Halfway back to San Francisco, tired from the polo field sunshine and the champagne buzz, my cell phone rang. Ethan wanted to tell me something else. “I remembered something that’s not so nice. A company Margoletti was involved with was in the news. The founder died suddenly. Not sure there’s a connection, but….”
A chill ran through me. “You can’t remember the man’s name?” I said, wishing my memory for names hadn’t gone on break.
“Not offhand. It was a car crash, I think. Not here, but in Boston. All I recall is some chatter at an entrepreneurs’ mixer.”
“Was Margoletti’s name mentioned?”
“Only that he was the guy’s attorney early on.”
I thanked him but didn’t tell him I’d already heard Vince Margoletti’s name linked to a car crash. I wondered if there was some cause and effect, or if this was a coincidence. I didn’t like coincidences much.
CHAPTER 11
This consulting gig was turning out to be harder than I thought. With Devor work piling up and the pressure on to bless the Margoletti gift quickly, I felt pulled in different directions. It didn’t help my mood when I heard a sharp tapping on my closed office door Monday morning. I hadn’t even finished my cappuccino, I grumbled to myself as I yelled for whomever it was to come in.
“Got a minute?” It was Geoff.
I recalled with a twinge of guilt that I hadn’t returned his phone call while I was at Lynthorpe, and apologized now. “I am so sorry the vice president at your alma mater died before we could meet. Did you know him well?”
“No, not really, but he met with the board regularly, and I always thought he was good. They were lucky to have him. A heart attack, Rory said in his email.”
“Yes, a real shock. He’ll obviously be missed. But I have access to his materials about the gift, so I think the due diligence will continue.” He only nodded, seeming distracted.
“Are you okay, Geoff?”
“I know you were busy. I wanted to share something. Remember my mentioning the man I knew who was killed by a train?”
I nodded.
“Bart Corliss,” Geoff said. “A decent man, developed some tracking software for medical records that became viable at the right moment in the market. Got ready to take his company public while investor money was still flowing. I didn’t make the connection then, but I’ve since been reminded that he had a business tie to Vince.”
My antennae jumped to attention. “Wait. You don’t think Margoletti had something to do with this man’s suicide? I know you said you don’t trust Vince.”
“Good Lord, no, nothing that dramatic. I don’t like Vince’s proximity to Corliss in light of his way of doing business.”
“Sorry, I’m not tracking, Geoff. What proximity?”
“Vince was the company’s attorney.”
“Is Vince on the board?”
“No, but word is he was paid in shares at a very favorable option price before the public offering. Meaning,” Geoff said when he saw the puzzled look on my face, “he’ll be able to sell his shares for a whopping profit now that the company’s listed on the stock exchange.”
Geoff’s face had taken on a little color as he told me the story, and he was rubbing the fingers of one hand with the other. For him, that’s major emotion.
“But Corliss got rich too?”
“That’s what’s bothering me. The police have confirmed Bart committed suicide, and that doesn’t make sense. He was at the top of his game.”
“Family troubles, maybe?”
“Well, we’ll never know, I guess. But I’m sensitive to anything Vince is attached to these days. How’s the vetting going?”
Seeing Margoletti as somehow involved in the deaths of two company founders wasn’t computing for me. Why would he? If it was true he had a ton of stock in Corliss’s hot company, he could make good on his cash pledge to Lynthorpe and still have enough to keep his playboy son in riding boots and horse trailers. I was beginning to think that Larry Saylor was intimidated by the size of the gift and afraid to sign off for fear of overlooking some detail, and that Geoff was letting his dislike of the man color his thinking. I had to tread lightly.
“Well enough. I’m plowing through paper this week and hope to have a draft of the report done very soon for Rory Brennan.”
Geoff was watching me, nodding, and then he said, “Have you run into any resistance from the administration?”
“You mean Rory, Coe, or the development director? Nothing serious. They all seem worried that something will slow the process down. Vince’s demands for a quick resolution have made them nervous. Why? Have you heard something?”
“Well, the dean did send me an email. Nothing to worry about. I think they may not have realized the complexities involved in accepting a large art collection. It makes me doubly glad you’re there. Don’t let anyone push you to sign off on an agreement with holes in it.”
I told him I would move as fast as possible and Geoff seemed satisfied. Looking at his watch, he said he had to get to Peter’s conference room for an executive committee meeting and waved goodbye.
****
Peter and I had had a drink after work Monday. I wanted my boss’s perspective before I flew back to Lynthorpe.
“It’s tricky, I admit,” he said over martinis in a trendy place that served astonishingly good sushi and every kind of martini yet invented. We were in a dark room with concrete walls, and floors livened with a forest of bamboo plants. “I might push you to present hard proof of illegal or deeply immoral activity if I were Brennan, something big likely to come out in the future. All you have now is the vice president’s private concerns and the donor’s reputation as a shark, balanced against major cash and an art collection I wish we’d had a crack at getting for the Devor. Any news about Teeni’s job search?” he said, switching gears.
“She’s excited about the college back East. Have you gotten a call for a recommendation?”
“I’m guessing it will come soon. She’s a strong candidate for damn near any position at her level but, cynically, even if she wasn’t a board’s first choice, they would include her in the finalist pool because it would make them feel good to be able to say they had an African American candidate.”
“I thought of that,” I said, sipping the last of my green appletini and wondering if I should order a second, “and so has she. Teeni has a nose for this kind of thing and hasn’t let the gamesters keep her in their candidate lists for show. She bows out as soon as she gets the hint.”
“Maybe she’ll sniff out tokenism in all of these offers and we can keep her,” he said, “even though we don’t have the right position for her.”
“The museum world is getting more diverse. She’ll land something good and we’ll throw her the party to end all parties when she packs it in here.”
Peter pushed me a bit about how much longer I’d be at the consulting assignment since we had a busy few months coming up at the Devor. Teeni’s exhibition was the highlight of a season that included VIP tours of two local art preserves in Sonoma County, an artist-themed film festival, and an audience participation art installation that was already attracting cultural reporters wanting to do feature stories. We do all of these events because it builds support for the arts and attracts new donors, but it’s always a stretch for our small staffs, and the boss was making it clear he wanted me back after next week. Brennan’s assistant had called me earlier in the day to say the president hoped I’d return tomorrow or the next day to present the report so they could proceed with their announcement.
“Give me a couple more days and I’ll be finished, promise. In the meantime, why don’t you see if Dickie has a contact number for J.P.? We can invite him to something special and you can grill him about the owner of the Matisse.”
****
Luckily for me, Lynthorpe had insisted on business class. I spent the five-hour flight going through every piece of paper related to the donation of art that the development director and
Gabby had been able to give me. The list of paintings was straightforward, a number of lesser known artists whose work might or might not stand up to scrutiny in twenty years, some reliable standbys from the middle of the twentieth century, plus a few marquee names. Larry Saylor had the same list but I hadn’t asked Gabby to copy it since I had skimmed McEvoy’s packet earlier. Margoletti, or more likely his art consultants, must have bid hefty amounts at Sotheby’s or Christie’s auction sales to get a few of them. He had a real trophy, a moody painting of an empty street by Edward Hopper that had sold at auction only a year ago for thirty million dollars before it came into his collection.
Most of the paperwork was fine, although there were a few, like the Hopper and a Lichtenstein, for which the documents were incomplete or missing, at least from my stack of material. Maybe he wasn’t giving them to Lynthorpe, and who could blame him? Most of the rest was routine, the provenances confirmed by the sales documents, and the pieces listed as being in storage, at his home or office, or in a few cases on loan for museum exhibitions. A few were also consigned for sale, and those needed to be cleared up as part or not part of the gift as of the date of the transfer. I would focus on making sure the full list was cleaned up before Lynthorpe signed the gift papers. Simple stuff really.
By the end of the flight, as I scooped up the piles of paper I had sorted through, I figured I had a handle on the art. If I could get a slightly better idea from Larry Saylor’s notes about what had worried him, I would be close to a place where I could make recommendations and hand the project over to the college.
****
It was late Tuesday when I handed the rental car keys to the young guy at the hotel’s concierge desk. From my room, I sent Gabby an email to ask if we could meet in the morning, and thought how nice it would have been to have someone back home who wanted to know I had arrived safely. Being unattached is a mixed experience.
Flipping through my notes the next morning after resisting waffles for breakfast in favor of cold cereal and feeling massively virtuous for it, I turned my attention to the rest of the papers I had accumulated. I came across the copy of Larry Saylor’s handwritten list with the international phone number. I promised myself I’d look it up although I wasn’t sure I’d try to reach whoever it was. What would I say? This number was written by a man who later drowned on a golf course in a peaceful New England town in America, and do you know anything about it?
The financial reports I had in front of me only confirmed what I and Larry Saylor and everyone else knew. Margoletti got shares in the companies listed in Gabby’s research as payment for legal counsel on intellectual property rights and patent law. Logic dictated, however, that since he was still walking around, smiling and being a big shot, whatever games he played apparently weren’t criminal, or at least not provably so.
I realized Geoff Johnson’s mistrust had colored this project for me too. My brief contact with Larry Saylor had reinforced the feeling that something was fishy about Margoletti, but the reality was I hadn’t found a single concrete reason to recommend Lynthorpe turn down, modify, or re-negotiate what looked to be a tremendous boost for the college. I decided to recommend approval with a second valuation of the art once the ownership documents were in place. I’d contact Margoletti’s office to get the missing documents proving ownership of the handful of important paintings and wrap up the job.
I hadn’t heard back from Gabby, so I decided to go for a walk to add to my healthy morning. A little voice inside my head cheered, if only because that might mean I could have French fries with lunch. It was the same helpful voice that urged me to try the ginger and lime martini the other night after the green appletini, but which was silent the next morning when I woke up with a headache.
I wandered along a pretty street with shops selling collegiate merchandise and handmade paper goods, which gave way in a few blocks to more ordinary stores with signs for sodas and sandwiches, and then to a block of boxy buildings with signs for hardware and auto parts. Off to my right, down an abruptly residential side street, were some older apartment buildings, their brick façades shielded by tall, leafy trees whose roots were pushing up blocks of concrete sidewalk. A couple of moms were out with strollers and several young men with backpacks and cell phones walked quickly in my direction, passing me without seeming to notice I existed. From the conversation I overheard one guy having on his phone, I got the idea he was a university student, and realized this was probably where the graduate students lived who didn’t or couldn’t stay on campus.
As if to prove me right, I saw someone with a dark ponytail come out of one building. It was Gabby and I raised my arm to catch her attention, then dropped it when I saw Dermott coming out right behind her. She was frowning and talking over her shoulder, and he didn’t look any happier. At the bottom of the entry steps she turned and faced him, still talking and shaking her head, her ponytail whipping back and forth from the effort. He threw up his hands in a jerky movement, stepped around her, and marched down the street away from the corner where I stood, anger making his body stiff.
She stood still for a moment, her head turned to watch him go, then lifted one hand and appeared to swipe at her eyes. Suddenly she turned in the opposite direction, almost as if she realized I was watching. Before I could shrink back around the corner, she had seen me. She lifted her head and waved. There wasn’t anything to do except wave back and wait for her to reach me.
“I was wondering when I’d see you again,” she said, but her voice was tight and she looked away after a quick glance at me. To determine if I had seen her arguing with Dermott? I wasn’t going to bring it up if she didn’t, so we exchanged information about our schedules. I would work in my hotel room on the draft report and would meet her when she was free to go over the gaps in my review of artworks included in the gift, and to talk one last time about what might have been worrying Saylor. I figured there might be a stray remark or notes somewhere that we hadn’t found, so we agreed to meet in his office.
“My goal is to get a draft done by tomorrow morning, bring it to President Brennan, and revise it if he has questions or wants more detail.”
“You haven’t found any serious problems?” Gabby said, sounding more like herself as the minutes passed. “That doesn’t make sense to me. He was so convinced…of something.” She shrugged and shook her head.
“I promise I’ll be super cautious, but, no, I’ve done a bit of background checking and I’ve seen the public reports of what you might call ethical challenges, but nothing illegal, or at least nothing labeled outright as such. Margoletti may not be the person you’d like to go into business with, especially with your money or your bright idea, but there are lots of people I’d feel the same way about, and I’m pretty sure some of them are admired and envied for their success.”
Gabby wasn’t satisfied, I could tell. “Some people have all the luck, don’t they? The rest of us go paycheck to paycheck…”
“Working in the development office, you’re going to see that a lot, the discrepancy in wealth. If it really bothers you, you may want to rethink the next career move you make.” I tried to keep my tone light, but it was a truth that we working folk had to face up to at some point. Trying to look and sound sympathetic at a cocktail party while the women in a group compare notes about their vacations in Bali, or the men grumble about getting good tee times at Pebble Beach takes some mental flexibility. I once tried to bond with them by beginning a story about Fever’s habit of spitting up hairballs on the carpet right after I had it shampooed, but it didn’t seem to click.
“Oh, I don’t mind so much. Dermott, well, it’s all those student loans and so little chance for a tenure track job anywhere these days.”
Money might have been the reason the newlyweds had been arguing on their doorstep, and my heart went out to her. Marrying a millionaire had not been a deliberate strategy, but at the time it had cushioned me from the kind of life so many new college graduates faced. I couldn’t think of anything
to say.
Maybe she thought my silence was a criticism of her. She shifted into professional mode and said, “I’ll spend an hour in Larry’s office before lunch, to organize what seems to be most important for you to look at. After that, I have some other work to do for Mr. McEvoy. Pretty soon I have to take all the papers over to the dean’s office. I’m cheating, though. Don’t tell him,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. “I’m making copies so that Mr. Saylor’s files are still useful for you.”
I laughed. Whoever said computers would end the need for paper files hadn’t given enough credit to the bureaucratic beast. “Fine. How about we meet in Larry’s office at five?”
****
By five o’clock, my stomach was rumbling, which reminded me I’d had nothing for lunch except a smoothie. That might have accounted for the fact that I was a little light-headed as I parked the rental car in the lot behind the old red brick building where the late financial vice president and his staff had their offices. A dozen parked cars attested to the fact that people were still at work. One, at least, was highly paid, judging by the glossy finish on a black sports car that almost blinded me as the reflection of the sun bounced off the hood. A couple of middle-aged women in summer dresses and sandals were coming out of the building’s back door, deep in conversation, and one smiled and held the door open for me with her free hand. In the other, she held a colorful paper plate with a napkin spread over it.
“Birthday cake,” she said when I looked at it. “My husband loves it when I bring him home some cake.”
I laughed and told her I knew what she meant.
The building was quiet except for some chattering that came from way down the hall, the site of the office party, I could guess. It got so quiet I could hear a fly buzzing against the window on the landing as I mounted the staircase. It was warm from the trapped heat of the day, and the printer in the small room on the second floor where Gabby had made copies for me the other day was making rhythmic sounds as it spurted out paper.
Mixed Up With Murder Page 8
