“It’s chocolate heuchera,” I said.
“You mean coral bells? No, I don’t think so,” she told me. “I’ve never seen that variety before. I was just saying to Lily that it must be a—”
“I’ll catch you later,” Tom said with a smile as the woman continued to tell me my business. I run into this a lot. Gardening enthusiasts often turned into zealots who, like baseball fanatics or wine collectors, prided themselves on an encyclopedic grasp of their beloved subject’s minutiae. I watched Tom out of the corner of my eye as he worked his way across the terrace, stopping from time to time to say hello to the many people he seemed to know, and I felt a surge of anticipation. I’ll catch you later. I wasn’t sure whether he meant it literally and intended to stay around for my guided tour—or not—but I knew that something had been righted between us.
It was nearly noon when I decided I needed to take a break and grab a glass of the lemonade Eleanor had set out for visitors on the deck. But when I got to the table I saw that the several large glass pitchers were empty. A couple of ice chips floated in a half inch of water at the bottom of the insulated bucket. It was hot now, and I could tell that the guests who were milling around on the deck were hoping for something cool to drink. I picked up the empty pitchers and made my way around to the kitchen entrance. The inner glass door was open, and I could see and hear into the kitchen area through the screen.
“. . . that’s all I’m asking for,” Eleanor was saying. She was facing Chloe across the butcher block island. Lachlan was sitting at the table, scrolling through his cell phone messages.
“Not my problem,” Chloe said. “And what in the world makes you think I have any influence over what Graham does anyway?”
“I’m—I’m desperate,” Eleanor said. “I’m asking you—no, I’m begging you. My son put his life savings into MKZEnergy because of what Mr. M said. And everything I have—everything—is tied up in that company.”
“Well, welcome to Mackenzie World,” Chloe told her. “I can’t believe you were naive enough to accept Graham’s claims without checking into them first. He’s a salesman, for heaven’s sake! And unfortunately, he’s the kind who tends to believe his own sales pitches.”
“But what am I going to do? What can I tell my son?”
“Tough luck?” Chloe said. “I don’t mean to sound callous, Eleanor, but how do you expect me to help you at this point? Everyone knows it’s buyer beware when it comes to investing. I’ve got enough money troubles of my own right now—plus I have Lachie to worry about.”
“But he promised me—”
“Oh, spare me! I have no idea what Graham might have promised you—he promises the world to everyone he meets. Now where the hell is he? He made us come all the way up here for this goddamned boondoggle. You’d think he could somehow manage to put in an appearance.”
I backed away from the screen door, still clutching the pitchers. I didn’t want to think about what I’d just overheard. It wasn’t meant for my ears, I told myself. It has nothing to do with me. I felt my mental focus narrow, blocking out Chloe’s words. I had things I had to attend to. Thirsty visitors. I was halfway aware that I was operating on a kind of automatic pilot. I just knew I had to keep moving. There was a spigot at the bottom of the steps just beneath the deck, and I decided that I would fill up the pitchers with cold water from the tap. I was halfway down the side steps when I heard raised voices on the hillside below me.
Then I heard a scream. A long, high, piercing scream. And then another. I hurried back up the steps and over to the railing. A group of people was clustered at the edge of the waterfall terrace, looking down.
“Call 911!” I heard someone cry. The kitchen door slammed behind me.
“What’s going on?” Chloe asked as Eleanor and Lachlan followed her out onto the deck. I didn’t bother to answer.
I ran. Hoping it was nothing. A slip. A turned ankle. Please don’t let it be anything serious, I prayed. A crowd had gathered at the overlook by the time I reached the terrace.
“What happened?” I asked, pushing my way to the front. There was a group of people below, clustered around something white on the ground. I saw Tom running down the stone steps that Nate had so recently rebuilt.
“Okay, the paramedics are coming,” he said. “They told me not to move him. Back up and give him some air.”
It wasn’t until a couple of people had edged away as Tom suggested that I saw who it was. He was flat on his back. His right arm was flung over his face, but there was no mistaking the silvery hair. Tom knelt beside him and gently pulled his wrist between his own fingers, feeling for his pulse.
“Hold on,” I thought I heard him tell Mackenzie. “Just hold on now.”
13
By the time the ambulance arrived, the terrace was jammed with onlookers.
“Who is he?”
“What happened?”
“Someone said it’s the owner.”
“I heard he just collapsed.”
“It’s the heat.”
“It’s a heart attack.”
“Move back, people!” an EMS worker cried, pushing through the crowd as two others ran behind him with a stretcher. I stood by the waterfall, clutching the wrought-iron railing, and watched as the paramedics rushed down the steps and over to the group surrounding Mackenzie. I saw that Chloe and Lachlan had joined them. They both seemed remarkably composed. Chloe stood off to the side, arms crossed, looking on silently as the paramedics crouched around her ex-husband. It was hard for me to see what they were doing, although one seemed to be administering CPR. I saw Lachlan approach Tom, who had moved away from Mackenzie when the paramedics arrived. They exchanged a word or two, with Tom nodding in agreement to something Lachlan said.
My eyes welled up with tears as the EMS workers lifted the stretcher bearing my client and started the cautious climb up the stone steps. Though Mackenzie was strapped down, the workers were obviously trying hard to keep the stretcher level. I could see them straining under the weight, the sweat pouring down their faces. Chloe, Lachlan, Tom, and the rest of the small group followed behind. It looked all too much like a funeral procession to me, and I felt a chill run through my body.
“Tom!” I called, hurrying over to him. “How is he? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But it could very well be a heart attack. I’m going to drive the wife and son to the hospital. They don’t know the way.”
“That’s kind of you,” I said. But I wasn’t surprised that he’d volunteered to help. He seemed to me the sort of person you could count on in a crisis. And one who would know the right thing to do.
“Do you think we should call things off here?” I asked him.
“I’m not sure, Alice . . . ,” he said, but then I think he realized that I was at a real loss. “But if it was up to me? Yes, I think I would. He might—I’m afraid he might be in pretty bad shape.”
“But he was breathing, right?” I asked. “You could feel his pulse?”
“I think so. But I’m not a doctor. Listen,” he said, touching my arm. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything more, okay?”
“Thanks,” I said. My heart ached as I watched him follow the paramedics. What a disaster! For Mackenzie. For the Open Day. And, yes, also for me. My problems seemed to be coming to a head. What was I going to tell my employees and suppliers now? As I walked up through the sunlit gardens to find Vera, I felt sick with worry. And guilt, too. All I could think about were my own concerns while Mackenzie’s life could be hanging in the balance.
“Oh, what a shame!” Vera said when I told her that I thought we should cancel the event. “We’re having such a wonderful turnout. I think we might actually be setting a record.” She turned and looked down at the many people who were still wandering through the garden rooms. The hush that had fallen over the crowd when the EMS team arrived had lifted no
w. Most of the guests didn’t seem to realize that it was Mackenzie who’d been taken away in the ambulance. I heard someone roar with laughter.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, “but I don’t think we have any choice. I very much hope Mr. Mackenzie will recover quickly. And then we could reschedule later in the summer.”
“I’m afraid not,” Vera said. “The rest of the season is writ in stone at this point. What a pity, Alice. You’ve really done a superior job here. Oh, well. But I think you’re probably right; best not to appear insensitive. Lisbeth and I will tell the volunteers to start asking the guests to leave.”
“Thank you,” I said. We’d been talking in the driveway. As I watched her walk back to the sign-in table I heard a crunch in the gravel behind me.
“You’re Alice Hyatt, right?” Though he sounded familiar, when I turned around I didn’t recognize the middle-aged man standing there. He had a bushy salt-and-pepper mustache and a big stomach. It took me a few seconds to place the voice.
“Jeff Isley? The Herald?” I said.
“That’s right. I’m grateful you told me about this,” he said, taking in the gardens and views. “It’s pretty incredible. Any chance you could spare a few minutes? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days.”
“Yes, I know,” I said.
Isley shook his head. “Look,” he said, “I’m just trying to figure out why you’d want to go to bat for someone like Mackenzie. You know he’s going to end up screwing you just like everybody else.”
“That’s none of your business,” I said. “And now, if—” I was about to tell him to get lost when I saw Mara hurrying along the driveway toward me with Danny in tow.
“Is it true?” she cried as she came up to us.
“I was about to come find you,” I said. “We’re telling everyone to leave.”
“Oh, God!” Mara said. Her face was drained of color. “Is he dead?”
“What’s going on?” Isley asked.
“Come into the house with me,” I told Mara, turning my back on the reporter. “Let’s find Eleanor.”
I could hear Sal Lombardi’s voice in the living room when we came into the entrance hall. I started down the corridor in that direction, but Mara didn’t follow me.
“We’ll see you in the kitchen,” she said, taking her son’s hand and heading the other way.
“Okay,” I told her.
Sal, Gigi, and another couple I recognized as Mackenzie’s wealthy neighbors down the mountain were sitting on the leather sectionals in front of the wall of windows.
“Hello, Alice,” Gigi said as I approached. “Eleanor invited us in after the ambulance left. We were all just wandering around in total shock! God, what a horrible thing to happen to you on your big day.”
“Any word on how he is?” I asked. I supposed it was Eleanor who had served them the glasses of wine they were drinking.
“Not yet,” Sal said. “You look like you could use a drink. Do you want one?”
“Thanks, but no,” I said. I realized it was probably inappropriate for me to ask one client about another client’s finances, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to know. “Listen, is it true that Mr. Mackenzie’s business is in real trouble? There’s a reporter here from the Herald who’s been hounding me about a story’s he doing on it.”
“Just like every other business reporter in the world,” Sal said. “It’s that jerk Isley, right? Does he know about Graham?”
“I think he does now.”
“Well, there goes the rest of my investment.”
“Honestly, Sally,” Gigi said, “you make it sound like all you care about is money.”
“Isn’t that why you married me?” Sal said with a laugh. But he wasn’t smiling when he turned to me. “The answer to your question, Alice, I’m sorry to say, is yes. MKZ’s a house of cards at this point. It’s collapsing as we speak.”
“And once the market hears Graham’s in the hospital,” the other man added, “I bet those shares are really going to tumble.”
“Not that they have all that much further to go,” Sal said. “Damn Mackenzie! He brought this on himself. I just hope the bastard gets a chance to learn from his mistakes.”
I left them to their drinks. Mackenzie’s drinks, really. But who was I to begrudge them a little solace? No, what stuck in my craw was the fact that Sal, who seemed to have taken a beating in some deal with Mackenzie, could talk about it so calmly. He could even laugh! Unlike me, Sal had money to burn. Sal was a savvy investor who had no doubt evaluated the risk factors inherent in doing business with Mackenzie. Unlike me.
Mara and Danny were sitting at the kitchen table. Eleanor was on the phone.
“. . . but that’s all I know. . . . Well, go ahead and call the hospital, then. . . . No, I certainly will not!”
Eleanor hung up with a bang and said to Mara, “What nerve! I can’t believe that woman—” She must have seen Mara looking past her to me as I came through the doorway. Eleanor stopped herself and turned around. Her eyes were bloodshot and her lips puffy from crying.
“Have you heard anything?” I asked Eleanor.
“No,” she said. She walked over and sat down beside Mara, who lifted Danny onto her lap.
“Hey there, big boy,” Eleanor said, kissing the top of Danny’s head. Her cheeks were wet with tears.
“What did Mr. Lombardi say?” Mara asked. Her face was splotchy, as though she, too, had been crying. Which seemed odd to me. As far as I knew, Mara didn’t particularly care for Mackenzie; I wasn’t certain she’d ever actually met him. And yet she’d seemed terribly distraught—in fact more emotional than I’d ever seen her—when she first came up to me and Isley on the driveway. Perhaps, like me, she was worried about how we were going to deal with the bad check if Mackenzie was seriously ill.
“They were talking mostly about MKZ,” I said, sitting down across from Mara. “How the stock’s in free fall. And apparently the news about Mackenzie is only going to make matters worse.”
“And Mr. M told me this was the time to buy,” Eleanor said, shaking her head. “He told me that he shouldn’t really be giving me a tip like that, because some people might think it was insider trading, but that MKZ had never been better priced. And that big things were going to be happening at the company.”
“When was this?” I asked her.
“The beginning of the year.”
“And you invested a lot?” Though I already knew the answer, I didn’t want her to realize that I’d been listening in on her conversation with Chloe earlier.
“Yes, but the thing is—” Eleanor took a deep breath and continued. “I told my son, Derek, about it. I was so proud that I could share something so important with him. I wanted him to know I wasn’t just Mr. M’s housekeeper—that he really valued me. Derek didn’t tell me until yesterday—when he first realized the stock price was sinking—that he cashed in his 401(k) so he could get in on the deal. And he’s got a young family to support.”
We sat there in silence for a moment. Then Eleanor said: “I just can’t believe Mr. M would let this happen to me! I know he’ll do something to help when he hears how much I lost.”
“I’m sure he will,” I said. I was counting on the same kind of miracle from him.
“Because, you know, he really is a good person,” Eleanor went on. “He’s always been so generous to me. He put me on full benefits right away. He always gave me a nice holiday bonus. And I always felt he appreciated who I was and what I did for him. I felt he cared. No, I know he did. People just can’t fake that sort of thing.”
I wasn’t about to tell her, but I knew all too well that people could.
14
Sal stopped by the kitchen on his way out to say good-bye.
“You’ll call me when you get word—right, Eleanor?”
“Of course, Mr. Lombardi.”
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br /> After we heard the visitors leave, Eleanor got up from her chair with a sigh.
“I guess I should get some lunch on the table,” she said to Mara. “Do you and Danny want to stay?”
“Sure,” Mara said. I hadn’t been invited, but I was too upset and nervous to sit still anyway.
“I need to get back to the office,” I said. I knew I had to keep moving and working—anything to keep from dwelling on the situation. But it was painful to drive along the top of the gardens on my way out. Had it really been only a little over four months since I’d first seen these half dozen sloping acres? I’d invested so much time, energy, and imagination into them! And so much hope. The Open Day had come to seem the ultimate proof of my worth, not just as a landscape designer but as a person. Where did that leave me now?
When I got back to the office, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon sorting through the accounts. Once I got a better grip on what we actually owed, I was certain I’d feel less panicked. Green Acres was a solid, going concern, I told myself. I wasn’t about to let one bad account—no matter how big—undermine that. I’d forgotten, though, that Mara had upgraded and moved the accounting software to her computer. And I didn’t realize until I tried to log in at my own computer that I could no longer access the books from there.
I moved across the room to Mara’s desk and sat down. Because she’d arranged her area so that the back of her terminal faced me, I rarely had the opportunity to see her screen. It was filled now with a montage of photos. Family photos, I assumed, because there was Danny and a young woman, around Mara’s age, who looked a lot like her except that she was smiling in almost every frame. And there was a shot of a good-looking man in his late twenties and an older man standing in front of a ranch-style house flanked by willow trees. It cheered me to think that Mara and Danny were part of a larger family, even if Mara never alluded to it.
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