"Share! Share! Share!" Griffin jumped up and down some more.
Lisbeth put her fingers in her ears and stuck out her tongue.
Ryan couldn't take any more. He said, "Griffin," low and hard.
His younger son stopped jumping, shut his mouth and turned to his father, eyes round as full moons.
"Go sit at the table. Now."
It worked, thank God. Griff trudged to the table, pulled out a chair and climbed onto it.
Ryan looked at his mother-in-law, seeking a hint as to what to do next. "Five minutes," she said.
Griff slumped his shoulders and stared at his Keds.
Lily said, "Lisbeth, go on up and take your bath."
"But The Lion King…"
"You've seen all you're going to see of it tonight."
Lisbeth's eyes filled with tears. "Griff ruined everything."
"Go on, now."
Lisbeth sniffed and turned for the hall to the stairs.
"Can I get up now?" Griff pleaded, the minute his sister was gone.
"Not until I say so," his grandmother replied. She looked at Drew. "Do you want to watch the rest of that movie?"
Drew grunted. "No, thanks. I've seen it about a hundred times."
"Then go on in and turn it off."
Drew ducked back into the family room again, leaving Ryan and Lily alone with a very sulky Griff.
Lily shot Ryan a long-suffering look. "Go on. I can handle this."
He felt just a little bit guilty at how eager he was to be gone. "Are you sure?"
She only sighed. So he took her at her word and made his escape, running upstairs first to exchange his racquetball bag for his briefcase.
It was a little after nine when he reached his office at Memorial. He let himself in and switched on the lights and sat down at his desk to tackle the stack of purchase orders.
As a rule, Ryan liked to put in hours at night. He did it a couple of times a week, as a matter of fact. There were no interruptions, and he usually got a lot done in a short space of time.
But that particular night, his concentration kept wandering. He kept recalling the tender, astonished way Ronni had murmured "Oh, Lord" when he'd told her to kiss him, kept remembering the taste of her mouth and the glorious feel of her body against his.
Then he'd think of Lily, with her face so drawn, scrubbing the counter that was already clean. And of Griff shouting "Share! Share! Share!"
More than once, he threw down his pen, got up and paced the room, feeling like a man trapped in a cell. Finally, he gave up and went home.
Monday at Ronni's office, it was business as usual. Ronni thumped tummies. She listened to heartbeats and the sound of breathing, to air whistling in and out through slightly congested lungs. She took medical histories, gave routine shots and answered an endless list of common questions: Why is my toddler such a picky eater? Is my six-month-old gaining enough weight? Will it spoil my newborn if I pick her up when she cries?
After office hours, she went to Children's Hospital, to check on her patients there. When she left the hospital, she did a little grocery shopping. She got home at seven and made herself dinner.
And then, at last, she allowed herself to think about Ryan.
About the way he had kissed her, the things he had said, the tenderness in his touch, in his eyes… She shouldn't get involved with him. She knew it.
The timing was wrong for her—and he needed a wife, not another breadwinner. And yet…
Never in her life had she felt the way she did when he touched her. She loved to talk with him, to just be with him. Could something that felt so good really be wrong?
True, he would never be the househusband of her dreams.
But then, she was certainly no Patricia, either. He'd given her a week to think about it. A week. Unless she sought him out beforehand. Her mind thought that a week was a very good idea.
Her heart, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. She wanted to go to him.
But she knew that she wouldn't.
It was only five more days, after all, until the Heart Ball.
Ryan got the call from Tanner on Tuesday. "We've got money problems on the new wing." Tanner's tone was flat, expressionless.
"Explain."
Tanner took a deep breath and let it out hard. "I had my accountant hand-carry the papers for the construction draw to the bank on the first," Tanner said. "And then I waited, the way I always do, for the bank to call back and say the funds were available. The bank didn't call. Two days later, on the third, I called them. They told me the account set up with them by the Pembroke people had an insufficient balance to cover the draw."
Ryan could not believe what he was hearing. "Insufficient," he repeated with great care.
"Yeah," Tanner said. "Extremely insufficient. As in they could give me ten thousand and change, max. They'd already been in touch with the people at the foundation. And gotten a runaround. So I called the foundation on Friday, the fourth."
"Why didn't you call me?"
"Ryan. I am calling you."
"I mean Friday. You should have called me then."
Tanner let out another hard gust of air. "Look. You might be my older brother. But we're both all grown up now. I don't call you every time there's a glitch. If I did, we'd be on the phone twenty-four hours a day—and do you want to hear this or not?"
"Sorry. Go on."
"All right. I called the Pembroke people. They said they'd get back to me. They did. Today. They told me what I'd already figured out—they've got a problem."
"But what the hell is the problem?"
"I got a bunch of mumbo jumbo. About cash flow and certain miscalculations. The upshot is, we're having a meeting. Tomorrow. At the foundation offices at 10:00 a.m."
"Who, specifically, did you talk to at the foundation?"
"The project officer for the wing."
"Bill Langley."
"Right."
"Did you try to reach Axel?"
"I did. No go. I thought maybe—"
"I'll call him myself, see what I can find out."
"It doesn't look good."
"No, it doesn't." Ryan knew his brother had to be in the hole pretty deep at this point. According to his usual procedure, Tanner would have paid his employees and subcontractors up front, expecting to be reimbursed by the money from the fund. "I'll be there for that meeting tomorrow."
"Fine. Right now, see what you can find out. And call me back if you learn anything."
"Will do." Ryan disconnected the call and dialed Axel's office.
"Pembroke Foundation. Mr. Pembroke's office."
"This is Ryan Malone. Let me speak with Axel Pembroke."
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Malone. Mr. Pembroke is not available at this time."
"When will he be available?"
"If you'd like to leave a number, someone will get back to you."
"Someone? Axel isn't returning his own calls anymore?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Malone."
He wanted to shout at her, to demand a few answers, right now or sooner. But he held his tongue. Whatever the hell disaster was going on there, it wasn't the secretary's fault. She was only repeating what she'd been told to say.
He hung up and tried Axel's home phone. A machine answered. He left a message, tried Axel's cell phone. No luck.
He called Bill Langley himself—and got the same evasive answers that Tanner had heard.
He asked Langley point-blank, "Where's Axel? I can't seem to reach him."
And Langley started tap-dancing, repeating the same things Axel's secretary had said. "Temporarily unavailable … tied up right now…"
Ryan demanded, "How long is 'temporarily'?"
"I'm sorry. I just can't say."
"I'll be there tomorrow, at the meeting you've called with Tanner Construction to talk about this."
"That's a good idea, Mr. Malone."
Ryan had a meeting with a couple of department heads at nine-thirty, which was five minutes away. As h
e stalked past his secretary's desk, he told her to page him immediately if Axel Pembroke called.
She didn't page him. When he returned to his office at eleven, he tried Axel's home number and his cell phone a second time. No answer at either number.
So he called his brother back. "I got nowhere," he said without preamble when Tanner picked up the phone.
"I was afraid you'd say that." Tanner swore. "Got any ideas about what's really going on?"
Ryan remembered that racquetball match with Axel last Saturday, replayed in his mind the strange things Axel had said.
"Ryan? You still with me?"
"I'm here."
"I asked you a question."
"Let's wait until that meeting tomorrow. See what they tell us."
"That's no answer."
"It's the best one I can give you right now."
Ryan and Tanner arrived at the Pembroke Building at nine-fifty the next morning. Bill Langley met them in the front office and then led them into a small conference room where two other men, attorneys for the foundation, were waiting. Coffee was served. Ryan passed on that. He had enough adrenaline racing through his system to get him through the rest of the day as it was—and no doubt far into what would probably be a long, sleepless night.
Langley started right in with a smoke screen. "I'm afraid we have a difficult situation here. As I'm sure you're aware, projecting the income for a fund the size of ours is not an exact science. Decisions were made based on our best knowledge. And it appears that a few of those decisions were … unwise. There have been miscalculations. Huge miscalculations."
Ryan glanced at the two lawyers. He knew exactly what their presence meant. Whatever had gone wrong, the foundation would be playing it close to the vest. This was damage control, big time. And Tanner and Ryan would get no real answers right then.
Langley took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. "Of course, we intend to do our best to honor our commitment to the Honeygrove Memorial Twenty-Year Wing. We've checked into a number of options. Unfortunately, according to the terms of the Pembroke Trust itself, we are not allowed to liquidate the principal. Also, the Trust cannot actually borrow money against itself. As a hedge against depletion in just such a situation as this one, the Trust was set up so that all projects would be funded strictly out of the income from investments."
"You're saying there's no money, and there isn't going to be any money anytime soon," Tanner said with slow precision.
"I am saying that we are going to have to declare a moratorium on all funding, at least for the next few weeks, until we can fully calculate the extent of the shortage and discover how best to recover our cash position."
Tanner muttered an oath.
Ryan picked up the ball. "The fund has so far provided us with sixty million dollars. We were to have received another forty over the next six months. How much do you project we will see of that?"
Langley slid a glance at the two legal eagles, and then cleared his throat. "I simply cannot project anything at this particular point. The foundation does have a few assets outside of the fund. And we do intend to liquidate those assets, as quickly as we can.
"How quickly will that be?"
"It's just impossible to tell right now. I'm sorry. But at this point, I really can't promise you anything. The truth is, there are other projects in just as dire a need as yours. It's a terrible mess, I know. And it's only going to get worse before it gets better…"
Ryan and Tanner left twenty minutes later, after having been assured by Langley that the foundation would get Tanner a few hundred thousand, somehow, within the next two weeks. "It's our hope that that will help you a little."
"Little," Tanner said. "That's the operative word."
"I'll get together with my board right away," Ryan said. "We'll be in touch with you to set up more meetings."
"Of course."
When they got outside, where the sky, for once, was incongruously clear, Tanner turned to Ryan. "Get that thought out of your head."
"What thought?"
"That it's all your fault. It's not."
His brother's generous denial didn't help. "I'm the one who focused on the Pembroke Foundation, and you know it. I was so damn proud of myself, to get everything we needed from one source."
"The Pembroke Fund was always solid as a rock. It's still solid as a rock. That's the problem. They lose their cash flow, and that's all she wrote. They can't honor their commitments. And they still didn't give us a damn hint about what's really going on. Their income projections just couldn't logically have been this far off. I can't see any possibility but theft, can you? That someone's been dipping a hand in the till?"
Ryan had to admit, "That's what it looks like."
"Did you ever reach Axel?"
"No."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Axel would be the one, wouldn't he, with enough access and authority over the money coming in? He'd probably need an accomplice, though. Someone high up in the foundation's accounting department."
Tanner's conjectures made sense. Way too much sense. More and more, it looked as if Axel Pembroke had seen his chance and grabbed it but good.
Tanner went on, "The foundation and its lawyers can't sit on this forever. Too many people are going to be affected. Word will get out. And the press will be on it. Soon."
Ryan nodded. "I give it another twenty-four hours at most."
"It's going to be ugly," Tanner said.
"Ugly's too mild a word."
Tanner muttered, "If Axel's the one, I will personally eliminate that little weasel from the gene pool."
"If it's Axel, you and I both know he's already left the country."
"Ryan…"
"Say it."
"I'm in damn deep here. Until you can come up with some alternative plan for funding—"
"How far are you extended?"
"Too far. I've got insurance. But it's not going to cover all of it."
"What about if you call an immediate halt to construction?"
"It depends."
"On?"
"How long it takes to get going again. Even if I cut my losses, I'm in too damn deep. I need money, and I need it soon—or I'm looking a Chapter 11 in the face."
Debt reorganization, Ryan thought. A polite word for bankruptcy. His own brother bankrupt, because of his baby, his twenty-year wing…
"Look," Tanner said tightly. "Maybe I can keep things moving for another few days."
"What would you do if I wasn't your brother?"
Tanner didn't answer.
Ryan spoke for him. "You've got no choice. Shut the damn project down."
* * *
Chapter Seven
« ^ »
After she did her rounds at Children's Hospital Thursday afternoon, Ronni stopped by her condo and admired her cobalt-blue bathtub and its matching sink. Then, since she was having all her mail delivered to a P.O. box until she made her permanent move to her new home, she ran by the post office.
She got back to the guest house at a little after eight and went through the stack of bills and junk mail as she heated up a can of soup. Then she sat down to eat with the evening's edition of the Honeygrove Gazette to keep her company.
She'd barely smoothed the paper out when the headline jumped out at her.
Pembroke Fund in Trouble. President of Fund Vanishes…
Ronni set down her spoon.
Millions of dollars are missing from Pembroke Fund coffers. And Axel Pembroke IV, president of the foundation that bears his family's name, is nowhere to be found. Also missing is Ms. Rhonda Jagger, CPA, and Pembroke Foundation accounting manager…
Ronni scanned the next few paragraphs quickly. Apparently, Axel Pembroke and Rhonda Jagger had been diverting income from the foundation's investments for a number of months. Neither had been seen since Sunday, February 6.
Ronni read on.
Hardest hit by the news is Honeygrove Memorial Hospital. The new wing at Memorial
, scheduled for completion in September of this year, in time for the twenty-year anniversary of the hospital's present building, was to be paid for by a hundred million dollar arrangement with the fund…
The new wing. Ryan's pet project. To most of the medical community in Honeygrove, the twenty-year wing and Ryan Malone were synonymous.
What had Lily said that Sunday when she dropped in with roast beef sandwiches and endless tales of the incomparable Patricia?
"One hundred million dollars, it's taking. From the Pembroke Fund. That was Ryan's doing, of course, the funding…"
And Marty, when he first introduced them, at that fund-raiser almost a month ago now: "This is Ryan Malone, the man personally responsible for all the construction you see going on at Memorial lately."
The man personally responsible…
He must be devastated by this.
Ronni left the newspaper on the table next to her untouched bowl of soup. She grabbed a jacket from the hall closet and went out the French doors in the bedroom.
She had to knock several times at the back door of the main house before Lily answered. "Is Ryan here?"
Lily shook her head. She didn't look friendly. But then, maybe she was just worried about Ryan.
Ronni said, "I saw the news … about the theft of the money from the Pembroke Fund."
Lily pressed her lips tightly together and nodded. "I'm afraid there's not much I can tell you. I've hardly talked to Ryan since this all happened. He called me around dinnertime yesterday, from the hospital, and told me a little about what was going on. He said that he'd be late coming home. He was late. Very late. This morning, he left before eight. He said he'd be in and out of meetings all day…"
"Oh, Lily, I'm so sorry…"
"I'm just … trying to keep things going. Trying to get the children bathed and ready for bed."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"We're fine. And I really do have to get back to the children. Griffin's in the tub now. There'll be water everywhere."
"Yes, of course. Would you tell Ryan that I stopped by?"
A DOCTOR'S VOW Page 7
