“Yes, it was.”
“My, how time flies. Now come on in, and meet my other guests.” He took her arm and led her into the living room.
Mark followed, surprised at the exchange and wanting a chance to ask why she hadn’t mentioned meeting Braden Senior before. At the same time he was overwhelmed by the memories of arriving here as a small child, with Kelly greeting them at the door and leading them in to meet the guests.
“I didn’t think my having met Braden was important,” Lucy whispered, apparently reading the puzzlement on Mark’s face.
They entered a massive room full of young and middle-aged men. Braden introduced them to the nearest group and beckoned to one of the numerous waiters circulating through the room.
Lucy requested champagne.
Mark asked for a beer.
Within moments they had their drinks in hand and Lucy was receiving the lion’s share of attention from the men around them. She acted fascinated with every single one.
Mark recognized the names of at least four or five heads of the Fortune 500 whose firms were headquartered in New York. The ingrained resentment he’d always had for the silver-spoon set stirred deep within him.
Other men walked over to introduce themselves. He barely paid attention, unticlass="underline"
“… Freddy Lawler II, and this is my boy Ronald…”
Mark started at this name, and found himself staring at a small-statured man with delicate features and short-cropped blond hair. He reappraised his audio impression of the kid’s mother, downsizing his mental image by about 50 percent. But he wasn’t curious enough to go over and ask Ronnie if he carried a picture of the woman to be sure. He did wonder if this well-heeled son ever visited Diane Whigston in her trailer park, and if he drove up to her front door in whichever fancy car parked outside was his, or arrived in a taxi to save them both embarrassment at the difference in their economic stations.
He slipped away from where Lucy continued to hold court and parked himself beside a table of hors d’oeuvres, making it a point to be alone and accessible.
He and Lucy suspected Braden wanted a private word with Mark, perhaps to suggest subtly that it would be wise to leave Chaz alone during the investigation. But while Mark went one-on-one with Charles, she would work the crowd, and perhaps succeed at prompting somebody to make a slip about Chaz’s real whereabouts at the time of the ambush. Judging by how readily they fell under her spell, Mark figured she just might pull it off.
At least that had been their plan.
“And you all hunt, do you?” Lucy asked the men arrayed around her. “I have a huge weak spot for venison. My four brothers used to bring in enough to feed our entire family for a winter, and nothing, but nothing, could surpass the taste of that meat prepared in my mother’s marinade…”
Her enthusiasm was so convincing that Mark figured her every word to be true. In any case she had her audience eating out of her hand.
“… so if any of you gentleman are willing to share some of your catch with me, I’d be pleased to remunerate-”
“Love to, Doc!”
“How much do you want?”
“I’ve got a dozen steaks in the freezer with your name on it – my gift to you…”
Mark chuckled at how she’d captivated these weekend hunters.
“… why, thank you gentlemen,” Lucy continued. “But which of you has bagged the most? I wouldn’t want to deprive someone of their sole catch?”
“We could show you later.”
“Yeah, it’s all down in the meat locker.”
“Just at the foot of the back steps.”
“Really? It isn’t bloody, is it? I can’t stand the sight of blood.”
“Oh, of course not,” reassured a very earnest young man with blow-dried black hair. Chipper he’d said his name was. “It’s all been cut into steaks, just like at the meat market-”
Lucy burst out laughing and, laying her hand on his, gave him a wink. “Chipper, you forget what I do for a living.”
He flushed.
The rest roundly laughed.
“Now you quit teasing me, Doc,” Chipper said, breaking into a good-natured smile.
Mark looked around, but Charles didn’t appear to be in the room. Spotting a group of men in a small parlor with sliding doors, he thought his host might be there, and sidled over. As he drew near, he picked up snatches of the conversation.
“… shareholders will bale at the slightest rumor…”
“… exercising my options…”
“… if it gets public…”
But no Charles.
Nevertheless, he strained to hear, thinking he might at least get a tip on which stocks to dump.
“… other CEOs have had worse problems…”
“… the SEC filed charges against Bob last week…”
“… Christ, everyone’s going down like flies these days…”
At that moment Charles appeared out of nowhere, stepped over to the doors, and drew them closed. He turned around and, seemingly only then, spotted Mark. He smiled, and shrugged, almost apologetically. “Businessmen are like doctors,” he said, walking over to take him by the elbow and lead him away. “You can’t even invite them to a party but they clump together and talk shop.”
“Well, I guess that’s true-”
“I wonder if you and I could have a word in private?”
Here we go, Mark thought.
“Of course.”
“Perhaps you’d be kind enough to wait for me in the library. I have to speak with the caterer, but will be along in a minute. You remember the way, don’t you? You used to play there as a child.”
The double wooden doors of polished mahogany were as high as the fifteen-foot ceilings. They opened as soundlessly as he remembered, admitting him to the silent interior. Overhead chandeliers suspended from dark wooden beams cast a dim golden glow over the thousands of book spines that lined the shelves along the walls. Though the room seemed smaller than before, it remained impressive.
Perfect, thought Mark. With the two of them alone, Braden would be more likely to start in with his refined arm-twisting techniques. There’d be no need to keep it polite. That might be more revealing about any family secrets Braden wanted to keep hidden than the nuanced exchanges they’d had thus far in the middle of crowds. Mark might even press him a little – make him defensive about Chaz.
As Mark waited, the soft pungent smell of leather mixed with the caramelized odor of varnish. Closing his eyes, he could have been backin that time when the three people he loved most in the world were as close as the next room, all happily, he’d believed, laughing, eating, and drinking together. Then he felt all the more desolate for the reminder of what he’d lost. “Goddamn it,” he muttered, starting to stroll and read the titles, anything to prevent the past from reinvading his memory. He resented such incursions at the best of times. Somehow, in this house, thoughts of his mother, his father, and Kelly were unseemly fresh and doubly painful.
Yet he found himself heading for the corner he’d liked best – the place where he had curled up on one of the big leather reading chairs with books on travel adventures that were full of wild-animal pictures.
On the way he passed entire sections of medical works, and quickly appreciated the extent of the collection. Interested, he took a closer look.
Initially he saw worn, faded books on obstetrics, some of them almost historical records exhibiting how crude and primitive the profession once was. Others documented more recent history. He pulled down an old leather-bound text dated 1930 and, flipping through it, shuddered at the realities of infant and maternal mortality in the era when his own parents had been born. Ether had been the only anesthetic, sulfa the only antibiotic for infections, and neonatal care for any compromised infants amounted to little more than keeping them warm and hydrated until they died or revived on their own.