The Trust
Page 8
“JoJo’s only six years older than you.”
“My point exactly.” Claire tapped her empty glass.
I filled it to the point where the curve in the crystal indicates headache in the morning. “There won’t be a problem at the board meetings, right?”
“Hope not,” replied Claire breezily.
For a while we sat and said nothing. She wanted to gossip, which wasn’t my place. We drank our wine and sat apart on the bench, the earlier magic gone from our evening. Claire finally broke the silence, her tone somewhat repentant.
“You think I’m awful?”
“Palmer wouldn’t want all the acrimony.”
“I doubt there’s anything we can do.”
“Why not?”
“JoJo got voted off the peninsula.” Claire’s eyes flashed with victory. Or maybe it was defiance.
“What do you mean?”
“Dad left me the house on South Battery, plus ten million in a trust to maintain it forever.”
“What about JoJo?”
“She gets our place on Sullivan’s Island.”
“The beach house is magnificent.”
“I bet she’s pissed.”
“Are you kidding?”
“She got evicted from South Battery,” Claire explained. “And I’m moving in.”
“That’s hardly an eviction.”
“It amounts to the same thing.”
“The antiques?” I asked, wondering about all the trips to Sotheby’s.
“Mine.”
“Even the ones JoJo picked out?”
“Mine.”
“Did she get anything else?”
“Ten million.”
“How can anybody be pissed about ten million and a beach house?” Sometimes, the values get out of whack in my world.
“You’ve seen the way JoJo flushes money,” replied Claire. “She can kiss the private jets adios.”
“You got the rest?” I couldn’t help myself. The words escaped before my brain engaged.
“Not exactly. Dad left me ten million.”
Hmm. That left $20 million in financial securities. I asked about the real estate, though, which seemed more diplomatic. “The South Battery house is the problem?”
“Pride,” Claire explained. “JoJo’s moving out and throttling back her big lifestyle. Meanwhile, I get the house, ten million to maintain it, ten million in my name, and something else.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s kind of embarrassing,” she said, looking sheepish.
“We can handle it.”
“There’s another twenty million in trust for my kids.”
“You don’t have any.”
“Not yet.” Claire’s smile was dazzling, a little too flirtatious. “But I’m working on it. Which is a good thing, because there are sixty-one places left in the family plot.”
“Your family has that many?”
“Remember the big grassy hill under the oak at the cemetery?”
“Yeah?”
“Ours. Daddy bought sixty-four plots when Mom died. She has a space. He has one. And now I get busy.”
“That’s two spots. You said sixty-one are left.”
“There’s a space for JoJo.”
It was my time to be the ambassador. “She’s suffering like the rest of us.”
“You’re too nice.”
“Like I said before. I like JoJo.”
“She just got outed.”
“Outed?”
“She’s a hobby.” Claire crossed her arms. “No kids, and now she’s leaving the family house. She’s not one of us.”
“Not fair.”
“A dog would have been so much easier if Daddy needed a bitch.”
I was failing at my effort to make peace. It was time to try pragmatism. “JoJo’s your equal at the Palmetto Foundation.”
“Which is why I need you on the board.”
I had no idea what to say. Instead, I took another sip of my wine, and the two of us sat in silence. Me—dissecting the job ahead, wondering what had happened to the woman who was everybody’s friend during my childhood. Claire—troubling over thoughts of her father and his wife.
For the first time in my life, I felt like an insider. But I was unsure whether the circles of old Charleston, the brass ring from my childhood, were the right place for me. After a long while, Claire scooted over on the bench and nestled in the crook of my shoulder. I could feel her body shake and realized she was crying.
“I feel like a shit.” She sniffled, as though adding an exclamation point to her tears.
What’s a friend do?
You give a little when you get a little. You help, and you ask for help. You trade. You open up. That’s what Annie says. So does my therapist. They both think there’s plenty of vulnerability to go around. They tell me to stop being “so fucking O’Rourke.”
Actually, those are Annie’s words. My shrink would never say anything like that. They tell me it’s okay to open up with friends to reveal some of those foibles. But I wasn’t sure what to say.
In the garden, this grieving friend in my arms, I might have asked, “Are you okay?”
Claire might have replied. But if she did, I don’t remember what she said. So instead, we sat there, the night growing colder by the hour. And I stopped judging Claire Kincaid or trying to understand what she had become.
We finished the bottle of wine. The last thing I said before returning to my hotel room was, “We’ll get through this.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SOUTH BATTERY
FRIDAY
Three Advil into the morning, I was sitting with JoJo on the second-floor piazza outside the family home of Palmer Kincaid. The overhead fans were whipping around and around, stirring the mix of ragweed and mosquitoes. We sipped cappuccino and gazed across Charleston’s expansive harbor. Her dachshund, Holly, was sleeping on its back, legs splayed, and dreaming of a belly rub.
I had gone ADHD, my head a mess of random thoughts from the late night, early morning, and lingering tannins. I was trying to focus. But the waterside views—choppy surface and the occasional sailboat—were distractions. Charlestonians, I decided, are charged with a unique responsibility. The old families don’t own this city so much as they drag it kicking and screaming into the present.
We could see Fort Sumter in the distance, the place where Confederate troops first attacked the Union in 1861. The island struck me as a harbinger of things to come. As a trustee at the Palmetto Foundation, I might be stepping into a second civil war. That’s why I was here to see JoJo.
“You doing okay?”
“About what you’d expect.” Big black sunglasses covered JoJo’s eyes like a blindfold. “I can’t believe Palmer’s gone.”
“Me either.”
“He loved night sails,” she remarked in a wistful, longing kind of way, her head turned to the sea. “He’d come home late stinking of shrimp and salt and too much wine. And that stupid cocktail sauce. He made me mad.”
JoJo paused and sipped from her cup. I said nothing and just listened. I imagined her brown eyes sweeping the harbor, searching for a memory of Palmer at the helm of Bounder. Or perhaps she was thinking about the child they never had. Claire’s words from last night were still buzzing through my head:
“No kids, and now she’s leaving the family house. She’s not one of us.”
“Palmer would wake me up,” JoJo continued, “and I’d go into a snit, all cranky and groggy. And right now, I’d give anything to take it all back. I adored him.”
“Don’t beat yourself up.”
The sunglasses hid half her face, the high cheekbones, the flawless skin so soft and smooth with hints of gold. I wanted her to take those damn shades off. I wanted to see what she was thinking.
“I’ve been in your shoes, JoJo. I’ve played all the mind games myself. And they’re no fun, because you can’t win. You never win.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. The drop emerge
d from underneath those stupid sunglasses and beat its way toward her long, sculpted neckline, the delicate features of ageless beauty.
“Let me know how I can help.” I leaned forward, assuming my words had connected.
“Palmer already did.” JoJo squeezed my hand, all touchy-feely the way she is. And I squeezed back because, however non-O’Rourke the bodily contact, reciprocating seemed the right thing to do.
“You’re talking about the Palmetto Foundation?”
“We need you.” She removed her sunglasses, revealing brown eyes red with grief. The pain was starting to settle in, now that the funeral was over and her crowd of friends had returned to their lives.
“Claire and you have a big job,” I ventured, exploring how JoJo would react to Claire’s name.
“Did SKC give you approval to join our board?”
“Not yet.”
“Claire is a smart girl.” I could tell JoJo was starting a sales pitch. “Scary smart. She has a knack for our business, which she gets from Palmer. We’ll make a great team, because we’ve been a great team.”
“The best.”
“But neither one of us has a head for investments, and Palmer said to forget all our other financial advisers. You’re the only one we can trust.”
Her words were not what I had expected. Nor was the absence of rancor. I thought Claire’s vitriol would spill over. That JoJo would throw her stepdaughter under the bus. But if Palmer’s wife felt any bitterness, she kept the venom to herself.
“I’ll try my boss again.”
“We need you.” JoJo was holding both my hands now. “We have an important decision to make next week, and I’m scared.”
“Scared about what?”
“Making a mistake. Palmer always says, ‘People are dumb as stumps when they lose someone.’”
“I’m here to help.”
“Maybe we can take a ride out to the beach tomorrow and talk about money. Not foundation money, but my money.” JoJo rested her right hand on my shoulder, casual and intimate at the same time.
“Happy to do it.”
“You know me. Palmer made money. And I spent it. I probably need somebody to put me on a budget.”
Thar she blows.
But the anger I anticipated never came. Instead, JoJo added, “He made my life better.”
“Mine too.”
Later that morning, walking back to my hotel, I found myself thinking there was a new Madam Ambassador in town. Her name was JoJo. And I wouldn’t give two cents for Claire Kincaid’s feminine intuition.
* * *
“No. No. No.” We had not been on the phone thirty seconds. And Katy Anders had already worked herself into a lather.
“I don’t see the problem.”
“You’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“What are you talking about?”
I was walking under the shade oaks of Meeting Street, past the Josiah Smith House and the Calhoun mansion, ready to chuck my cell phone into the next zip code. The horse-drawn-carriage rides weren’t the only explanation for the smell of horseshit wafting through the air. My boss might be to blame, too.
“Do the math,” Anders said, annoyed, harried. I bet she was looking at her watch. “The Kincaids keep twenty million with you. That’s nothing.”
What planet do you live on?
“The family needs my help.”
“And you know our policy.”
“You just got notified. I’m getting approval from compliance, with or without your support.” I had been working for Anders less than a month. And already, I was keeping my fingers crossed for boss number fifteen.
“There’s no upside.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re a fiduciary,” she argued. “If anything goes wrong, you get hung.”
“The Kincaids are my friends.”
“Get me a box of tissues,” she snapped, her tone sarcastic. “Do I really need to spell out the firm’s liability for you?”
Somewhere, there was a carrion bird spitting out the rancid flesh from this woman’s heart. She didn’t get the importance I assigned to a board position at the Palmetto Foundation. No way was I backing down. “The foundation has liability insurance for directors. I already talked to the lawyers.”
“Ours?”
“Theirs.”
“Ours don’t have time anyway.”
My boss’s snide comment pissed me off. I came back hard, the Wall Street way, and threatened to jump ship. Sometimes it’s the only way to get attention in my business. “That’s not what Frank Kurtz would say. We have a pretty good relationship now that he’s at Morgan Stanley.”
“Make my day.”
Her indifference shut me up.
“Look, I’ve said too much,” Anders said, her tone softening. “This is not a great time to ask compliance for anything.”
“Said too much about what?”
“Just get back here.” My boss never answered the question.
“Not happening.”
“I like you, Grove.”
Uh-oh.
“That’s why I’m telling you,” she continued, “to forget the Palmetto Foundation and focus on your job.”
“Zola and Chloe have things under control. And I have things to do down here, until you explain what’s going on.”
“Suit yourself.”
That was it. We hung up, two colleagues divided by one rat race.
* * *
“You’re staying in Charleston?”
Anders had just finished flogging me over the phone. Under these circumstances, I call Annie to bitch about the boss. And a good purge—me venting about stupid decisions—usually helps. Only today, our conversation got off track early and never returned to SKC.
“Palmer asked me to be a trustee at the Palmetto Foundation,” I replied.
“Congrats. That’s big, right?”
“JoJo said there’s an important meeting Tuesday.”
“So come home for the weekend.”
“I promised to look at her portfolio.”
“What about dinner with my friends?”
“Oh shit, I spaced it.”
Sort of. Annie and I had planned a Saturday night out with her graduate school buddies, which meant I’d pay for everyone. They’d eat. They’d drink. And they’d disappear into the bathroom when the check arrived, leaving me to do the gracious thing and pay the bill because I’m the only one with a fucking job. Bar flight is a form of behavioral entitlement that makes my skin crawl. If you ask me, there’s a special place in hell for NYC’s dinner deadbeats.
Annie said nothing.
“I’ll cancel.”
I could almost see her over the phone, the raised eyebrows, the full lips turned up at the corners, the no-dummy expression that says, “Don’t bullshit me.” Or maybe she was doing that thing where she squints, the look that says she can rip the thoughts out of a skull. My skull. She has a sixth sense about everything.
“You can’t. JoJo’s a client.”
Annie knew these things. She learned the ropes during her first two years working for me. That was before my big fiasco with Charlie Kelemen and his Ponzi scheme: the one that almost got me fired; the one that put me on the cover of the New York Post; the one where Annie risked everything to watch my back. A year after we sorted out the mess, she left SKC for Columbia.
“You’re right.” Any other response would have been disingenuous on my part.
“I’ve got class. I’ll call you tonight.”
“On my cell, okay?”
“Why not the hotel?”
“Claire offered me her carriage house.”
“You’re staying in her home?” Annie asked after a considerable pause.
Uh-oh.
“In the building out back. But I’m dying to see her place. Claire says the house is pre–Civil War.” I was trying to sound chatty. I mean, it was no big deal, me staying with a high school buddy. No big deal if you know how to dance on eggs.
“Claire comes from a family with two hundred million dollars. The bathrooms are okay.”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Annie said. “Class is about to start.”
“Why don’t you come to Charleston for the weekend?”
“I have schoolwork,” she replied. “Call me.”
Our conversation ended with a dull thud, and I could tell Annie was pissed. Here I was, walking back to my hotel so I could pack up my things and move to Claire Kincaid’s carriage house. So I could take her out to dinner and go toe to toe with a few vodka martinis and talk about old times and deal with my own insecurities about Charleston and all my personal crap about not fitting in.
There’s a special kind of self-loathing when you double-book the weekend—accidentally on purpose—and disappoint the single most important person in your life.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LUMBERTON, NORTH CAROLINA
MONDAY
Bong exited I-95 twenty minutes south of Fayetteville and turned onto U.S. 301. Moments later, he parked his Ford rental and considered the spider-sun tattoo on his forearm.
There was no telling what people remembered. He rolled down his long white sleeves and pulled a black baseball cap low over his forehead. No markings on the hat.
The parking lot outside the Lumberton Walmart felt postapocalyptic. Bleak. Buggy. Barren. Bong wondered why the Arkansas company, as rich and powerful as it was, spent so much money on tarmac and so little on plants.
Monstrous lampposts sprouted from the concrete like New Age weeds. The light fixtures at the top looked more alive than the scraggly trees scattered around the lot.
“No attention to detail.” He muttered and shook his head in disapproval.
“Hello,” croaked the Walmart greeter. The old man’s ruddy face was a road map of lines, his voice tobacco-cured from two packs a day. He hunched forward on a stool, his arms slung over a shopping cart, the south side of his pants revealing too much information.
Bong thought the guy an odd choice to welcome customers. Walmart needed some tits out front. Preferably on somebody who could still chew solid foods. This fellow looked several breaths shy of a 911 call.
“Keep up the good work, captain.”
Inside the store Bong inspected the layout, the racking, the way different sections were labeled. He found a disposable cell phone in electronics. It cost $19.95 with $10 preloaded in minutes. He selected a $25 calling card with more minutes, paid cash, and headed over to hardware, where he purchased a can of Great Stuff. Again, he paid cash and tugged his cap low.