Baronet Vineyards, the nation’s largest purveyor of inexpensive jug wines, has long been a wholly family-owned company, and its assets a closely guarded family secret. A number of takeover moves in the past have been unsuccessful. However, when the Tillinghast organization was able to acquire 2,000 shares of Baronet last year, Kern-McKittrick was able, as Assaria LeBaron puts it, “to get its toe in the door—and a very unattractive toe, at that. Oil and water don’t mix, and neither do oil and wine.” Kern-McKittrick operates oil-producing fields, primarily in Kern, Tulare, and Fresno Counties.
Due to the wine company’s traditional secrecy, it is difficult to place a value on its stock, which has never been traded in the marketplace. However, the Tillinghast offer is currently 13.25 shares of Kern-McKittrick common for each share of Baronet common. And since Kern-McKittrick is currently traded on the N.Y.S.E. at around $50 a share (it has reached as high as $56 in recent weeks, as rumors of the takeover have circulated on Wall Street), it is possible to figure that Harry Tillinghast estimates Baronet’s stock as worth about $662 a share.
This, Assaria LeBaron insists, is much too low. Her company’s shares, she says, are worth at least $1,000 a share, for which Harry Tillinghast would have to up his bid to at least $80 million in Kern-McKittrick stock. “Does he take me for a fool?” Mrs. LeBaron told the Gazette yesterday. “When he was allowed to buy in, he paid $700 a share. Now he offers $660. Does he think we’ve gone down in value?” Mrs. LeBaron accuses Mr. Tillinghast of acting in bad faith.
The matter will presumably be settled at a shareholders’ meeting scheduled for April 30.
Unexpected Complications
To date, Baronet Vineyards is owned by only seven shareholders. Assaria LeBaron is said to control roughly 28,000 shares, and her sister-in-law is said to own an equal amount. An additional 12,000 shares are owned by Joanna LeBaron’s son, Lance, 55, of Peapack, N.J., a sportsman and horse breeder. Peter LeBaron, Jr., is said to own 4,000 shares; his brother Eric owns 2,000 shares, and Harry Tillinghast presently owns 2,000 shares. However, an unexpected complication has arisen involving the shareholdings of Miss Melissa LeBaron, socialite and art patroness.
Miss LeBaron was raised in San Francisco as Mrs. Assaria LeBaron’s daughter. But in the course of sorting out the LeBaron holdings in preparation for the takeover battle, it was revealed that Miss LeBaron is, in fact, the daughter of Joanna LeBaron Kiley by a previous marriage. Under the terms of her father’s will, Melissa LeBaron was left 4,000 shares of Baronet stock outright. But the will also stipulates that the 12,000 shares which Lance LeBaron now holds were to be divided equally between Joanna Kiley’s children. Melissa LeBaron is now claiming that this was not done, and that she is legally entitled to 6,000 additional shares from her father’s estate. With 10,000 shares under her control, Melissa LeBaron could well provide the “swing vote” in the dispute. Miss LeBaron refused to be interviewed for this article, and all queries were referred to her attorneys, who had no comment.
Legal complications arising from this latest family revelation could easily stall the Kern-McKittrick takeover in its tracks.
“Stay That Way”
“This has always been a family-run company for four generations, and it’s going to stay that way,” Assaria LeBaron told the Gazette. “If anyone has any sense they’ll see it my way, and keep Baronet what it is. Meanwhile, this is getting to be ridiculous. Nobody in the family is speaking to anyone else. Once I win, and get this all behind me, I’d like to get back to my real business, which is making and selling wine.”
Mrs. LeBaron, a septuagenarian, is a well-known local philanthropist. It was she who principally underwrote the restoration of the Odeon Theatre, and she is active in urban renewal projects in the area south of Market Street. She is also the “Flying Grandmother” who last winter made headlines when, though she has no pilot’s license, she took the controls of her company’s Boeing 727 and flew the aircraft under the center span of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Mrs. LeBaron is also the owner of the San Francisco Condors baseball team, currently in spring training at Candlestick Park.
Baronet Vineyards was founded by her late husband’s grandfather, Marc LeBaron, a French immigrant, in 1857. Her husband, Peter Powell LeBaron, Sr., was killed in a hunting accident at the family’s Montana ranch in 1955. Since his death, Mrs. LeBaron has run Baronet almost single-handedly, and has earned deep respect as a tough trader and a shrewd but honest fighter in the business community.
“I love it, Gabe!” Sari says. “It’s perfect. I got all the quotes, and I don’t mind being called a tough trader or a fighter at all. I also like that ‘shrewd but honest’ part. In fact, I think the whole thing’s very pro me, don’t you?”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“And we even got in a plug for the Condors! They’ll love that. And we’ve made the LeBarons French instead of wops. Old Julius would have loved that—though he’d have preferred it if it’d said ‘French aristocrat.’ When did this hit the stands?”
“Six o’clock this morning.”
“Ha! We’ve already had calls from Time and Business Week, asking who Joanna’s first husband was. They find no record of it. Ha! I told the truth. I said I didn’t know. I told them to ask Joanna. Ha! So I put the ball right back in her court, on that one.”
“I’m glad you like the story, Sari.”
“I do. Congratulate Archie for me.”
“I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear that he can still be of some use to you,” he says without a trace of sarcasm.
“Now, Gabe. You know that at first I thought the best thing to do was to try to destroy Melissa’s credibility. Then I changed my mind, and decided I needed her on my team. That’s a woman’s prerogative, isn’t it, to change her mind?”
“Absolutely, Sari.”
“Now, even if Melissa won’t return my calls or answer my letters, she’ll read this and certainly see the light—right on the front page! You’ve scooped the country, Gabe. Suddenly, I’m very optimistic.”
“Good,” he says.
“Miss Martino has already had calls from the network news. What do you think, Gabe? Should I go on TV with this? Should I do Good Morning America, and the Today show?”
“That would be up to you, Sari.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve always been able to do, it’s present myself to the public. I think what I’ll tell them is that all I’ll consent to do will be a segment on Sixty Minutes. I think Sixty Minutes has more credibility than those morning spots, don’t you? And they’ll come to the house to tape it. With the others, I’d have to go to New York. What should I wear for Sixty Minutes? Something simple, I think, simple and businesslike. And I think I’d like to do it with Harry Reasoner, and not one of those other bozos. I definitely won’t do it if it’s Mike Wallace …”
Gabe Pollack is smiling. Sari is a star again.
After Peter’s funeral, she had also been a star, the principal mourner, the chief recipient of the condolence letters and telegrams—from heads of industry, the mayor of San Francisco, the governor, from Chief Justice Earl Warren—all of which she would answer on embossed and monogrammed black-bordered stationery. And after all the guests had gone, and the hand-wringing and kisses and murmurs of sympathetic words were over, she and Gabe had been alone at last in the big house on Washington Street, and the Wedding-Cake House had suddenly seemed very empty, and Sari had found herself feeling very dispirited. She had draped her black mourning veil across the mirror in the drawing room.
“Malchemuvis.”
“Yes.”
“You loved him, didn’t you, Sari?”
“Yes. No. Off and on. On and off. He was a difficult man—to get to know. For a long time, it was like living with a stranger, a shadow, or a ghost, and I couldn’t find out what was haunting him, haunting us. And then I found out, and it helped me bring him back to life—for a little bit, at least. From time to time. But the ghost never really went
away. It kept coming back to haunt us with what it knew. Joanna. Did you see her at the grave? What a ridiculous woman.”
“An evil woman, do you think?”
“No, not evil. Just ridiculous. Ridiculous, but very effective.”
“I still don’t understand it,” he said.
“What?”
“A hunting accident. He never hunted, did he?”
“No. He chopped down trees. Back in the nineteen thirties, he used to carry a pistol, but that was just for the morale of the field hands when there were labor troubles—threats of strikes, scab labor coming in, that sort of thing. He never used it. I used to carry a pistol, too, for the same reasons, and I used my pistol more than he did, but never on a human being.”
“Then how did it happen?”
“That morning, he seemed perfectly normal. A little more withdrawn than usual, perhaps. My accident upset him terribly. He blamed himself. He told Mr. Hanratty that he was going out to hunt some rabbits. Rabbits! Rabbits were never a problem at the ranch, not that I knew of. And when they found him, it was as though he had tripped over a fallen log, and the pistol had accidentally gone off into his chest. He was lying on his face, on the other side of the fallen log. It wasn’t an accident.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I found this,” she said, and wheeled her chair to the Regency games table, spun its top around, and lifted the piece of blotting paper from one of the secret compartments underneath. “Hold it up to the mirror, and you can read it,” she said.
He went to the mirror, and gingerly lifted one corner of her dark veil to expose a small triangle of glass. I can no longer face this life, he read.
“His handwriting. I found it on his desk. I haven’t shown it to anyone else. He must have started to write a note, then changed his mind.”
“No note was found.”
“No note. Only that. It’s not even addressed to anyone.”
“He destroyed the note.”
“Destroyed it. Burned it, perhaps. Who knows. But he changed his mind, and didn’t finish it.”
“I wonder why.”
“Perhaps because he didn’t want to place the blame on anyone. That would have been nice. But I think more likely he remembered that as a suicide he couldn’t be buried in consecrated earth, as he was today. He remembered his mother and his father.”
“But why would Peter have wanted to take his own life? That’s what I can’t understand.”
“Oh, Gabe,” she said almost desperately then, “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I don’t know anything. Today, in the church, I thought I don’t even know who I am. I felt I had no right to take part in what was going on, and I couldn’t understand even a little bit of it. I felt I was all alone there, lost in some terrible limbo, with even a name that was made up from some Kansas towns I’ve never seen. Deus noster refugium—but we’re Jews, aren’t we, Gabe? The Romans persecuted us, didn’t they? We’re Jews, wanderers, auslanders, strangers in a strange land, aren’t we? And I thought, how did I ever become a part of this? I don’t belong here. I belong in some different land of milk and honey, and orange groves and cypress trees and cedars of Lebanon, but I know nothing about that land, either. But why am I here, not there, and how did I get to where I am? How did I lose everything, my faith to boot? I had no business partaking in that High Requiem Mass today, genuflecting to an image of Christ on the cross. I had no business being there, and yet I was there. Has my whole life been a deceit and a hypocrisy? How did I become nothing—nothing at all—with no feelings left, and nothing to believe in, not even myself? Is Peter in heaven now? Is Athalie? Are Julius and Constance? Where will I go? I don’t know. Who am I?”
Who is she? She had heard that question whispered, and so had Gabe, particularly in the first months after she and Peter had returned from their long, long wedding trip in Europe, with a new baby. Where did she come from? Terre Haute, they say. Terre Haute? And what a strange name—Assaria! And who is that man who was her guardian, Gabe Pollack? A Jew, they say. And she a Jewess? It’s hard to say. From her looks, it could be either or. Were she and Gabe Pollack lovers, do you think? Hard to say, but isn’t he—a bit minty, as we say? But who is she? And fifteen months for a honeymoon, and a baby! And that baby—it looks to me a good deal older than the LeBarons are saying it is! How old do they say? Four months? If I know anything about babies, that baby is closer to eight months old. That means, of course, that she was pregnant when she married him—and all in white! He had to marry her, of course. LeBarons always marry down. Look at Julius and Constance, for all her airs, pretending to be a real O’Brien, when the world knows.… Well, after all, what can you expect? They’re Valley people. Mackerel-snappers. Cat-lickers. Dagos. Wops. Well, I’ll say this for her. She caught a rich one. Caught him is right. Caught him with his pants down.
That was the way San Francisco talked when she and Peter first came home with Melissa. The past grows silent. It doesn’t go away.
“Who am I, Gabe?”
“Well, I’m a member of my own little persecuted minority,” he said.
“What do you mean? Oh, you mean—that. At least you can consider yourself part of a group. I’m nothing.”
“In the final analysis, everyone is a minority of one. As God said to Moses, ‘I am that I am.’”
“But what did God mean by that? Unless it was a riddle. That’s what I feel I am—just a riddle.”
“You loved Peter very much, didn’t you?”
“I used to think I loved you,” she said.
“But you loved Peter, Sari. I want to hear you say that. It’s important to me.”
She smiled a little absently. “Oh, we had our passionate moments,” she said. “Is love important? Is it important to be in love? How many times I’ve asked myself that question.”
“The answer, I think, is yes.”
“Gabe, I’m a little frightened about staying in this house alone tonight. Will you spend the night with me? It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. Just spend the night here so we two outcasts and orphans can be outcasts and orphans together.”
Sixteen
And now, at last, the day has come. It is April 30, and the shareholders of Baronet Vineyards are gathered in a sixth-floor suite of the Fairmont to decide on the business at hand. The hotel has helpfully cleared one room of bedroom furniture, and replaced this with a long conference table and comfortable swivel chairs, an even dozen of them, and at each place a fresh pad of yellow legal foolscap has been set, along with a new ballpoint pen, glasses, and individual thermos carafes of ice water. In the sitting room next door, urns of coffee and tea have been set out, with cups and saucers and platters of fresh Danish pastries, croissants, and raisin buns. In what had been the bedroom, the atmosphere is all very businesslike. Outside, in the sitting room, Sari thinks, there is an almost festive party air. The hotel has even sent fresh flowers to the room, and a large basket of fresh fruit reposing in a nest of green shredded cellophane. Outside, diagonally across the, street, Sari can see the garish facade of the Standard station that occupies the site on California Street where the old LeBaron house once stood.
All these little extra frills and special touches have, of course, been arranged by Sari’s office, for this is to be no ordinary stockholders’ meeting. Normally, stockholders’ meetings have been loose, informal affairs held in Baronet’s old-fashioned boardroom, with everyone sitting around drinking Coca-Cola out of plastic cups. But Sari has chosen the Fairmont because she wants the meeting to be held on neutral territory. She has chosen this suite because it is prettier and more intimate than some of the hotel’s standard meeting rooms. Not that this is expected to be a cozy little gathering of old friends. It is more like a council of war.
Assaria LeBaron is deliberately avoiding eye contact with any of the others in the room. Let them wonder, she thinks, what she will do first. Instead, she watches as the black court stenographer, who has been engaged to record the proceedings for post
erity, deftly removes her little machine from its impossibly small black case, extends its slender tripod legs, and sets the machine upon the tripod. With this small gadget, with its handful of little symbols, she will record every syllable that is spoken and then, magically, transform her symbols back into written words. A small packet of white stenographic tape appears, folded accordion fashion, and is fed into the machine by the young woman’s efficient, crimson-lacquered fingers, a tape that will soon be filled with impossible-to-decipher symbols—impossible, that is, for everyone but her.
She is a beauty, this black woman, with skin that has an almost purple hue, and a long, aristocratic neck, and the profile of Nefertiti. Her bearing is that of an aristocrat beyond aristocracy, an Ethiopian princess, secure in her breeding, her beauty, and her high art. This princess-priestess wears her glistening jet-black hair pulled tightly away from her face, and secured in a bun in the back. Her hair has the glossy sheen and luster of a black walnut veneer, and a clever trompe l’oeil paint job cannot be ruled out. Her high cheekbones have been blushed with the faintest persimmon color. Within this perfectly sculpted head are encapsulated all sorts of arcane transliterative powers and sciences. She frowns disdainfully at her machine, and then her nostrils flare imperiously as she seats herself in front of it, and poises her long, slender fingers above its keyboard. “May I please have,” she says, “the names and positions of everyone at the meeting, starting with the gentleman seated at the head of the table, and then moving clockwise around the table?” Her fingers are ready for the responses.
“William C. Whitney,” says Bill Whitney, the prissy little secretary of Baronet’s board. “Secretary, Board of Directors, Baronet Vineyards, Incorporated.”
“Harry Boyd Tillinghast,” says Harry, who is seated on Bill Whitney’s left. “Baronet shareholder of record.”
“Eric O’Brien LeBaron, shareholder,” says Eric, who is next.
“Eldridge R. Nugent, representing Mrs. Joanna LeBaron Kiley, attorney with the firm of Cravath, Swaine and Moore, One Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York City,” says Joanna’s lawyer, and the young black woman’s fingers move noiselessly across her keyboard, her face expressionless.
The LeBaron Secret Page 38
