“I’m not done yet. Get this: ‘Cassie’ isn’t even her real name.”
Nick furrowed his brow.
Eddie smiled. “Helen. Her name is Helen Stadler. Cassie—that’s not on her birth certificate. Not a legal name change. Totally made up.”
“So what? What’s your point?”
“I got a feeling about her,” Eddie said. “Something about her ain’t correct. We talked about this already, but let me say it again: I don’t care how sweet the snatch. It ain’t worth the risk.”
“All I asked you to do was to find out what Scott McNally was up to.”
After a few seconds of sullen silence, Eddie handed Nick another folder.
“So, those encrypted documents my guys found?”
“Yeah?”
“My guys cracked ’em all. It’s really just one document, bunch of different drafts, went back and forth between Scotty and some lawyer in Chicago.”
“Randall Enright.”
Eddie cocked his head. “That’s right.”
“What is it?”
“Fuck if I know. Legal bullshit.”
Nick started to page through the documents. Many of them were labeled DRAFT ONLY and REDLINE. The sheets were dense with legal jargon and stippled with numbers, the demon spawn of a lawyer and an accountant.
“Maybe he’s selling company secrets,” Eddie said.
Nick shook his head. “Not our Scott. Huh-uh. He’s not selling company secrets.”
“No?”
“No,” Nick said, once again short of breath. “He’s selling the company.”
81
“Why do you trust me?” said Stephanie Alstrom. They met in one of the smaller conference rooms on her floor. There was just no damned privacy in this company, Nick realized. Everyone knew who was meeting with whom; everyone could listen in.
“What do you mean?”
“Scott’s stabbing you in the back, and you hired him too.”
“Instinct, I guess. Why, are you working against me too?”
“No,” she smiled. Nick had never seen her smile before, and it wrinkled her face strangely. “I just guess I should feel flattered.”
“Well,” Nick said, “my instinct has failed me before. But you can’t be distrustful of everyone.”
“Good point,” she said, putting on a pair of half-glasses. “So, you know what you’ve got here, right?”
“A Definitive Purchase Agreement,” Nick said. He’d looked over hundreds of contracts like this in his career, and even though the legalese froze his brain, he’d learned to hack his way through the dense underbrush to uncover the key points. “Fairfield Equity Partners is selling us to some Hong Kong–based firm called Pacific Rim Investors.”
Stephanie shook her head slowly. “That’s not what I pick up from this. It’s strange. For one thing, there’s not a single mention in the list of assets of any factories or plants or employees. Which, if they were planning to keep any of it, they’d have to list. And then, in the Representations and Warranties section, it says the buyer’s on the hook for any costs, liabilities, et cetera, associated with shutting down U.S. facilities or firing all employees. So, it’s pretty clear. Pacific Rim is buying only Stratton’s name. And getting rid of everything else.”
Nick stared. “They don’t need our factories. They’ve got plenty in Shenzhen. But all this money for a name?”
“Stratton means class. An old reliable American name that’s synonymous with elegance and solidity. Plus, they get our distribution channels. Think about it—they can make everything over there at a fraction of the price, slap a Stratton nameplate on it, sell it for a premium. No American firm would have made a deal like this.”
“Who are they, this Pacific Rim Investors?”
“No idea, but I’ll find out for you. Looks like Randall Enright wasn’t working for Fairfield after all—he represents the buyer. Pacific Rim.”
Nick nodded. Now he understood why Scott had given Enright the factory tour. Enright was in Fenwick to do due diligence on behalf of a Hong Kong–based firm that couldn’t come to visit because they wanted to keep everything very quiet.
She said, “The least they could do is tell you.”
“They knew I’d go ballistic.”
“That must be why they put Scott on the board. Asians always demand to meet with the top brass. If Todd Muldaur thought firing you would help, he’d have done it already.”
“Exactly.”
“It freaks potential buyers out if a CEO gets fired right before a sale. Everyone’s antennae go up. Plus, a lot of the key relationships are yours. The smarter move was to hermetically seal you off. As they did.”
“I used to think Todd Muldaur was an idiot, but now I know better. He’s just a prick. Can you explain this side agreement to me?”
Her pruned mouth turned down in a scowl. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like some kind of deal-sweetener. From what I can tell, it’s a way to speed up the deal, make it happen fast. But that’s just a guess. You might want to talk to someone who knows.”
“Like who? Scott’s the only one I know who understands the really devious stuff.”
“He’s good, but he’s not the only one,” Stephanie said. “Does Hutch still speak to you?”
82
Nick had begun to dread going out in public.
Not “public” as in going to work, though that still took a fair amount of effort, putting on his Nick Conover, CEO act, confident and friendly and outgoing, when a toxic spill of anxiety threatened to ooze out through his pores. But whether it was school functions or shopping or taking clients out to restaurants, it was getting harder and harder to keep the mask fastened securely.
What was once just uncomfortable, even painful—seeing people the company had laid off, exchanging polite if tense words with them, or just generally feeling like a pariah in this town—was now close to intolerable. Everywhere he went, everyone he ran into, he felt as if a neon sign was hanging around his neck, its gaudy orange tubes flashing the word MURDERER.
Even tonight, when he was just another spectator at Julia’s piano recital. Her long-dreaded, long-awaited piano recital. It was being held in one of the old town performance theaters, Aftermath Hall, a mildew-smelling old place that had been built in the nineteen thirties, a Steinway grand on a yellow wooden stage, red velvet curtain, matching red velvet upholstered seats with uncomfortable wooden backs.
The kids in their little coats and ties or their dresses streaked across the lobby, propelled by nervous energy. A couple of little African-American boys in jackets and ties with their older sister, in a white dress with a bow: unusual in Fenwick, given how few blacks there were.
He was startled to find Laura’s sister there. Abby was a couple of years older than Laura, had two kids as well, married a guy with a trust fund and no personality. He claimed to be a novelist, but mostly he played tennis and golf. Abby had the same clear blue eyes as Laura, had the same swan neck. Instead of Laura’s corkscrew brown curls, though, her brown hair was straight and glossy and fell to her shoulders. She was more reserved, had a more regal bearing, was less approachable. Nick didn’t especially like her. The feeling was probably mutual.
“Hey,” he said, touching her elbow. “Nice of you to come. Julia’s going to be thrilled.”
“It was sweet of Julia to call me.”
“She did?”
“You seem surprised. You didn’t tell her to?”
“I can’t tell her to do anything, you know that. How’s the family?”
“We’re fine. Kids doing okay?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. They miss you a lot.”
“Do they? Not you, though.” Then she softened it a bit with a smile that didn’t look very sincere.
“Come on. We all do. How come we haven’t seen you?”
“Oh,” she breathed, “it’s been crazy.”
“Crazy how?”
She blinked, looked uncomfortable. Final
ly she said, “Look, Nick, it’s hard for me. Since…”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Nick put in hastily. “I’m just saying, don’t be a stranger.”
“No, Nick,” Abby said, inclining her head, lowering her voice, her eyes gleaming with something bad. “It’s just that—every time I look at you.” She looked down, then back up at him. “Every time I look at you it makes me sick.”
Nick felt as if he’d just been kicked in the throat.
Little kids, big kids running past, dressed up, taut with the preperformance jitters. Someone playing a swatch of complicated music on the Steinway, sounding like a professional you might hear at Carnegie Hall.
Laura’s nude body on the folding wheeled table after the embalming, Nick weeping and slobbering as he dressed her, his request, honored by the funeral director with some reluctance. Nick unable to look at her waxen face, a plausible imitation of her once glowing skin, the neck and cheek he’d nuzzled against so many times.
“You think the accident was my fault, that it?”
“I really see no sense in talking about it,” she said, looking at the floor. “Where’s Julia?”
“Probably waiting her turn at the piano.” Nick felt a hand on his shoulder, turned, and was stunned to see Cassie. His heart lifted.
She stood on her tiptoes, gave him a quick peck on the lips.
“Cass—Jesus, I had no idea—”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Did Julia order you to show up too?”
“She told me about it, which is a different thing. I’d say a daughter’s piano recital falls in the category of a family obligation, don’t you think?”
“I’m—wow.”
“Come on, I’m practically family. Plus, I’m a big classical piano fan, don’t you know that about me?”
“Why do I doubt that?”
She put her lips to his ear and whispered, her hot breath getting him excited: “I owe you an apology.”
Then she was gone, before Nick had a chance to introduce her.
“Who’s the new girlfriend?” Abby’s voice, abrupt and harsh and brittle, an undertone of ridicule.
Nick froze. “Her name’s…Cassie. I mean, she’s—”
I mean, she’s what? Not a girlfriend? Just a fuck? Oh, she’s the daughter of the guy I murdered, ain’t that a funny coincidence? Tell that to Craig, your alleged-writer husband. Give him something to write about.
“She’s beautiful.” Abby’s arched brows, lowered lids, glimmering with contempt.
He nodded, supremely uncomfortable.
“She doesn’t exactly seem like the Nick Conover type, though. Is she an…artist or something?”
“She does some painting. Teaches yoga.”
“Glad you’re dating again.” Abby could not have sounded more inauthentic.
“Yeah, well…”
“Hey, it’s been a year, right?” she said brightly, something cold and hard and lilting in her voice. “You’re allowed to date.” She smiled, victorious, not even bothering to hide it.
Nick couldn’t think of anything to say.
LaTonya was lecturing some poor soul as Audrey approached, wagging her forefinger, her long coral-colored nails—a self-adhesive French manicure kit she’d been hounding Audrey to try—looking like dangerous instruments. She was dressed in an avocado muumuu with big jangly earrings. “That’s right,” she was saying. “I can make a hundred and fifty dollars an hour easy, taking these online surveys. Sitting at home in my pajamas. I get paid for expressing my opinions!”
When she saw Audrey, she lit up. “And I figured you’d be working,” she said, enfolding Audrey in an immense bosomy hug.
“Don’t tell me Leon’s here too.” LaTonya seemed to have forgotten about her sales pitch, freeing the victim to drift off.
“I don’t know where Leon is,” Audrey confessed. “He wasn’t at home when I stopped in.”
“Mmm hmm,” LaTonya hummed significantly. “The one thing I know he’s not doing is working.”
“Do you know something you’re not telling me?” Audrey said, embarrassed by the desperation she’d let show.
“About Leon? You think he tells me anything?”
“LaTonya, sister,” Audrey said, moving in close, “I’m worried about him.”
“You do too much worrying about that man. He don’t deserve it.”
“That’s not what I mean. He’s—well, he’s gone too much.”
“Thank your lucky stars for that.”
“We—we haven’t had much of a private life in a very long time,” Audrey forced herself to say.
LaTonya waggled her head. “I don’t think I want to know the gory details about my brother, you know?”
“No, I’m…Something’s going on, LaTonya, you understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“His drinking getting even worse?”
“It isn’t that, I don’t think. He’s just been disappearing a lot.”
“Think that bastard is cheating on you, that it?”
Tears sprang to Audrey’s eyes. She compressed her lips, nodded.
“You want me to have a talk with him? I’ll slice his fucking balls off.”
“I’ll handle it, LaTonya.”
“You don’t hesitate to call me in, hear? Lazy bastard don’t know what a good thing he has in you.”
83
Audrey’s heart broke when Nicholas Conover’s daughter played the first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier. It wasn’t just that the girl hadn’t played all that well—a number of note fumbles, her technique not very polished, her performance mechanical. Camille had all but stolen the show with the Brahms waltz, had played perfectly and with heart, making Audrey burst with pride. It was what was about to happen to Julia Conover. This little girl, awkward in her dress, had lost her mother, something that should never happen to a child. And now she was about to lose her father.
In just a couple of days her father would be arrested, charged with murder. The only time she’d ever see her remaining parent would be during supervised jail visits, her daddy wearing an orange jumpsuit, behind a bulletproof window. Her life would be upended by a public murder trial; she’d never stop hearing the vicious gossip, she’d cry herself to sleep, and who would tuck her in at night? A paid babysitter? It was too awful to think about.
And then her daddy would be sent away to prison. This beautiful little girl, who wasn’t much of a pianist but radiated sweetness and naïveté: her life was about to change forever. Andrew Stadler may have been the murder victim, but this little girl was a victim too, and it filled Audrey with sorrow and foreboding.
As the teacher, Mrs. Guarini, thanked the audience for coming and invited everyone to stay for refreshments, Audrey turned around and saw Nicholas Conover.
He was holding up a video camera. Next to him sat a beautiful young woman, and next to her Conover’s handsome son, Lucas. Audrey did a double take, recognizing the woman, who just then put her hand on Conover’s neck, stroking it familiarly.
It was Cassie Stadler.
Andrew Stadler’s daughter.
Her mind spun crazily. She didn’t know what to think, what to make of it.
Nicholas Conover, having an affair with the daughter of the man he’d murdered.
She felt as if a whole row of doors had just been flung open.
84
It had to happen, since the two of them got into work at about the same time.
Nick and Scott had been avoiding each other studiously. Even at meetings where both of them were present, they were publicly cordial yet no longer exchanged small talk, before or after.
But they could hardly avoid each other right now. Nick stood at the elevator bank, waiting, just as Scott approached.
Nick was the first to speak: “’Morning, Scott.”
“’Morning, Nick.”
A long stretch of silence.
Fortunately, someone else came up to them, a woman who worked in Accounts Receivable. She
greeted Scott, who was her boss, then shyly said, “Hi” in Nick’s general direction.
The three of them rode up in silence, everyone watching the numbers change. The woman got off on three.
Nick turned to Scott. “So you’ve been busy,” he said. It came out more fiercely than he intended.
Scott shrugged. “Just the usual.”
“The usual include killing new projects like Dashboard?”
A beat, and then: “I tabled it, actually.”
“I didn’t know new product development was in your job description.”
Scott looked momentarily uncertain, as if he were considering ducking the question, but then he said, “Any expenditures of that magnitude concern me.”
The elevator dinged as it reached the executive floor.
“Well,” Scott said with visible relief, “to be continued, I’m sure.”
Nick reached over to the elevator control panel and pressed the emergency stop button, which immediately stopped the doors from opening and also set off an alarm bell that sounded distantly in the elevator shaft.
“What the hell are you—”
“Whose side are you on, Scott?” Nick asked with ferocious calm, crowding Scott into the corner of the elevator. “You think I don’t know what’s going on?”
Nick braced himself for the usual wisecracking evasions. Scott’s face went a deep plum color, his eyes growing, but Nick saw anger in his face, not fear.
He’s not scared of you, Cassie had observed.
“There aren’t any sides here, Nick. It’s not like shirts versus skins.”
“I want you to listen to me closely. You are not to kill or ‘table’ projects, change vendors, or in fact make any changes whatsoever without consulting me, are we clear?”
“Not that simple,” Scott replied levelly, a tic starting in his left eye. “I make decisions all day long—”
The elevator emergency alarm kept ringing.
Nick dropped his voice to a near-whisper. “Who do you think you’re working for? Any decision you make, any order you give, that’s not in your designated area of responsibility will be countermanded—by me. Publicly, if need be. You see, Scott, like it or not, you work for me,” Nick said. “Not for Todd Muldaur, not for Willard Osgood, but for me. Understand?”
Company Man Page 37