The LeBaron Secret

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Thank you, George.” Then he rose from the table, and gestured to her to follow him.

  Mystified, she also rose, and followed him out of the restaurant, into the lobby of the hotel, to the elevators.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see. Sixth floor, please,” he said to the elevator operator.

  On the sixth floor, he produced a key and ushered her into a suite of rooms overlooking Union Square.

  “Oh, Peter!” she gasped.

  The room seemed to be filled with flowers—roses, calla lilies, birds of paradise. In the center of the sitting room, a round table draped with a long white cloth was set for two, with serving dishes under silver lids, and a three-branched silver candelabrum with its candles lighted.

  “Oh, Peter!”

  “Just an ordinary little hotel suite,” he said. “I said I’d stand on my head to get you to forgive me. Now, watch me.” And he kicked off his shoes, sprang forward on his hands, and stood on his head in the center of the room. “I’ll do more than that,” he said. “I’ll walk on my hands.” And he began walking about the room on his hands, his stockinged feet high in the air, his trouser legs flopping about his ankles. He looked so ridiculous that she began to laugh. “I’ll do this all night if you say so.”

  “There’s a monster here who tickles the feet of people who walk on their hands,” she said, and reached out and tickled the soles of his passing feet.

  “Oh!” he yelped. “How did you know I’m ticklish?” and he back-somersaulted onto his feet again. “I can’t stand to be tickled!”

  “Are you ticklish here?” she said, laughing, tickling his chest. “And here?” tickling him under his arms.

  “Stop, stop,” he moaned, and suddenly, gasping, he was holding her in his arms. “Oh, Sari,” he said, “I want—I want—so much!”

  “What do you want?”

  “So much that I can’t have. What do you want, Sari?”

  “I want someone to love me. Someone to love. I love you, Peter …”

  “Oh … oh,” and now he was kissing her, and she felt her own body, of its own accord, of a mind of its own, grow limp and breathless, pressing against him, arched and expectant.

  “Your beautiful nipples … I couldn’t take my eyes off them that day on the boat … little pink points.” Now he unbuttoned her dress and was kissing them, first one, then the other, curling his tongue around them. “Let me show you the only way to drink wine,” he whispered. “Let me show you the wine expert’s way,” and she watched with amazement as he reached for the bottle of chilled wine on the table, filled a glass, and then dipped first her left breast, then her right, in the glass, then licked the nipples clean while a fire of excitement shot through her like a volcano erupting. With her breast in his mouth, his eyes traveled up to hers.

  “Oh, Peter,” she sobbed. “I love you so. I love you more—more than the world. Do you love me, Peter?” Then, in one motion, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, where the coverlet was turned down and the sheet folded back in a clean white triangle.

  “Love me, Peter!”

  At first, there was a little pain, but then, wonder of wonders, she began feeling herself liking it a little, just as Joanna had told her she would, and when it was over she lay damp and spent in his arms, damp, and spent, and loved. “All my life,” she murmured, and she thought: Now we will get married. Marriage is what happens next. We are in love, we will get married, and we will have his beautiful children, all my life. Then she discovered that there were tears in his eyes. “What is it, Peter? What’s wrong, my love?” She ran her fingers through the fine hairs of his chest, and kissed his eyes, finding that even the taste of his tears thrilled her.

  “I’ve done a terrible thing … a terrible thing,” he said.

  “No, you haven’t. It was lovely and wonderful, and I wanted it too, Peter.”

  “No … you don’t understand.”

  “I want us to be happy,” she said. “Like the song.” Under the covers, she began to tickle him again, and soon he was laughing despite himself, and then they were making love all over again, and it was even better than the first time. After that, he appeared to sleep.

  As she lay beside him in the big bed in the darkened bedroom, nested against him, spoon fashion, while their uneaten dinner in the sitting room outside grew colder under the hotel’s silver warming lids, she let only one thought drift through her mind. She let the thought pass, waft past like a slightly chilly breeze, then disappear, banished, but not unobserved. The thought was: If Joanna always has a plan, is this a part of it? Is this why she has been arranging for us to spend so much time together? Is she testing us, testing me, testing Peter, experimenting with us to see what will happen when the two reagents are placed together and heated in the retort—what fumes will rise, whether an explosion will occur? Is this all a part of some mysterious Joanna plan?

  “We must never tell Joanna about this,” she whispered. “Promise me. Never.”

  But there was no answer, and she let the thought drift away into the clouds of foreverness and forgetfulness, where it belonged.

  Instead, she thought: It is simple. He loves me. Next, he will ask me to marry him, and I will say yes.

  Their clothes lay in a heap on the floor by the bed. Reaching down, she found Peter’s tweed Norfolk jacket, picked it up, stepped out of bed, and slipped it on. It reached halfway to her knees. On tiptoes, she walked out into the sitting room of the suite, where two low table lamps were lit, and where the table was still set for their dinner. The candles on the table had guttered out. She lifted one of the warming lids: cold asparagus. She picked up a spear, and nibbled it. She lifted another lid: rissolé potatoes. She replaced that lid, but a third lid revealed baby lamb chops, which would be excellent cold. She sat down at the table and selected a chop with her fingers.

  Sitting there in Peter’s baggy jacket, overlooking the Square and the lighted city, the chunky palm trees that dotted the Square with the tall Dewey Monument at its center—the monument with the loosely draped lady at the top of her pedestal—and having her own quiet, solitary dinner and eating a baby lamb chop with her fingers; everything about it all was somehow—well, somehow like having a picnic on the deck of a sailboat in a sheltered cove, but tonight it was infinitely more rewarding, more fulfilling and romantic, she thought.

  Looking out at the Square, she thought: I am that loosely draped lady, she is me. See how surely and squarely she stands, chin tilted upward, resolute, proud, secure in her world, unafraid of the future. See how she seems to be spreading her wings, preparing to fly, borne by the wind. She is me. Oh! She is me.

  And she thought: It is simple. He loves me. Next, he will ask me to marry him. That is what happens next to lovers. And I will say yes.

  But, as a few of us know, it did not happen quite that way, not quite that way at all, at all, at all.

  “Sari, I’ve arranged to come to San Francisco on Friday,” Joanna is saying. “I’m taking the eleven o’clock, so I should be in the city by one. I’ll be staying at the Stanford Court.”

  “Nonsense,” Sari says. “You’ll stay here, of course. There’s plenty of room. I’m not going to have you staying at some hotel.”

  “Well,” Joanna says with a little laugh, “that’s very nice of you, but I think I should warn you that I’m more than likely going to take Eric’s side in this—if it should come to a vote, that is. And I don’t want to feel I could be murdered in my bed!”

  “Nonsense again. There’s no reason why we two can’t meet and discuss this thing like two adult, civilized human beings.”

  “That’s what I’d like, Sari. Just a nice, adult, preferably pleasant family discussion of the situation. Not a formal stockholders’ meeting. Just a discussion of the pros and the cons.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And I think Eric should be present when we do this,” Joanna says. “I think Eric should be able to present his side.”

 
; “Well, Eric and I aren’t speaking at the moment,” Sari says. “So I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

  “Sari, I’m sure Eric will come if you ask him. At least ask him, Sari. I think it’s important that everyone concerned be present when we meet—Eric, Peeper, Melissa, and you and I.”

  “What about Lance?”

  “Lance won’t be able to make it,” she says. “But he and I’ve discussed it, and he will go along with whatever I decide to do. Which I’m sure comes as no surprise to you, Sari.”

  “No,” she says a little sourly. “No surprise at all.”

  “Then what shall we plan?”

  “Let’s plan on dinner here at the house Saturday night,” she says, “if that suits everybody.”

  “And you’ll try Eric.”

  “Yes.”

  “And no lawyers—nothing like that, Sari.”

  “Just family.”

  “Who knows?” Joanna says. “We might just all end up having a good time. Wouldn’t that be nice—for a change?”

  “And it’s settled—you’re staying here. I’ll cancel your hotel reservation. And Jo—give me your flight number. I’m going to send Thomas out to the airport to collect you.”

  “Well,” she says to Thomas a little later. “Did Melissa get that letter?”

  “It was on her breakfast tray, with all her other mail, this morning, Madam.”

  “Then why the hell haven’t I heard something from her?”

  “When I picked up the tray, all the mail was gone.”

  “Then why no reaction from downstairs?”

  “Perhaps Madam should—”

  “What?”

  “Initiate a conversation with Miss Melissa.”

  “On that subject? No! Then she’d know immediately that we’d steamed open the letter and read it. Then she’d really be on the warpath with me!”

  “Yes, Madam has a point.”

  “There’s not that much time to waste. We’re going to try for a family meeting. Here. Saturday night.”

  “I know, Madam. Have you invited Miss Melissa yet?”

  “No …”

  “Why not do that now? Madam might get some hint, from her tone of voice.”

  And so, while Thomas watches, Sari picks up the interhouse phone and taps out Melissa’s code on the buttons, and Thomas listens as his mistress says, “Melissa darling, how are you today? … Oh, fine, just fine. Darling, can you come up for dinner Saturday night? Joanna’s going to be here from New York, and we thought we could all discuss this takeover proposal of Eric’s and Harry’s … yes, all of us.… You can? Oh, good. Seven-thirty, very casual.… And—how’s everything else? Ah … good.”

  She replaces the phone. “Sweetness and light,” she says to Thomas. “All milk and honey. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She’d love to come! Dammit, Thomas, what in hell is Melissa trying to pull?”

  “Well, I will keep my eyes and ears open, Madam. At the moment, that’s about the only thing we can do.”

  Ten

  It is Friday morning, and Sari and her lawyers are meeting in her downtown office on Montgomery Street. Jacobs & Siller have sent not one, but two, of their senior partners over to discuss the situation on the theory, perhaps, that two heads are better than one, or, more likely, that two heads mean they can double their fee. The lawyers’ names are Jonathan Baines, Esq., and Simon Rosenthal, Esq., and Messrs. Baines and Rosenthal have just finished explaining to Sari, who proposed this meeting, that there is really very little they can do. Sari is thinking: senior partners! They both appear to be no more than eighteen years old, and Mr. Baines has a beard, like a hippie.

  “You see, Mrs. LeBaron,” Mr. Rosenthal is explaining, “the way your husband’s will was written, you and your sister-in-law each control thirty-five percent of Baronet Vineyards. Clearly, your late husband wished to divide the rest of the shares proportionately and fairly among members of the next generation. Thusly, of the remaining thirty percent of the company, fifteen percent was bequeathed in equal shares to your children, and an additional fifteen percent was bequeathed to your sister-in-law’s children.”

  “I know all this,” Sari says impatiently. “But fifteen percent to Lance doesn’t seem fair, when each of my children only gets five.”

  “Unfortunately,” he says, “your sister-in-law had only the one child. But we must assume that your late husband intended this will to be fair and equitable, one that would preclude any family conflict or dissension. The will was very likely written with the thought in mind that Joanna LeBaron might have further issue.”

  “At age forty-six? Not bloody likely!”

  “Well, your late husband’s last will and testament was written in nineteen forty-five, when she would have been—uh—thirty-five or thirty-six, and when your late husband still might have supposed, or taken into consideration, the possibility of future issue.”

  “Well, what can we do? Who can we sue? Can we break the will?”

  “Of course, that is a possibility, Mrs. LeBaron,” Mr. Baines says, “but I think a rather remote one. Don’t you agree, Si?”

  “Your husband died in nineteen fifty-five—” Mr. Rosenthal says.

  “Dammit, I know when he died!”

  “—and his will was probated, without contest, later that year. The provisions of this will have been operative since then, and we don’t think it likely that a court would look kindly at an attempt to break, as you put it, an instrument the provisions of which have been operative for nearly thirty years.”

  “And on what grounds could we attempt to break the will, Mrs. LeBaron?” Mr. Baines says.

  “Fraud!”

  “Fraud?”

  “Fraud—deceptions—lies.”

  “What sort of lies, Mrs. LeBaron?”

  “Never mind. What I want to know is how I can win this thing. That’s what I brought you here for. I’m not going to let them take my company away from me.”

  “Unfortunately, Mrs. LeBaron,” Mr. Rosenthal says, “in view of the way in which your late husband apportioned his estate among his heirs per stirpes—”

  “Don’t use expressions like per stirpes with me. Speak English.”

  “Unfortunately, the way the Baronet shares were divided under your late husband’s will, if your sister-in-law votes in favor of the acquisition, as you indicate to us she will, and if her son, Lance, votes with her, and they are led by your son Eric and Mr. Tillinghast, they will have fifty-five percent of the share votes, Mrs. LeBaron. If that is the way these four shareholders align themselves, there is no way that you could win. It is a lost cause.”

  “Dammit,” she says, “I hire you people to help me defend my case, and you start out telling me you’re going to lose it for me!”

  “Mrs. LeBaron,” Mr. Rosenthal says, “this is not a case, and you are not a defendant. This is an offer to buy, and you are one of the proposed sellers. In Wall Street terms, this is a takeover bid, and your company is the target.”

  “Means the same thing, doesn’t it? Just words.”

  “All we could do,” Mr. Baines says, “since our firm serves as trust officer for your late husband’s estate, and if the Kern-McKittrick offer is placed before a shareholder vote, is be present at this shareholders’ meeting. Naturally, we would have no vote ourselves, nor could we in any way influence the vote. But we could be present at the meeting to make sure that everything is conducted legally, and that the shareholders’ interests are properly protected. In fact, I think we should be at this meeting, don’t you, Si?”

  “Definitely. Make sure that there isn’t any hanky-panky.”

  “Not that I can see that there would be,” Mr. Baines says. “It seems like a perfectly straight and aboveboard offer. A clean bid, as they say.”

  “Then let me ask you one thing,” Sari says. “What if Melissa is not my daughter?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You heard me. If Melissa is not my daughter, then what?”

  “Not your
daughter. Well—” Mr. Baines says.

  “Adopted, or something.”

  “Well,” Mr. Baines says, riffling through some papers in the open briefcase on his lap, “since Melissa LeBaron is designated in Peter LeBaron’s will as his five percent heir per stirpes, I don’t see that it makes any difference whether she was adopted or not. She is still one of the heirs per stirpes.”

  “And,” Mr. Rosenthal adds, “Melissa LeBaron’s vote hardly counts in the takeover bid at all. With or without her vote, you are already outvoted.”

  “So I’m defeated. Powerless. I’ve as good as lost control.”

  “Which brings us, Mrs. LeBaron, to a recommendation on our part. We know you feel strongly about the matter, but we feel strongly also, as your advisers, that we should advise you to accept the Kern-McKittrick offer.”

  “Never!”

  “There is even a rumor circulating that Harry Tillinghast is willing to increase his offer by five tenths of a point.”

  “Five tenths of a point! Peanuts.”

  “You are a solely family-owned company at the moment, Mrs. LeBaron. In the event of your death, or your sister-in-law’s death—”

  “I’m perfectly healthy, thank you!”

  “In the event of your death, the government could step in, and place any sort of appraisal it chose on your estate—”

  “You’re going to tell me all about taxes, aren’t you? Well, I’ve heard all those arguments.”

  “But your heirs—”

  “I don’t plan to have any heirs.”

  “Everyone has heirs, Mrs. LeBaron.”

  “I’ll be the first one not to.”

  “We’ve been in communication with Joanna LeBaron’s lawyers at Cravath, Swaine and Moore in New York. They strongly recommend that she accept the Kern-McKittrick offer. We also recommend that you do.”

  “Harry Tillinghast’s in the oil business. What does he know about making wine?”

  “I’m sure you’d still be able to exercise a certain amount of control.”

  “I want full control! I want the control I’ve had since Peter died. I want to keep my company. If I can’t, this meeting is over.”