Look Closely

by Laura Caldwell

  Why? It brought me back to that other question—why had Sean wanted to hire me? Did he know my family from when we lived in Woodland Dunes? The thought came to me that he had been the man my mom was dating, but I couldn’t believe that. He was sharp and mean, rude and unfeeling. My mother would never go for someone like that. Yet what did I know? I barely knew her.

  The cab swung to the left onto Sheridan Road, and eventually turned into a short brick driveway, approaching a white wedding cake of a house. It had huge, twisted white columns and balconies from every room on the second floor. A fountain in front sent arcs of sparkling water into the air.

  I asked the cabbie to wait, hoping that my meeting would take no longer than half an hour, and I headed for the front door. It was opened by a maid, who said very little as she showed me into a parlor off the front foyer. She disappeared for a minute and returned with a tray of tea and cookies, which she set on a low table. The room was pleasant, with a yellow porcelain-tiled fireplace at one end and pastel-colored Orientals on the floor. Works of the Impressionists, some of which looked suspiciously like originals, lined the walls.

  A woman, who appeared in her late forties, strode into the parlor. She had short brown hair, and she wore a brown pantsuit, looking at odds with the light colors filling the rest of the room.

  “Hailey Sutter, I presume,” she said, stretching out her hand.

  I rose and shook it, trying not to flinch at the force of her grip. “You must be Eden Fieldings. Thank you for meeting with me.”

  She sighed and said nothing. The deeply etched lines around her eyes and mouth made her seem permanently tired, eternally unhappy.

  We both took our seats. Eden gestured wordlessly toward the tea tray, as if to say, “Help yourself.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll get right to the point. I’m representing McKnight Corporation.”

  “Yes, so I heard,” she said in a dry tone.

  I cleared my throat, then busied myself with taking a legal pad out of my briefcase. “I’m here because I’d like to find out anything I can about the takeover of your company by McKnight Corporation.”

  She swallowed; she looked down, as if she was trying to hold something back. “What do you want to know?”

  “First off, I’d like to know if you’ve been contacted by Evan Lamey, or someone from his office. He’s the plaintiff’s attorney on this case, and he—”

  “I know who he is,” Eden said, inflectionless.

  “I take it to mean that he’s tried to reach your family.”

  “Yes, but we’ve refused to see him.”

  “I see.” But I didn’t. “If I may ask, then why are you meeting with me?”

  Eden began tapping the toe of her pointy suede pump. I had the feeling that she didn’t even know she was doing it. “My father insisted.”

  “Your father? Walter Fieldings? My secretary said that you’d given her the impression he was rather aged and incapacitated.”

  Eden glanced over her shoulder toward the open doorway of the parlor. For a moment, she looked like a guilty schoolgirl. “My dad has had a number of medical problems over the years. I run the business now.” She laughed, a sudden, caustic laugh. “Not really a business, actually, but I manage our holdings.”

  “Well, I’m sure that’s very time-consuming.” It came out condescendingly, which I hadn’t intended, but Eden caught it.

  She straightened up and gave me a hard look. “You’ve got five minutes. What do you want to know?”

  Now what I really wanted to know was why Walter Fieldings had asked his daughter to meet me. But it was more important to learn the facts of the previous takeover, in case Lamey was able to get them from some other means. Despite everything else, I had a trial coming up.

  “What I’m primarily interested in,” I said, “are the events that led to your family selling your business to McKnight. As I’m sure you know, there have been vague allegations that there was some impropriety that caused your family to sell.”

  “Yes, vague allegations,” she said. Was she mimicking me?

  “Can you tell me how the decision was made?”

  “I was only in my twenties then. I wasn’t an integral part of the decision-making process, but it was a family matter, so we all discussed it. And McKnight twisted our arm, so to speak, until it broke.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  Eden made that caustic laugh again but stayed silent.

  I decided to back up for a second, and ask the question I couldn’t shake. “Can you tell me why your father wanted you to meet with me?”

  She blinked a few times. She looked less angry, less sure of herself. Leaning over, she poured tea into a delicate white cup. “He’s gotten sentimental these last few years. It was something to do with your name.”

  “My name?”

  “Yes. Your last name.”

  Just then an elderly man in a golf shirt and khaki pants came into the room. He used a walking stick made of old, gnarled wood. “May I interrupt?” he said.

  “Oh, Dad,” Eden said. “You’re supposed to be sitting down.”

  He ignored her. He walked into the room slowly, making good use of the walking stick, each step a labor of movement. And yet the whole time, his gray eyes never left mine.

  “You are Hailey Sutter?” he said.

  “Yes.” I stood to meet him and offered my hand.

  It took a long time for him to reach me, and I began to feel awkward, standing with my arm out. Finally, he took my hand in his. It was large, probably once a strong hand, and yet now it felt papery and soft. “I’m Walter Fieldings,” he said. He had a head full of thick gray hair that contrasted with his heavily wrinkled face and the frail stoop of his shoulders.

  “Dad, here,” Eden said, pushing her chair toward him. Once he sat, she took a seat on the couch. “Ms. Sutter and I were just talking about McKnight Corporation, but I know this is a tough subject for you. Why don’t you let me finish this, then we’ll have lunch?”

  “I was just trying to find out exactly what happened when McKnight took over your company,” I said, sitting again. “From what I understand, there was some early disagreement, but you decided to sell, is that right?”

  Mr. Fieldings smiled. “In its most rudimentary form, that is what happened.”

  “Can you tell me the not-so-rudimentary version?”

  “Dad,” Eden said. Just that one word. A word of caution.

  Mr. Fieldings glanced in the direction of his daughter, but seemed not to see her. “How do you spell your last name?” he asked me.

  “Sutter. S-U-T-T-E-R.”

  “And your family? Where are they from?”

  The question threw me. I paused for a moment. “We’re from…Well, we’re from all over. My father and I have lived in New York for many years now.”

  “I see,” Mr. Fielding said. “And your father’s name?”

  That tightness in my chest that I felt this morning came back. “William Sutter,” I said, my voice coming out low.

  “And he goes by Will, does he?”

  “Do you know my father?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Fielding said. “I knew him once. I’m surprised you didn’t ask him about the McKnight takeover.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your father was our attorney.”

  I’d heard wrong. I was sure I’d heard him wrong.

  “Dad,” Eden said again in that warning tone.

  “Your father,” Mr. Fieldings said, leaning forward in his chair, his right hand still gripped tight to that stick. “Your father is the reason I lost my company.”

  No more than ten seconds of silence could have passed, but to me it was an eternity. Crazy old man. That was my first thought. He had to be mistaken. But then the doubt and the anger rushed in, adding to the already long list of emotions about my father. Something else he’d kept from me, apparently, probably hoping desperately that I wouldn’t dig too far into the McKnight case.

  My throa
t felt parched, my mouth too dry to talk. I moved forward in my chair to pour a cup of tea, spilling my legal pad from my lap in the process. “Sorry,” I said. “Excuse me.”

  By the time I picked up the pad and retrieved my pen from under my chair, Mr. Fieldings had poured me a cup of tea, which he offered to me on a saucer. I mumbled a word of thanks as I took it and sipped. It was a smoky black tea. Exotic and foreign-tasting.

  “I wasn’t aware my father represented you,” I said. “Are you sure it was him? The name isn’t that uncommon.”

  “He’s with Gardner, State & Lord?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s the same Will Sutter. Of course, this was a long time ago, twenty-some years ago now.”

  I took another sip of tea, the cup clattering as I set it back on the saucer. Calm down. So what if my father had represented Fieldings? So what if he hadn’t told me? I didn’t know all of his past cases. What would be the point? I glanced at Eden on the couch, who was watching her own father with a strange look, a mix of fear and anticipation.

  “Mr. Fieldings,” I said, my voice stronger now. “I take it from your comment that you weren’t happy with my father’s representation.”

  “Not happy?” he said. “Maybe you didn’t hear me correctly. Your father is the reason I lost my company. He gave confidential information to that bastard McKnight. And your client then blackmailed me with it.”

  “Dad!” Eden said. She got up from the couch. “I think that’s enough.”

  “Sit down, Eden!” He said this as if he was scolding a dog. “I’ve kept quiet long enough. I want to get this out before I die. And you don’t know what I’m talking about anyway.”

  Eden was silent. She slumped back on the couch.

  “I am quite sure that my father would never give away privileged information,” I said. “You must be mistaken.”

  “How old are you?” Mr. Fieldings said.

  “Almost thirty.” My birthday was five months away. I sounded like a toddler who says they’re “three and a half.”

  “Will Sutter represented me twenty-two years ago. I highly doubt that you know anything about it. Shall I tell you what happened? I find it ironic that you’re representing McKnight now, although maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. For all I know, your father was in his employ the whole time. Either way, you should know what I have to tell you.”

  It was hard to concentrate on what he was saying. Twenty-two years ago, I kept thinking. The year my mother died. “I don’t think my father has even met Sean McKnight,” I managed to say, but it came out weak, unsure.

  Mr. Fieldings chuckled. “I can assure you, my dear. They knew each other well enough.”

  He started to talk then. He leaned forward on his walking stick to make a point, never even glancing at his daughter, who seemed as shocked as I did by his tale. It occurred to me that she might be hearing this story, most of it anyway, for the first time.

  According to Walter Fieldings, my father had been hired to represent them against a takeover bid from McKnight Corporation. Mr. Fieldings had started his company, he said, and the family had decided long ago that it would never become publicly held, it would never be owned by anyone but the Fieldings family. At first they were pleased with my father’s work. Will had defended them well. Mr. Fieldings got the impression that my father had a personal vendetta against Sean McKnight, but that was fine with him.

  But then one day, Sean McKnight called Walter Fieldings. At first, Mr. Fieldings wouldn’t talk. He told McKnight to contact his attorney and was about to hang up, when McKnight said a few words that changed everything. “Your son, Laddy,” McKnight had said. “I know about his extracurricular activities.”

  Eden sat forward on the couch at that point. “Dad, I think that’s enough.”

  Her father snorted, waved her away with a quick gesture of his walking stick. “I’m not talking about the drugs, Eden. We could have gotten over that.”

  “Ms. Sutter,” he said, turning his gaze back to me. “What I’m about to tell you is private family business. I have no reason to trust that you’ll keep this confidential, since your father couldn’t, but I’m old now, my company is gone, and frankly it doesn’t matter anymore who knows. So I’ll tell you.”

  I made a barely perceptible dip of my head, unable to tell him to stop, unable to encourage him to continue.

  “My son, Henry, who I called Laddy in private, was a sweet boy.” He rubbed the top of his walking stick, his knuckles turning pink from the tight grip. “He was a little too sweet, unfortunately. Took everything personally, if you understand me. He was very sensitive. His mother and I managed to get him into a university out East. We were hoping that college and some time away from home would toughen him up. He was supposed to help me run the company one day. But he didn’t handle college well, either. Got mixed up with the wrong folk, started taking drugs. Cocaine, they tell me, which I consider a fool’s drug. But then it turned out that my son was a fool.”

  Mr. Fieldings took a breath. He rubbed his hand over the top of his walking stick some more. “Goodness,” he said, “this is tough, even after all these years.”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was still waiting for my father to come back into the story. When I glanced at Eden, she was looking down, twisting a napkin in her lap.

  “We got a phone call one night from the police station near the university. They’d arrested Henry. He was involved in some…” Mr. Fieldings rubbed his lips together, seemingly searching his mouth for the right words. “I don’t know what you’d call it. A ring, I suppose. A prostitution ring for men who like other men.”

  Eden made a tiny gasp. Her father looked at her implacably. “Not now, Eden.”

  “Will Sutter,” he said to me, “was the first person I called. He was doing well for me, so I thought, and I asked his advice. And he handled the Henry situation for me. He had the charges dropped, the records sealed. We got Henry into a drug center. We still had hopes for him. We thought he could clean himself up and get his act together. And life returned to normal for a while, until McKnight called me that day. He knew about Henry.”

  “Mr. Fieldings,” I said, relieved to find my voice and a point that I could argue. “That doesn’t mean my father told him the information. Mr. McKnight could have easily learned about your son’s arrest from an investigator.”

  “I’m not a fool, my dear,” he said. “Obviously, I thought of that. But you see, it was that first phone call from McKnight that made me realize he had learned this from your father. He called my son Laddy. That was my nickname for him, no one else’s, and I didn’t use the name in public. But I’d told your father that when I called him upset that night. Your father knew.”

  “I’m sorry, but I still don’t think that’s enough. I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

  “I confronted your father. He admitted to me what he’d done.”

  “What?” I said. My voice was too loud, echoing through the parlor.

  Mr. Fieldings’s wrinkled face seemed to tighten around the jaw with the memory. “He would never tell me why, but he admitted it.”

  “Then why didn’t you call the Attorney Disciplinary Committee if you were so sure? Why not turn him in?”

  “My dear, don’t you see? If I turned in your father, then I would have to come clean about my son. And if I did that, my family would have been ruined. I still had hopes that Henry would take over the reins from me. McKnight promised that he would keep me on after the sale. He led me to believe that he’d always have a Fieldings on the board, that kind of thing. I wanted to believe him. I wanted my son to have the chance to follow my legacy. So you see, I couldn’t tell anyone. I did what I had to do. I sold the company.”

  “And your son?” I asked.

  Mr. Fieldings was quiet for a few long seconds. “Laddy died seven years ago of an overdose. That’s why it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve lost my son, I’ve lost my company. My wife is gone. I have nothing left, you see?”
>
  On the couch, Eden cried softly. And what about your daughter? I wanted to ask. But all I could do was thank Mr. Fieldings for his time and for sharing his story. When I left the house, the sky was dove-gray and thick with rain. I walked to the cab, ignoring the drops that splashed my face, and I told the cabdriver to take me to McKnight headquarters.

  23

  As the cab sped south down Lake Shore, heading back to the Loop, I dug frantically through my briefcase for my cell phone. I dialed my father’s office. I missed a number and got a message for someone named Glenn. “Shit!” I said, squeezing the phone tighter, dialing the numbers again with more caution.

  The phone rang and rang, and finally my dad’s voice mail picked up. I hit zero and waited for Barbara, my father’s longtime secretary, to answer. But I got her voice mail, as well.

  “Shit!” I yelled again. The cabbie eyed me in the mirror.

  My frustration made me weepy, a few tears clouding my eyes. I hit zero again, and rolled the window down, letting the damp breeze blow on my face, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

  I finally reached the Gardner State receptionist and asked her to page my father. After what seemed like ten full minutes, he came on the line. “Hailey, sweetie,” he said, “where are you?”

  “Did you give Sean McKnight information to blackmail the Fieldings family?”

  Silence.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Answer the question.” My voice came out hard and even, as if I was talking to a witness at a deposition.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “So what?” I yelled.

  More silence. I had never raised my voice around my father.

  Finally, he said, “You know as well as I do that it shouldn’t be admissible in court.”

  “Are you admitting it then? You used confidential information and gave it to the opposing side?”