The Golden Chance (22 page)

Eleanor turned away from the window and gazed around the Federal-style bedroom with its fine old dressing table, high-post bedstead, and dimity hangings. She was so much happier here in this room these days. She had moved all Burke's things out, claiming it saddened her to be reminded of him. Everyone had accepted that explanation without questioning it.

But the truth was, she had experienced an enormous sense of relief the day Burke died. She had felt freed at last.

She was far from free, however. She knew that now. None of them was free.

“Did you plan it this way, Burke? You'd be happy if you knew that we're all still paying for your cruel games. I should have known you'd find a way to reach beyond the grave to hurt us.”

She could envision him laughing as he watched those he had left behind struggle with the results of the disasters he had set in motion. Some people were destined to go through life wrecking the happiness of others. Burke Castleton had been an expert at doing exactly that, and his bastard daughter had inherited his talent.

But Darren was different. Darren was her son. He had inherited his father's looks and charm but not his callousness.

Eleanor's fingers tightened around the sherry glass. She refused to contemplate failure. She would not let her dead husband ruin her son's future.

“Did you enjoy the evening, Reed?” Hilary asked casually as she climbed the stairs ahead of her husband.

“Sure. Eleanor always puts on a good feed. If she weren't so hung up on proper wineglasses and forks we'd probably all enjoy ourselves more, but what the hell. The halibut was good.” He tugged at his tie, amazed at how automatically he concealed his true feelings from Hilary these days. It was almost instinctive.

“Phila is an amusing character at times, isn't she?”

“She'll give Nick a run for his money, that's for sure.”

“Did she really remind you of Nora?”

Reed wondered where all this was leading. He grew even more cautious. “Just once with that little lecture on charitable contributions. Nora was always after the rest of us to spread the money around a little. She used to quote the same bit about it being like manure, as I recall.”

“You know most charities are scams,” Hilary said as she rounded the corner at the top of the stairs. “One has to be so careful. Much more effective to donate money to the conservative organizations and politicians who are working to keep the country on the right path. In the long run, everyone benefits that way, rich and poor alike.”

“Goddamn right.”

“Nick certainly seems taken with Phila.”

“You can never tell with Nick,” Reed heard himself say carefully.

“I know.” Hilary walked into her room. “We all learned that the hard way three years ago, didn't we? Good night, Reed.” She smiled wistfully before she closed the door.

Reed stood staring at the closed door for a long moment before moving slowly off down the hall to his bedroom. He walked inside and shut his own door. His gaze caught on the carved maple bed. He tried to visualize Hilary in that bed, her beautiful red hair cascading around her breasts, her fine body stretched out languorously beneath the sheets.

It was impossible. No matter how hard he worked at it, he could not summon up an image of Hilary in his bed. Nora was the only woman who had looked at home there.

In spite of everything, Reed realized he was glad that Nick was finding some happiness and satisfaction with Philadelphia Fox. Nora would have wanted her son to be happy.

The revolver roared, the noise penetrating even the thick headgear Phila wore over her ears. The heavy gun jumped in her hand, and she struggled to bring it back in line with the target.

“Take it easy, Phila.”

“What?” Phila shouted in return, squinting at the paper target in the distance to try and see if she had come remotely close.

“You're doing everything too fast. Slow down. This isn't a quick-draw contest.”

“What?”

“I said,” Nick repeated, lifting the muff-shaped headgear away from her ears, “this isn't a quick-draw contest. You want the whole operation to be smooth and easy. Try doing it in slow motion.”

“I don't think I like this gun.”

“You don't like guns, in general, so you're hardly a good judge.”

“Why can't I practice with my own gun?”

“Because for someone who doesn't really like guns, someone like you who won't ever want to practice, a revolver is a much better option than an automatic. I've already explained that. You'd have to fire hundreds of rounds with your 9-mm to break it in and to get yourself familiar with it. Somehow I don't see you being willing to do that.”

“This thing's hard to load.”

“Stop bitching. You'll get used to it. Even if it is a little more awkward to load, a revolver is a lot less complicated to use. For your purposes you want something simple and direct, not fancy. Trust me, Phila, you're better off with a .38 than your 9-mm.”

“This sucker's heavy. My arm's getting tired, and my hand is sore from pulling the trigger so many times.”

Nick gave her an exasperated look. “You've been complaining since we got here this morning. Close your mouth and reload your gun, lady.”

“You're getting impatient with me, Nick.” She fumbled with the ammunition, feeling like some desperado in an old-time western movie. “You'll make me nervous if you start yelling.”

“It was your idea to carry a gun. I'll be damned if I'll have you running around with something you can't handle. If you're going to keep a gun beside your bed, you're sure as hell going to know how to use it. That's final.”

“You're starting to raise your voice, Nick.”

“That's not all I'm going to do if you don't start paying attention. All right, step up to the firing line and for God's sake, try to remember what I just told you. Easy does it.”

“Must be something about guns that brings out the macho in men, huh? Is that why you're talking so tough this morning?”

“Another five minutes and I won't be talking tough. I will be acting tough. Be interesting to see if that approach works any better.” Nick shoved the muffs back down over her ears.

Phila groaned, took her stance and brought the revolver up with what she thought was a smooth, sweeping motion. She snapped off two shots in the general direction of the target and lowered the gun.

“Not bad,” Tec said loudly behind her. “She's got a tendency to pull to the right and she's still trying to get the shot off too fast, but she's starting to hit the paper.”

Phila removed the muffs and smiled loftily. “Why thank you, General Sherman. So kind of you to pass along some encouraging words to the troops. If I paid too much attention to Nick, I'd get very depressed. He hasn't said one nice thing to me all morning.”

“Nick,” said Nick, “is taking this seriously and you'd better do the same, Phila. Try it again.”

Phila ignored him for a moment, eyeing Tec's orange-and-pink aloha shirt with some envy. “Nice shirt, General.”

Tec beamed. “Thought you might like it.”

“Get your little ass over to the firing line, Phila,” ordered Nick, “or I will drag it over there, myself.”

“Sheesh. What a way to spend a perfectly good morning.” Phila grumbled and went through the motions once more. She didn't hear the Mercedes arrive but when she finished firing several more rounds and glanced around for approval, she saw that Reed had driven down from the house to join them at the outdoor firing range.

“She's rushing it,” Reed announced as he strolled over to the small group near the firing line. “Just like she rushes her backswing.”

“I know.” Nick handed Phila more ammunition. “I'm working on the problem.”

“I don't need any more of an audience,” Phila said, annoyed. “It's hard enough doing this with Nick and Tec glaring at me.”

“Why
are
you doing it, Phila?” Reed asked in a conversational tone as he picked up a .357 Magnum Tec had brought along. “It's fairly obvious you don't think much of handguns and you don't seem to approve of individuals owning them. Why are you so goddamned bent on carrying one?”

“I have my reasons,” Phila muttered, not wanting to go into the whole story for the benefit of Reed and Tec.

“She had some trouble a while back with one of the operators of a foster home,” Nick explained as he unpacked more ammunition. “The guy jumped her with a gun, roughed her up a bit and landed in jail. He made some threats about what he was going to do when he got out.”

“Holy shit,” said Tec, looking both reverent and awed. “Were you hurt?”

“No, just shaken up. The police arrived in the nick of time.” Phila concentrated on the targets in the distance.

Reed frowned at Phila. “But the creep threatened to come after you when he got out of prison?”

“I know it sounds melodramatic,” Phila said, examining the heavy weapon in her hand, “but the fact is, I'm scared of Elijah Spalding.”

Reed looked at Nick over Phila's head. “Have you checked into this?”

“Not yet,” Nick said. “But I intend to. All right, Phila, try it again and this time make it very slow and very smooth, understand?”

She stared at him, alarmed. “What do you mean, you're going to check into it? What's to check into?”

“Never mind. Stop arguing and for once in your life try following orders.”

“I never follow orders if I can help it,” Phila announced with fine hauteur.

“You'll learn,” Nick replied, unconcerned.

“Who knows?” Tec added. “You might even get used to it.”

“Not a chance,” Phila retorted. “Antiauthoritarian, ultra-liberal, anarchistic tendencies are bred in my bones. Just ask Reed here.”

“With all three of us yelling at her,” Reed said equably, “she'll learn to follow a few orders.”

“Make that four,” Darren drawled as he strolled up to join the crowd.

Phila surveyed the small circle of determined male faces and knew she was outnumbered. Feeling mutinous but temporarily subdued, she turned back toward the target.

It was an odd sensation to have all these people hovering over her, concerned with making certain she got this gun business right, she reflected as she lifted the .38.

It had been a very long time since anyone had worried about her personal safety and even longer since anyone had felt obliged to ensure it by teaching her how to take care of herself.

It made no sense, but for the first time since Crissie's death Phila didn't feel quite so alone in the world.

Nick arrived in Seattle at four o'clock that afternoon. The trip was another calculated risk, he acknowledged as he parked his Porsche in one of the company lots. But this whole project was dependent on a series of such risks. He had to keep things teetering on the brink until he was ready to send a few of them over the edge.

He turned off the engine and sat for a moment behind the wheel, examining the jumble of plain two- and three-story buildings that comprised the headquarters of Castleton & Lightfoot, Inc.

The company had grown in rapid spurts during the early years. Reed and Burke had paid scant attention to such niceties as coordinated office and manufacturing plant design. Business was booming and they'd had no time for frills.

They had acquired building space in the south end of Seattle and as needed erected the cheapest, most efficient structures they could find. The parking lots were scattered willy-nilly around the buildings. At some point in the distant past someone had planted a few scraggly bushes near the doorways in a futile attempt to soften the no-nonsense surroundings.

There was nothing about the Castleton & Lightfoot headquarters that would win any industrial-design awards, but that wasn't nearly as important to the work force as the fact that there had never been any layoffs in the entire history of the company. Jobs had been steady, even during the worst periods of the notoriously cyclical aerospace boom-and-bust industry.

The company had managed to tread water during the bad times and bounce back as strong as ever when the economy picked up again. Avoiding mass layoffs was just another Castleton & Lightfoot tradition.

There was no denying that C&L had done phenomenally well during the initial growth period when Reed and Burke had been at the helm. But for the past several years things had become comfortably staid as far as Nick was concerned. The company was set in its ways; it no longer responded quickly to the promise of new markets. Competitors nipped at its heels. When Nick had been given the CEO mandate, he'd immediately started making some changes.

He had contracted several relationships with new suppliers whose operations were more modern than some of the older companies C&L had always used. He had begun to expand the overseas markets, with a special emphasis on Pacific Rim countries. And he had started to expand product development so that it would be less necessary for C&L to depend on government contracts.

That was the area where he had found himself going toe-to-toe with both his father and Burke Castleton. They liked doing business the old-fashioned way, which meant the government way.

Nick felt strongly that sophisticated electronics and instrumentation had as many uses in industry and the home as they did in military hardware. To Reed and Burke the nongovernment market niches were afterthoughts, nothing more than casual sidelines in which Castleton & Lightfoot occasionally dabbled.

But Nick had seen the future of the company in those niches and had focused an increasing amount of Castleton & Lightfoot resources toward developing them. Darren had been receptive to the new ideas, but Nick had been forced to fight his father and Burke Castleton all the way.

It occurred to Nick as he parked the Porsche that if he'd had Phila on his side in those days when he'd been battling his father and Burke, he would probably have won the war.

He smiled briefly as he got out of the Porsche. It was obvious that once Phila gave her friendship or her love, she was fiercely loyal. She would have backed her husband to the hilt, unlike Hilary who had undermined Nick's position every chance she got. Nick had made few mistakes in his life but he readily admitted that marrying Hilary had been a costly one.

He walked across the wide parking lot, cutting between rows of cars until he was on the sidewalk that led to the building that housed the corporate offices. He pushed open the glass doors and looked around with a sensation of possessiveness he could never quite suppress. It had been three years since he had walked into this lobby, but the feeling that he had a right to be here, that this was where he belonged, had never wavered during that time.

Over the years he had done everything in this business from emptying the wastebaskets to negotiating multimillion-dollar contracts. He knew C&L from the ground up, and half of it was his.

The Lightfoot portion of Castleton & Lightfoot constituted his rightful inheritance. Three years ago he had told himself to forget that inheritance, but he knew now as he walked through the front door again that one of these days he was going to reclaim it.

The receptionist at the front desk was new, thin and terrifyingly young. She looked as if she had done her apprenticeship behind a cosmetics counter—nothing but perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect makeup.

The nameplate read Rita Duckett. Nick wondered what had happened to Miss Oxberry, who had been thirty years older, gray haired and capable of fending off an entire battalion of nosy government bureaucrats.

“May I help you, sir?” Miss Duckett inquired with a smile that suggested Nick was probably in the wrong building.

“I'm Nick Lightfoot, and I'm going upstairs to the CEO's office.”

Miss Duckett frowned over the name. “I'm sorry, sir, but Mrs. Lightfoot is not here. She's on vacation for a few weeks. I'm afraid her assistant, Mr. Vellacott, has already left for the day. You said your name was Lightfoot?”

“That's right. And you don't have to worry about my going upstairs. The office is mine. I just haven't been using it for a while.” He headed for the elevators.

Miss Duckett leapt to her feet. “Mr. Lightfoot wait a minute. I can't let you just barge upstairs.”

Nick spotted the guard who was ambling forward to see what the fuss was about. “Hello, Boyd. How are the wife and kids?”

The guard's leathery face creased first in surprise and then in a wide grin. “Mr. Lightfoot. Good to see you again, sir. Been a long time.”

“I know.” Nick stepped into the waiting elevator. “Please tell Miss Duckett I belong here. She's a little nervous.”

“Oh, sure. I'll let her know. She's new. You coming back to work here again, Mr. Lightfoot?”