The enclave of John’s Island held the special silence of the rich. The wind was still strong enough to push the palms around. Raindrops rattled off the leaves and sparkled in the emerging sunlight. The lawn was the shade of liquid emeralds. A chickadee sang from around the side of the house. A car whished by on wet tires. Otherwise the world was orderly, calm, restrained.
Tatyana rang the front doorbell and said, “I hate going to Easton with just more questions and no answers.”
“He’s the one who asked for this meeting, right?”
“Even so, I feel that I am letting him down. My job is to identify solutions. That is why we are close. Most attorneys specialize in finding problems. I look for answers as well.”
“That’s one reason you’re close, not the only.” He heard footsteps tapping across the interior. “You’re close because he trusts you.”
The door was opened by the same girl they had seen on their previous visit. Tatyana said, “Hello, Clara. Your father is expecting us.”
She did not look at either of them directly. “He’s on the phone.”
“Can we come inside?”
Wayne had the clear sense that the girl really wanted to shut the door in their faces. Just slam out all the impossible terrors. Her face was pinched tight as she stepped back. The Labrador retriever kept so close she bumped him with her leg. The Lab moved forward and nudged Wayne’s hand with his wet nose. Wayne stroked the dog between the ears and felt the Lab’s tail thump against his knee.
“Come here, Jody.”
The Lab returned to his position behind the girl. She directed her words to the door as she shut and locked it. “Dad’s in the kitchen.”
“Then maybe we should go wait in his study.”
The girl gave a teenage shrug and walked away. As if she didn’t care. As if she could block them out. Then the Lab nudged her leg, just a little, and she almost tumbled. The slightest force was enough to wreck her fragile equilibrium.
Tatyana pointed Wayne toward the stairs. Midway up the girl spoke from the bottom of the stairs, “Do you know who’s doing this?”
Tatyana leaned over the railing. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I could say it was all behind us. But no.”
The pinched features almost hid the tight quiver to the girl’s mouth. Almost. “He won’t go out. Not even to the store. Not even to play golf. It’s like he’s sick or something.”
“We’re working on this just as hard as we can.”
She looked at the panting dog without seeing him. “Daddy is scared. He says he’s not. He says he likes the time at home with us. But I know.”
“Would you like me to call you from time to time? I could do that.” Tatyana hesitated, then added, “I know what it’s like to be scared.”
“Mom’s scared too.” Her voice broke then. She turned away.
“I’ll call you, Clara.”
The girl padded in her bare feet across the marble-tiled foyer and disappeared.
The room at the top of the stairs was everything a rich man’s study should be, paneled in some wood that glowed, a matching desk, big leather chair, fireplace, oil paintings, awards, books. The smell was like a man’s cologne, or a musk. If money had a scent, Wayne decided, it would be this. “Nice.”
Tatyana walked to the window, or started to. But her attention was snagged by something on Grey’s desk. She picked up the two sheets of paper and studied them. Wayne could almost feel her intensity. She was still looking at them when Easton Grey entered the room and said, “Thank you for coming, Mr. Grusza.”
“Call me Wayne.”
“Have a seat. I understand you have something to tell me.” He saw how Tatyana remained absorbed by the sheets of paper, and told her, “Names and times of every call I’ve received, just as you asked.”
Her face had returned to its customary lines of singular focus. Wayne felt a sudden stab of loss, which he knew was absurd. But he couldn’t help himself. She asked in the voice of old, “Trace Neally called you at two fifteen yesterday afternoon?”
“That’s right. Take a seat, Tatyana.”
She remained where she was. “Can I ask what you talked about?”
Grey waved Wayne into one of the leather chairs and chose the sofa for himself. “We talked about you.”
“Those charges the disciplinary board brought against me are utterly false.”
“Tatyana, think of who you’re talking to. I know they’re false. Now come sit down. Please.”
She moved with the stiffness of repressed anger. She selected a high-backed chair next to the fireplace. The pages dangled from her hand. Wayne asked her, “This guy was one of those who accused you?”
“Trace Neally was the last member of the disciplinary board to arrive.” Her face now resembled Easton’s daughter. Same pinched features, same small mouth, same tremble so tight it appeared almost a tic.
“Who is he?”
“A property developer. One of the biggest in Florida.”
“And a friend,” Easton added. “We’ve known each other for almost twenty years.”
“So why would your friend level charges you know are false against your company’s legal counsel?”
Easton nodded approval. “Exactly what I asked him. He replied that he was there because he had been asked to come.”
“We need to know who brought up this issue against Tatyana with the disciplinary board,” Wayne said. “The timing is too perfect for this to be chance.”
“Trace promised to check into it and come back to me.”
Wayne gave Tatyana a chance to take charge. But her attention had returned to the sheets in her hand. So Wayne said, “Did this Trace guy say who asked him to come?”
“His secretary made the appointment. After I got off the phone with Trace, I checked with her. She arrived that morning to find a board-level memo waiting for her. The signature was illegible.” Easton turned his attention to the lady seated by the fireplace and said, “You look very nice today, Tatyana.”
Her eyes returned to the page. “My ex-husband called you three times?”
“Just as I recorded there on the page.” Easton kept his voice intentionally mild.
“Was that about me too?”
“To some degree. Eric Stroud is now representing Teledyne.” Easton added for Wayne’s benefit, “Teledyne is a company we are seeking to acquire.”
Tatyana said, “I’ve been responsible for those negotiations. Eric’s name has never come up before.”
“Eric’s firm is Teledyne’s outside counsel. You know that. Their board specifically requested that Eric take personal charge. He would not say why. He approached me because, well, he feared there might be some difficulty dealing with you.”
She directed her words to the page in her hand. “So he’s going behind my back.”
“He tried. I told him if he could not handle the matter with you, Teledyne would either need to find new counsel or the deal was finished.”
Tatyana blinked once. A second time. The tension gradually drained away. She moved her lips back and forth, as though trying to massage blood back into them again. She said in a very small voice, “Thank you, Easton.”
“You are my chief in-house counsel. How else could I possibly respond?” He dismissed the issue by turning to Wayne and saying, “I understand you have met the gentleman in question.”
“Hold that thought.” Wayne turned to Tatyana. “We need to follow up on this Trace guy.”
Drawing the room back into focus clearly required serious effort on Tatyana’s part. “He is Easton’s friend.”
“Think about it. You were tackled by this disciplinary group. How many were there?”
“The same as always. Four. Two company executives, two board members.”
“And it’s a very serious matter to be brought before them on charges, right?”
Easton asked, “Where are you going with this?”
“I have a friend who’s a former cop. Since this thing broke, he’s kept saying how he hates coincidences.”
Wayne expected the company boss to object to his sharing of confidential information with an unknown. Instead, Easton said, “You think someone on the board is involved in this scam, if that’s what it was.”
“Maybe.” He directed his words to Tatyana. “Does your ex handle a lot of corporate buyouts?”
Easton replied, “Eric Stroud is partner in Orlando’s largest firm. They handle whatever comes their way.”
Wayne had assumed that already. His question, however, had the desired effect. Tatyana was back fully with them. She said, “The takeover.”
“I’m thinking that’s what Jerry would say. After you’re pulled away I’m confronted by an exec from a completely different department. Your husband pops up like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat.” He shrugged. “So we follow the coincidences and see where they lead. We need to talk with this Trace guy, see if he can give us a feel for what happened when you weren’t in the room.”
Tatyana nodded. “I’ll set that up.”
Easton leaned back in the sofa, his gaze moving back and forth between the two of them. “Well, well.”
Tatyana glanced at her boss. “What?”
“It sounds to me like you two have become a team.”
She made that gesture from her distant past, the raising of her chin, the noncommittal full-body shrug. “Is that bad?”
He said to Wayne, “In a matter of a few days, you have moved from arm’s length to trusted ally. Tatyana does not trust easily. I hope her confidence in you is justified.”
“I hope so too,” Wayne replied.
“Back to my earlier question. You spoke with the gentleman who claimed to be God’s messenger?”
“More like, he spoke to me.”
“Describe it, please. In as much detail as you can.”
Wayne did so. When he finished, he watched Easton pull at his lip for a moment, then added, “I dreamed about him last night.”
Easton Grey revealed neither shock nor derision. Just a return of that absorbed concentration. “Was it just a dream, Mr. Grusza?”
“Excuse me?”
“I think you know what I’m referring to.”
He licked his lips. He wished he had not brought it up now. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Did he speak?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
The leather squeaked as Easton Grey leaned forward. “What did he say?”
“Choose.”
The corporate chieftain surprised him. He smiled. The invisible strain he had carried with him both times they had met suddenly lifted. “He told you to choose.”
“Maybe. I sort of heard the word after I had woken up.”
“Choose,” he repeated, and rose from the sofa. “The same word he spoke to you in the conference room.”
“That’s right.”
“The same conference room where he could not possibly have appeared.”
“So I’m told.”
Easton Grey was slender in the manner of a long-distance runner, lean and taut. He moved across the room and tapped his hand thoughtfully upon the oiled wood of his desk. He spoke to the polished surface. “And still you insist that he must be part of a scam.”
Wayne found the breath hard to come by. “I don’t …No. I’m not insisting.”
Easton Grey’s smile was both gentle and as taut as the rest of him. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“I think we should track down this possibility of a scam. See if there’s a connection between anybody on the disciplinary board and Eric Stroud and Teledyne.”
Easton Grey kept smiling. “The possibility of a scam.”
“Yes.”
“And what about the other possibility? What about that?”
Wayne swallowed. “I’m going to check that out too.”