Echoes of Titanic

by Mindy Starns Clark

  The room quickly dissolved into pandemonium after that, with the guards grabbing the man’s arms and trying to drag him out, the reporters continuing to shout questions, a woman Kelsey didn’t know—a tall redhead with short cropped hair—begging the man to “Stop it! Stop it!” and the man himself still shouting even as he slumped down in the guards’ grip. A heavy-set man, he used his dead weight to his advantage.

  “I came here to tell the world,” he yelled as loudly as he could, “that I have proof that the woman who called herself Adele Brennan was actually Jocelyn Brennan, Adele’s first cousin! Jocelyn assumed Adele’s identity after Titanic sank and came here to America pretending to be Adele so she could steal her inheritance!”

  Fortunately, that was all he was able to get out before the guards finally managed to pull him through the door. The reporters followed, the redhead was now screaming at the guards instead of the man, saying, “Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!” and the people in the audience chattered loudly about what had just happened. From the corner of her eye, Kelsey saw Lou jump up from his seat and join the fray, no doubt to help with damage control.

  Someone needed to speak up quickly in Adele’s defense. Kelsey thought about doing it herself, but she knew such words coming from the woman’s great-granddaughter would be seen as biased and wouldn’t carry much weight.

  Mortified and desperate, Kelsey looked down to see that today’s honored guests seemed decidedly uncomfortable. In the front row sat Pamela Greeley, the well-respected head of Queen’s Fleet Management Group and one of the older people present here today. Pamela’s career in the world of finance had overlapped with Adele’s, maybe even as far back as the late sixties. Though they never actually worked together in the same place, they had numerous business dealings over the years, and Pamela had looked up to the legendary Adele Brennan Tate as her own personal hero and the kind of businesswoman she aspired to be. Kelsey knew this because Pamela had been one of the speakers at Adele’s funeral and had said as much to the congregation gathered there. Kelsey had only been nine years old at the time, but she clearly remembered Pamela’s heartfelt words because they had echoed her own thoughts. Grandma Adele had been Kelsey’s personal hero too, the kind of woman she wanted to grow up to be.

  Looking to Pamela now, Kelsey implored her with her eyes, wishing she would come up and publically refute the claims of the man who had just disrupted the entire ceremony. Anyone who had known Adele knew that she was a woman of honesty and integrity. To call her an imposter was like saying Mother Teresa was selfish or Babe Ruth wasn’t much of a hitter. Adele had been the very embodiment of ethics, and everyone who knew her knew that. Pamela didn’t take the cue, however, so Kelsey gave up, knowing it would be rude and presumptuous to call the woman out by name and specifically ask her to come up and defend Adele’s honor.

  If only Gloria were here! She, too, had known Adele, had known the kind of person she’d been. Why wasn’t she around to help?

  Walter had only been with the firm for about five years, so Kelsey wasn’t sure if he’d ever known Adele personally or not. Regardless, he was missing at the moment too, having stayed with the security guards and the raving lunatic who had ruined her ceremony. Ditto with Lou, who was also MIA.

  Feeling like a deer caught in headlights, Kelsey looked out at the whole auditorium, which was now half empty. The roar of the voices of those who left could still be heard coming from the lobby, and those who remained were perched in their seats and looking up at Kelsey, unsure, as if they were too polite to leave but hoping she was about to dismiss them.

  Finally, she took a deep breath and said the only thing that came to mind. “I’m so sorry about all of this. I suppose we’ll have to speak with the caterers about what they put in the punch.”

  Her joke landed a few chuckles, but mostly the crowd looked antsy and ready to bolt. Growing more serious, Kelsey continued.

  “Obviously, there is no truth to that man’s allegations. I’m not sure what he was hoping to achieve here, but rest assured we’ll get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, maybe we should go ahead and try to wrap things up. I apologize that our ceremony has been cut short.”

  Glancing down at her notes, Kelsey tried to decide what parts—if any—of her talk she could salvage. “Before I was interrupted,” she said, lifting her eyes and looking out at the audience, “I was telling the story of my great-grandmother, Adele Brennan. Why don’t we just jump ahead to the part of that story that, to me, most clearly demonstrates her tremendous gifts and talents as a businessperson.”

  She went on to tell that part of her tale, how Adele’s husband, Edwin, was happy to be the behind-the-scenes administrator and facilitator while Adele was the star rainmaker. “They made quite a pair, and between the two of them managed to keep this company afloat through the crash of nineteen twenty-nine and the Great Depression.”

  Scanning the faces in the room, Kelsey was pleased to see that she seemed to have regained their full attention. She continued.

  “When this company was at its lowest point, it was Adele’s idea to invest in businesses run by women, immigrants, and minorities. That’s part of what helped save Brennan & Tate at a time when other investment firms were going belly up all around them. No other company would take a risk on these types of businesses, but my great-grandmother knew her roots and knew who to believe in. With that vision, not only did she and Edwin bring this place through some difficult years, but they also gave a chance to so many who came to them for financial help. For the second time in her life, Adele had been brought down to nothing and found the will and strength to survive and ultimately thrive. Her legacy is still with us today.”

  At that, the audience surprised Kelsey by bursting into enthusiastic applause. Smiling, she waited for the applause to wind down, and then she added, “It’s in the spirit of that legacy that I’d like to make the following announcement on behalf of the Adele Brennan Tate Foundation. My great-grandmother created the foundation when I was just a little girl, but I well remember her enthusiasm for its goal of empowering women in business. On tables out in the lobby, you probably saw some reports about many of the good works the foundation has been able to do. Now I’m thrilled to announce their newest effort: The Adele Brennan Tate Scholarship Fund, which will provide up to ten substantial scholarships per year to young women who demonstrate academic excellence in business-related courses and clear evidence of an entrepreneurial or investment-related spirit.”

  More applause, and though Kelsey was still devastated by the bizarre turn of events, she was glad at least that she’d managed to get to the main part of the ceremony anyway.

  “I know this has been one of the more, uh, unique events you’ve probably been to this week,” she quipped, “but I hope what you remember most from this afternoon isn’t the outburst of a stranger but the legacy and generosity of a truly upstanding, ethical, and memorable woman, Adele Brennan Tate, who was brilliant in business, charitable in life, and absolutely, positively who she said she was. I’d stake my life on that.”

  With those words Kelsey thanked everyone for coming. The members of the audience leaped to their feet and gave her a standing ovation. Yet, as convincing as she felt she’d been, she knew it wouldn’t count for much because none of the media people had even been in the room to hear her wrap things up.

  Now that the ceremony was finished and she was coming back down from the adrenaline rush of her closing words, she found herself feeling momentarily disoriented. What should she do next? Mingle with those who had stayed? Go out to the lobby and help handle the press? She was trying to decide when she heard her name being called, and she turned to see Lou standing off to the side of the stage, right where she had stood during Walter’s introduction.

  “Come on, kiddo,” Lou said, and that was all she needed to hear.

  With a final smile and a wave at her audience, Kelsey walked out the way she’d come in, giving Lou a quick embrace and then letting him lead her throug
h the backstage shadows to the stairwell door. She thought they would be going upstairs or maybe outside, but instead he led her to the one door of the four she never, ever used, the one for the maintenance area.

  The door didn’t even have a keypad for entry, but instead just a regular knob and deadbolt that were always locked. At the moment, however, the door was propped slightly open by what looked like an Italian leather shoe. To her surprise, Lou pulled the door the rest of the way open and then slipped his foot into the shoe.

  “Lou! Are those Testonis?”

  “Berlutis,” he replied. “Not the cheapest doorstop around, but it was all I could think of to do.”

  He gestured inside, and she moved forward up the narrow, grungy hallway that ran past the building’s HVAC system and maintenance supply area.

  “Where are we going?”

  “They need you in security, but this was the only way to get you there without going through the lobby.”

  They continued forward, finally coming to a stop in front of the door at the end of the hall. Lou reached across Kelsey to give it a sharp knock, and it immediately swung open to reveal the imposing figure of Ephraim Jones, head of security.

  “Hey, Kelsey,” he said in his low rumble of a voice. “You okay?”

  “I’ve been better,” she replied with a wan smile.

  “I hear that.”

  Moving back, he swung the door open all the way and gestured for them to come inside. Kelsey stepped forward but then glanced back to see Lou hesitating in the hallway. For the second time today, someone she needed and trusted was about to stay behind at the worst possible moment.

  “Oh, no you don’t. You’re coming with me,” Kelsey said to him, grabbing his wrist and pulling him inside.

  “I don’t work here anymore, remember?”

  “That doesn’t matter right now, Lou. I need you.”

  He hesitated and then did as she asked. “I’m here for you, kiddo. You know that.”

  Together they followed Ephraim around the corner to the security office. Standing nearby was Walter, a security guard, and a woman named Carole from the public relations firm. At the far end of the room was the man who had disrupted the meeting, deep in conversation with the spiky-haired redhead who had also been part of the ruckus. The two of them were arguing in hushed whispers, and at the moment they were so focused on each other that they didn’t even seem to notice Kelsey had come into the room.

  Walter, however, greeted her with a hug and an apology, much to her surprise. “I’m sorry I abandoned you in there,” he said in a low voice. “Carole told me you did an excellent job of calming everyone down and wrapping things up. I knew you would.”

  Kelsey glanced at the PR woman and then back at Walter. “Thanks, but I don’t know what good it did. All the media people had already left by then.”

  “They didn’t go far,” Ephraim said, gesturing toward a bank of security screens. The image on the left was coming from one of the lobby cameras, and Kelsey could see that the space was packed wall-to-wall with people. No big surprise there. They had gotten a whiff of a big story and weren’t going to go away until they knew who this man was and what it was he’d been trying to say.

  The next screen over showed the lobby at a different angle, near the doors to the auditorium. Moving closer, Kelsey could see several members of her investment research team, along with her EA, Sharon. They were huddled together talking, and when Sharon glanced up toward the camera, the worry on her face was clear.

  “So what’s the plan here?” Kelsey whispered, looking apprehensively toward the pair at the other end of the room. Now that she was getting a closer look at them, she could see that the man was in his mid-sixties with messy gray hair, thick glasses, and cheap, ill-fitting clothes. The woman looked to be a few years younger than he was, though that might have been because of her more youthful orange hair color—obviously from a bottle—and the spiky style she wore it in. How had these two possibly slipped past security and into the ceremony?

  “The plan,” Walter said, “is to get this man out of this building and then out of New York City before any reporters can get their hooks into him.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Florida, but that’s not where we want him to go just yet. Too easy for the reporters to track him there. Instead, I offered him a limo to Vermont, a week at my sister’s bed-and-breakfast near Burlington, and five hundred dollars spending money for while he’s there if he’ll keep his mouth shut. He’s not having any of it, but the woman with him is trying to talk him into it.”

  Kelsey’s eyes widened. Walter was trying to pay off this lunatic? That was absurd! The man had come here, made libelous accusations about her great-grandmother in public, and disrupted a big corporate event in the process. Now he was getting rewarded for it? Before Kelsey could voice her objections, Lou muttered, “Excuse us, Walter,” took her by the arm, and pulled her out of the room and around the corner.

  “Don’t blow your stack here, kiddo,” he whispered. “I don’t always see eye to eye with Walter Hallerman, as you know, but I think in this case it’s the right move. This kook’s done enough damage already. Let him get shuttled out of here and tucked away till the dust settles. You can follow up more privately later.”

  Kelsey wanted to scream, but she knew Lou was right. She fully intended to question the man now, before he left, but otherwise the only real move they had was to get him as far away as possible from that crowd of reporters in the lobby.

  “Fine.” Though she agreed to the plan, she still wasn’t happy as they returned to the other room.

  “I suppose I’d better get back out there,” Ephraim said in his deep voice, still eyeing the milling crowd on the screen. Looking at Walter, he added, “Are you sure you don’t want us to call the police?”

  “Nope. We’ll handle things in here ourselves. But thanks anyway.”

  Nodding, Ephraim headed to the main security door that led to reception. As soon as he swung it open, the noise of the crowd came rushing in.

  “Sounds like the vultures are circling,” Lou said as the door fell closed behind him. “I don’t get it. Why is this turning into such a big deal? Adele’s been dead for more than twenty years. Whether this guy’s telling the truth or not, it’s practically ancient history by now.”

  The PR lady turned and addressed Lou and Kelsey as well. “I’ll tell you why it’s a big deal,” she hissed softly. “For starters, we’re not just talking about Adele Brennan Tate, well-known Wall Street icon. We’re talking about a woman who also happened to be a survivor of Titanic. This man just served up the juiciest Titanic- related scandal anyone’s heard about in years. To make matters worse, the world’s already in a Titanic frenzy right now because of the anniversary.”

  “Anniversary?” Lou asked.

  “Yes,” Kelsey told him. “We’re coming up on one hundred years since the ship sank.”

  “In about a week and a half,” Carole said, “April fifteenth. I have you booked solid for that whole weekend, the fourteenth and fifteenth.”

  Kelsey nodded, resisting the urge to groan, as Carole continued.

  “Anyway, with this big hundred-year anniversary coming up, there’s not a media outlet in existence that wouldn’t kill for some huge story they could tie in with it—and the more outrageous that story, the better.”

  Lou sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Got it. Wow. Talk about bad timing.”

  Walter, who had been studying the screen, interrupted their conversation. “Carole, why don’t you go out there and spread the word to all B & T employees that they should get their things and go on home? I don’t want anyone hanging around tonight. Have them leave the building as quickly as possible. I know they are curious about what’s happening, but we need to clear out the lobby as much as we can—plus I don’t want any of them getting questioned by reporters.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Then see if your people need help schmoozing our special gu
ests out the door. I know the reporters and photographers aren’t going anywhere, but if we can at least get everybody else out, it’ll help.”

  “Will do.”

  As she headed for the same door Ephraim had used, Walter added, “After you’ve done that, Carole, you and your people are free to go too. We’ll deal with all of this tomorrow.”

  “Good idea,” she replied, “though I’ll wait to take off until after the caterers have all their stuff out.”

  With that she was gone, and Kelsey was glad. More than anything, she wanted to talk with the man who had ruined her speech with his insane accusations about her great-grandmother, but there was no reason for the PR woman to hear all the gritty details, whatever they might be.

  “Where’s Gloria in all of this?” Lou asked Kelsey softly. “I didn’t even see her at the ceremony.”

  Kelsey was trying to decide how to reply when Walter answered for her.

  “She’s up in her office. I just talked to her. I told her what happened and that we needed her down here ASAP to help with damage control, but she said she wasn’t coming. She’s not feeling well.”

  Kelsey could feel heat rising in her cheeks. Though she was as put out with Gloria as it sounded like Walter was, she felt the urge to defend the woman. She was obviously dealing with something difficult. If she wasn’t up to attending the ceremony, it stood to reason that she wouldn’t be coming down to help out in its aftermath, either.

  “You know she would be here if she could,” Kelsey replied, but as soon as she said it, she remembered the woman’s odd behavior before the ceremony and wondered if that were really true. Something weird had been going on with Gloria today.

  “All I know is that she’s been extremely unhelpful in all of this,” Walter snapped. “If she’s so sick that she can’t get herself down here, then she needs to go home.”

  “I’ll talk to her once we’re done,” Kelsey assured him.

  “Well, well, well,” the man said suddenly from the other end of the room.