Broken: A Billionaire Love Story (14 page)

Oh, yes. Turn the car on. Right. That was silly. She’d tell that to her mother later, how she forgot how she was supposed to turn on a car. She’d share it and they’d laugh and her mother would let her in on one of the times that such a thing had happened to her.

God. That was all going away, second by second.

The car roared on, and Olivia flew down the hill and onto the road.

The whole way there, Olivia sped. She tried and failed to ignore red lights—her mother’s words echoing in her head. “There aren’t a lot of laws that make sense. But, excepting speed limits, most traffic laws do. So follow them.”

More of Harriet's words that she hear only ever again in the echoing halls of her head.

Fifteen minutes later—a record time from the center to the hospice—she had arrived. As good a time as she had ever made, and, she already knew, as good a time as she ever would have to make.

She parked and rushed up the steps. The nurses, expecting her, didn’t even make her sign in. She rushed through the pristine white stone halls, trying to remember her mother’s room number. Was it 14C? She always thought it was 14B, but then once upon a time she had been wrong, and so maybe she had originally thought it was 14B but it was actually 14C and had mistakenly gone to the wrong room a few times, but now in the fog of memory she couldn’t remember which was correct.

Even her thoughts were babbling, now.

The room was 14B, after all. Her mother in there, the life fleeing her body. A couple of nurses attending.

It was like Harriet had been expecting her, for when Olivia arrived, her demeanor changed from calm and tired to hacking and coughing in an instant—like she had been holding in the death grown inside of her by sheer force of will.

Olivia took her, held her, could feel the gentle beat of her heart fade more and more. Her mother’s arms flailed for several moments, chest heaving with all the heavy coughs, and then it was all done.

It was hard to believe. Everything that she had ever been given had come from this woman. All her intelligence, her determination, her fervor, her decency, it all had been from this wonderful—now dead—woman.

Olivia got up and kissed her mother on the forehead. The nurse recorded the time of death and then stepped out.

It was all just a normal day for them.

Chapter 20:

It had been an odd day for Heck Parsons.

He reflected as he looked at his old car, Pearl, trying to formulate his next move in the cool weather of the afternoon.

First, he had woken up early—about six in the morning—asked by a police officer to move his car out of the parking lot of the grocery store where he had laid up for the night. Usually, the police officers left him alone—he had a rotation of parking lots, never the same place in a given month—and cops tended just to leave him be. But this cop acted all high-and-mighty about it, acting like Heck was polluting the ground of the earth by daring to sleep on it inside of an automobile.

That was fine. Whatever. Screw that cop.

A thought Heck Parsons was very used to, “screw that cop.” He had employed it many a time over the course of his career.

Around nine in the morning he got a call to meet someone at a bar in the middle of University City, deep in the middle of the St. Louis area. This person, in a husky, obviously muffled and disguised voice, said he had very important information on the Shane Conway case. Intrigued

Heck waited in the coffee shop for three hours. He would have only waited for fifteen minutes, except for the frequent text messages assuring him that the informant was still on his way, just delayed.

Finally, frustrated, he came back out to his car—and found all his files in disarray.

They had been in disarray anyway—Heck wasn’t known for his cleanliness—but this was a
new
disarray. Carefully, he examined the metal around the passenger-side door handle...yes. A few scratches that hadn’t been there before.

Someone had broken in. Someone had broken in and gone through all his files. The handle wasn't all the way broken—the offender must have noticed that the door was unlocked after a little bit of trying. Heck always kept the car unlocked, not ever thinking he had anything worth stealing, even though his whole life in the car.

None of his files seemed missing—but Heck had been distracted long enough for something to have been taken to a nearby copy shop and replicated and replaced.

Two days before, Parsons was ready to give up. He had nothing to go on, nothing to write, no idea how to handle what he was supposed to be investigating. He couldn’t get close to where he
knew
Shane Conway was.

Based on hunches and intuition and nothing else, he had made a few calls around to some of his friends in finance. There was a deal coming between the Conway Corporation and Global-Comm, an enormous telecommunications corporation that was steadily eating up companies and corporations all over the world.

He reviewed his notes, then—based on the original investigation. Wills, stock reports, that sort of thing. The state of affairs in the Conway Corporation, as made to the public. Arthur Conway was the COO, but a curious wrinkle was that he was the CEO in all-but-name as well. It was a sort of open secret in the world of business. The actual CEO, Cassandra Conway, had not done much executing for the past five years. She mostly just arrived at important meetings and reported what Arthur told her to.

Fueled by desperation, he arrived at the building of the Conway Corporation, and waited.

Around lunch time, he found his spot—there was Arthur Conway, walking out the door, looking as crisp and sharp as ever. Heck zeroed in on him.

“Mister Conway!” He matched pace with the rich man in the busyness of the street. “Mister Conway, a word, please.”

“No.” Conway shook his head. “Who are you? No.”

Heck, of course, decided to go straight to the heart of the matter. He rushed forward in front of Conway, walking backward as he went.

“I know all about your little merger deal. You stand to make a good deal of money, is that right? You'll be running things in name
and
in title. Won't you?”

This was a bluff, of course. Heck was running on nothing but guesswork. But Arthur's jolted reaction told him all he needed to know.

Conway frowned deeply, stopping in his tracks for a moment. Then, as if he realized he had revealed too much, he continued on.

“Parsons, isn't it? I remember you now. All those questions from that bloody business a few years back.”

“That's right.”

“Still on the case, are we? You realize you're the only one?”

“You denying there's a story there doesn't mean there's no story. Sort of like how it is with this merger.”

“I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. If I did, however, I might wonder how you came to possess such information. I would wager that such information could turn out to be very costly for someone in your position.”

“Is that a threat?”

They approached a car on the street—a very nice town car, driver and entourage waiting.

“I would steer clear of me, Mr. Parsons,” said Conway, stepping into the car.

Heck thought that was it, but then Conway rolled down the window to say a bit more.

“I don’t understand people like you,” said Conway. “Do you know the resources I employ? Do you know what I have at my disposal? It would be nothing to crush you. You’re already crushed. All I would be doing would be to sweep a bit of clumpy mud into the drain and turning the water on full blast. People would thank me. You could probably name them already, these people who would thank me.”

Heck rapped his knuckles on the side of the car. “That’s true.”

“Then leave it alone. Leave my family alone. Leave it all alone. It’s better for you.”

Anger seized Heck. He could feel the control of his mouth slipping away. “You want to know why I’m doing this, is that it?”

“Not particularly.”

Conway rolled up his window then, and the car began driving off.

Parsons, unable to help himself, shouted after the car, stopped at a light just a few dozen feet away. “I’m doing this because people like you need a reality check! And every time you’ve gotten too big for your britches, there’s been someone like me to cut you down to size! I am the other end of the pendulum, Conway! And I’m swinging your way!”

Nonsense, mostly. Just stuff he shouted out to see if he could get under Conway’s skin. You feel a fool for shouting such things, and Heck Parsons understood this.

People on the street stared at him, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. Heck understood that, too. He had similar questions about his mental state.

That was yesterday.

And today, his car had been broken into.

And this is why Heck Parsons smiled, looking at his car. Because if someone had taken the time to break into his car and see what he had, then it meant he was on to something. It meant his investigation wasn’t all for nothing. It meant—and Heck Parsons loved this part—it meant every bit of the story he wanted was true, and juicier than he could have ever imagined.

Chapter 21:

A week after her mother's death, Olivia returned to work.

Or rather, she returned to work at Edgemont. Her retail job had finally fired her—her lack of attendance, even in her grief, was more than enough reason for her termination.

So long, farewell. She hadn’t been happy there, trying to sell battered fridges and ovens in her collared shirt and khakis, but it had been an extra eight hundred dollars a month that she had come to depend on quite a bit.

She tried to push such thoughts out of her mind—all the money she would no longer have from a comfortable source—as well as any thoughts of bitterness about their lack of civility when they knew very well why she wasn’t going to be at work. The joys of working in a right-to-work state—just as often, it seemed to Olivia, it was a right-to-fire.

Edgemont was different, for which she was unendingly grateful. Even though the job there was part-time, they had been very accommodating.

“Take as much time as you need,” Dr. Strauss told her. “We need people like you here. So please, work out what you need to and return as it suits you.”

The wind blew hard as Olivia walked up the hill into Edgemont. She had to hug her trim, brown jacket to her body just to keep from tipping over entirely.

When she entered, they were waiting for her, everyone with a greeting and condolences. Rounds of hugs and gifts were passed around for about half-an-hour before meetings started and everyone had to get to work. Olivia entered her office at ten-thirty with an armful of chocolates and flowers, and unloaded them in a pile of other chocolates and flowers already stacked in the office.

It was nice to be liked. She couldn’t get away from that. It would be easy during such a time to think that people were just doing what was expected of them—making a show to communicate some human feeling, trying to partake in the fabric of society—but still Olivia felt an enormous amount of gratitude for the people she worked with. With the one job lost, she almost had to keep up that gratitude.

The funeral had been surprisingly well-attended. Of course, Olivia's brothers made the trip—making several overtures of gratitude for Olivia being the one to be there for their mom. They were both sad for the loss—but seemed somewhat removed from it, not having had to witness it go down. Olivia got the impression they had come to terms with Harriet's death some time ago.

Besides her children, Harriet did not have much in the way of family—and so neither did Olivia—but her years of working for equality had earned her a wide range of friendships from all over the country. Activists from Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami showed up, almost all of them getting on in years.

They explained to Olivia, sadness in their eyes, that their circle of progressive change was slowly and steadily being eaten away by the sands of time. All of them were at the age where more friends were dying and dead than living. Still, they had joy in their lives, mostly from happy lives, well-lived and full of helping others, and recounted several fun, engaging stories at the funeral that made Olivia love her mother even more. She hadn’t known her mother to be such a frequent dancer or singer—but story after story expounded on her mother’s exploits in both areas with gusto.

Her mother had a modest life-insurance policy that was largely eaten up by all the expenses. Some money was saved by cremation, which Harriet had requested. The urn was now on top of Olivia’s entryway desk where she kept her key dish and spare mail. She wanted a better place for the urn, but at the same time, she was glad it was right there to greet her when she came through the door.

The only other bit of her mother that she had been given was a ring—the same ring that her father had proposed to her with. It was a beautiful, simple gold band—her mother abhorred the practice of giving diamonds and refused to accept them. The way she put it, she wanted nothing to do with an ad campaign's property-trading practice. Olivia kept the ring in her pocket, not quite sure whether she felt up to wearing it.

Olivia could accept her mother’s death. She wasn’t doing a good job of it yet, but she could feel that acceptance sliding around in her head, waiting to be made in full. One good thing about a prolonged death is that it allowed a lot of preparation for the grieving process. Anger, denial, bargaining—Olivia had been through all of these already. She could feel the icy throes of depression clawing at her, but she had built up reserves and reserves of acceptance to battle them over the months of her mother’s decline.

With all her anxiety problems in the past, it wasn't as if she was unused to how depression could control her life. In a strange way, all those problems had helped to prepare her—she knew how bad it could get, and was determined not to allow it to happen.

There was not a lot of money left over from the funeral and the rest of the necessities of death, not really. Enough was saved, however, for Olivia to apply to a range of grad schools and also a chunk of the first year of tuition at some of her choices, if she ended up needing to pay. She felt as if it were a type of sign that good things were on the horizon—though of course, she had thought in these terms before she had learned she had lost her retail job.