The Jinx (10 page)

“I think you should tell the police what you just told me.”

“Really? Why?”

“It just seems like a strange confluence of events. Somebody might be trying to take over the company of which Sara is the largest shareholder, and meanwhile she's been assaulted.”

“You can't really think the two things are connected?”

“Probably not any more than the attack being connected with the serial killer. But you never know.”

I thought about what he'd said. Had I been so busy trying to blame a Creepy Violent Stalker or a Psycho Roommate that I'd missed something important? It seemed to be taking far-fetched to a whole new level, but it couldn't hurt to make sure that the authorities charged with investigating the attack were aware of all the facts. Although, I was still hoping that my fears of a potential takeover attempt were unwarranted. I said as much to Jonathan.

“I'm sure you're right, but the police will probably appreciate being filled in. I'll arrange for you to talk to them tomorrow, if that works for you.”

“That's fine,” I agreed.

We lingered over dinner. Jonathan asked me a lot about myself, and he listened intently. At some point, his cell phone rang, but rather than taking the call he switched off his phone. I found this sort of undivided attention flattering, particularly when my putative boyfriend's attention had been so thoroughly divided of late. And the flattery had the logical effect of making me feel glowing and attractive, which also went nicely with the tingling. I hadn't realized how in need of an ego boost I was. Still, I resolved, I would tell Jonathan about Peter before the evening was over. I just had to find the right moment.

Jonathan insisted on paying for dinner and driving me back to the hotel. He'd parked on a side street near the restaurant, and he took my arm to help me pick my way through the slush and patches of ice on the sidewalk. He unlocked the passenger-side door of his old Saab, a car I'd always thought personified New England academia. He closed the door after me, and I watched him walk around to the driver's side. In his tweed jacket, with a crimson-and-white striped Harvard scarf wrapped around his neck, he was almost a cliché. But a very attractive one.

He took Mass. Ave. toward Harvard Square, neatly skirting the potholes that pocked the road. We spent the drive lamenting the demise of favorite old haunts. The Bow and Arrow, which had once been a fabulous dive bar complete with outdated pinball machines, was now a restaurant and Tommy's Lunch had metamorphosed into Tommy's House of Pizza. We laughed over the famous rumor about Ted Kennedy running into his professor while having a roast beef sandwich at Elsie's, another long-gone landmark. Unfortunately, Kennedy was supposed to be taking an exam in that professor's course when they ran into each other, and he had found someone to take the exam on his behalf. His professor was not amused. Or so the story went.

Jonathan pulled into the circle in front of the Charles and put the car into park. And I suddenly felt very, very awkward. Peter was probably upstairs, waiting for me, and I'd just had a very nice dinner with another, very handsome man. There was no escaping it. The time had come to tell Jonathan that there was a Peter in the picture. I couldn't wait anymore for just the right moment to assert itself—the evening had all but run out of moments.

I turned to Jonathan to come clean. But before I could get a word out, he'd reached over and rested one hand on the back of my head.

It looked like the last possible moment had arrived.

He hesitated for a second, as if he were trying to make up his mind about something, and I saw an opening.

“Jon—”

But before I could get the words out, he kissed me. On the lips. Or, it would have been on the lips if I hadn't turned my head. Instead, the kiss connected with my left jawbone. Even so, I was so utterly stunned by its impact that I could barely speak. While the earlier kiss on my cheek had resulted in tingling, this kiss had more intent behind it than a friendly greeting. Tingling didn't even begin to describe its effect. I didn't want to imagine what would have happened if the kiss had landed on its original target.

The hotel doorman chose that precise instant to open my door.

“Thank you for dinner,” I managed to say.

Jonathan looked mildly surprised, as if he didn't know what to make of my nick-of-time head turn. “I'm glad you could come out tonight,” he said. “I had a great time. Talk to you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” I replied.

The doorman shut the car door behind me, and Jonathan drove away.

I
walked into the hotel feeling as if I had a scarlet
A
tattooed on my forehead. I'd just kissed another man.

Well, that wasn't exactly true. I hadn't really participated in the kiss, although it had elevated my low-grade tingling to full-force vibrating. Still, I had been kissed, rather than actively kissing. And I'd managed to keep my lips uninvolved. It was really only a quasikiss. But Jonathan had meant to involve my lips. And if I'd mentioned Peter to Jonathan, I wouldn't have been kissed. So, on some level I was definitely a participant in the kissing.

Semantics will get you every time.

On the way up in the elevator, I wondered what I should say to Peter. This didn't really merit disclosure, did it? And the scarlet
A
wouldn't really show. But how would I feel if I knew he was out being kissed, even only quasikissed, by other women? Particularly during the same twenty-four-hour time frame during which we'd kissed, and done a lot more than kissed, each other.

I'd feel sick, probably. Betrayed and bereft. So I wouldn't want to know, would I? And Peter wouldn't want to know, either. The kiss had been Jonathan's idea, and my reaction had been purely chemical, nothing more. I'd clear things up with Jonathan when I spoke to him tomorrow. In the meantime, there was no reason to upset Peter.

With this twisted reasoning firmly under my belt, I was feeling sleazy but somewhat confident by the time I slipped my keycard into the door. I pushed it open and called out Peter's name.

There was no response. I consulted my watch—it was past ten. In fact, it was closer to eleven. And still no Peter. I took my Blackberry out of my bag, but there were no new voice mails or e-mails. Not a one. The scarlet
A
on my forehead was shining less brightly. Then I noticed that the message light was blinking on the desktop phone. So, Peter
had
called. The blinking light was a visual reproach, and I felt like a slut all over again.

I picked up the receiver and dialed into the hotel's voice mail. The message, however, was not from Peter. It was from Brian Mulcahey, Grenthaler's COO.

I jotted down the number and deleted the recording. Then I called Brian back, and we agreed to meet for breakfast the next day at the Four Seasons before I went to see the Porters.

I didn't fall asleep until well after two, alternately worrying about potential takeovers, my sluttish behavior and Peter's continued absence. The last worried me the most; what had been a hazy foreboding began crystallizing into dread as the minutes ticked by on the bedside clock. Was Peter dumping me, replacing me with Abigail? What other explanation could there be for staying out so late—with Abigail, no less—and not even calling? How could our relationship have fallen apart so quickly? Had I been too busy congratulating myself on how perfect everything was to recognize the signs of his waning affection? Had my cavalier dismissal of the Jinxing Gods spurred them into action?

 

I eventually fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and I didn't even know what time Peter finally came in, but when the phone blared out in the morning with our wake-up call, he was there, snoring heavily.

Which meant he'd been drinking. Peter only snored when he had more than two drinks. He also slept right through the shrill noise of the phone. Another undeniable indicator that he'd been doing some serious imbibing the previous night. But I was just glad he was there. Surely that meant all of my worrying had been groundless?

I poked him and he grunted.

“Wake-up call,” I announced cheerily.

He grunted again.

I poked him again.

He flipped over onto his stomach and pulled the duvet over his head.

I poked him through the duvet. “Good morning!”

“Go 'way.”

I slipped out of bed and crossed to the windows, opening the drapes with a flourish. Then I returned to the bed and pulled back the duvet. “Rise and shine!”

“Argghh.”

“Nice to see you, too, Sparky.”

“What time is it?” he mumbled.

“Seven.”

“Oh, no.” He groaned and struggled to a sitting position. His hair looked like he was auditioning for a Flock of Seagulls tribute band.

“Oh, yes.”

He let rip with a colorful string of expletives. “Oh, God. I'm late.”

“But your hair looks really good.”

“Do you have any Advil?”

“In the bathroom.”

He lifted himself heavily from the bed. “Shower.”

“Good.” I moved to join him, eager to make up for doubting him, not to mention letting myself be quasikissed by Jonathan.

“No, Rachel. Me. Alone. I'm late.”

“Oh. Okay. Fine.”

The bathroom door shut behind him.

And all of my worries came flooding back.

 

Twenty minutes later Peter was out the door, already talking on his cell phone. I got a hurried and perfunctory kiss that missed my face completely and landed on my right ear. Jonathan's quasikiss had been nearly pornographic in comparison.

Twenty minutes after that, I was in a cab heading to the Four Seasons. I'd called Cecelia to check in, guilty that I was leaving her stranded again, but she professed to have everything under control. “Will you be all right for interviewers?” I asked.

“Sure. You and Scott are both skipping out, but I've got enough people to get by.”

“Scott's not going to be there, either?” I asked, relieved that I wouldn't have to dodge his backhanded attempts to undermine me with Stan.

“No. Something about an ‘incredibly' urgent client matter. Anyhow, go to your breakfast. I've got it all covered.”

I definitely owed her, and not just flowers and a bottle of wine. A full day at Bliss Spa was in order, and only partly on the firm's tab.

I tried to look at the newspaper as the cab sped toward Back Bay, but reading in cars on an empty stomach made me feel sick, and the news did, too. There was an article on the front page about the prostitute killings—seven in the past six months if you included the two this week, and the seeming escalation in the number of murders was whipping the media into a frenzy. Definitely not the sort of thing to read about in a moving vehicle before I'd had any caffeine.

The cab pulled up in front of the Four Seasons, a modern redbrick edifice facing on the Public Garden. I settled with the driver and went inside, making my way through the lobby to the restaurant, Aujourd'hui. Mulcahey was already seated at a table by the window, a steaming cup of coffee before him.

He stood to greet me, shaking my hand and helping me with my chair. A waiter materialized to take our order, a bagel and orange juice for Mulcahey and an omelet and Diet Coke for me.

To date, I'd had few direct interactions with Mulcahey. As COO, his role was exactly what it sounded to be. He was the guy charged with running Grenthaler's day-to-day business. Most of my work with Grenthaler was either about acquisitions and divestitures or about financial planning—there'd never been much need for the two of us to work together. Still, I knew him by reputation as a good, strong manager. He kept everything running smoothly, and there was a lot to be said for that.

“So, Rachel,” he began, running a hand through his close-cropped, curly gray hair before folding his arms in front of him on the table. “I'm glad you could make it this morning.”

“I'm glad you could make it, too,” I replied. “It sounds like we both have matters to discuss. What's on your mind?”

“Well, as you probably know, I've been acting as interim CEO since Tom passed away.”

“Things must be pretty frenetic for you right now.”

“It's a big job, and to be frank, I'm not the man for it. I'm happy to be the caretaker until we can find somebody better, but it's really not what I'm all about. I've always been more of a manager than a leader.” Brian was in his early sixties, and he'd risen through the company ranks in a slow but steady way over the course of three decades. I admired that he had such a good handle on his own limitations, although I suspected he was underestimating himself. Still, since I was usually surrounded by people who were far more likely to overestimate themselves, his modesty was refreshing.

“What does the board think?” Grenthaler's board of directors would be charged with appointing the next CEO.

“We're having an emergency meeting tomorrow morning to discuss it.” I nodded, wondering what was coming next.

“I think we both know who should probably be the next CEO.”

“Sara?” I asked.

“Yes. She's still relatively young and inexperienced, but it's what her father wanted and it's what Tom wanted.”

“What will the board think?”

“Probably that she's too young and inexperienced. That said, the board is weighted in her favor.” Grenthaler's board included Mulcahey, Edward and Helene Porter, Barbara Barnett, and a handful of outsiders who had been handpicked by Samuel Grenthaler and Tom Barnett.

“There's probably a provisional solution,” I pointed out. “Sara only has another semester left at school. You could stay on until she graduates, and for a year or two after, until she's really ready to take over.”

“That's what I'm thinking. And I believe that most of the board would be amenable to that.” He hesitated.

“But?” I prompted.

“There may be a faction on the board that won't be so amenable.”

I had a feeling about where he was going. “Barbara Barnett?”

He nodded. “I think she's going to try to get Adam named to the position.”

That hadn't occurred to me. I'd been more concerned about Barbara selling her shares than about her trying to get more involved with the company, and to bring Adam with her. I thought for a moment. “Look, Barbara has a significant stake in the company, but it's not much compared to what Sara has. I don't know how much influence she'd really be able to have over the decision.”

“It doesn't seem like she could have much. But some of the external board members might be persuaded. Adam knows the company as well as anyone but Sara and me. And he's got a few more years of business experience than she does.”

“Not really. He's always been in finance.”

“We know it's not the same, but he's pretty impressive on paper.”

I didn't say what I was thinking, which was that Adam sure wasn't impressive off paper, but I guessed Mulcahey was thinking the same thing.

Brian interrupted my thoughts. “Either way, Barbara does own ten percent of the company, and she may be able to swing some of the other directors around to her point of view. I'm worried that tomorrow's discussion could get fractious. I was hoping you could come to the meeting and sit in. I know it's a bit unorthodox, but you worked closely with Tom and the board on most of the big decisions we've made in the last few years. It would be great to get your input, not only tomorrow but over the next month or so as we get things sorted out.”

“That's fine,” I agreed, realizing that yet another opportunity for a leisurely room-service breakfast morning with Peter was going to pass us by. Which was just as well, since he would probably have to rush off to meet Abigail anyhow. At the same time I realized that there was a tiny little part of me that was thinking how convenient it might be to spend more time in Boston. I felt an imaginary pulse on my forehead, as if the scarlet
A
were back.

The waiter arrived with our food. “Now what was it you wanted to discuss?” Brian asked as I cut into my omelet.

“It almost seems less important now that you've told me about Barbara. But have you been following the stock recently?”

“Not really,” he admitted. “That's not my area. And I've been so busy with everything else.”

“There's been some strange movement. I can't imagine that it's much to worry about given that the majority of the company is privately held. But I'm trying to get in touch with Barbara to discuss what she intends to do with her shares. Yesterday didn't seem like the right time.”

“No, probably not. But I'm glad that you've got your eye on it.”

“I'm looking into it,” I told him. “I'll be sure to keep you posted. And what you've said about Barbara is reassuring. Even if the CEO question ends up being a fight, if she does want Adam to have the job, it sounds like she intends to stay involved and to hold on to her shares.”

 

Brian offered to drop me off on his way back to Grenthaler's headquarters in Kendall Square, but I still had time before meeting with the Porters, so I decided to walk. I could use the fresh air, and probably the exercise, too, although I generally tried to keep my exercise accidental or incidental. The path through the Public Garden looked particularly icy and slushy, so I stuck to the sidewalk on Arlington Street.

I glanced casually across the street as I passed the Ritz on the opposite side. And then I did a double take.

Three men were being ushered into a taxi, and from where I stood I thought I recognized them all.

My eyes were probably playing tricks on me, but the Caped Avenger's wardrobe was pretty distinctive. Not a lot of grown men wearing capes these days.

But what was he doing with Adam Barnett and Scott Epson?