Echoes of Titanic (23 page)

When they pulled apart, the girl wiped a tear from her cheek and gave a slight nod. After that, Kelsey slung the strap for her computer case over her shoulder and grabbed her tote bag and purse.

“Guess that's everything for now,” she said, glancing around the room. As an afterthought, she walked over to the windowsill, grabbed one of the framed photos there, and shoved it down into her tote bag.

With that, she was off.

As hard as it was to do so, she would hold her head high and walk out of here with pride. But as she walked past nosy coworkers, stepped into the elevator with Ephraim, and watched the doors slide shut, she couldn't help but think,
This would never have happened to Adele. She wouldn't have let it happen
.

They traveled the rest of the way down in silence. When the doors slid open, Ephraim walked with her across the lobby and held the door for her.

“Want me to get you a cab?”

“No thanks.” Her jaw set, she was stepping out of the door when Ephraim said her name. She turned and looked up into his sweet, dark face, his soft brown eyes.

“Yes?”

“If there's anything I can do for you, you just tell me. Okay?”

This time, the tears filled her eyes before she could stop them. “Thank you, Ephraim. I appreciate that.” She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, regaining her composure. “I'll be okay. I just wish I knew what had been going on with Gloria here at the end and why she ended up dead. Unless you can explain that to me, I'm afraid there's not much else you can do.”

An odd expression coming over his face, Ephraim stepped outside with her and let the door fall shut behind them.

“I can tell you this much,” he said in a low voice. “I do know that Mrs. Poole and Mr. Hallerman had a screaming fight on Monday.”

“What?”

He glanced around and lowered his voice even further. “Monday afternoon, around three o'clock, Mrs. Poole came down and asked me to unlock the auditorium so she could get things set up for the big ceremony the next day. She was working for a while by herself, but maybe half an hour later I overheard voices, so I figured someone was helping her. But then the voices started sounding kind of mad, so I checked it out. Mr. Hallerman was in there with her, and they were hollering and fighting up a storm.” He hesitated. “I'm no gossip, Kelsey, and I wouldn't mention this at all except that I had to tell that detective about it when he interviewed me, and after that he just kept coming back to it and asking me a whole bunch of questions. What did I hear? What did they say? What did they do? In retrospect, it made me wonder if I should have said something to someone sooner.”

Kelsey's eyebrows lifted. She'd left the office on Monday around two and had been tied up in meetings the rest of the afternoon, so she'd missed this event entirely. Then again, if something disruptive had happened in her absence, Sharon would have told her about it. Why hadn't she said anything? A big fight between the two highest-level executives in the company—especially one that happened just a day before one of them ended up dead—was definitely big news.

At Kelsey's request, Ephraim gave her the same information he'd given the detective, which wasn't much. He hadn't paid any attention to the specifics of the argument, so all he could remember of their conversation was how it ended. Ephraim had made his presence known and asked if everything was okay. The two had simply glared at each other, and then Walter had said something like, “I'm calling an emergency meeting of the board,” and left.

“And that was it?”

“That was it. I asked Mrs. Poole if I could help her or if she needed anything, but she just snapped at me and told me to go away. There were tears in her eyes, so I just figured she was embarrassed for me to see her cry. She left the building pretty soon after that.”

Once again, Kelsey felt as though her head were spinning. She'd been so forthcoming with Walter about all she'd learned, yet he'd held back this very pertinent fact from her? Something definitely wasn't right here.

Thanking Ephraim one more time, Kelsey turned to her right and began walking briskly down the block toward Battery Park. She couldn't bring herself to go home just yet. Her mind was spinning, her heart was aching, and she felt utterly and completely lost.

When she reached the park, she made her way toward the family memorial stone, which was practically hidden among some trees near the southeast end of the park. Strolling down an offshoot path that led her among those trees, she reached her destination.

Simple yet elegant, the memorial was made of a solid block of Irish blue limestone that was about five feet high by a foot across. On the front was an inlaid plaque that read:

In loving memory of
R
OWAN AND
J
OCELYN
B
RENNAN
,
Father and daughter,
who perished together on
Titanic
in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912

A few lines down from that was a second plaque with the words:
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis
, which she knew was an Irish expression along the lines of “May your faithful soul be at God's right hand.” Though the memorial had been erected by Sean Brennan just a year after
Titanic
sank, the Irish plaque had been added by Adele herself several decades later in honor of her father's passing. Following the tradition, Adele's son, Jonah, had put in a stone bench nearby, in honor of his mother after she died. As Jonah was still alive and well and living at the Jersey shore, nothing had yet been added in his honor to carry on the tradition. Even at eighty-nine, he was in excellent health. With a start Kelsey realized that there was a good chance he would outlive his own son. How heartbreaking would that be for the poor old guy? They would have to come up with something together to place here in honor of Nolan, a task she'd always thought she and Matt wouldn't have to face for many years.

Sucking in a deep breath, Kelsey moved over to the stone bench and sat facing the sculpture. Being here always made her feel more connected to her ancestors, but especially to her great-grandmother. She just wished the woman were here now to tell her what to do. Gloria was gone as well. Even her dad was practically as good as gone. That left Walter, who apparently wanted nothing to do with her.

Aching with loss and loneliness, Kelsey reached into her tote bag and pulled out the framed photo she'd grabbed from her office. She held it in her hands and studied it now, a group shot taken in 2007 at her father's sixtieth birthday celebration. In the picture was the grinning birthday boy himself,
Nolan, front and center, and he was surrounded by Gloria, Lou, and several others, including Kelsey and the handsome man next to her, Cole Thornton. Looking at the photo now, she realized that this was the group's last real golden moment. Not long after that dinner, the dominoes had begun to tumble.

Now here she sat, just about as alone and lost as she'd ever been.

At that moment, Kelsey's phone began to ring from her purse, and though she intended to send the call straight to voice mail, when she looked at the screen and realized it was Lou, she went ahead and answered.

He said he'd just been calling to see if she was doing okay, but soon he got far more than he'd bargained for, listening as she spilled out the lower points of her day, sharing her grief and dismay over one bad thing after the other. When she was finished, he asked if there was any way he could help.

“Not unless you can convince Walter to let me back in the building. Either that, or turn back the clock a few days so we can keep Gloria alive and make everything work out differently this time.”

Lou gave a sad chuckle. “To be honest, Kels, I'd probably have better luck at turning back time than I would at convincing Walter Hallerman to do anything.”

She sighed, knowing no love was lost between Lou and Walter, the man who had essentially stolen the CEO position at Brennan & Tate out from under him.

“Actually,” he added, “I bet there's one way I can help. I think I can take a pretty good guess at what Gloria and Walter were fighting about.”

She sat up straight, eager to hear what he had to say. “I'm listening.”

“Okay, well, you know I've tried not to burn any bridges with B & T in the hopes that someday my own firm might be large enough to merge back in. In fact, I've had a standing offer with your company for the past year, but so far Walter hasn't been interested in taking me up on it.”

“Yes, I know all about that,” she said, wondering where he was going with this.

“Lately, rumor has it that a much bigger corporation than mine now also has its eye on B & T. On Monday they made an offer too, but theirs is going to be a little harder to refuse than mine was.”

“Why?”

“Because from what I hear, it's somebody big, which means that if Walter and the board don't play their cards right, this could turn into a hostile
takeover situation. I have a feeling that the reason he and Gloria were fighting was because reportedly she was in favor of the deal. In fact, I heard she was pushing him pretty hard to accept their offer.”

Kelsey thought about that for a moment. She tried to keep her eyes and ears open too, but she'd not picked up one whiff about any of this from anyone. Why had Gloria not confided in her? For that matter, why hadn't Walter brought her into the loop?

At the thought of a hostile takeover, Kelsey's chest tightened. If that went through, her family company could end up being dissolved into some big conglomerate. Even if she somehow managed to hang on to her position, Brennan & Tate as she knew it would cease to exist.

“Who is it, Lou?” she asked, almost afraid to hear his answer. “Who's the big company trying to buy out B & T?”

“I wish I could tell you, kiddo. All I know at this point is that it's somebody big. That doesn't exactly narrow things down. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Kelsey thanked him for the information and ended the call. Then she sat there for a long time, looking over toward the memorial. She thought about her great-grandmother and how much this spot had meant to her, how much this whole city, in fact, had been a part of her, had been in her blood.

When Kelsey was about seven or eight years old, Adele had begun taking her for what she called her “Accomplishment Walks” through the city. The woman had been quite old by then but was still very spry. Their walks always started somewhere different, but every few blocks she would stop and point out some nearby building or window and tell her, “I helped fund that company's start-up,” and then she'd go on to elaborate. She'd say things like, “Twenty-five years ago, I gave them thirty thou for sixteen percent, now they're at three mil, which means my original thirty is up to almost five hundred. That's a net profit of about four hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Not bad for an old lady, eh?”

At those times, even when Kelsey didn't understand what her great-grandmother was actually saying, she still hung on her every word. She'd found the lingo fascinating.

Great-Grandma Adele didn't just talk money. She also loved to tell Kelsey about the various people who owned the businesses she'd invested in. Often, they were women or immigrants or minorities—folks who couldn't seem to get much cash the conventional way. But Adele knew a good thing when she saw it, and she liked to say that she often banked as much on the person
as on their product or service. Kelsey had always admired Adele, but those walks had helped to reinforce her desire to grow up to invest in people and their businesses as well.

Now she rose and walked over to the memorial, reaching out to run her fingers over the Irish words on the plaque that had been added by her great-grandmother. At that moment, for the first time ever, Kelsey did not feel close to Adele at all.

Was it possible that Rupert was right?

Had she actually been Jocelyn, pretending to be Adele?

Kelsey could think of only one person who might be able to give her some answers: her grandfather, Jonah Tate. As Adele's son, he just might be able to fill in some blanks. And as Kelsey's grandpa, he also might be able to soothe some of the hurt.

With new purpose Kelsey turned away from the memorial and headed through the park toward Battery Place, the street that ran along in front. She could run home, throw together a few things, and be on a train by one thirty, heading south on the North Jersey Coast line. If anyone still alive knew Adele Tate's deepest secrets, it would be Grandpa Jonah.

K
elsey ended up catching the two thirty train from Penn Station, and as soon as they made it through the tunnel, she fell asleep and ended up dozing almost the rest of the way.

Her grandfather was waiting on the platform at Bay Head when she arrived, and he greeted her with a warm hug and a kiss.

“You look wonderful, Grandpa!”

“So do you, young lady.”

She knew he was lying, that she was tired and disheveled and had never looked worse, but she didn't say so. He was just being kind.

He put her bag in the trunk of his old Buick and drove south on Highway 35 about twelve miles until they reached the coastal town of Seaside Park, a narrow strip of land nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay. His snug little home sat directly across the street from the ocean, with the bay just three blocks behind him. Grandma Tate had died twenty-five years ago, and Jonah had lived here alone ever since. Nowadays he was checked on regularly by a professional caretaker, who also did some light cleaning and laundry, and an agency brought his lunch five days a week. But otherwise he had thus far managed to maintain his independence. As a retired ship captain and member of the merchant marine, if he couldn't be out on the water, he at least wanted to live as close to it as he could.