Murder at the Spa (23 page)

Aha, cancer too. She noted he didn’t say “cure” but “protect against.” “How long will it be before I notice an improvement?” she asked, curious about the time required for her senescent body functions to be reinvigorated.

“Some patients notice an improvement within a few weeks,” Sperry replied. “For others, it can take as much as a few months. The results last four to seven years, depending on age and physical condition. For someone your age, the results will probably last only four years.”

“Which means that I’ll have to come back?”

“Yes. The more often you have treatments, the more effectively the aging process will be retarded. But above eighty we can’t do much.” He smiled, wrinkling his nose. “Unfortunately, we can’t extend the life span. But we can extend the active, productive period of life well into old age.”

So there was something cell therapy couldn’t cure: death. After a few more minutes of chatting about cell therapy, Charlotte left. Sperry bid her good-bye “until tomorrow,” a reference to the preliminary cell therapy treatment that she had no intention of undergoing.

On her way out she crossed paths with Nicky, who headed into Sperry’s office in eager expectation of having lost another couple of pounds.

Ten minutes later, Charlotte was riding the glass elevator up to Paulina’s penthouse. Jack answered the door. He was dressed in a white tunic of an expensive-looking linen fabric. He looked like a well-kept gigolo, which in a sense was what he was. It was a good thing he worked for Paulina. He had a taste for luxury that would have been satisfied by few other secretarial jobs. In reply to Charlotte’s inquiry, he reported that Paulina’s nervous crisis was nearly over. She had gotten up the previous afternoon for her tests. Upon her return, she’d gone immediately back to bed, but he predicted that she’d soon be up for good. Then she’d take the cure. It was her habit to take the cure every June. It was also her habit to take it following an emotional crisis. In this instance, the emotional crisis fell in June, which provided a double excuse for being purged in the cathartic mineral waters. Taking the cure, like buying jewelry and reviewing her balance sheets, was one of Paulina’s ways of dealing with death, disappointment, or, in the case at hand, betrayal. But if she hadn’t yet emerged from the protective cocoon of her huge Chinese bed, she was, as Jack put it, “full of her old piss and vinegar.” His big blue eyes danced. He was clearly delighted that his boss was herself again.

Jack escorted Charlotte down the hall to Paulina’s bedroom, where they found her stretched out on her side in a Madame Récamier pose, a meaty flank thrust less-than-seductively toward the ceiling. Her cotton duster had been exchanged for an elaborately embroidered red silk kimono that looked as if it should be on display at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum. She was conducting business: her heavy black-framed glasses were balanced on the tip of her nose.
The New York Times
was clutched in the beringed, ink-stained fingers of one hand; a buttered bagel in the other. A profusion of papers was scattered over the pink-quilted bedspread:
Barron’s
and the
Wall Street Journal, Standard and Poor’s
and
Moody’s
indexes, corporate prospectuses and annual reports. Paulina was a woman who kept an eye on her investments. There was also, Charlotte noted, a copy of the business magazine with Gary and Elliot on the cover. At her bedside, with his gray pin-striped back turned to Charlotte, sat a man with whom Paulina was conferring over a yellow legal pad. At Charlotte’s arrival, he turned around. The man was Raymond Innis! Charlotte stared. He returned her stare through deep-set, slightly slanted eyes that were narrowed to slits by his prominent cheekbones.

“Come in, come in,” said Paulina, waving the bagel. “I want you to meet … my banker.” She looked at Jack, who came to the rescue.

“Mr. Innis,” he said.

“Mr. Innis, this is Miss …”

“Graham,” supplied Jack.

“The famous movie star,” added Paulina. “You know,
Border Town
. And that other movie about the pioneer woman …”

“Westward Ho,”
offered Charlotte. She hadn’t realized Paulina was such a fan. Stepping forward, she shook hands with Innis. “We’ve met. We were both interviewed in connection with the murder investigation.”

“Oh, that,” said Paulina with a dismissive wave of the bagel. Taking a bite, she munched pensively for a moment and then peered suspiciously at Innis over the tops of her glasses. “Why you?”

“I was in the cubicle next to the victim’s.”

“Did you see anything?” asked the ever-curious Paulina as she polished off the rest of the bagel.

Innis shook his head.

“I hear they suspect My Mistake. Never mind,” she added. “We’re not talking about it. Bad for business.” She turned her attention back to Charlotte. “What brings you to visit a lonely old lady?” she asked, this time without a trace of self-pity.

“Mr. Innis,” replied Charlotte bluntly.

“Mr. Innis? You came to see me about Mr. Innis?”

Innis set down the legal pad, leaned back, and folded his arms, calmly awaiting her explanation.

“Yes. I found out who planted the radium rumor. Remember? The reason you asked me up here?”

Paulina stared at her uncomprehendingly for a minute. Then she slapped a palm to her forehead. “I forgot.”

“You were right. The radium rumor
was
planted. By Mr. Innis’s firm.”

At this point Leon entered. Approaching the bed, he kissed his aunt on both cheeks, shook Innis’s hand, and nodded hello to Charlotte. Then he took up his usual position in the chaise longue at the rear of the room, the sycophant at the foot of the empress’s throne.

“Leon, this is all your fault, this mess,” said Paulina, raising a braceleted arm to the heavens with a clank of precious metals. “The sound of a one-man band without the trumpet” is how Charlotte had once heard someone refer to the cacophony created by Paulina’s jewelry.

“What’s my fault?”

Paulina shot him an aggrieved look. She gestured to Charlotte. “Come here,” she ordered.

Charlotte stepped over to the edge of the bed.

Paulina took Charlotte’s hand. “I’m sorry. I forgot I’d asked you to look into this for me. I found out myself who was responsible. It was my nephew—he asked Mr. Innis to take care of it. It was a tactic to avert the takeover.” She addressed Leon. “What did you call it? Burned ground?”

“Scorched earth,” corrected Leon, who was wearing bright yellow socks to accent the thin yellow line in his conservative tie.

“Scorched earth. Sabotage the product so the enemy won’t want the company. Leon found out that Sonny was going to betray me and decided to take care of it himself. How sweet.” Her voice was caustic. “Don’t alarm the senile old lady. My Sonny may be an airhead, but you—you are a buzzard.”

“Vulture,” said Leon.

“He corrects me yet. A vulture,” she hissed. “Leon, listen to me. I am not senile—yet. I am not dead—yet. Until I am, I will handle my own affairs. Understand?”

“Yes, Aunt Paulina,” said Leon contritely.

So it was just as Charlotte had suspected—the
An Enemy of the People
theory. Only the party who had planted the rumor to depress the price of the stock wasn’t Gary, as she had suspected, but Leon. The theory was right, she had just been on the wrong side of the corporate battle line.

“And you,” Paulina continued, turning to Innis. “Until I’m dead you’ll do business with me. Not with my son, not with my nephew. With me.”

“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, Mrs. Langenberg. Your nephew led us to believe that you’d approved of the scheme.”

“Approved of. Feb.” She addressed Leon. “Where’d you get that harebrained scheme anyway? Let me tell you something: if you want to make a company unattractive, you sell off assets, you issue stock, you go into debt. But sabotage the product? That’s stupid. Besides, a little rumor wouldn’t stop the Seltzer Boy. Not only are you contemptible and deceitful and …”

“And a vulture,” volunteered Leon.

“And a vulture. You’re stupid. Now I’ll show you how business is conducted in the real world.” She grinned. “If Sonny thinks he can outwit his mother, he’s deluded. He doesn’t realize who he’s up against. The same goes for the Seltzer Boy. Such nerve, taking my company like a rapist. If he’d come to me like a gentleman, maybe we could have talked terms.”

Charlotte raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Paulina caught Charlotte’s expression and shrugged. “Well, maybe not. But he’s not the only one with nerve. Two can play his game as well as one.”

“What are you going to do, Aunt Paulina?”

Paulina grinned. “If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad,” she said cryptically, “Muhammad must buy the mountain.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” observed Charlotte.

“Does that mean you’re going to buy High Rock Waters?” asked Leon.

Paulina played her moment with great style. Sliding backward, she propped herself up against the headboard. As suspense mounted, she sat quietly with her eyes half closed. Then, after taking a moment to rearrange the pillows, she announced coyly: “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for Paulina Langenberg.”

“But …” protested Leon.

Paulina raised a hand to silence him. “I know what you’re going to say. That it’s impossible, that it would require a two-thirds vote of the stock, of which the Seltzer Boy’s company controls thirty-four percent.” She looked at Leon over the tops of her glasses. “Tell me. Am I right?”

“Well, yes,” he replied.

“Am I right?” Paulina repeated, this time addressing Innis.

Innis played along, although it was clear he was familiar with her plans. “That was Brant’s idea, yes. To gain negative control.”

She turned back to Leon: “You say it’s impossible to fight back. First lesson: you can always fight back. The Seltzer Boy is a little nothing who’s attacked a very big, very powerful animal. What he doesn’t realize is that the animal is about to bite him back. Correction: swallow him up.”

“But how can you?” asked Leon.

“It’s not for nothing that I’m one of the world’s richest women. I’m going to form a new company to take over the Seltzer Boy. I already own five percent of his stock. I always own stock in the companies I do business with—it’s a good business practice. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”

Leon looked stunned.

Paulina picked up the pad and started making notes fast and furiously. “Mr. Banker, tell your team to get up here on the double. Jack, get the company lawyers up here. And call the PR people—we’ll need them to get the word out to the financial press. Then get us some food—sausages and so on.”

Paulina was one of those people for whom the emotional stress of most crises could be palliated by the administration of food or drink.

“But, Aunt Paulina, a counter-takeover will wipe us out,” whined Leon, clearly worried about the security of his newfound inheritance.

She stared at him, steely-eyed. “First, it is
my
money, not
our
money. Second, do you think I’m going to pay cash?”

“Oh, I see,” said Leon. He nodded in a businesslike way, obviously a studied effort to appear calm.

“It’s called borrowing money, bor-row-ing mon-ey. It’s one way that businesses acquire other businesses. That’s your second lesson for the day. Isn’t that right, Mr. Banker?”

Innis nodded.

Leon was now sitting bolt upright in the chaise longue. “How much are you going to borrow?” he asked. A note of hysteria had crept into his voice.

Paulina consulted the figures on her pad. With a malicious little grin, she announced, “I think we can do it for under twenty-five million.”

“Twenty-five million!” Leon jumped up and began pacing the rose-colored carpet at the foot of the bed.

“It would be even more expensive if it weren’t for you. Your stupidity is actually going to save us money. Their stock dropped fifteen points after you put that article in the newspaper. Of course it shot back up after Wednesday’s takeover announcement. But not to where it had been. Everybody knows the only person who can run Paulina Langenberg is Paulina Langenberg.”

Leon leaned against the railing at the foot of the bed. “You’re telling me you’re going to spend twenty-five million on a company that’s in trouble?” he said, his jaw clenched.

“Bah,” said Paulina. “In trouble is when you want to buy a company. We’ll be getting a good company cheap. That’s your third lesson for the day. For this, I should be charging tuition. If you listen to me, you’ll learn more than you ever did at Columbia. Now sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

Leon continued pacing.

“Sit down,”
yelled Paulina.

Leon retreated to the chaise, where he sat with his arms folded defiantly across his chest, his lower lip stuck out in a pout.

“Now listen. This is what will happen. Sales will recover. We just need to get the message out that there’s nothing wrong with the water. Look at our stock, it bounced right back. Besides, we’ll have the Seltzer Boy working for us. He can bring it back. He said so at the fete.”

“Who says he’s not going to quit?” taunted Leon.

“No one. But I hope he doesn’t. He’s sharp, the Seltzer Boy. Unlike some people around here.” She looked at Leon. She continued: “Now, we must proceed with speed. Let’s see,” she said, chewing on the end of her pencil, “this is Sunday.” She addressed Innis: “Can we get our commitments by Wednesday?”

Innis considered the question briefly. “I think so.”

“Okay, we’ll announce the tender offer on Wednesday. A sneak attack—if he can do it to us, we can do it to him. If we announce on Wednesday, we should be able to wrap it up pretty quickly. If they’re going to tender, they’ll want to get it over with by the weekend.”

“What have you decided to offer?” asked Innis, who was making notes.

“Fifty,” said Paulina. “That’s a premium of a hundred percent over the current market price. If we don’t reach our goal by the end of the waiting period, we’ll raise our bid. But I don’t think we’ll run into any problems. After the radium rumor, the stockholders will be anxious to sell.”

“What’s our goal?” asked Leon.