papers atop his desk. “I want my stock.”
C.W. slowly ran his finger along his jawline. “The bank, the house, the name if I can help it—nothing will be yours. Nor will it ever be.”
The smile froze on Agatha’s face. “You wouldn’t go back on your word. Not you. Not a Blair.”
C.W. slowly shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t.” Sitting up abruptly, he opened his desk with a sharp pull, took out a pile of papers, and set them in a neat pile atop his desk.
“I had in mind a trade.”
“A trade? What trade!”
“Instead of controlling interest in the bank, I thought you might like to buy my silence instead.”
Like a flustered crow, Agatha spread out her elbows, then brought them tightly back to her sides. “Silence for what?” she shrieked.
He took one memo from the top of his pile and eased it toward her. She grasped it from the desk to her face. He saw her eyes widen, then narrow. He watched as her jaw clenched and her fingers whitened on her cane. She reminded him of a gargoyle he had once seen in Paris.
“Where did you get this,” she hissed.
“Does it matter? What matters, dear stepmother, is that I am in possession of Michael MacKenzie’s private papers and journal. You thought they existed, didn’t you? Sent your minions to search. But they never found them. They were never discovered because MacKenzie’s wife was too smart for the lot of you. She suspected foul play all along and took them as her only protection against your backstabbing maneuvers.”
He flattened his palms upon the papers as he leaned forward. “You led MacKenzie on, creating a web so intric
ate that neither he nor I knew what was going on. Then, like the black widow you are, when you were done with him, you took everything he had and killed him.”
“He committed suicide.”
“There are many ways to kill a man. I know.”
He leaned back in his chair, but he was clearly angry now. He studied Agatha’s pale face closely.
“You have been caught in your own web, Agatha. What I have here—” he tapped the papers with the tip of his finger “—will not only take everything you have, but it will put you in prison for a very long time.”
“You do that and it will ruin your bank!”
“I doubt it. Shake it up a bit, perhaps. But ruin it? No.”
“But the van Gogh!” she shrieked. “Why the game?”
“Ah…the game. As I said, it wasn’t a game. I knew I would win. You are incredibly avaricious, Agatha. I knew it, and I counted on it to set my strategy.”
Agatha’s voice lowered to a husky whisper. “What strategy?”
“You do play chess, don’t you? Sidney wanted control of the bank. Desperately. He bid up the painting enough to ensure a fair auction; he was my knight. Cornelia then moved in to push the bidding higher, and the auction into a success; she was my bishop. And Nora, my queen, will now step forward and repay the bank loans, clearing both her name, and my own.”
C.W. leaned far forward over the desk and stared deep into Agatha’s gray eyes. “You do remember those loans, don’t you? The ones you forged my name to?”
Agatha paled and her lips parted.
“It seemed only fitting that you should pay back the money you stole,” C.W. continued, sitting back and screwing the cap to his black fountain pen with quick twists of his wrist. His business was almost completed.
“So now the accounts are balanced, MacKenzie’s debt has been repaid and you, dear Agatha, have purchased a fine painting.”
“My money!” she cried, rising.
“Why, Agatha. You never liked cheap art.”
She began to rail against him, calling him names from the gutter and cursing him, his family, and MacKenzie. But when her slurs turned to Nora, he cut it short.
“Enough!” he called sharply, fixing her with his famous cold stare. She shrank back against the wall.
“Don’t you ever refer to Mrs. MacKenzie in those terms again,” he warned. “In fact, I don’t want her name to be fouled by so much as crossing your lips.”
C.W. paused to collect himself. He was very, very angry and ready to lash out. After a slow breath and straightening his tie, C.W. gathered Agatha’s purse and cane and, politely taking her elbow, steered her across the room. He waited until they reached the door before speaking again in a low voice, careful to enunciate clearly.
“I will not press charges if I have your resignation on my desk by six tonight. You’re out of the bank. You’re off the board. And, you have one month to clear out of my family home.” He swung wide the door, handing her the auction papers. “Your painting, madam. Study its message well.”
Agatha, seeming dazed, turned slowly and, without another word, left. He heard the faint click, click, click of her cane dissipate down the hall, then the velvety swoosh of the elevator, and she was gone.
C.W. lowered his head and released a deep sigh. The deed was done. Yet, he felt no joy in this victory. Revenge was not sweet. God, he thought bitterly. Was he cursed to live out this routine again and again?
He remembered Seth’s words: “God gave us each a field. It’s our job to find a way to live in it.”
C.W. tightened his fist. He’d come too far to return to despair. He’d found his field, and it wasn’t this one. His business here was done—the lot of it. Sidney had been put to the test and passed with flying colors. His sister had proven herself a Blair and stood by his side. She would stand by the bank. Everyone, even old Abe, all had come through. Family and loyalty—that was all that mattered. The rest he could sign away, with a smile on his face. He wanted to go home.
He almost ran to the phone, picked it up, and dialed his sister’s number. Sidney answered.
“Sid, I know it’s short notice. May I come over?”
There was a pained pause. “You’re always welcome in our home.”
“I’ll be right over. Brother.”
C.W. scooped up Mike’s papers and shoved them in his briefcase, grabbed his coat, and raced out the door. He never looked back.
34
A NOVEMBER RAIN PELTED the windows of Nora’s hotel room, a mean, cold kind of rain that she felt even indoors. Nora rubbed her arms and turned away from the window. Let the world cry, she thought bitterly to herself. I’ve cried enough.
The morning’s weather suited her mood. She closed her suitcase, clicked the latch, and with a heave, hoisted her suitcase from the bed. Then she rang for the bellboy. One more bill to pay, and she was out of New York for good.
The last two weeks had been purgatory, with no heaven in sight. The auction had ended well, thanks to the van Gogh, but not well enough. Her debts were paid and she’d come out of the skirmish with her head high. Yet, personal honor came at a high cost.
That thought brought back to mind the farm and the fifty-two ewes that hadn’t survived. Those that had were unfit to breed. Even a number of her “babies” had died of pneumonia during that freak storm. They just hadn’t made it. Neither had she.
Nora slumped upon the bed and rested her arms upon her knees. The carpet blurred, yet there were no more tears to fall. The farm felt so far away now. A distant place in another time. Nora understood that life was difficult. Yet she’d always believed that somehow she’d save the farm. She’d believed that she’d found a place, at last, that she could call home. That dream was hard to let go of.
And she had to let it go. The auction hadn’t brought enough capital to cover the looming farm losses. When she could admit it, she didn’t have the heart to start again from scratch without C.W. So she had put the farm on the market and it sold quickly.
It almost killed her to sign the deed. She was glad Seth hadn’t lived to see the sheep dead and the farm sold. Frank and Junior could make arrangements with the new owner; they’d make out all right. Yet, from some deep recess in her mind, Nora knew the old shepherd wouldn’t have quit. Seth would have tried again. “Life is like that,” he would have said with a shrug.
Nora’s cheeks burned. What choice did she have? She had done her best at the farm, and she was through being sorry. It was time to face facts. Without the dream, the farm was just geography. She’d find some place to live—any place—it didn’t matter. She’d get some job. Her life would go on, without childish dreams.
Nora brushed away a lock of hair from her face, along with the thought that the dream had lived with C.W.
“You don’t love him,” she told herself. “You don’t even hate him. You feel nothing for him. Nothing.” She repeated it again and again like a mantra, hoping to convince herself of its truth. But the void left by his absence these past two weeks proved her a liar.
Three knocks sounded on the door. Startled from her bleakness, she shot upright. “Come in,” Nora called, wiping her cheeks.
The bellboy stepped in. He seemed so young. She felt so old.
“Here for your bags, ma’am. And,” he added, handing her a large padded envelope, “this came for you.”
“I thought I was finished with all these legal papers,” she muttered, tipping him and taking the package. Reading the return address, she stopped midstride.
“Where did you get this?” she demanded.
“From the front desk,” he answered defensively.
It was from Charles Walker Blair. She ripped it open, spilling out a small green-and-red tin. Bag Balm.
She stared at the tin with wide, disbelieving eyes. Was this some kind of sick joke? Attached by a piece of tape was a small, heavy calling card. She twisted it over, recognizing at once his tight, scrawling script. “Thought you might need this. I do.”
“Sh
ould I take these down, Mrs. MacKenzie?” The bellboy’s voice filtered through the layers of her confusion.
“What?” she asked, her voice distant.
“The bags. Should I take them to the lobby?”
“Oh. Yes, of course. Here,” she said, giving him another tip. She looked again at the tin in her hands. “Bring them to the front desk. And please, watch them for me.”
The bellboy left, shaking his head at the dizzy blond. When he counted his tip, however, he called out, “Thanks again!” and whistled down the hall.
“Why is he doing this?” Nora asked herself as she fingered the tin. She refused to believe he might be sincere. He had to be after something. What more could he want from her? She opened the envelope and reached through bits of torn padding searching for something…anything. Her fingers brushed against a thick fold of paper. Yanking the plain envelope out, she unsealed it and, hands shaking, scanned the papers it held.
Her mouth went dry as she read the papers. It was the deed to her farm, purchased in her name.
Nora tapped the papers against her hand. Thoughts were racing in her head so fast she couldn’t make sense of them, so she had to physically burn off the confusion. A few laps around the peach carpet and she caught hold of one idea—and it stuck fast.
Charles Walker Blair was paying her off. That had to be it. This was her little stipend for a job well done. No strings attached.
In a rush of self-righteous fury she threw the Bag Balm across the room. The little tin bounced from the wall, clattering loudly, popping its lid. Instantly the room reeked of its antiseptic odor.
“Well, Mr. High and Mighty Blair. This is one girl who can’t be paid off. If you think you can ease your conscience this easily, you’ve got another thing coming!”
The Long Road Home Page 37