The LeBaron Secret (49 page)

She stepped closer to him. “Peter,” she said, “how do you ever intend to finish this unless you get some others in to help you?”

The question seemed to irritate him, and he paused, frowning, leaning on his ax, and mopped at his brow with a red-checked handkerchief. It must have been a question he had begun to ask himself, and Sari knew she should not have asked it.

“It's coming along,” he said finally, and resumed his chopping.

In the middle distance, Mr. Hanratty passed through the clearing, on his way to some errand or other, and Sari smiled and waved at him, but Hanratty was not on her mind. She was trying to decide how to tell Peter what Melissa had just told her, or whether in fact to tell him at all.

But, as though he had been reading her thoughts, he said, panting, between swings of his blade, “Had a—phone call—from Jo this morning.”

“Oh? What did she want?”

“Wants to—have Lance—come out here for the rest of the summer.”

“Really? Why?”

He paused once more, and mopped at his brow again with the handkerchief. “Lance is between jobs, and has been staying with her. But it seems she's got to go to Japan on business, and wants to let her servants go for the month and close the apartment. She wants to know if we can take Lance.”

“Well,” Sari said, “we can't.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because I don't want Lance here. If she wanted to send Lance out here, she should have asked me.”

“I thought the twins would enjoy it,” he said. “Having an older fellow around—someone closer to their age than you or me.”

“Well, I don't want him here. He can't come.”

“Well,” he said, “I'm afraid I already told her we'd be glad to have him.” And he resumed his chopping.

“What?” she cried. “You told her he could come without even consulting me? I'm going back to the house right now, and telephone her, and tell her that he can't come. That he's not welcome, that I don't want him.”

“Ah, you wouldn't do that, Sari.”

“I certainly would, and I certainly will. That bitch has some nerve—”

“Don't be so hard on Jo, Sari. It hasn't been easy for her, raising the boy without a father.”

“And what about me?” she said. “I'm sick and tired of doing everything Joanna wants! I've raised her daughter, haven't I? I've raised enough of her damned children. I'm sick and tired of cleaning up after your sister's dirty little messes. Your sister is nothing but a plotting, conniving woman who wants to create dissension between us. First it was Melissa who was dumped on me. Now it's Lance. Well, I won't have it, Peter.”

“Now, Sari, you don't mean that.” He was circling the tree now, studying it, analyzing the cuts he had already made, planning the next ones. “Jo's your best friend.”

“I certainly do mean it,” she said. “And with a friend like that, I don't need enemies. All she wants to do is to drive another wedge between us. Don't you see? It's all she's ever wanted.”

There was another blow of the ax, and the tall pine quivered, its limbs lifting and sighing in the wind, its needles whispering in a kind of protest. “I told Jo we'd help her out,” he said.

“
Why?
Why do we have to help her out? Haven't we helped her out enough? Is it—” she began, as the ax fell again, “—is it because you think she's better in bed than I am? Is that it? Is it because she's the better lay?” She was screaming at him now, as the ax fell again. “
Or is it because Lance is your son, too?
”

The tree began to fall, and she saw it tumbling toward her, tried to run, then stumbled and fell as the tree crashed upon her. “Oh, my God!” she heard him cry. “Oh, my God, Sari!”

Mr. Hanratty, who had heard her screams, came running, and between them the two men tried to raise the weight of the tree that had fallen across her legs, and all she could hear was Peter sobbing, “Oh, Sari! Oh, my God, Sari!”

Later, from what she dimly recognized was a hospital bed, she opened her eyes and saw his face bending over her. “Oh, God, I'm sorry, Sari,” he was saying. “The wind shifted, and then you ran—right into the path of the fall—”

“No,” she said. “It wasn't the wind. It was my fault. I shouldn't have said that. It was all my fault.”

“Don't say that,” he said. “It was an accident, Sari—I swear to you it was!”

She closed her eyes. No, she thought, perhaps it was not her fault or his fault.

It was Joanna's fault.

Fifteen

From the front page of the
Peninsula Gazette:

KERN-McKITTRICK TAKEOVER BID SPARKS FAMILY FEUD

San Francisco, March 28
. A complex family-business drama is unfolding in the boardrooms of two of California's most prestigious corporations, and in the drawing rooms of two of the Bay Area's wealthiest families. Pitted against each other, furthermore, are two of the city's toughest street fighters, oil magnate Harry Boyd Tillinghast, and Assaria Latham LeBaron, president and chief executive officer of Baronet Vineyards, Inc., and dowager of the LeBaron wine clan. Tillinghast's Kern-McKittrick Corp., it seems, would like to get into the wine business, and has made Baronet shareholders a $56 million stock offer to prove it.

The issue is complicated, however, by a couple of factors. For one, Harry Tillinghast's daughter, Alix, is married to Assaria LeBaron's son, Eric, 39, of Hillsborough. And Assaria LeBaron has flatly rejected the Tillinghast offer as “chickenfeed”—that's $56 million worth of chickenfeed, mind you.

Related Factors

Sparks began to fly in the LeBaron family in February when Baronet's New York ad agency, LeBaron & Murdock, Inc., resigned the Baronet account, claiming “differences in advertising philosophies.” LeBaron & Murdock is owned by yet another family member, Mrs. Joanna LeBaron Kiley, Assaria LeBaron's sister-in-law, who is known professionally as Joanna LeBaron.

Insiders, however, claim that the differences were more than philosophical, and that the real reason for the split was Baronet's refusal to pay full commissions on advertising placed through the agency, and Baronet's contention that it is entitled to “family prices.”

But that intra-family dispute may also have been sparked by Assaria LeBaron's earlier announcement that her son Peter P. LeBaron, Jr., would be appointed co-director of advertising and marketing for the company, along with his twin brother, Eric. Eric LeBaron was reported as having been unhappy with this arrangement, which his mother defended as “bringing new strength to the Advertising-Marketing Division.”

Eric LeBaron's unhappiness is said to explain his support of the Tillinghast takeover bid, which is also supported by Joanna LeBaron Kiley, another major Baronet shareholder. Thus, two sisters-in-law are pitted against each other for control of the company, and mother is pitted against son. Eric LeBaron has been dismissed by the company. His brother, Peter, remains, and will presumably support his mother in the struggle.

Family Secret

Baronet Vineyards, the nation's largest purveyor of inexpensive jug wines, has long been a wholly family-owned company, and its assets a closely guarded family secret. A number of takeover moves in the past have been unsuccessful. However, when the Tillinghast organization was able to acquire 2,000 shares of Baronet last year, Kern-McKittrick was able, as Assaria LeBaron puts it, “to get its toe in the door—and a very unattractive toe, at that. Oil and water don't mix, and neither do oil and wine.” Kern-McKittrick operates oil-producing fields, primarily in Kern, Tulare, and Fresno Counties.

Due to the wine company's traditional secrecy, it is difficult to place a value on its stock, which has never been traded in the marketplace. However, the Tillinghast offer is currently 13.25 shares of Kern-McKittrick common for each share of Baronet common. And since Kern-McKittrick is currently traded on the N.Y.S.E. at around $50 a share (it has reached as high as $56 in recent weeks, as rumors of the takeover have circulated on Wall Street), it is possible to figure that Harry Tillinghast estimates Baronet's stock as worth about $662 a share.

This, Assaria LeBaron insists, is much too low. Her company's shares, she says, are worth at least $1,000 a share, for which Harry Tillinghast would have to up his bid to at least $80 million in Kern-McKittrick stock. “Does he take me for a fool?” Mrs. LeBaron told the Gazette yesterday. “When he was allowed to buy in, he paid $700 a share. Now he offers $660. Does he think we've gone down in value?” Mrs. LeBaron accuses Mr. Tillinghast of acting in bad faith.

The matter will presumably be settled at a shareholders' meeting scheduled for April 30.

Unexpected Complications

To date, Baronet Vineyards is owned by only seven shareholders. Assaria LeBaron is said to control roughly 28,000 shares, and her sister-in-law is said to own an equal amount. An additional 12,000 shares are owned by Joanna LeBaron's son, Lance, 55, of Peapack, N.J., a sportsman and horse breeder. Peter LeBaron, Jr., is said to own 4,000 shares; his brother Eric owns 2,000 shares, and Harry Tillinghast presently owns 2,000 shares. However, an unexpected complication has arisen involving the shareholdings of Miss Melissa LeBaron, socialite and art patroness.

Miss LeBaron was raised in San Francisco as Mrs. Assaria LeBaron's daughter. But in the course of sorting out the LeBaron holdings in preparation for the takeover battle, it was revealed that Miss LeBaron is, in fact, the daughter of Joanna LeBaron Kiley by a previous marriage. Under the terms of her father's will, Melissa LeBaron was left 4,000 shares of Baronet stock outright. But the will also stipulates that the 12,000 shares which Lance LeBaron now holds were to be divided equally between Joanna Kiley's children. Melissa LeBaron is now claiming that this was not done, and that she is legally entitled to 6,000 additional shares from her father's estate. With 10,000 shares under her control, Melissa LeBaron could well provide the “swing vote” in the dispute. Miss LeBaron refused to be interviewed for this article, and all queries were referred to her attorneys, who had no comment.

Legal complications arising from this latest family revelation could easily stall the Kern-McKittrick takeover in its tracks.

“
Stay That Way
”

“This has always been a family-run company for four generations, and it's going to stay that way,” Assaria LeBaron told the Gazette. “If anyone has any sense they'll see it my way, and keep Baronet what it is. Meanwhile, this is getting to be ridiculous. Nobody in the family is speaking to anyone else. Once I win, and get this all behind me, I'd like to get back to my real business, which is making and selling wine.”

Mrs. LeBaron, a septuagenarian, is a well-known local philanthropist. It was she who principally underwrote the restoration of the Odeon Theatre, and she is active in urban renewal projects in the area south of Market Street. She is also the “Flying Grandmother” who last winter made headlines when, though she has no pilot's license, she took the controls of her company's Boeing 727 and flew the aircraft under the center span of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Mrs. LeBaron is also the owner of the San Francisco Condors baseball team, currently in spring training at Candlestick Park.

Baronet Vineyards was founded by her late husband's grandfather, Marc LeBaron, a French immigrant, in 1857. Her husband, Peter Powell LeBaron, Sr., was killed in a hunting accident at the family's Montana ranch in 1955. Since his death, Mrs. LeBaron has run Baronet almost single-handedly, and has earned deep respect as a tough trader and a shrewd but honest fighter in the business community.

“I love it, Gabe!” Sari says. “It's perfect. I got all the quotes, and I don't mind being called a tough trader or a fighter at all. I also like that ‘shrewd but honest' part. In fact, I think the whole thing's very pro
me
, don't you?”

“That's what you wanted, isn't it?”

“And we even got in a plug for the Condors! They'll love that. And we've made the LeBarons French instead of wops. Old Julius would have loved
that
—though he'd have preferred it if it'd said ‘French aristocrat.' When did this hit the stands?”

“Six o'clock this morning.”

“Ha! We've already had calls from
Time
and
Business Week
, asking who Joanna's first husband was. They find no record of it. Ha! I told the truth. I said I didn't know. I told them to ask Joanna. Ha! So I put the ball right back in her court, on that one.”

“I'm glad you like the story, Sari.”

“I do. Congratulate Archie for me.”

“I'm sure he'll be pleased to hear that he can still be of some use to you,” he says without a trace of sarcasm.

“Now, Gabe. You know that at first I thought the best thing to do was to try to destroy Melissa's credibility. Then I changed my mind, and decided I needed her on my team. That's a woman's prerogative, isn't it, to change her mind?”

“Absolutely, Sari.”

“Now, even if Melissa won't return my calls or answer my letters, she'll read this and certainly see the light—right on the front page! You've scooped the country, Gabe. Suddenly, I'm very optimistic.”

“Good,” he says.

“Miss Martino has already had calls from the network news. What do you think, Gabe? Should I go on TV with this? Should I do
Good Morning America
, and the
Today
show?”

“That would be up to you, Sari.”

“If there's one thing I've always been able to do, it's present myself to the public. I think what I'll tell them is that all I'll consent to do will be a segment on
Sixty Minutes
. I think
Sixty Minutes
has more credibility than those morning spots, don't you? And they'll come to the house to tape it. With the others, I'd have to go to New York. What should I wear for
Sixty Minutes?
Something simple, I think, simple and businesslike. And I think I'd like to do it with Harry Reasoner, and not one of those other bozos. I definitely won't do it if it's Mike Wallace …”