Offerings (5 page)

“There is nothing to the allegations.”

“I can’t believe what little we have left will be exhausted paying lawyers to deal with this nonsense. I need you to go through your emails and phone logs and whatever records you have so I can at least get a small piece of comfort that what the lawyers are saying isn’t true. I saw you talking to Brandon. Please don’t tell me you don’t have any time to do that because you now need to run off to Madagascar for him.”

Kate stopped short of reminding Peter she needed to do everything Ed Roth asked of her because she was carrying both the household and their future on her back.

Sarah was looking around the cafeteria, as if she were wondering why her parents weren’t holding her as close as the other kids in the orchestra. “C’mon, Peter. Let’s go be with Sarah. It’s not fair to her.” She took his wrist and began walking toward her.

“And then you decided to sell the Leger without even talking to me.”

Kate stopped. “I asked Connie what the market for the painting might be in this market. Nothing more. I know what it means to you.”

When they had returned from London,
Art News
had sent a reporter and photographer up to Scarsdale and ran a feature touting Peter and Kate as the new young aristocracy. Kate thought the whole thing was a lark. Peter, though, seemed to define himself as a man who owned one important painting, with more on the way.

“And the Amigo bid? What exactly did Jack say?”

Kate hesitated. She hadn’t talked to Jack since she’d frantically called him to see if she could borrow both his Gulfstream and his pilot to rush her to Pittsburgh the minute she’d gotten the news of her mother’s heart attack. Kate’s mother was only sixty-seven. Peter had offered to buy her a house anywhere she wanted, near her grandchildren or in the Sun Belt, but she’d chosen to stay near her friends in Pittsburgh. They bowled. They played canasta. They drank sherry after dinner in spite of their doctors’ warnings.

Jack Carpenter had accompanied Kate on the flight, but they’d gotten there too late.

Sarah finally found her parents. She reached out her hands to them. Kate stroked the top of her daughter’s hair. The principal, a tall, angular man with wireless glasses who’d been walking with Sarah said he wanted a picture of his exceptionally talented first cellist and her parents. Peter stood to Sarah’s left, Kate to her right.

It took no more than a few seconds to pose for the picture, but the silence of the time they were frozen in their smiles caused Kate to wonder whether there was anything to what Peter and Karl had been talking about. Had her conversation with Jack started any differently from the one she’d just had with Brandon?
Kate, can I ask you a quick question about something I’ve been chewing on?
All deals have to start somewhere.

Had Kate missed Jack’s signal?

She didn’t want to think that was possible.

But she feared she’d spend the next several months tethered to that question.

NINE

There were notes to the kids’ schools, a copy of the contract with the broker she’d hired to sell her mother’s house, condolence cards and receipts, but nothing suggesting Jack Carpenter had the slightest interest in Ascalon. Either he’d said nothing or she’d failed to pick up his hints. It was out of her hands at that point.

And Ed assured Kate that she would have no more time to sort through her things or to debate the question when he poked his head into her office a little after eleven. “I’m sure they’re up and running in Boulder. Let’s call Franklin. I want to be on the call when you talk to him about the painting.” Her protest that Ed’s meddling wouldn’t help the deal got her nowhere.

The moment Chris got on the line Kate morphed into her role as dealmaker as though someone had thrown a switch.

“Chris, Kate Brewster. I wanted to catch you before things got rolling out there.” She made certain her voice sounded professional and in command of the agenda.

“We’re rolling. I’ve already been on the phone several times to a chip supplier of mine in Brazil. You were right. That fire has screwed things up for all of us. Beth said you had a couple of questions. I was going to call you later this morning,” Chris said quickly, as though he were juggling a dozen different things.

“Thanks. Chris, I’m on the speaker because Ed Roth is with me. Ed owns the place, so don’t say anything bad about Steve or me.”

“I’m honored you’d take time from your schedule, Ed. Nice to meet you.” Ed puffed at the salesman’s flattery.

Kate spoke next. “Chris, you said you were going to call me. Would you like to go first, or are we talking about the same thing?” She had seen enough of the man to anticipate his style and chose not to play the coquette.

“It’s the painting your analyst asked Beth about. Explain to me why you’re asking about it. It seemed an odd request. It’s certainly not something your competition asked about.”

“Chris, I’m looking at the deal from all possible angles. One way to sell it is as a cash-flow deal based solely upon the strength of your new games. Hitting the numbers you’re projecting for your new games certainly will prove you can generate cash. I assume you’re confident about that or else you wouldn’t even think about going public in the current environment.” Kate wanted to be certain she sounded clinical without being judgmental.

“We’re certainly busting our asses out here to make that happen. If I can find a way to get my hands on a bunch of chips, I’d sleep better at night. You’re the one who said that I’ve only got six months until Halloween to get my games into the stores.”

“I guess in a way that proves my point, Chris. I worry about things like timing. Slip a week or two on those chips and you’re numbers are way less impressive.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know. But I’m on top of that at our end.”

“It’s not just timing, Chris, I worry about everything. I worry about the fickleness of the little boys like my eight-year old who buy your games. I worry about what every other game maker who sells in your market is cooking up. Games is a tough segment of the entertainment market. I worry whether one good season will be enough to convince the equity markets you’re a long term player.” Kate’s job was to sell optimism, but it was in short supply at the moment.

“You sound like my CFO. Christ, you sound like my mother.”

Kate laughed. “It’s what I do, Chris. I guess I’m trained to look for the banana peels in the aisle. That’s why I was looking for some assets to support the company if you don’t hit your numbers. If that painting is real it could be worth millions. Have you ever had it appraised?”

He laughed. “Millions? I wish someone had told my parents that when they were scraping together enough money to put food on the table. I can’t imagine it’s worth anything.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. This deal could use some heft.”

That, at least, elicited a small laugh. “Let me ask you straight up. Are you saying we can’t do this as a pure cash-flow deal?”

“It will be tough, but the market will tell us its comfort level. Let me come back to that painting for a moment. I’m curious about how a painting like that found its way to the office. I didn’t spend more than a minute looking at it but it certainly struck me either as genuine or as a terrific copy. The frame itself is worth far more than you’re insuring the whole painting for.”

Maybe it was her fixation with squeezing as much as she possibly could out of the Leger, maybe it was her desperation to get some deal—any deal—done, but Kate couldn’t rid herself of the idea nobody ever asked the hard questions about the Courbet.

Chris hesitated for some time before answering. “It was in my parent’s house for years. I didn’t pay much attention to it until my mother moved to a smaller place and she gave it to me.” Kate sensed some hesitancy in Chris’s voice. “I put it here when I was renovating my house, to get it out of the way. I’ve never asked whether it’s genuine,” he said. “You’re right about it seeming old. There are small cracks in the paint. I’m running my finger over the signature now. It’s almost warm to the touch.”

Chris’s voice was far more animated than it was only a moment before. “My God, Kate, do you really think this could be worth enough money to play a role in the offering? How odd would that be?”

Ed pushed the mute button on Kate’s phone and still felt he had to whisper. “Tell him we’ll do the research for him. We’ll find out what we can about the history of the painting.”

“Ed, you don’t know what you’re proposing. That makes less sense than saying we’ll find a bunch of hundred dollar bills on the sidewalk.”

“Kate, are you there?” Chris’s voice filled her office. “Did I lose you?”

Kate hit the button on her telephone. “I’m sorry, Chris, someone handed me something to sign.” Ed nodded in seeming satisfaction with her fabrication. “Going back to this painting, what did you have in mind?”

“I’m not sure I had anything specific in mind. I hadn’t given the question any thought until both of you told me I wouldn’t be able to hit the market just on my numbers. I imagine I’ll give you a couple of weeks or so to come up with some information about this painting, although I know it’s an incredibly long shot. Listen, if I’m asking too much, just say so. I need to move ahead with my funding one way or another.”

Before Kate could speak, Ed was at the telephone. “Chris, Ed again. We’d be pleased to look into whether we can use the painting in the deal.” Kate wanted to strangle the man. “Kate, how does ten days sound?”

“I’m not sure, Ed, that’s a lot of work to do in a very short period of time.”

Chris jumped in. “Kate, Ed, I’m sorry, but that call I was waiting for from Frankfurt just came in. I’m going to have to jump off. Ten days? Sure. I’ll hold off my decision until then. Kate, if you need anything more, talk to Beth.”

The line went dead.

“God damn it Ed, do you have any idea what you’ve just done? I’m going to spend the next ten days of my life running to who-knows-where and when I don’t find anything out that answers anything about the history of a painting we don’t even know is authentic and then we won’t be able to do the deal anyway.” What gnawed at Kate more than the distraction was the fact that in Ed’s eyes she had been reduced to a functionary, if she ever had been more than that. He seemed incapable of showing her the respect that was part of the bargain Kate thought they struck when he asked her to leave Greene Houseman.

Ed ignored her statement. “Don’t be naïve. Think strategically. The painting is just a hook to get us in the door. Think of this as a chance to show the guy how good we are without any competition. We put an issue on the table that effectively just boxed out Greene Houseman. Show some confidence in yourself.”

“Ed, I don’t see how...”

“Eliminate that expression from your vocabulary. You’re on the clock. You’ve got ten days.”

TEN

It would take at least a month and thirty-five thousand dollars to have the authenticity of the painting verified by anyone legitimate, far too long and far too rich for this deal. Instead, Ed directed that Kate work from the ground up to see what she could find about the painting’s history.

Chris didn’t even know the painting’s name. The only clue he could give was that the letters
di
were visible on what was left of the nameplate. Kate hadn’t been given much to work with, but then she made her name on Wall Street as someone who could create beautiful stories that raised hundreds of millions of dollars out of more slender reeds. She’d treat this as one more puzzle to solve. She’d get through this.

She gave the job of doing some background research on Gustave Courbet to one of Drake’s junior analysts and gave herself the gift of sleeping in until ten on Saturday morning. It was a small enough reward for the last ten days.

The kitchen was filled with the aroma of coffee. Mack was playing one of Chris Franklin’s games, a medieval adventure filled with knights and dragons and a quest for hidden treasure. She kissed the top of his head. He was shirtless, wearing only pajama bottoms. She ran her finger down his spine. “Hey, sport. Anybody else live here?” His skin still had the sweet tenderness of a baby.

“Dad and Sarah went to find batteries.” He squirmed, anxious not to be distracted, as he already made it to the fourth level. “You got a call when you were in the shower. Some guy named Ed from the office asked me to tell you he wants you to go to the museum Monday with someone, but I forgot the name.”

“Did you write everything down, like you’re supposed to do when you answer the phone?” Mack said he put the note in the message bowl. It said
Ed
—
muzeem
—
Monday
in Mack’s broad scrawl. Mack had done his job, but Kate had no idea what it meant. Another Ed Roth direction. Maybe this time they were entertaining a client. Ed would follow through with an email or another call.

Kate flipped through the mail that filled the Gien bowl in the two days since she bothered to check. Something was odd. Peter hadn’t mailed the final payment to Mack’s summer camp. That he hadn’t was more than a pin prick. She left a pile of envelopes the morning of Sarah’s concert with a note asking Peter to mail them on one of his morning runs. Two were car payments, one was for insurance, one to Interlochen, where Sarah would lose herself in her music for the summer, and one to Camp Kiawah, in Rumford, Maine, where Mack would be a ranger for four weeks in his first summer away. All of the other envelopes were gone.

It wasn’t an oversight. Peter left this envelope behind. He was the man you’d ask to build you a lunar module, not someone you had to follow after to clean up his messes. He hadn’t said anything to her.

She poured herself a glass of orange juice and took that and a mug of coffee to the terrace through the French doors off the kitchen. Siena came beside her, stretched her spine and walked at her side with her tail wagging at the delight of going outside. Peter had brought all of the patio furniture from the storage shed, hosed it down, and brushed off the cushions. Kate sat in the white rattan rocker. A tiny rabbit no bigger than a squirrel ran out from under a hedge, but rushed back in when Siena raised on her forelegs.