Children of Dynasty (44 page)

A
s the lunch hour had been taken up by the meeting, Mariah suggested they order in pizzas for the entire company. The staff all stayed to await the tower of boxes, filled with crusts smothered in tomato and cheese and topped with everything from olives to anchovies.

Just as Mariah grabbed a paper plate and started eating, her cell phone rang.

She chewed and swallowed a mouthful of pepperoni and cheese. “Mariah Gra … Campbell.”

“Now you’ve got it,” said Rory warmly.

His voice sent a little shiver through her and, still giddy from the reception of their news, she laughed. “Everyone here is celebrating.”

Because of the noise level, she went out into the hall and stepped into her old office. It seemed unfamiliar since she’d been working out of her father’s on the corner. “Now I can hear you.”

“McMillan and I are finishing up at the bank.” He paused for effect. “The threat of foreclosure is officially off, pending the legal creation of CGI.”

“We did it.” Mariah felt the final knots loosen in her shoulders and back. “I can say it now without worrying about a jinx. We really did it.”

Rory sobered. “I showed them Father’s letter of resignation and First California’s chairman called Thaddeus Walker on the carpet.”

She imagined the long-faced banker’s usually dour expression growing even darker.

“It’ll be a wonder if he keeps his job.”

She almost said that was great, but why celebrate misfortune? Instead, she said, “We’re eating pizza here. You want to come by?”

“McMillan and I are having lunch to discuss some innovative financing for the new company. Also, he says he wants to invest in us. We’ll meet with him together next week.”

A nice vote of confidence in her and Rory, but it was a shame her dad was cut out of it.

“Funny,” Rory mused. “The chairman at First California expressed regret at the developers’ community losing both Father and John. He knows about your dad’s health, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the reasons we forced Father out.”

Another pang went through her. Davis Campbell, ever proud, with a spring in his step and a gleam in his eye, brought down in disgrace. She still had the PI looking for Zaragoza and Rory didn’t know that.

“Are you coming by after lunch?” she tempered.

“I thought I’d go back to the office and talk to the DCI staff. They haven’t heard about the merger yet … or about us.”

“It’s probably better coming from you than from the press,” she agreed. “What if both our PR folks send out a joint release?”

She and Rory arranged to meet at her father’s house after work.

Mariah returned to the conference room. A thinning crowd stood around a litter of empty pizza boxes. Soft drink cans were scattered over every surface, and a few folks were bringing out trash bags to manage to mess.

John buttonholed her. “We can’t visit all our sites, but I think we should go over to Grant Plaza.”

“I should have thought of that.” The site boasted the largest group of employees outside of the main office.

He patted her shoulder, and she didn’t even mind some of the staff seeing. “As time goes on, you’ll think of the right things yourself.”

They excused themselves and left the building. As she drove them to the site, she dwelled on her inexperience. “I’ve only been with the company a short time. I wish you hadn’t made that deal with Davis to stay out of the business.”

From the corner of her eye she saw a muscle twitch in her father’s jaw. “I do too … now.”

Yet, she knew him to be man of honor, who would not break his word unless faced with a compelling reason.

At the site, Mariah parked her sedan alongside the trucks and trailers. She and John got out of the car, and both of them raised their faces skyward. The glass spire sparkled in the afternoon sun like a perfect crystal.

Onsite, the bustle of the crew and the sound of a generator spoke of the work and energy that went into building. Mariah’s chest swelled with pride, because even though Charley was no longer with them, Grant Plaza was being completed and her family name would live on in it.

Supervisor Cassie Holden greeted them in the main trailer. “John, Mariah. I’m glad you’re here.” Her cheek bore a healing scar where flying glass had struck her, a little more prominent than the one on Mariah’s forehead. “Ramsey Rhodes is touring the site with the OSHA rep. Said they’ve got the final results of the investigation.”

Mariah’s pulse accelerated. “What caused it?”

“He didn’t want to tell me before he had a chance to talk with you and John.” Cassie opened the trailer door and yelled to a man in a hard hat standing near the base of the replaced hoist. “What floor is Ramsey on?”

“Top,” came the answering shout.

“Let’s go.” John’s expression suggested both determination and wariness.

Mariah headed for the hoist with him, suspecting he was thinking about Davis. Cassie discreetly stayed behind.

The metal cage waited at the base of the tower. Normally, Mariah loved the sensation of ascending a structure that only existed from hard work and imagination. Today, her stomach fluttered as she and John rose into the sky. The closer they got to the top, the less she wanted to hear what Ramsey had to say. If her suspicions were correct, the heat stress already found on the cable held the evidence of sabotage. There might not be any way to pin it on Davis, but for the sake of Charley and his family, she had to try and find justice.

If she, if her PI, found evidence his father were guilty would Rory want to divorce her?

The hoist reached the top floor. Though the view of the city, Bay, and bridges was spectacular, she turned without savoring it and went into the building.

Afternoon light grayed in the center away from the tinted windows. Bits of paper and other debris littered the concrete floor from one side of the building to the other. The only breaks in the space were the central elevator shafts and stairwells. Ramsey stood at the north windows talking on his cell phone.

Mariah headed for him with slow dread. How was it possible that after the long wait for answers, she no longer wanted to hear? With all her heart, she wished that Davis had nothing to do with Charley’s death.

As she approached Ramsey, she heard him say, “She and John are here now. I’ll tell her you’re waiting on the okay for a press release.” He pressed the “end” button. “That was April. Ready to give out the good news.”

“About the foreclosure?”

Ramsey shook his head. “No. She’s already sent that one.”

Mariah replayed what he’d said about good news and her steps slowed further. The knot in the middle of her stomach twisted. “It wasn’t sabotage?”

Completely out of character, Ramsey grinned from ear to ear. “A design flaw, the best possible outcome for us. The hoist company is calling a warning for all of their leased equipment to be inspected before tragedy strikes anywhere else.”

“Thank you,” Mariah said. “Oh, thank you.”

Near the end of the arduous day, Rory was left alone, sitting in his father’s chair. His tie had been put aside, his collar loosened. It was all over, as that tired saying went, all but the shouting. Father wasn’t going to take this quietly, even if he had left the building as soon as his letter was signed.

Just after six, Mariah called Rory from outside the locked lobby doors, and he went to meet her. She looked beautiful; a few strands of her hair wisping around her neck, and he wanted to take the rest of it down. To run his hands up her arms and pull her against him.

Because John stood beside her, he did not.

“The accident report is complete,” she said. “We got it and came straight here.”

Sweat broke out on his palms and under his arms. His heart set up a rough and heavy beat. Not Father, oh, not Father. “What caused it?” he asked in as normal a tone as he could manage.

John answered. “The hoist cable showed metal fatigue caused by the heat of vibration. A gear misalignment.”

Rory’s eyes closed, and he let out his breath. No matter what else his father had done, he wasn’t a murderer.

“The cable was past due for replacement from a work standpoint, but not according to hours,” Mariah said. “Only under the scanning electron microscope in a metallurgist’s lab could the problem have been detected. And the fact that the emergency brake failed to arrest the fall is a one in a million piece of bad luck.”

“He didn’t do it.” Rory’s voice rose. “He didn’t do it.”

Mariah looked at him with somber eyes. “I wish I could jump up and down and be happy. I am happy … but what I did was terrible, jumping to conclusions.”

John put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “You have to admit Davis pulled some pretty low tricks this spring.”

“Yes, but whatever else he may have done, I owe him an apology,” Mariah said.

Rory felt as though there were a weight on his chest. “He won’t take it. He’ll never want to see either of us again.”

“Don’t you see, we have to try?” she insisted. “He was making the same mistake so many of us do, dwelling on an old hurt.”

John rubbed his chin. “You know, that makes me think. The other day Davis said I had never apologized for taking Catharine from him.”

“You told him you never would.” Rory didn’t see where his father deserved an apology for John loving Catharine.

The older man looked chagrined. “I said I’d never apologize for loving her, but what we did, getting married while he was in Africa … that’s always set heavy on my conscience. Maybe what I need to do, what we all need to do, is accept blame for our own part in all that’s happened.”

Thirty minutes later, Rory turned into the cul-de-sac at Seacliff. He was driving Mariah’s sedan carrying the three of them, as his Porsche did not have a back seat big enough to accommodate anyone larger than a preschooler.

Rory got out of the car, chimed the doorbell, and knocked. An inquiring glance from Mariah reminded him once more of the ignominy of a son not having a key to the house he’d grown up in. His “Halloo!” echoed off stone and glass.

Anna came to door, moving slowly as usual.

As soon as she opened it, Rory pushed past her, leaving Mariah and John on the threshold. He went into the kitchen where the Sub Zero threw back his reflection, along with the rest of the ultra modern stone and stainless room. In a ceramic bowl on the counter, he found the spare keys.

Mariah caught up with him. He recognized the extra door keys, selected one, and twisted it off. He put the key in his pocket. “I should have done this years ago.”

Together, they returned to the foyer. His mother’s sitting room and the library lay in darkness.

“Mr. Rory.” Anna twisted her hands together and he hated that he was making the well-loved housekeeper nervous. “Your mother is in the family room.”

Her eyes avoided his and Rory’s scalp prickled. What if Davis was taking his anger at being ousted out on Kiki?

Once more leaving Mariah and the slower moving John behind, he raced across the foyer and into the trophy room.

His mother sat slumped on the slate floor. An Alaskan brown bear on its hind legs towered over her. Rory wondered that she wasn’t freezing, sitting on the chill stone in a thin dress. Tears ran down her cheeks to join the others that had splattered her red silk like raindrops. He surmised now that Anna’s nervousness had been because of her following the family rule that servants didn’t see certain things.

Like the half-empty brandy bottle atop the bar.

But the family rules were being shattered, and Rory had a sense that something irrevocable was about to happen.

Kiki struggled to her feet and went to the wet bar, where she stared at her reflection. Raising her hands to her cheeks, she kneaded the skin with fingers that clutched, then grasped. Her sharply manicured nails produced a line of blood that welled beneath her left ear.

“Mom,” Rory cried.

She turned and saw him. He moved toward her, but he was still fifteen feet away when she grabbed and swung the brandy bottle. The mirror disintegrated into crystal shards. Liquor fumes fogged the falling glass. She stumbled back from the wreckage, clutched the edge of the granite bar top for a second, and then dropped out of sight.