Echoes of Titanic (34 page)

She was about to keep going when she realized Flash was giggling.

“Yes?”

He looked up, startled, as if he hadn't realized he was laughing out loud.

“It just struck me as funny that you said you were going to start at the beginning. I was expecting something like last year or last month—not a hundred and sixteen years ago! That's what I call starting at the beginning.”

Thriller chuckled as well.

“Sorry,” she replied, smiling. “Like I said, it's complicated. We have to go this far back to understand the whole situation.” She returned her eyes to the page in front of her but then paused to look back up at Flash. “Sounds like you're a bit of a numbers whiz, by the way. That was some quick math you just did.”

Beaming, he replied, “I'm the youngest-ever recipient of the Lobachevsky Award.” At her blank stare, he added, “Nikolai Ivanovitch Lobachevsky? Discovered non-Euclidean geometry?”

Suppressing a grin, she glanced at Cole, who gave her a wink in return.

Referring again to the handout, she gave a brief summary of Sean Brennan's life, how his wife died and his daughter was sent to Belfast to be raised by his brother and sister-in-law, Rowan and Oona. She described Sean's professional successes here in New York, and how he worked in a bank and later formed his own investment firm, Brennan & Company, in 1904.

When Kelsey got to 1912 and the part where Adele and her cousin Jocelyn were nineteen and ready to come to America with Jocelyn's father, Rowan, Thriller grunted.

“Don't tell me,” he said, interrupting. “They didn't buy passage on
Titanic
, did they?”

Kelsey nodded. “How did you guess?”

He shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed. “Nineteen twelve. Everybody knows that's the year it sank.”

Again, Kelsey had to suppress a smile. She was being assisted by one math
nerd and one
Titanic
buff. Throw in an ex-boyfriend for whom she still carried a torch, and their group made quite a team.

She continued, telling how the family may have bought some bonds before leaving London—bonds which may or may not have survived the sinking—and then she traced out the rest of the story, including the fact that the uncle and one cousin died but that the other cousin survived and made it to America. She told about what happened a year later, when a young executive who also survived the voyage, Tad Myers, challenged Adele's true identity, claiming she was in fact Jocelyn Brennan just pretending to be Adele. She described the letter Sean sent to Oona in response, and the frustrating lack of the letter she'd written in reply.

“According to my grandfather,” Kelsey said, “Adele was keeping a diary back then, but no one knows where that diary ended up. If I could find it, it would probably shed some light on several of these issues.”

Moving on, she told them about Adele going to work for her father and marrying Edwin Tate and guiding the company through tough times while also breaking down doors for women in business and becoming a legend on Wall Street. She gave the specifics of the payout from Sean's estate after he passed away and the impact Adele's identity would have on that. All three men nodded, seeming to understand, and the further she went, the more she realized what a great team they were. They seemed to connect the dots almost as quickly as she could lay out the facts.

From there she brought things forward to the early '70s, when Ian Brennan first approached Brennan & Tate about Sean's will and Adele's true identity and ended up with a settlement, and then how his son Rupert picked up that battle once Ian died in 2002 and pursued it some more until he was squelched by Gloria Poole. Kelsey was about to launch into a side explanation of why DNA testing couldn't help settle the question of Adele's identity when Flash cut her off with a brusque, “Of course not,” and then, with reference to the family tree on the first page of her packet, he summarized the situation in scientific terms, going on about X and Y chromosomes and the limitations of mitochondrial DNA.

“I think we can take your word for it,” Cole said at last, cutting him off. “Anyway, Kelsey, you were saying that Gloria was in charge of keeping Rupert quiet?”

She nodded, glad to be back on track but also sick at heart at the imminent turn in her tale. Her face flushing with heat, she kept her eyes trained on
the page as she got to that time five years ago when Gloria was twice passed over for promotion and ended up feeling so hurt and bitter. As that was also the time Kelsey had undercut Cole in the deal to finance Lou, she was afraid Flash might make some snide comment that would once again refer to their prior relationship. But he either had sense enough at that point to keep it to himself or he hadn't realized their breakup was connected with that specific series of events because he didn't say a word.

Finally, she brought them to one year ago, when her father had a stroke and the company's value began to plummet. She described the path that had eventually led the firm to hire a public relations group to restore consumer confidence by promoting Kelsey as the newest Tate with the golden touch. Moving along in time, she explained how Gloria had most likely been in talks with Pamela Greeley of Queen's Fleet Management Group at some point in the past few weeks, and how she had apparently done an about-face with Rupert Brennan and sent him an anonymous letter encouraging him to come to Tuesday's ceremony—probably to drive down the value of the company and thus make it more viable for a takeover by Pamela.

She had included a copy of the letter Gloria had sent to Rupert, and she paused to let them read it now. When they were done, she went on to reveal how Walter had been contacted by Queen's Fleet on Monday afternoon, at which point they had made an offer to buy B & T. She described how Gloria had been all for it and how she and Walter had fought, and then how Gloria went home early but got a call later that night, one that upset her greatly and brought her back to the office, where she stayed until morning.

Weary from the telling, Kelsey took a deep breath and tried to stretch her neck by tilting her head from side to side. The closer she came to the death, the harder this was for her.

She pressed onward regardless, describing Gloria's odd behavior just prior to the ceremony on Tuesday afternoon. Then she went through the whole Rupert disturbance and the conversation with him afterward. Finally, her voice flat, she explained how at 5:52 p.m. on Tuesday evening, Gloria sent Kelsey a suicide note via text and then apparently hung herself from a cord attached to the projection screen in the executive conference room. At that point, the others around the table had grown so silent and still that she could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall.

“There's also a chance her death wasn't…” Kelsey's voice trailed off. She
cleared her throat and tried again. “The police are still investigating, but they haven't yet said whether it was a suicide or a homicide.”

That earned a grunt from Thriller, but he didn't comment.

“Anyway,” she said, “I've spent almost all of my time since then gathering the facts I've just gone through with you guys.” She went on to describe how Walter kicked her out of the company and his reasoning behind it. Glancing at Cole, she was gratified to see an expression of outrage on her behalf.

She concluded with the last two matters of importance: the status of the hostile takeover, which was in the air pending a meeting and vote by the stockholders, and the conversation with her father about the bonds, when he told her Gloria had been in charge of their safekeeping and that wherever they were, it had something to do with what he'd called “The wonder.”

“The wonder?” Flash asked.

“The wonder,” Thriller mused, and she could tell that he was thinking the name over closely.

“And so,” she said as she turned to the final page of the handout, “this is where we are now. You'll see on the last page that I've written out a long list of questions. And while I certainly don't expect you guys to answer every one of these, I thought the more clearly I spelled out exactly what I need to know, the more easily you can figure out which aspects you'd like to tackle and how you want to approach things.”

With that she looked from Thriller to Flash to Cole, focusing in on Cole's gorgeous green eyes. “I'm so grateful for your offer to help, but now that you see what we're up against, I'll understand if you want to take a pass after all.”

Cole's eyes widened, and to her surprise he reached out and placed a warm, comforting hand on top of hers.

“If anything, Kels, I'm even more determined to help you now than I was before. You weren't kidding when you said things were a mess. There's no way you should have to figure all of this out by yourself.”

As he spoke, he looked to the other two guys, who were both nodding vigorously. Cole removed his hand, but the warmth of it lingered.

“Do you think there are parts of this that you can jump in and tackle?” she asked hopefully. “I know you're used to digging up info on investments, not on things like inside traitors or stolen identities or potential homicides, but I'm hoping maybe there's enough crossover here that you could at least do a little.”

“I think we can do a
lot
,” Thriller said, standing and going over to the dispenser to freshen his coffee.

Flash nodded. “Several avenues of approach have already occurred to me.”

She looked again to Cole, who gave her a reassuring smile.

“Kelsey, our company is what you might call, uh, unique. This team truly is more than capable of meeting your challenge.”

“So you really can help me after all?”

“You bet we can,” Cole replied. “Looks to me like you need all the help you can get.”

W
ithin an hour the group had managed to hammer out a full plan of attack. Each member of the team would be focusing on a different aspect of the investigation according to their expertise or access. Kelsey had been charged with two tasks. First, she was to secure some sort of detailed plans or blueprints of the B & T building so that the guys could study them for any logical places where a hidden safe may have been built into the walls. That shouldn't be too hard. From what she could recall, there was a set of plans in her father's home office, acquired a few years ago when they were considering a remodel of the sixth floor at B & T. And though there was no longer any need for that home office to exist, as far as Kelsey knew, it had remained untouched and completely intact.

Her other task was to confront Pamela Greeley, if possible, about her intentions with the takeover and her ties to Gloria. While they were all still there in the conference room making their plans, Kelsey called Pamela's office to ask for an appointment but had to leave a message.

Cole would be focusing on financials—of B & T and Queen's Fleet—while Flash would work on a plan for getting a look at Gloria's recent digitally recorded activities before she died. Finally, Thriller would cover the bonds, from their original acquisition to their current location. More than once she'd heard him mumble “the wonder” as if he had an idea about what that might mean but couldn't quite remember what it was.

The only part of the plan that made Kelsey nervous was the fact that they needed her to get into the Brennan & Tate offices after hours, both to
facilitate a digital search and to conduct a physical one. Cole and Thriller both felt strongly that there might be a safe hidden somewhere in the office, and if so that it would probably contain the bonds—if they existed. She wasn't crazy about sneaking in against the wishes of the CEO, but in her heart she knew Walter was wrong to keep her away, dead wrong. If her father were still active and involved, he would have kicked Walter to the curb by now for even suggesting that Kelsey be banned from the family company. She had every right to go back in there and do what she needed to do.

“Can you suggest an optimum time?” Cole asked. “We need to get you in there when the place is empty, but we don't want to look suspicious by doing it in the middle of the night or something.”

Kelsey thought for a moment. “Gloria's wake is this evening, and I'm sure most of B & T's management will be there. I thought I'd put in an appearance, but I don't have to stay long. I can be punctual, and most of them will probably come in a little later.”

“Good,” Cole said. “When does it start?”

“It runs six to nine.”

“Perfect. Show up right at six and let them all see you there, but then get back over here as soon as you can, let's say by seven at the latest, and we'll all head down to the financial district together.”

“Okay. Sounds good. Should I dress in black? Maybe bring along a ski mask or something?”

Cole smiled. “Slow down, James Bond. You're not breaking in and hopping over laser beams and rappelling down walls. You're an employee and a family stockholder of Brennan & Tate, and you'll be walking in the door like a regular person—well, you'll be walking in the back door. Coming in through the front might be pushing it.”

They decided then that they would adjourn until this evening, with everyone working hard between now and then to accomplish their goals. With that, Flash and Thriller grabbed up one more load of pastries and disappeared to their respective offices while Cole offered to give Kelsey a quick tour before she left.