The Secret Keeping (34 page)

“Mr. Rios. A pleasure to meet you,” Hathaway said, standing and extending his hand across the desk.

Rio Joe limped as he crossed the room. He grasped Hathaway’s hand tightly before letting go and placed himself painstakingly into the adjacent chair. “Pleasure’s all mine, I can assure you,” he said, without smiling.

Hathaway grinned and sat down. “What’s the other guy look like?”

Joe grimaced. “This? I injured my foot at the gym. Broke it. Three toes.”

“I see. That’s too bad.” Hathaway did a quiet assessment of the well-dressed young man with the aggressive handshake who didn’t smile. Very arrogant. Though right now he wore the attitude of a defeated warrior. Hathaway looked him square in the face, but the fella refused to make eye contact. Okay. There’s a story here. “So who’s Jane Doe, Mr. Rios?”

A sneer came over Joseph Rios’ face. Hathaway felt compelled to add cruel to his list of observations.

“Jane Doe happens to be a Lydia Beaumont, top financial strategist for Soloman-Schmitt.”

Willard Hathaway whistled. “Edward Beaumont her father, would you know?”

“The same.”

That’s why her face had seemed so familiar! Hathaway could barely contain himself. Edward Beaumont had brought him a great deal of bad luck over the years and he’d never won a single case when the Madison-Beaumont firm was involved because of it. He had been thrilled to learn of the man’s retirement last year, though he knew he was still out there, mucking about, still making appearances at the club, still chasing skirts.

Mr. Teflon. A smile came over Hathaway’s face. He wanted to spread this joy. He had an incredible urge to call up Beaumont right now and scream I gotcha! Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Edward Beaumont sees his little girl’s name in the paper tomorrow.

“It’s a wonderful service you’ve provided if this information checks out.”

Rio Joe nodded. “It will. Trust me.”

“You involved with her?”

“Not anymore.”

“I see. Tell me something. Is she clean otherwise?”

“Spotless.”

Hathaway took that information in stride. “You know her home address?”

Rio Joe took out his little black book and read it off.

“What’s the address over there at Soloman-Schmitt, her floor?”

He pulled out a card and dropped it on the lawyer’s desk. “Fifteenth.”

“You got a photo of her? You know, wallet size?”

Rio Joe extracted a small color photo from his billfold and handed it to him.

“Beautiful. Beautiful. That’s her. Listen, can I keep this? We’ll get it back to you, of course. When we’re done with it.” He saw the young man suddenly scowl and reach over the desk to reclaim his photograph.

“No,” Joe answered, slipping it quickly into his breast pocket.

_____

Initially it didn’t occur to Lydia that the noisy reporters waiting outside her office building on Tuesday morning were waiting for her. True to form, she hadn’t bothered to look at a newspaper before she came to work. If she had she probably would have thought better of it.

When she heard the shouts, “there she is,” she turned, assuming they must have spotted Helaine on the other side of the street. It was then, when she noticed the empty sidewalks across the way, that it dawned on her. The stark possibility. The awful likelihood. But by then it was a useless hunch.

So it happened quickly, Jane Doe’s transformation into Lydia Beaumont. She stood swamped in front of her own building, perhaps only twenty feet or so from the revolving doors. Lights glared, people shouted, she was jostled on all sides. It’s funny what one thinks in a situation like that. She was surprised by her first thoughts. She hoped her hair looked all right. She hoped she didn’t look stupid. She hoped her mom wouldn’t see her on TV. There was a kind of resignation going on in her psyche as if all along it had been prepared for this outcome. Questions flew at her like bullets and she heard them whizzing by her head and she calmly wondered if it was possible to just walk away from this, to enter her building. And then she discovered it was impossible to move in any direction with reporters surrounding her in every direction, yelling her name to get her attention, blinding her with their lights and cameras. She glanced at the sky over their heads and said nothing.

“Ms. Beaumont! Ms. Beaumont! How long have you and Dr. Kristenson been lovers?” “Ms. Beaumont, over here please!” (click) “Thank you!” “Ms. Beaumont! How did you and the Love Doc meet?” “Ms.

Beaumont!” “Ms. Beaumont, have you met Sharon Chambers?” “Ms. Beaumont! Could you make a statement? Anything?”

“Are you Lydia Beaumont?” asked a wide-eyed young man who had thrust himself in front of everyone.

Lydia glanced at him. He didn’t look like he belonged there. The crowd swayed into her as reporters jockeyed for a better view and she found herself standing face to face with him, watching transfixed as he fidgeted with the large envelope in his hand.

“Are you Lydia Beaumont?” he repeated.

“Are you a reporter?” she shouted back.

“No ma’am, I’m a process–”

Another volley of questions. Server, she finished in her head. He’s a process server, fool.

“Are you Lydia Beau–”

“Yes,” she interrupted, “Give it to me.”

The reporter closest to them heard her declaration and passed it along the ranks. “It’s her,” they starting screaming all over again. “Ms. Beaumont!” “Ms. Beaumont! Look over here!”

The server was overwhelmed. The two of them stood bobbing in the center, him with his papers, her with her briefcase. He was, Lydia realized, an obstacle to her immediate egress.

“Give them to me,” she said again.

He handed her the papers and gulped a few times, trying to remember what he was supposed to say next.

“I’ve been served,” Lydia acknowledged. She had spied a way out toward the street, if she could just get past him.

“You been served, Lydia Beaumont.”

“I’ve been served,” she repeated, trying to push him aside. “Now, please, get out of my way!”

He took a few steps back and let her pass, actually restraining a camera man with one outstretched arm.

She gripped the envelope in one hand and her briefcase in the other and forced her way through the melee, the adrenaline pounding in her ears as she proceeded up the block toward Frank’s Place, the reporters and cameras in tow, racing alongside of her, attempting to cut her off.

Her first confrontation with the press, Lydia was thinking as she walked, and at worst she was only a little numb. She needed a cab. She needed to see Stanley. Ultimately she knew she would need to retain a driver, as her father had always nagged her about doing. It was no longer ostentatious and pompous. A car and a driver would be necessary for survival now. And, she realized, even a bodyguard–she hadn’t known the press could be so rough. She kept her eye on them and held them at bay, holding up her briefcase whenever they came too close.

A few blocks down, she could see Harry standing near the corner on Frank’s patio. He was an especially welcome sight this morning and she nearly cried when he raised his arms and beckoned to her. She quickened her pace to lose the undesirable entourage. That, she knew, would only give her a few seconds.

Harry was offering his arm to her and she slid hers through it, allowing him to lead her to a waiting cab.

“Are you hurt?”

“No. Terrified.”

“Don’t be, dear. Everything will be fine.” He closed the car door behind her before she could thank him.

“Drive!” he ordered the cabby. The car lurched with a loud squeal and then sped away, leaving the gathering mob with a cocktail of dirt and fumes.

_____

Lydia arrived earlier than expected at the uptown office of Stanley Kandinsky. She added cell phone to her mental list of immediate necessities, though she hated their chirps and intrusions.

“May I use your phone while I wait?” she asked his secretary.

“Certainly. There you go.”

Lydia checked the time. Ten o’clock already. She had missed an important meeting this morning. “Good morning, it’s Lydia Beaumont. Paula Treadwell, please.” She noticed she still held the legal envelope in her hand and threw it in disgust on top of her briefcase. “Paula? Oh, you did? Thank you. I don’t know yet, I was hoping this afternoon…it’s…you don’t have to do that. Fine, but I can’t let them disrupt my schedule. Yeah, I agree. At my lawyer’s right now. True, but maybe he can calm it down so I can get into the building tomorrow. What? Paula…I…I can’t discuss this now. I do. I suspect it was Joseph. Yes. He is? I guess that’s as good a motive as any. E-mail it to my home office then. Oh, yes, I will. This afternoon. Because it’s a priority. Before the board convenes. You know, I don’t have it in front of me–when is that? That soon? Oh, god, what a mess. I’m trying not to. Flowers? Where? Paula, you’re kidding. From where? Already? Oh, this is utter nonsense. I will, someday. I better give this line back. This afternoon. Home, I guess, till it dies down. I wish I knew. Thank you, Paula. This afternoon. Don’t worry, I will.”

She handed the phone back and hovered over her personal effects for another half hour.

“Ms. Beaumont, come in.”

“Good morning, Mr. Kandinsky.”

He shut the door and they sat. “Call me Stan. How’s your dad?”

“Please, Stanley. How is he?”

Stanley laughed without blinking. “Worried. Surprised. And how are you? I heard you made a smashing debut this morning.”

“Complicates things, I know. I need to get into my office. Why did they serve me at work?”

“Well, I’m sure they thought it would be more dramatic that way, the press already setting up house there and all. Cameras will be greeting you at your home, too. Count on it. Did you say anything to them?”

“Nothing. Should I have?”

“Nothing is ideal. You’re a natural.”

She winced. “Good teacher.”

“Yes…your father is livid about this. The photo and all. We’re going to have to hypnotize everyone with our own spin on it. Hush-a-bye as opposed to hush-it-up.”

“Hypnotize?”

“We’re going to sue the plaintiff for defamation, Lydia. In excess of what she’s claiming. We are actually in a very strong pos–”

“Stanley. Ms. Chambers isn’t lying.”

His eyes became two dark slits. “That is irrelevant.”

_____

Paula Treadwell, age 53, is the senior vice president of Soloman-Schmitt. Lydia Beaumont is her protégé.

She has groomed her for an assistantship ever since Beaumont first emerged as a promising young investment broker ten years ago. Paula believes, in fact, that Lydia Beaumont is the ideal candidate to become the first female president in the hundred-year history of this investment firm, although she doesn’t expect that to happen in this decade. Still, that is her aspiration for Beaumont, despite her protégé’s growing disenchantment with the world of finance and her subsequent announcement nearly two years ago that she plans to retire at forty.

VP Treadwell’s concerns regarding the present controversy have nothing to do with Beaumont’s exotic pursuits and mishaps, about which she really couldn’t care less. Nor is she worried over what such disclosures might do to the company’s image, especially considering the bombshell of financial revelations she knows is going to explode any day now at Soloman-Schmitt. All the cover-ups: of inside trading, of accounting irregularities, of mysterious overseas partnerships, of red to black overnight banking conversions that turn staggering corporate debt and expenditures into huge capital gains and profits–these are the reports that Lydia Beaumont has been issuing for quite some time and that Treadwell has been endorsing and directing to the board, with no effect, until this week.

This week, at last, the mighty Soloman-Schmitt had taken heed of these warnings, possibly too late, but it had finally begun to get its house in order, firing some of its most prominent offenders, preparing others for their perp walks, accepting resignations without pay. It would be a shakeup that could go all the way up to the chief financial officer, reach all across the board when it’s done. To the uninitiated, to the red-handed, it might all seem like the product of whistle blowing, but it wasn’t. Lydia Beaumont was just doing her job, unlike others around her.

Senior Vice President Paula Treadwell fears that the woman is disgusted enough with her work that she might see the Chambers scandal as a good excuse to exit the troubled firm even sooner than she had planned. That would not be good for Senior Vice President Paula Treadwell. Treadwell is undertaking to manage a major corporate scandal and she is depending on her protégé to help her pull it off. She fully expects Beaumont to march into battle beside her and to return, as they say, with her shield or on it.

Treadwell has no intention of proceeding without her, no intention of losing her top executive in a love triangle, not to Sharon Chambers with her spurious allegations, not to the esteemed Dr. Kristenson, the seductive siren responsible in the first place for leading Beaumont to the rocks. A corporate shakedown requires patience and skill, after all. And secrecy.

Paula Treadwell glared down onto the street from her top floor offices. “What’s the story with that shit down there? Can I arrest those reporters for trespassing?”

“I don’t see why not. They’re not on the sidewalk. They’re on the grounds.”

She put her hand to her mouth thoughtfully and considered her options. “Confiscate their cameras–illegal surveillance. Then have security remove them, John. They come back, arrest every one of them.”

“Will do.”

“And get general counsel over here, right away. I want these tabloids off our ass with this Jane Doe crap.

We’ve got enough problems brewing. Grab me general counsel before you go.”

“Which one?”

“Oh, I don’t know. All of them.”

“Will do.”

“And send a limo for Beaumont tomorrow morning. We’re re-situating her on private company property.

Bring me that directory, John. She’s going to need a suite.”

“Will do. Anything else?”

“Yeah, mum’s the word on this. I want her comfortable. Stock her up with the works. Champagne, caviar, whatever. Get her women if that’s what she prefers! A different one every night if that’s what it takes to keep her mind off this bullshit. Send her all blonds. Blond bombs posing as bookworms. I don’t care, as long as she stays away from THAT WOMAN over there,” she said, pointing angrily at the building across the street. “She’s a jinx. I can feel it.”