Echoes of Titanic

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Good try. You got the dark pants right but my top is maroon.”

  “Oh, yeah? I bet it looks great on you too.”

  There was a long silence, and Kelsey wondered if he was flirting with her or if that had just slipped out by accident.

  “Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat, “you hang in there. In the long run, this current mess will end up being a little blip on your otherwise upward arc.”

  “Your mouth to God’s ear.”

  She smiled, but she realized there was a measure of truth to what he was saying. She had been on an upward arc—at least until Rupert’s scene at the ceremony had broken it in half and sent her tumbling to the ground. Given that Gloria had engineered the man’s appearance there, had that been her intention, to break the upward arc Kelsey was on? But why?

  Who would mentor someone for all these years and then turn around one day and cut them off at the knees?

  “Cole, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure. Anything.”

  Kelsey shifted in her seat to get more comfortable. “I was talking to Lou Strahan yesterday, and he said that when my father passed Gloria over for promotion five years ago, she was absolutely devastated and has probably been smoldering with bitterness ever since. Do you think he could be right about that? I always thought she took it in stride. At least, that’s how it looked from where I was sitting. But now I’m wondering if all that mess back then really did hit her harder than I realized.”

  He was silent for a long moment.

  “Gloria was really shocked back then,” he said. “And deeply hurt. I guess it’s possible that she may have held on to her bitterness about it. Lou was passed over too—and just as devastated—so he probably knows what he’s talking about.”

  Kelsey watched out the window as the train slowed down for a brief stop at the Spring Lake station. “Yeah, but he says the problem was that she stayed on at the company, which kind of forced her to stew in her own juices. The only way he was able to get over it was by leaving completely and starting fresh somewhere else.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Cole said softly. “You had a big part in helping him get that fresh start.”

  Kelsey was mortified she had brought that up. For a moment she couldn’t think of what to say. She didn’t know how to break the long silence.

  At last Cole spoke, addressing the matter head-on. “Hey, that’s water under the bridge, Kelsey. And you know things worked out great in the end—for him and for me. I might never have made the jump to start my own business if things had gone the way I thought they should. And I really love what I’m doing now.”

  “I’m happy for you, Cole. I truly am.”

  The train started up again as their call was winding down.

  “Well, like I said, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You hang in there, and if you think you can use my team’s services, we’re here for you. Don’t hesitate to call.”

  Kelsey smiled. Cole would surround himself with the smartest and the best, she was sure of that, but she already had a great team of her own.

  She thanked him one last time and then they hung up. For a while she allowed herself to sit back and stare out the window and bask in the memories of the man. Rattling along toward the next stop, her mind went back to the day she and Cole had met, at that first church youth retreat back in high school.

  The two of them had ended up on the same team during recreation time and had instantly hit it off, their game-playing strategies merging perfectly and resulting in the winning capture of the other team’s flag. After that they had become “youth group buddies,” but never anything more. Cole had been really cute, but he was shorter than her by half a head and his voice tended to squeak at all the wrong moments.

  They went away to different colleges, but through letters and emails and the occasional call stayed in touch over the years, just as friends. Cole had always been super smart, a real numbers guy, and when he graduated with a Wharton MBA in 2004, it wasn’t hard for Kelsey to get him an interview at the family firm.

  What a shock that had been, the day he came walking into Brennan & Tate for his meeting. Gone was the little boy with the pretty eyes and the squeaky voice. In his place was a man, six foot plus, nice build, incredibly handsome. Truly, the sight of him had knocked her breathless.

  He’d seemed equally taken by her, and once they were reunited and working together, their friendship deepened and eventually turned to romance. That romance had come to an end a year later, thanks to her thoughtless actions and stupid ambition.

  Kelsey sat up straight, suddenly remembering that Gloria had been a big part of things back then as well. Gloria had been the one who had first come to Kelsey with Lou’s business plan and suggested she work something up despite the fact that Cole was already on it. Gloria had been the one who had told Kelsey the details of the miniscule offer Cole had made to Lou and laughed with her at how ridiculous it was. Gloria had been the one who had assured Kelsey that business was business and personal was personal and that one had nothing to do with the other.

  Try telling that to Kelsey’s heart after Cole was gone.

  Was it possible that Gloria had intentionally sabotaged their relationship back then? Had she wanted the two of them to break up?

  Suddenly, she found herself looking at all of Gloria’s actions in a new light. If the woman was capable of bringing in Rupert Brennan and unleashing him at the ceremony, what else had she been capable of? What else had she done to wreak havoc in Kelsey’s world?

  More importantly, why had she done it? What had been her motivation?

  Kelsey’s first, knee-jerk reaction was the thought that this was personal, that underneath that caring exterior, Gloria hadn’t liked her at all and had wanted to hurt her out of spite. But was that true? Or had her motivations lain elsewhere and Kelsey was just collateral damage?

  She thought about that. If it was personal, maybe she’d done it because she’d been jealous of Kelsey’s early success. Maybe she’d even been afraid Kelsey would be promoted ahead of her. That could very well have happened in a few years, as everyone knew that Nolan had always hoped for his daughter to head up the company eventually. Cole’s words were some comfort, and yet there was a flip side to his assurance that she was of prime importance to B & T. Had this been personal, aimed at Kelsey herself? Was Gloria determined to keep her from ever taking the helm, regardless of what that required?

  Shifting in her seat, Kelsey considered the other alternative, that this hadn’t been personal at all but rather part of something much bigger, something aimed at the company at large. Could Gloria have been working behind the scenes to sabotage the entire corporation? If Kelsey was as pivotal to B & T as Cole seemed to think, maybe Gloria’s actions constituted an act against B & T itself. After all, an attack on Kelsey was an attack on B & T.

  She took out the battered letter Gloria had sent to Rupert Brennan and read it again, trying to stay calm and objective. When she came to the last paragraph before the postscript, she paused and reread it.

  Please note that if Brennan & Tate is sold, you may forever lose your right to inherit any part of Sean’s fortune, thanks to what is known as “innocent buyer” laws. Don’t let this happen!

  Right there in the letter, she’d said “if Brennan & Tate is sold.” Had that just been a general hint at a future possibility, or did it imply foreknowledge of the impending hostile takeover? Maybe this whole Rupert mess had been all about the takeover.

  Needing to organize her thoughts, Kelsey took out pen and paper. At the top of the page, she began writing a list of every person and entity that had been involved thus far. She wrote out Kelsey, Gloria, B & T, Rupert, Rhonda, Walter, Pamela, QFMG—and then she stopped. Something with those last letters had caught her eye. She’d seen the same notation recently, QFMG. But where? Pulse surging, she opened her purse and dug around in the depths, feeling not unlike her cousin Rhonda. Finally, her hand closed around Gloria’s scribble pad and she pulled
it out. She scanned the scrawled notes until she found it, there on the third page and jotted in Gloria’s handwriting: Sched. mtg. with P @ QFMG.

  Kelsey closed her eyes for a moment. This whole thing seemed incredible. Had Gloria been working with Pamela in secret toward a hostile takeover of B & T? If so, how could she have done that? How could Gloria, one of the company’s most loyal employees, have been such a traitor?

  Most importantly, if she had done it, then why?

  Doing the math, Kelsey quickly tried to figure out how much B & T stock Gloria owned. Between the shares granted to her as a member of management and additional incentive stock plan grants over the years, the woman had probably amassed enough stock by now that she owned a good five percent of the company. A percentage that high would have made her an appealing inside partner to Pamela in her attempt at a takeover. Had the two of them been working together?

  Had Gloria been a traitor in their midst?

  Kelsey mentally reviewed the consequences of Gloria’s latest actions:

  She had disparaged Adele’s legacy.

  She had gotten Kelsey banned from her own office.

  She had caused the value of B & T to plummet.

  The thought hit Kelsey like a punch in the stomach. That had to be why Gloria had done all this: She’d wanted to devalue the stock! She’d used the Rupert mess to sully the company name and drive down the price of shares, which in turn would make the hostile takeover possible and affordable.

  That had to be it. Just look at how things were falling into place, she thought. The stockholders were probably frightened enough by the plummeting stock value by now to accept an outside offer. The employees were already eyeing the door. Soon, Pamela’s bid for takeover would be a success, and B & T as they knew it would cease to exist.

  Gloria and Pamela must have been working together all along. Despite Pamela’s reputation for cleaning house, she had probably agreed to make an exception in this case, offering Gloria a tony position within the new, merged version of B & T—perhaps even the top spot. Gloria was all about power, and looking at the big picture made Kelsey realize that, sneaky as it was, this was the type of thing Gloria would have been capable of doing without another soul ever catching on.

  But if things were going Gloria’s way so perfectly, then why had she committed suicide?

  And if she hadn’t committed suicide, then why had someone killed her?

  There were just so many questions and not nearly enough answers. And as desperately as Kelsey wanted to get to the bottom of things, she had to admit she would never be able to solve this alone—especially now that she wasn’t even allowed in the building.

  Quickly, she grabbed her phone and called Sharon again. This time she told her she wanted to assemble her research team, that she needed them to meet with her somewhere off-site to lay out a plan for how they could fix this situation. Sounding a little uncomfortable at the thought, Sharon nevertheless promised to talk to each of them and get back to her as soon as possible.

  While she waited, Kelsey jotted down a list of the many questions that needed answers and the various ways the team could go about finding them. By the time she reached the city, she wanted to have mapped out a complete plan of attack. Half an hour later, just as the train was about to go into the tunnel, a text came through from Sharon.

  Whole team on board with plan, excited to help. Meet at 6 at the High Yield Café on Stone St.

  Thank goodness, Kelsey thought, tucking her phone into her purse and gathering up her stuff. She hated to have to wait that long, but six o’clock was better than not at all. And now that her team was behind her, at least she had a fighting chance

  Closing her eyes, she whispered aloud as she waited for the train to come to a stop underneath the massive Penn Station. “Lord, please let me save my family’s company as well as my great-grandmother’s legacy.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Kelsey made her way through busy Penn Station, switching over from New Jersey Transit to the subway system without ever having to go above ground. Soon she was crammed in tightly with her bags, rumbling south toward Rector Street Station. Half an hour later she emerged into the sunlight, jolted by the difference between the calm, salty sea air of the shore and the noisy, bustling city that surrounded her now. Hoisting her bags on her shoulders, she walked to her home a few blocks away.

  As she neared her apartment building, she was relieved to see that it looked as if the reporters had all given up and gone away. She entered through the front door without being approached by anyone, and she was upstairs and in her apartment by two p.m. That gave her four hours until her meeting, which was plenty of time for both tasks she wanted to accomplish.

  After making herself a late lunch, she took out her laptop and settled down at the kitchen bar. She pulled up her contact list and got ready to start making the calls she’d been trying to get around to for a day and a half. She had a feeling Walter would not be happy with her for doing so, but on this matter she would stand her ground. Distancing herself from the company for the world at large was one thing, but disappearing without a word to her clients was something else entirely.

  She went through her entire list of active clients, dialing them up one at a time and giving them the same basic spiel. She said she was calling to touch base and to reassure them that while Brennan & Tate was currently facing some challenges, the company was actively working to solve those challenges as quickly as possible. In the meantime, she added, though she might have to hand over some of her accounts to her coworkers temporarily, she wasn’t going anywhere and, most importantly, the clients’ interests were not going to be forgotten in the shuffle.

  Fortunately, the calls went better than she had expected. There were a few clients with big deals pending who were understandably nervous, but otherwise almost everyone seemed appreciative that she had contacted them. In general, people seemed to be taking the situation in stride, sounding neither hostile nor skittish but primarily curious. Though she had no answers for most of their questions, she did what she could to be reassuring. By the time she was finished, she felt much better, and she hoped they did too. They certainly seemed to.

  Then she changed into one of her favorite tailored jackets, a pale beige blouse, and black jeans. She completed the outfit by fastening to her lapel the pin Lou had given her. She would wear it with pride, hoping it would continue to remind her of her hard work at B & T and all that she’d done there. No one was going to take that away from her without a fight.

  Before going to the meeting, she would be making a detour on the way to pay a visit to Vern Poole. Kelsey hated to drop in unannounced, but she wouldn’t stay long. She just wanted to ask him some quick questions, make sure he was okay, and find out if any funeral plans had been firmed up yet. As angry as Kelsey was at Gloria, and as confused as she was about her recent behavior, she still felt bad for the woman’s husband. The poor guy had been such a mess the other night, and her heart had really gone out to him.

  On the way from the apartment to the subway station, she slipped into her favorite neighborhood bakery and bought a delicious-looking lemon cream Bundt cake. Then, with the box in one hand and her purse in the other, she got on the train at Rector Street and rode until she reached Union Square station. From there it was a quick five blocks straight up, from Fifteenth to Twentieth, before she reached Gramercy Park and the gorgeous old red brick building that Vern and Gloria had called home for the last twenty or so years.

  Kelsey was standing directly across the street, waiting for the light to change, when she saw a familiar figure emerge from the building’s front door. Despite her four-inch heels, the woman glided gracefully down the steps and across the wide pavement, coming to a stop on the other side of the street at the same light Kelsey was waiting for. It was Yanni, looking strikingly beautiful as usual in a light gray dress-length all-weather coat, cinched at her tiny waist by a wide silver belt. When the light turned, rather than crossing,
Kelsey stepped back out of the way of the other pedestrians and waited there as Yanni came toward her. She’d probably gone by Gloria’s place to drop off some of her personal things from the office. If so, perhaps she would be able to give Kelsey an idea of how Vern was doing before she headed up there herself.

  Yanni didn’t notice Kelsey waiting, so she called out her name before she was all the way past. In response, Yanni jumped, clearly startled.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Kelsey said with a smile, stepping closer. “I saw you crossing the street and thought I’d wait on this side for you. I wanted to ask you a question.”

  Yanni forced a smile in return, though she did not look at all pleased to have run into Kelsey. In fact, she looked downright upset, as if she were ready to bolt at any moment. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Kelsey wondered if Walter had been turning the employees against her, starting with his own assistant.

  “Kelsey, hello,” Yanni said, recovering from her surprise. She gestured off behind her and to the right, speaking more quickly than usual. “I was just over at the salon, getting a blowout. Big date tonight. You know how it is.” She smiled even wider, but that smile did not reach her eyes.

  Kelsey hesitated, the situation shifting in her mind. There was no salon in Gloria’s building, not that she could recall. More significantly, Yanni’s hair did not look freshly styled at all. If anything, it looked disheveled, as did her makeup, for that matter. If this was Yanni’s idea of dressing up for a hot date, she needed a better mirror.

  Clearing her throat, Kelsey tried to sound nonchalant as she said, “Oh? Who do you use? I’ve been looking for somewhere new ever since my last haircut. My girl butchered me.”

  “No way,” Yanni said, her cheeks coloring a bright pink. “Your hair looks beautiful. It always does. If I were you, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “Still, it never hurts to get a good lead on a new place. What’s the salon called?”