The Fregoli Delusion (17 page)

“And you were happy?”

She sipped her coffee and set the
cup down. “Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t going to be a walk in the park. First, I
have to sell my interest in Benson Holdings. David’s going to buy a portion to
give him a majority interest, and we’re looking for another partner to come in
with him on the rest, which isn’t easy right now. Plus, I have a lot of other
holdings I’ve been slowly liquidating, and the rest I’m going to have to
finance, which is tough in the current economic climate, trust me. But it’s
been coming together and I was going to be able to raise enough to make the
buy. I was
very
happy. This is my father’s life’s work, and he wanted me
to have it. Now, while I’m still in my prime. I want it very much.”

Hank was now writing in his
notebook, which he was never without. “So how does it work instead? Under the
existing will?”

“Ned gets Dad’s controlling stake
in Jarrett, he and I split properties and various holdings, Kathleen gets a
token amount to float her through the rest of her bleary days, which wasn't
going to change, and Chrissy gets what she was going to get. The only major
difference, other than the estate and inheritance taxes, which can't be avoided
now, is that once it’s probated, Ned’s stuck with control of Jarrett
Corporation and I’ll have to buy it from him instead of Dad.”

“Will he sell it to you?”

“In a heartbeat. Ask him. You’ll
see.”

“All right.” Hank rubbed his chin
thoughtfully. “Let’s look at it from another angle. You’re going to be walking
into Jarrett Corporation as the new head honcho. You’ve got a board of
directors and a roster of executive officers who’ve been following your
father’s lead for quite a few years now. You’ve got a challenge in front of you
to win them over to your leadership and your way of doing things. Who’s going
to have a problem accepting you as the new head of Jarrett Corporation?”

Diane put her elbow on the table
and cupped her jaw in her hand. “You’ve got a way about you, Hank. I like it.
You’re very polite and careful, but you ask your questions anyway, as a cop
should.” She shrugged, staring at him. “The board had mixed feelings about Dad
but he made them a ton of money and nobody complained about that. And they knew
Ned was going to sell to me no matter what, and I’d be walking in the front
door one way or another. No matter what.”

“Even if someone came up with a
better offer?”

“Even if someone came up with a
better offer. Look, Ned's the kind of person who really can't appreciate the
difference between five hundred million dollars and seven hundred and fifty
million dollars. Either way, it's a lot more money than he could spend in six
lifetimes. He and his attorney came down during the negotiations to attend a
couple of sessions and get a clear understanding of how the changes were going
to work. He made it abundantly clear he had no problem with any of it and
supported me one hundred percent. He also made it clear he didn’t understand
ninety percent of what we were talking about, and didn’t want to. If anyone
thought that by killing Dad they could get Ned to sell Jarrett Corporation to
them instead of me, they'd have to be delusional.”

“All right. What about the
executive officers of Jarrett Corporation? How were they taking it all?”

“I really can’t say for sure.
Walter was fine with me. We were having some problems with the books and I
didn’t really agree with some of the decisions he’d made in terms of revenue
recognition and so on that would take several hours to explain, but the bottom
line is that we have a different understanding of what my father’s stake in the
company’s worth, and we need to get it straightened out before the transaction
can go through because it's a difference of millions and I don’t have a lot of
wiggle room.”

“How was he, in these
negotiations?”

“Good. Firm, stubborn, pig-headed,
but gracious. We both knew we’d eventually reach common ground.”

“What about the other executive
officers?”

Diane shrugged. “Olive Chin
doesn’t strike me as someone who’d kill the boss to take over the company. Jane
Anne Marshall, the CIO, is actually a friend of mine, and we’d talked a bit
about what I was going to do when I came in. She had a few ideas as well that I
thought were pretty good. Emory Raskin’s the general counsel, and I don’t
really know him all that well. He's very much my father's man. Period. Richard
Holland’s a little pipsqueak whose days in Jarrett might be numbered once I get
hold of him, but other than that, I really can’t say. I don’t see any of them
getting so upset about me taking over that they’d shoot Dad. I mean, they’re
civilized people. Civilized people don’t shoot people to change the direction in
which corporations evolve. Do they?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said, his pen
moving across the page while his eyes remained on her.

“Look,” she said, “I haven’t
really answered your first question. Dad wasn’t the kind of person who got all
excited about the presents his children bought him for Father’s Day. He never
said ‘I love you.’ He always made it clear he approved of Ned and was proud of
his academic accomplishments. You should have seen the book launch he threw for
Ned’s second one, the thing on what’s-his-name.”

“William Bartram.”

“Yeah. You’d think Ned was John
Grisham or something. I mean, who's going to buy that one off the rack next to
the checkout line in the drug store? Nobody knows who this Bartram guy was, let
alone care if they did know.”

“He was an eighteenth-century
naturalist and writer,” Hank said, to see how she would respond. “His
best-known work was
Travels in North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and
West Florida
.”

She grinned at him. “Well, there
you are. He’s got one fan, at least. Make sure you ask him for an autographed
copy. He’s got cartons of the damned things in his basement. He’d be glad to
give you one.”

“You’re not impressed?”

“He’s a little nerd who wears bow
ties and mumbles to himself, but he’s a very nice man just the same. We don’t
do the brother-and-sister thing, but he’s never said an unkind word about
Kathleen and he’s always been a perfect gentleman around me. As I said, he
supports me one hundred percent.” She sighed. “I’ve gone off track again, Hank.
Sorry.”

“That’s quite all right.”

“I told you about Dad’s
relationship with Ned. With me, it was a little different. He wasn’t really
happy about having a child with Kathleen, when it came down to it. But I
remember as a little girl I worked very hard to please him, and I guess he saw
it, which was why he put his foot down and kept me here when Kathleen went to
Arizona. Ned didn’t need to do anything, really, to win Dad’s approval, but I
had to work like hell just to make sure I didn’t lose it. So I worked very
hard. I got good grades in school and I behaved like a little princess whenever
he was around. Just the same, I think it was only when he saw my grade point average
at State that he really became aware of me as a person in his life.”

Hank listened, watching her.

“It sounds odd, I suppose.” She shrugged.
“Maybe you’ve had similar experiences, since your parents were rich and
successful, too. But anyway, he started asking to read my term papers before I
submitted them. He tore some of them to shreds, but not in a mean way. Always
impersonally, so I wouldn’t feel like he was attacking me for being a stupid
idiot, but in a way that forced me to think about the concepts from angles I’d
never considered before. He wouldn’t look at rewrites, it was up to me either
to get it or not get it, but I could sense there was this tacit approval that
was slowly growing.

“After I graduated and started my
businesses, he continued to show a restrained interest. A couple of times over
the years he’d talk to me, just the two of us, to get a sense of where I was in
the game, whether I was growing and learning. A few times I asked him questions
and he answered them. But see, if I’d come to work for him, it would’ve been
very different. Oh, yeah. I would’ve felt smothered and he wouldn’t have been
able to deal with me objectively. He probably would’ve ended up firing me
because I can be pretty stubborn myself.”

“Did he ever give you advice?”

“Only once. I was talking to him
about whether or not I should marry David.”

“And?”

“He advised me to go ahead. It was
solid advice. I wouldn't have expected anything less from him.”

“He talked to you about taking
over the company?”

“Uh huh. At length. Once he’d made
the decision, we had quite a few meetings about it. Some alone, several with
Walter, and others with our lawyers in the room. At times I could see how
anxious he was to get it done. It was like a yoke around his neck that he
wanted to unload onto me, and he was hugely relieved that I was more than
willing to take it from him. He was finished. He’d played the game all the way
to the end, and he knew it was time to leave.”

“All right.” Hank made a quick
notation and looked up. “Where were you yesterday morning between six and
seven?”

Diane grimaced uncomfortably. “I
was in the car. The driver takes me in to the office for seven. David starts at
five, to catch the overseas action, so he was already there. I stay late; he
goes home before I do. So I was in the car at the time it would’ve happened.”

“Is the driver an employee of
yours?”

“No, we use a service.
Consolidated Transportation Services. We have a contract with them. But it’s
always the same driver. We call him George. That’s what his name tag says.”

Hank wrote it down. “How did you
get the news?”

“Walter called. I was in a
meeting, but these days when Walter calls I interrupt what I’m doing, given the
importance of what we’ve been negotiating. I thought he was calling with some
numbers I was expecting. I was devastated.”

“Any idea who might have done
this?”

“None. It’s too horrible.”

“We’ll try to talk to all the
corporate officers to see if they have any ideas,” Hank said. “Richard Holland,
for example, we’ve already interviewed. You mentioned him earlier but you don’t
seem too impressed.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Why’s that?”

Diane shook her head. “Too much of
a butt kisser for me. Always trying to make it look like he was closer to Dad
than he actually was.”

“What do you know about his
background?”

“His father, Gerald Holland, was
in charge of sales at Cross Bandage when Dad bought it. As I remember the
story, Dad kept him on for a couple of years but caught him stealing. Instead
of calling the police, he fired him. Or let him resign. Something like that. Holland
committed suicide. Richard must’ve been just a baby at the time. I think his
mother still lives in town.”

“Do you know her name?”

“Uh, yeah. Mary Holland. She lives
in Springhill somewhere. I’m not sure where.”

“All right.” Hank made a final note
and put his pen away. “The detectives will see you for a written statement.”

“I understand, that’s fine.”

She stood up. “Please find the
person who did this and make them pay for it.”

He slipped his notebook into his
jacket pocket, stood up, and shook the hand she offered him. “We will.”

“I hope so.”

He sat back down and watched her
walk away. He picked up his cup and saw that it was almost empty. He poured
himself another cup, added cream and sugar, stirred, and sipped. She was right,
it was good coffee.

More people had come back
downstairs while he and Diane had talked. More tables were occupied, and a
number of people stood in small groups, chatting.

The collective net worth of this
crowd was probably high enough that it would come close to the gross national
product of a country whose flag he might actually recognize if he saw it. He
thought about Diane and Walter trading numbers so large it wouldn’t seem possible
they’d apply to individual people. He thought about Walter Parris, who everyone
said was a nice man, and he thought about Brett. He thought about the gap in
time between the photos of the corpse Brett had taken with his cell phone and
the call to 911. He felt reasonably certain Brett had spent that time waiting
for Walter to arrive, rather than waiting for Walter to do something after
having been discovered at the scene by his son.

He thought about Brett’s
condition, the Fregoli delusion that caused him to believe that people were not
who they appeared to be. He looked at a nearby group of six people. Four men,
two women. They looked very elegant in their evening wear.

Hank wondered what it would be
like to be Brett Parris. Suppose he was Brett, and he’d missed his medication
for a couple of days. His mind was slipping out of its groove. He was convinced
that one of those men over there, say the short one with brown hair, was
actually Richard Holland. Holland, who was always after him. Always stalking
him. How would he explain it to himself? A copy of Holland’s mind had replaced
the mind of the brown-haired man? Or that Holland had some kind of supernatural
ability to change his shape, to imitate the appearance of someone else? Or just
good make-up and different clothing?