Midas Touch (10 page)

“And Mom,” Allison continued, “stays busy with her volunteer work. I swear, she works more hours than I do.” Allison fell silent, as the traffic grew
heavier.

“Is something wrong?” Sandra asked, unable to wait any longer. Allison’s restless shifting and throat clearing was beginning to get on her nerves.

“I need to discuss something with you. I feel bad about bringing it up,” Allison admitted as she moved to the right-hand lane to avoid the fumes of a city bus inching along in front of them.

“Does it have anything to do with the office?”

Allison nodded.

“The Dunbar project?”

“No.” Allison cleared her throat again. “It’s not completely work related. Wait a minute.” Allison whipped her car into a parking lot and stopped.

“I can’t do this and drive at the same time,” she said with a sigh. “I’m sorry to drop this on you, but I think it’s important you know what’s happened. Gordon fired Charles Carlton yesterday morning.”

Sandra started to speak, but Allison stopped her.

“You would have fired him. Gordon told me he warned Charles the boards were unacceptable. That’s when Charles went to you with them.” She fidgeted with the chain on her watchband.

“After being fired, Charles went straight to MacMillan. They

hired him.”

Sandra leaned her head back against the seat. MacMillan was her biggest competitor. “I assume there’s more. I can’t see you being this upset over Charles being fired.”

Allison nodded. “Charles called all of our major clients and,”

she hesitated, “told them you are a lesbian. Lisa Allen from Overby’s called me this morning. Charles told her you fired him because he disagreed with you over the content of some of our ads. He made it sound like you were opposing ads that, and I quote, ‘represented the natural acts between men and women’.”

Without giving Sandra time to comment, Allison rushed on.

“Roy Landreth from Mega Star Foods called threatening to pull his stores out of the malls. He believes Tate Enterprises misrepresented itself, and you will become a determent to his businesses. To top everything off, someone called the paper. You made the business section.” She pulled a newspaper from under the seat and handed it to Sandra.

After reading the article announcing to all of Dallas that she was a lesbian, Sandra tried to evaluate how this would affect business.

“I’m really sorry all this is happening,” Allison said. “I know you were ready to get away, but frankly, I’m afraid if you disappear now, it’ll look like you’re hiding.”

“I won’t be hiding,” Sandra assured her.

“What are you going to do?”

Sandra sat quietly for a minute. “Get a copy of the layouts Charles wanted to use and then contact Molly Devonshire. Ask her if she’s interested in printing our side of the story.”

Allison grinned. “Sandra, you’re evil. You know Molly Devonshire will take one look at those layouts and renew her crusade on pornography in advertising.”

“Let’s hope by the time she gets through singing our praises for refusing to contribute to ‘
the degradation of women by mass
market money-mongers’
no one will remember I’m a lesbian.”

“So it’s true?” Allison asked.

Sandra stared at her. “You didn’t know?”

“We’ve never discussed it.”

“Does it bother you?” Sandra’s fingers tapped a nervous dance on her thigh, while Allison looked out the window. It never occurred to her Allison might not know. However, when she thought about it, why would anyone know?

Carol never attended office events, and Sandra rarely mentioned her. Sandra’s business life and her personal life were separate worlds, and she preferred to keep them that way.

“To be honest, I’d have to say at some level I suspected,”

Allison admitted. “Since all of this happened with Charles, I’ve wondered why we never talked about your life. We’ve spent hours talking about my problems with Mom and Brian, but I know next to nothing about your life outside the office,” she said and shrugged. “I finally had to admit to myself why I never asked about your life. I think I knew and wasn’t comfortable with it.”

She turned to look at Sandra. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me.”

Sandra nodded and looked away. She was not sure how she felt about being dragged out of the closet. “We’d better get going.

Margaret will call out the National Guard if we’re later than she thinks we should be.”

Allison’s chuckle revealed her relief in escaping the current conversation. “I’ve had a couple of close encounters with Margaret already. I’m not ready for another one.”

Allison left after a none-too-subtle hint from Margaret that Sandra needed to rest.

“I’ll take care of the things we discussed,” Allison promised as she waved good-bye. “I’ll make arrangements to get your car home.”

After Allison left, Sandra started toward her office.

“And where do you think you’re headed?” Margaret demanded.

“I thought I’d spend some time working on the speech I’m giving …” Sandra let the sentence drop as
Margaret crossed her arms over her massive chest.

“It’s rest you’ll be needin’. Dr. Ida said you were to take it easy.”

Sandra considered protesting, but decided it was useless.

Arguing with Margaret was as fruitless as arguing with a wall.

She went to her bedroom.

After changing into her pajamas, Sandra crawled into bed.

She laughed softly when she found a small bell by the bedside with a note from Margaret instructing her to ring it if she needed anything.

Sandra waited until she was sure Margaret was busy and out of earshot before calling her lawyer, Elizabeth Brubeck. She needed to take care of one more item. After a few quick assurances that she was feeling fine, Sandra dictated the changes she wanted made to her will.

“Sandra, as your attorney I feel obligated to make sure you really want to do this. It’s understandable you would want to leave Margaret something. However, half of your estate seems excessive. That’s an awful lot of money,” Elizabeth stressed.

“Liz, I have no family. It’s what I want, right now.”

“You know best. You can always change it. By the way,”

she added, “Rita and I were sorry to hear about you and Carol splitting.”

“Thanks. It was best for both of us.”

“Don’t hesitate to call if there’s anything we can do. I’ll drop by tomorrow to get your signature on these changes.”

After hanging up the telephone, Sandra remembered she had promised to send Carol’s passport and birth certificate to Lynda Hopkins. Moving quietly, Sandra slipped into the master bedroom and removed the lock box from the safe. Feeling like a disobedient child, she took the box and scurried back to bed. She stuffed the items in an envelope and placed the envelope in the dresser by the door. Hiding the lock box under the bed, she rang the bell Margaret had left.

“Why aren’t you sleepin’?” Margaret demanded as she came into the room.

“I remembered something and couldn’t sleep until it was taken care of.”

Margaret eyed her suspiciously. Sandra felt a twinge of

0

guilt, but reminded herself she was not actually telling a lie. She couldn’t sleep.

“I promised I’d mail a package to Carol’s lawyer. I forgot to do it. I believe it’s there in the dresser. Could you call a courier and have it delivered today?”

Margaret went to the dresser and found the envelope. “Don’t be tryin’ this again. I won’t be believin’ it,” she warned sternly, shaking the envelope at Sandra. “Now, to sleep with you.”

Suitably chastised, Sandra nodded.

As Sandra suspected, Molly Devonshire wanted the interview. She was practically foaming at the mouth when she left Sandra’s penthouse with a copy of the offensive layouts and Sandra’s assurance that Tate Enterprises would never resort to using such sexually explicit advertising.

The paper ran a photo of the layout with a long article on the hidden dangers of this caliber of advertising. Molly wrapped the story up by praising the vast amount of charity work Sandra did for women and children and the contributions made by Tate Enterprises to charities too numerous to mention.

Allison called Sandra an hour after the paper hit the street.

Roy Landreth from Mega Star Foods had decided to leave his stores in Tate Enterprises’ chain of malls.

Sandra sat on the balcony. Three days out of the hospital and she was already bored beyond belief. Other than her short walks in the morning and late afternoon, she spent most of her time reading or sleeping.

The chest pains and heartburn were gradually dissipating and she was restless. The thought of doing this for three months was almost more than she could stand. She glanced at her watch.

Allison had promised to stop by later in the afternoon and give her a brief run-down on what was happening at the office.

Sandra returned to the bedroom. She reached across the bed for the book she was trying to read. As she did so, her toe stubbed something beneath the bed. She knelt down and saw the lock

box she had failed to return to the safe after removing Carol’s passport and birth certificate.

She pulled the box out and opened it. At the bottom, beneath a small bundle of cash that served as a security blanket for her, and some of Sandra’s papers, lay a large manila envelope. It contained practically everything from her father’s meager estate.

He had sold the old travel trailer, after she left for college, and moved into a low-rent apartment complex. He took care of the grounds and did minor repair jobs in exchange for his rent.

To supplement his income, he hired out for odd jobs around the neighborhood. Sandra tried to give him money, but he always refused it. Her father had always insisted on being paid in cash, which meant he usually worked in low paying jobs. Sandra credited her father’s idiosyncrasy to the fact he was a compulsively private person.

Less than two years after she moved back to Dallas, her father was killed when he fell from a roof he was patching. Numb with grief, Sandra made the simple arrangements he would have wanted. Since her father was an only child, and his parents had died before Sandra was born, there was no family to notify.

Sandra donated his meager wardrobe and furniture to Goodwill and paid to have his ancient truck towed away.

At the time of his death, she had been emotionally unable to deal with his private personal effects. She had placed everything in the envelope and stored it in the lock box.

She dumped the contents of the envelope onto the bed and carefully separated them. She found his cracked and peeling wallet, a scarred Barlow pocketknife, and a small envelope containing four photos. She swallowed the burning lump in her throat and removed the photos.

The first one was of her when she was a child. The stamp on the back gave the year and the address of a photo shop in San Antonio. She squinted at the photo. Judging by the date, she had been about four-years-old. She was standing on a porch clutching a scruffy-looking bear. The bear was wearing a plaid vest. An odd-shaped hat sat at a jaunty angle over one ear.

For years, her father kept the photo hidden in a cigar box under his bed. She was about ten when she discovered it while cleaning and had instinctively known not to ask him about it.

There was a shadow of the photographer in the lower left corner. Over time, Sandra started associating the shadow with her mother. During the lonely years of childhood, she developed an intense love/hate relationship with the mysterious shadow.

When she left for college, she stole the snapshot to take with her.

She felt so guilty she returned it on her first trip home.

Looking at the photo, Sandra again wondered about the mysterious photographer. Was it a shadow of her mother? She turned her attention to the bear she held in the photo.
Mr. Peepers,
she thought suddenly. The name came from her subconscious, along with an unsettling sense of loss. She could not remember when or where the bear had disappeared from her life.

Uneasy with the emotions running through her, she turned her attention to the remaining photographs, which were of her and her father at various times in her life. Sandra studied the awkward-looking child for several minutes before stuffing the photos back in the envelope.

She picked up his battered wallet. The brown imitation leather was cracked and peeling with age. She started to put it back into the envelope. The wallet was the only truly personal thing he had owned. She ran her finger along a cracked seam and slowly opened the wallet. The lump in her throat grew. She coughed trying to ease the discomfort.

The wallet contained eight dollars. The window where a driver’s license would normally fit was empty She searched through the inner pockets looking for his license. There was not one, but in the last pocket, she found a pale blue envelope.

The envelope had been folded several times and was stained and worn with age. She opened it carefully to avoid ripping the fragile paper. The letter addressed to her father had a San Antonio return address, but no name. Curious as to why he would have carried the letter for so many years, she opened it. The letter contained no date.

Dear Vernon,

I wanted to plead with you one more time to let me see Sandra. I
love her dearly and miss my darling girl. Please, don’t let your hatred
for me keep our daughter from her mother. Vernon, she is only four.

She doesn’t understand what’s happening. I promise you, she will never
know why I left.

I don’t have a telephone, but you can contact me at this address or
call me at work. My number is below. I’m begging you. Please, don’t
keep her from me.