With that he turned and walked away.
Furious, Kelsey sat there steaming for a long moment. But then as the door swung shut behind him, she grabbed her things, tossed a ten on the table, and got up. She ran after him.
“Walter!” she called, once she was outside on the sidewalk. He turned to face her. “What are you keeping me away from? What are you trying to hide?”
His eyes darkened. “I’ve already explained this to you. We have to disassociate B & T from you and these allegations of fraud against your great-grandmother.”
“My great-grandmother wasn’t a fraud!” she hissed, her back straight and her chin high. She’d never thought she would see this day—when a member of the Tate family would have to fight for the company and the integrity of the Tate name.
“Can you prove it?” he said in a lower tone. “Because if you can, great. We could take things public and try to repair the damage done by your cousin. But I doubt that you can, and right now I don’t see any other way around this. I’m sorry, Kelsey, but I spoke at length with Rupert Brennan yesterday. He may be a little eccentric, but he’s not crazy and he’s not giving up the fight. I’d move carefully on this if I were you.”
Kelsey wanted to scream. Walter, who should have been her strongest ally, was now her adversary. She wished Great-Grandma Adele were here with her—or her father or someone else she could trust. Someone who would back her up and give her the freedom to do what she needed to do. A week ago she would have turned to Gloria. Tonight, she had been counting on her team. But there was no team, no Gloria, no Nolan, no Adele.
There was just her, and she was alone.
Swallowing the painful lump in her throat, Kelsey told herself to calm down, that she couldn’t blame Walter for this. He was only trying to do the best he could to ensure the company would ride out the storm.
“Talk to me, Walter,” she said in a more reasonable tone. “We both want this horrible mess to go away. I’m doing what I can from the outside, but there’s still a lot I need to know. I deserve some information.”
He stood there for a long moment, as if hovering between coming and going. Then he sighed heavily and looked at his watch. “All right. I can give you fifteen minutes.”
Together they returned to the restaurant and to her table in the back corner, though when the waitress came to get Walter’s drink order, Kelsey apologized, saying that her group wouldn’t be coming after all and that they would be happy to move to a smaller one.
“No prob,” the woman said. “We don’t usually get much of a crowd on Thursday nights anyway.”
Once she walked away, Kelsey turned to Walter and asked him to start by explaining to her about the takeover. He gave her a brief summary of events, saying that on Monday afternoon he’d been contacted by Pamela Greeley of Queen’s Fleet Management Group, who made him an offer for Brennan & Tate.
“Trust me, that offer was not in our best interest. I took it to the board, and of course they rejected it.”
Kelsey pondered that. “Were you surprised when the offer came in?”
“Of course. I had no idea it was in the works. And I’m very unhappy about this whole thing, but we’re in it now, and I’m doing the best I can—for B & T and for you, Kelsey, whether it feels that way or not.”
Deep down, she wanted to take his words at face value, but it was hard. Could she really trust him? How did she know what he was really doing while she was banned from the office and her usual sources of information?
“What did Gloria think about the offer?” she asked. She didn’t want to rat out Ephraim and the secret he’d shared with her about the argument he’d overheard on Monday between Gloria and Walter, so instead she left it to Walter himself to tell her. If he answered honestly, it would be a good sign that he was on the up-and-up.
“Gloria was all for it, much to my surprise,” he said. “We had words. It didn’t go well. The day she died, she was still so angry about it that she wouldn’t even speak to me. I figured she would cool down eventually and then we could talk like rational adults. Instead, she killed herself, leaving me to wonder why she’d taken such an absurd stance against the company she loved more than life itself.”
The waitress approached the table with the mug of hot tea Walter had ordered and a fresh cup of decaf for Kelsey. Then she asked if she could take their order.
“We’re not staying,” Walter said to her, and again Kelsey was reminded of how differently this evening was playing out than she had expected. At this point she should have been surrounded by her EA and her top-notch team, fighting over slices of pizza and hashing out the mystery that was quickly consuming her life. Instead, she was here sipping coffee, stomach growling, with the man who had kicked her out of her own family company.
“You say you had words. When was that?”
“Monday afternoon, downstairs in the auditorium.”
“And did you call her at home later that night? Around ten thirty?”
Walter looked startled. “No, why would I do that?”
She studied his eyes, trying to decide if he was telling the truth or not. “Vern said someone called her at home Monday night at about ten thirty, and after that she was upset and went back to the office and stayed there till dawn.”
A noisy group of diners came in the front door, distracting them both. Once the people were settled at a front table and had quieted down a bit, they resumed their conversation.
“This is the first I’ve heard of this,” Walter said earnestly. “I can’t imagine what would have brought Gloria back out at that hour, much less kept her out for that long.”
They were both quiet for a moment as Kelsey tried to decide how much to tell him.
“To be honest, Walter,” she said finally, “Gloria did several things recently that have me questioning her motives. Things you may not be aware of.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “For starters, did Rupert tell you about the letter he got inviting him to the ceremony?”
“The anonymous one? With the invitation and the cash? Yes, he did. What about it?”
She hesitated, hoping she was right to trust Walter with the secrets she had thus far unearthed. “That letter came from Gloria.”
Walter’s head jerked back, as if he’d been slapped. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Without another word, she reached into her purse and pulled out the printed copy. “I figured out her password and found this yesterday. I brought it up to your office and was about to show it to you when you had me escorted from the building.”
He took the letter from her and read it through, several times, his face growing ashen as he did.
“I don’t understand,” he said finally, handing it back. “Gloria was the one charged with squelching this issue the last time it came up. Why would she turn around now and undo all of her own hard work?”
Kelsey let that question sit there between them as she folded up the letter and tucked it back into her purse. “I don’t know, but you might have someone poke around a bit more in her files. Who knows what else you’ll find in there? I came across this in less than half an hour, and I had barely scratched the surface.”
The poor man actually looked as though he might be sick. “But why?” he whispered, more to himself than to her. “Why would Gloria turn on us this way?”
Kelsey sipped her coffee, studying his face. “I have a theory if you’d like to hear it.”
“Please. Something. Anything.”
Settling back in her chair, Kelsey told him that she thought it had to do with the situation five years before, when he was first brought in to run the company and Lou and Gloria were both passed over for promotion. She said that Gloria had been extremely hurt by the whole thing and had been harboring resentment ever since.
“Why did my father do that anyway, Walter?” she asked. “No offense, but why did he need you when he already had two outstanding candidates in-house? Both Lou and Gloria were competent enough to step into the
positions of CEO and COO. Did my father not trust them in some way?”
Walter shook his head. “No, lack of trust had nothing to do with it. I think in Gloria’s case she was so competent in the position she already held that Nolan wanted to keep her there forever. His long-range plan for her was to continue to develop her department so that it would eventually become its own division.”
“So she never would have risen to COO or CEO?”
Walter shook his head. “Not under Nolan’s long-term plan, no. As for Lou, your father had great respect for the man, but at that time he felt he was too immature, too impulsive to become CEO just then. That’s one reason I was Nolan’s first choice for the job, because I’m not exactly a spring chicken. He told me straight out that he expected me to serve at the helm for ten years and then retire. At that point, his hope was that Lou would have matured enough to step up and take my place.”
Walter sipped his tea as Kelsey thought about that. She didn’t see Lou as impulsive, just aggressive, which wasn’t necessarily a bad quality to have in this business. If she was honest, she had a feeling her father’s stance had had more to do with Lou’s nouveau riche mentality than his “immaturity.” The man wore thousand-dollar shoes and lived in Trump Tower, but every once in a while he’d let slip a “youse guys” and reveal his humble Brooklyn roots. And while her father wasn’t exactly a snob, he’d been raised in a far more refined environment. Someone like Lou at the helm of the family company would have been distasteful at best, embarrassing at worst. Nolan had probably hoped that another ten years would serve to file away the rougher edges and make Lou a more suitable representative for the Tate family. She wasn’t proud of that thought, but she had a feeling she was right.
“Unfortunately,” Walter continued, “while your father’s plan was a sound one, he didn’t do a good job of communicating it to Lou or to Gloria. In response, Gloria was very upset, from what I understand, but at least she sucked it up and got on with things. Lou, on the other hand, did not. True to his nature, he left B & T in a pique and went to start his own company.”
“Which he’s been quite successful with, by the way.”
“Oh, I know. No one doubted his talents, Kelsey. It was just a question of his readiness for the position at that time.”
“But when Lou left B & T, that would have opened up the COO position after all, right?”
“Correct.”
“So, once again, Gloria must have expected a promotion into the spot left vacant by Lou’s departure.”
Walter nodded. “Probably. Instead, your father decided to dissolve the COO position and divide out its duties, most of which came to me.”
“Leaving poor Gloria passed over again.”
“I’m afraid so. Maybe you’re right. Maybe her resentment had festered in the years since. She always worked well with me, but then again she was a professional, never the kind to wear her heart on her sleeve.”
Kelsey nodded in agreement. Some of Gloria’s biggest lessons to her as mentor involved keeping a level head and making business decisions with facts, not emotions. Acting from hurt feelings wouldn’t fit Gloria’s character. If she had chafed working under Walter, she had kept her feelings in check and done an excellent job without revealing what was really going on inside.
Which had probably only served to make the situation worse.
“Anyway,” Kelsey concluded, “I think Gloria may have taken all of that rejection harder than anyone realized. I think she’d probably been simmering with resentment ever since, just waiting for her chance to get even. That sounds impossible, I know, but it’s the best explanation I’ve been able to come up with.”
They were both silent for a moment. Kelsey watched a plate of nachos go by and felt her stomach rumbling. Maybe when they were finished she would order some dinner for herself.
“But why now?” Walter asked. “It’s been five years. Why choose this point in time to sabotage the company?”
Kelsey shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with the big PR campaign we’ve been conducting to promote the Tate name. How better to bring the company to its knees than by letting that campaign reach a fever pitch—all Tate, all the time—and then slam the Tate name with allegations of fraud? It’s brilliant, actually. She sent that letter to Rupert Brennan a few weeks ago and set off a chain of events that just might lead to the end of the company as we know it. Voilà, sweet revenge at last.”
Walter sipped at his tea for a moment and then spoke. “Let’s say you’re right and that’s really what she was trying to do. But to what end? What did she hope to accomplish? She’s an employee of B & T herself, not to mention a stockholder. By damaging the company, she’d only be hurting herself. As my mother used to say, she’d be cutting off her nose to spite her face.”
“Which is why none of this made sense until I heard about the hostile takeover.”
He looked at her, squinting, and then understanding slowly flooded his features. “The stock value.”
Kelsey nodded. “It’s my theory that Gloria wanted to drive down the value of the stock so that the takeover would be more feasible for Queen’s Fleet Management Group. I’m sure Pamela promised her a cushy new position after the takeover—maybe even at the top spot. Gloria wasn’t just being spiteful for spite’s sake, Walter. She was killing two birds with one stone.”
“You’re talking about corporate sabotage, young lady.”
Kelsey raised her hands, palms upward. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”
With that, she sat back and waited for him to process her theory. The poor man looked stunned, a general who’d just learned there was a traitor in the ranks.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
April 12, 1912
ADELE
The sea was calm again on Friday, and Adele and Jocelyn had spent half the morning on the boat deck, visiting, reading, and warming themselves in the sun. Now that lunch was over, Adele had come back up to the boat deck again, alone this time, to wait for her Uncle Rowan. The air was colder than it had been that morning, but it was still pleasant enough to be outside, thanks to the warm new navy coat Aunt Oona had made for her prior to the voyage. Adele didn’t even need her hand muff, though she was glad she’d thought to wear her gloves this time.
At the moment, Jocelyn was three decks down in the enclosed promenade. She had found some storybooks in the library and brought them with her, hoping to help entertain some of the children there. As for Tad, Adele had a feeling he was currently in the smoking room. She wasn’t sure what the men did in there all day, but apparently that had quickly become one of his favorite places on the entire ship. At least he seemed to have made some new friends in there. Right now, Adele was grateful for the relative solitude of the boat deck as she waited for her uncle’s arrival. They had an exciting appointment coming up in a little while, and she was relieved to have this chance to relax and focus on what lay ahead.
Once Uncle Rowan joined her, the two of them would be going into first class to have tea with Mr. Neville Williams. Only they had been invited, and though Adele wasn’t sure why Jocelyn and Tad had been excluded from the event, a part of her was glad. She hoped to discuss matters of business and finance with Mr. Williams, and that would be easier and far more pleasurable without the bored, glazed-over eyes of her cousin or the scornful, dismissive looks of Tad.
At least he had begun to tone down all of that a bit. Last night at dinner, Adele had been trying to calculate how many meals would be needed for the entire voyage. When she expressed her final estimate aloud, rather than ignoring her or making fun, Tad had actually responded with interest. Soon, they were entertaining everyone at the table with various facts they had learned about the galley; for example, that the ship had started out with fifty tons of meat and poultry and five and a half tons of fish, all served on twenty-one thousand plates and washed down with beverages in thirteen thousands cups.
It made for a fasc
inating discussion, and by the time the meal had drawn to a close and Adele pushed the last of her dessert aside, the two of them had moved on to a spirited debate about how much coal was burned in a single day in order to maintain a speed of twenty-two knots. By the time they finally agreed on six hundred tons a day, the conversation had shifted to whether that speed would allow Titanic to break the record for the fastest crossing of the North Atlantic. Tad claimed he had it on good authority that the ship was traveling fast enough to arrive a day early in New York, thus ensuring they would make it into the history books. Adele countered that this was just nonsensical smoking room talk, and it would be far too dangerous to maintain that speed through the ice fields to come.
After dinner, as the men and the women parted ways so that the ladies could visit the library and the gentlemen relax in the smoking room, Tad had actually taken hold of Adele’s hand and brought it to his lips in farewell. She wasn’t sure how she felt about such an action—or about him, for that matter—but she’d been flattered by his attentions regardless. Perhaps he was the one who had given a bad first impression and was not nearly as obnoxious as she’d thought.
“Adele!”
At the sound of her name, she turned to see her uncle moving toward her across the open deck, a wide smile on his face.
“Oh, good,” Rowan said, coming to a stop in front of her. “I had hoped you’d be out here already so that we would have a few moments to chat before going to tea.”
Adele noted that her uncle had changed into his finest suit for the occasion. She, too, had taken care with her appearance, styling her hair and donning another of her new dresses, an emerald-green wool crepe with a shadow lace collar and plaited-front skirt.
“You look absolutely lovely, by the way,” Rowan said, eyeing her outfit approvingly.
“And you, sir, look as if you must have wandered into second class by accident,” she replied with a smile. “Better get back to first class by dinnertime, or they will be missing you at the captain’s table.”
A trio of female passengers began moving their way, so before the women could attempt to engage the two of them in friendly conversation, Rowan took Adele’s arm and steered her in the opposite direction.
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