You're Gone (Finding Solid Ground) (31 page)

Waiting for her first board meeting as owner of Davidson and Associates to begin, Charleigh sat alone in what used to be Jamie’s office when he’d worked there. She found it more than just a little strange that the room was most likely still in the condition as when he had worked there. Among other things, there was a mini putt-putt green. Pinball machines. A Pac man arcade game in the corner next to a floor-to-ceiling plate-glass. She had to laugh.
Was this a place of business for Jamie, or a fun park?

It was the last place in the world that Charleigh wanted to be. She didn’t want to run the deadwood company. She didn’t want to own it, for that matter, either. No matter what these people said to her in this impromptu meeting called by Richard Sullivan, the interim CEO,
but Charleigh wasn’t going to change her mind.

In fact, that was the reason Terry had come to New York with her. He was going to do everything possible to get her out of the deal her parents had made with Gerald Davidson all those years ago. To think that her parents would press such a heavy burden on her shoulders was unimaginable.

Maybe Mike and Amanda had believed Greg would turn things around once he became CEO. Instead, he’d stabbed them in the back with the same crooked tactics his father-in-law had used to get in trouble in the first place.

Charleigh got up from where she was sitting behind Jamie’s old desk, and went over to look out the window. The street below was crowded with cars and trucks, delivery trucks, and motorcycles and scooters. No, she was most definitely not going to take over this company. She just wouldn’t be able to stand living in this city. Too crowded. Too noisy.

Not to mention that she didn’t know the first thing about architecture.

“Miss Randall, they’re ready for you,” Richard Sullivan’s secretary called to her from the doorway.

Charleigh turned around and looked at her. She was a small woman, petite, with small impish features. At the most, she stood five feet tall. Charleigh judged her to be around fifty-one or fifty-two from the way she was dressed in a simple dark blue skirt and matching jacket. Her hair was brown, with red undertones, pulled halfway back.

Taking a deep breath
, Charleigh finally nodded. She followed the woman down the hallway to a set of elevators. Once the doors opened, the two of them stepped inside, and the secretary pressed the button marked 45. The elevator came to life, whisking them up.

When the doors opened, she saw Kevin and Jenna were standing there, waiting for her. Charleigh stepped out of the elevator, looking at each of the three people around her.

“We can take her from here,” Jenna told the secretary, who nodded and pressed a button that would send her back down.

“Hey,” Kevin said, giving her a tight-lipped smile. “You ready for this?”

Charleigh shrugged. The three of them fell in step together as they walked toward the boardroom. She felt a funny feeling in her gut, and it wasn’t caused by the babies.

“No, wait,” Charleigh said and stopped just outside the closed door of the boardroom. “I can’t do this. I can’t go in there.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Jenna tried unsuccessfully to convince her.

“No, it’s
not
. I don’t want this company. I don’t want the responsibility. Can’t they just split and go their separate ways? There are four other branches to this company. Can’t they buy me out, or something?”

Charleigh felt like she needed to sit down. Somewhere other than in that boardroom. The
nervousness that had settled in the pit of her stomach was just about enough to make her sick.

“Then go in there and tell them that,” Kevin told Charleigh, squeezing her shoulder.

“We’ll be right there with you,” Jenna confirmed and opened the door.

With that, Charleigh nodded once again and walked inside.

Richard Sullivan was standing at the far end of the large room. He nodded when he saw her walk in with Kevin and Jenna on her heels. Around the long, rectangular table sat twelve men and women. Charleigh recognized a few of them from the party at the Plaza.

Fredrick MacMillan was also in attendance. He nodded at Charleigh, sending a smile in her direction, and then turned back to Richard. There were three vacant seats at the nearest end.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Miss Charleigh Randall,” he introduced her.  “All of you already know Kevin and Jenna Matthews. Please, have a seat.”

             
Terry was sitting by himself at the end. Charleigh took the chair closest to him. He gave her a confident look. That gave Charleigh the tiny boost she needed.

“Well, Charleigh
... Do you mind if I call you Charleigh?” Richard began and put on his glasses as he sat down at the table.

“It’s fine,” Charleigh called. He nodded once more and then began to introduce the people who were sitting around the table.

“I called this meeting because it was necessary for all members of this company to meet our new owner. Greg brought the issue of your ownership to my attention just before his death, and I in turned shared it with our board members a short time ago.” Richard began to shuffle through a stack of papers in front of him.

“Did Greg also fill you in on how he
committed fraud?” Charleigh looked around at the people who occupied the table. “And pardon me for asking a stupid question, but why is there a board went I maintain majority ownership of this company, with ninety-four percent? A board usually consists of stockowners. I only see three here. Jenna, Kevin, and myself.”

One of the women who’d been introduced as Corrine Dunne raised her hand. She was sitting halfway down the table on the same side as Terry. She spoke up, “I’m the President of King Development in London. I was appointed by your parents to this board in 1982. We were brought in as an advisory board
, because we oversee operations of our specific unit, to work together to make sure the company is successful as a whole. ” Her voice sounded somewhat timid.

Charleigh smirked with indifference. “Were
all
of you appointed by my parents?”

All of them seemed to nod and speak up at once. It was apparent now to her that they had. Shaking her head, Charleigh stood up and looked around the table at everyone. From Richard to Terry, Kevin and Jenna
, and then back to Corrine. She held up and hand, and the noise stopped. 

“All I have to say is you did a pretty
bad job, as a whole,” Charleigh remarked snidely and sat back down. She looked over at Terry and whispered, “What did they say about buying me out?”

“Yeah, about that
,” he began.

“Well, I apologize if you think so,” a man who Richard had introduced as Mark Wan replied with a snort, interrupting the conservation,
“but Davidson and Associates happens to be the most successful development company in the world, as a whole.”

“Yeah, you always seem to come out on top when you’re bribing city officials to approve buildings that aren’t exactly up to code,” Charleigh shot back, “Nobody ever notices anything like that until there’s a fire or an earthquake, and the whole thing crumbles. People get hurt and
killed that way, you know. But if the price is right.”

Mark sat back in his leather executive chair but didn’t say a word.

“I take it you participated at least a time or two, Mister Wan. That money Greg Matthews was giving you people to hand out like Halloween candy belonged to me. More than a billion dollars.” She stood up again and began to walk away from the table. From the doorway, she looked back at Terry, “Let them separate for free. I don’t want anything to do with this company, or its subsidiaries. Do whatever you have to do.”

Then Charleigh walked out.

***

Relaxing on the bed of her hotel suite, Charleigh watched a rerun of CSI. She wore a plush blue bath robe, and her hair was pulled back in a loose bun on top of her head. After a long soak in the bath tub, the worries of the day seemed to have evaporated. She just let her mind float along with the storyline.

Just as Charleigh had started to drift off, there was a knock on the door. For a single moment, she thought about keeping her eyes closed, stay in bed and whoever was at the door would eventually go away. There was nothing so important that it couldn’t wait until the next morning. At least this was Charleigh’s opinion.

“Charleigh, it’s Jen,” she heard a muffled voice call out to her from outside the door. “Kevin’s with me. Will you let us in?”

“Oh, brother,” Charleigh said to herself, scooting off the bed. She stopped a few feet short to yawn and stretch. “What?” she asked, finally opening the door to Jenna and Kevin, who were accompanied by Terry and Fredrick MacMillan.

Finding that the two were not alone, Charleigh kept the door open just enough to look out. She wasn’t displeased to see Mister Marcum with them as he was on her side of the matter. Seeing Mister MacMillan there was what Charleigh found so disrupting. She just couldn’t be sure of his motives, since he was connected to Davidson and Associates.

“Can we come in? We’d like to discuss a proposal we have come up with,” Fredrick spoke up. 

“I thought I had left the discussion when I walked out of that room. I’m not going to debate it anymore.” Charleigh went to close her door, but Kevin stuck his foot in the gap before she could.

              “Charleigh, please?” He asked her.

             
“Five minutes. Maybe even less, if I don’t like what I hear,” she told him and moved to open the door wider to allow the visitors access.             

She didn’t want to. What Charleigh wanted to do was shut the door in their faces and go to sleep. When she woke up in the morning, she would pack her bags and fly back home to Magnolia. Once Charleigh was there, then she would figure out what she was going to do with Davidson and Associates. Put it on EBAY and auction it off with a starting bid of one-cent, if that’s what it came down to.

Jenna sat down in one of the plush black leather chairs in the sitting area. Kevin propped himself down on the arm of that same chair. Terry and Fredrick stayed standing.

“Okay, y’all
. What is this all about? You’re running out of time,” Charleigh told them as she sat down on the edge of her bed for the night.

“We just left the meeting. And we’ve come up with a plan that will make everyone happy, especially you, Charleigh,” Terry began, shifting his briefcase from one hand to the other.

Charleigh twisted around to look at the alarm clock that sat on the nightstand. It showed 9:45. She’d left the meeting before noon. Was it possible that they’d been there for more than nine hours?

“Go on.”

“Well, before you joined the meeting, they’d all pretty much agreed that separating would be the best thing to do for everybody,” her trust attorney said.

“So what was the problem with Sullivan?” Charleigh asked, somewhat relieved by what she had just been told. However, she knew Terry wasn’t finished yet with what he had to say.

“Apparently, Dad promised that Richard could take over as CEO, because he was planning to retire in a few years,” Kevin replied.

“I guess Greg didn’t think much of the agreement Gerald Davidson made with my parents,” Charleigh remarked, shaking her head with disgust. Even though he’d promised not to, Greg had still been making crooked deals.

“He knew that you didn’t want to run the company. Greg figured that his recommendation would be enough for you just to step back and let Richard become CEO when the time came,” Fredrick added.

“I guess he still expected me to let him take over, even after Greg died. Richard Sullivan got a rude awakening, huh?”

“One thing is for sure, old Dick never expected Charleigh to let the companies go in their own directions,” Terry said with a laugh. “According to William Mauer, they’ve been wanting to do so for a while now.”

“He’s right. Greg would never allow it,” Fredrick confirmed. “If I had only known what I was getting into all those years ago when I merged with Gerald Davidson.”

“But you got what you wanted, Charleigh,” Jenna said, changing the subject. Unlike Jamie had known, and Kevin did now, she would never accept that her father and grandfather had been crooked businessmen. “Three of the companies had broken out on their own, and you made
a lot
of money from this deal. Twelve billion dollars.”

“Twelve billion dollars?” Charleigh repeated as a question, baffled by the amount. It
was
a lot of money. Maybe too much. “But only three? There are four other branches to Davidson. What’s the deal with the fourth?”

“That’s my fault,” Fredrick replied, letting his shoulders sag a little.
“I just don’t know what to do about my company. I was supposed to retire in December, but with Daniel’s death… He’d already taken over as President, but I don’t feel that there’s anyone with enough experience to run it the way my son did.”

Charleigh nodded with understanding. “What about the employees from the New York branch?” She had figured that they would separate among the agencies.

“Well, a few of the architects approached me for advice on whether or not you would let them out of their contracts to go work elsewhere.” Terry looked over the first page of a yellow legal pad he held. “None of them wants to continue working for the associates, if you shut down the New York office, except John Madison. He wants to go to London and work for King.”