Montaro Caine A Novel - By Sidney Poitier Page 0,16
the information I have to your parents.”
Priscilla glared at Whitcombe. “What information?”
“I’ve had an investigator doing some interviews in that area for a couple of days.”
Priscilla knew that Whitcombe was not bluffing. Her father had long admired the man’s straightforward approach, his refusal to tell clients what they wanted to hear.
“You mean you’ve been spying?” she asked.
“Call it what you like,” Whitcombe said. “I was just hoping that you would level with your parents and me. It would be better if they heard it from you, but if they don’t, they’ll hear it from me.”
“I think you’re despicable, Mr. Whitcombe,” said Priscilla.
“I’ll have to manage to live with that, my dear,” Whitcombe said.
In the kitchen, Cecilia was warming milk in a small pot over a low flame when the phone rang. She glanced across the kitchen to the breakfast nook where her husband was seated in front of the dish of cookies she had set out for Priscilla.
The phone kept jingling, but Montaro made no move to answer it. As Cecilia reached for the phone, Montaro shook his head. Cecilia turned back to the stove and adjusted the flame slightly. Then, she took a seat next to her husband but said nothing until the ringing stopped. “Finally,” she said. But then, the ringing started again.
Over the past few weeks, practically everyone she knew had called, including some friends she hadn’t heard from in years. They were all calling for the same reason, but only Bette Grayson, Cecilia’s tart-tongued friend since high school, had come right out and asked: “What’s going on at your husband’s company? Should Nelson and I sell our Fitzer stock? Give it to me straight, Cece, what the fuck is happening?”
Like everyone else who had called, Bette had read The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, both of which had run articles suggesting that, in the aftermath of the Utah mining disaster, unknown suitors were planning to make a strong takeover bid for Fitzer, and Montaro’s position was in jeopardy.
“It’s been jumping off the hook all afternoon, the private line and my cell too,” Cecilia said, indicating the phone that had momentarily fallen silent. Montaro responded with a detached nod.
“I hope this won’t get in the way of any of our summer plans,” said Cecilia. “We can’t miss P.L.’s birthday. And we’ve already paid for the rental of the beach house in Southampton for August.”
“I don’t think we’ll have to undo anything. At least not yet,” Caine said. His thoughts had shifted from Priscilla to the business with Herman Freich, Colette Beekman, and the reappearance of the coin from his past. He hadn’t yet told Cecilia about all that he had discussed with Freich and Beekman and the memories that discussion had conjured up. Cecilia was a woman of strong emotions, much like his mother; he worried that she would get unrealistically hopeful if he told her about the coin, then disappointed if things didn’t work out.
“Fine,” said Cecilia. “But whatever happens, P.L.’s birthday is a must. We have to be there.”
“Of course,” Montaro said. Philip L. Caine, Montaro’s childhood protector, would turn ninety-nine this year, and Montaro knew what his grandfather’s loss would mean to his wife as well as to him. Death had come often to Cecilia in her forty-four years. Her father, mother, older brother, her mother’s sister, Dolly, and Dolly’s husband, Jake—Cecilia had no one left from the family she was born into. When she was decorating her husband’s office, she had hung the portraits of her mother and Dolly on his walls, two raven-haired women who closely resembled Cecilia, as if to remind her husband that he could take nothing for granted. It was no secret to Montaro that his wife’s huge appetite for life was born out of her fear of death. And he understood, too, that this was part of the reason she clung so protectively to Priscilla and those remaining few on his side of the family—she had not learned the art of letting go, a talent he had perfected when he was just a boy.
“Don’t worry, honey, we’ll go,” he told his wife. He put his arms around her and drew her near.
Once again, the phone exploded in the quiet kitchen. And once again, both Montaro and Cecilia glanced at it, then looked away. A few seconds later, a door slammed shut upstairs. Assuming Priscilla and Whitcombe were on their way, Cecilia kissed her husband, then moved to the stove to ready her daughter’s warm milk.