she was elated—pumped up with a kind of achievement she hadn’t felt in years and eager to share her photos with her father.
The desk clerk handed her an urgent message to call Franklin Burgess at her office. Burgess, that younger VP whose cunning had been so apparent to Salustrio. The human loud hailer whose booming voice invaded all the cubbies and was known behind his back as “Foghorn.”
She took a shower before ringing him. It was 22:15 London time, and he was still at his desk.
He announced he was taking over her transaction for Invicta’s acquisition of Cornerstone and had a few questions. “Coxe’s idea,” he said. Even with the receiver as far from her ear as she could hold it, his voice assaulted her like a speakerphone on full volume. “He wants this kind of deal under my belt when I go up for MD.”
“You scheming bastard,” she hollered toward the distant receiver. “I’ve been gone all of four days, and you scoop a deal I brought in.”
“He thinks you’ve lost your edge,” Burgess said. “Fat chance; you’re edgier than ever. It’s your mind you seem to have misplaced. Besides, you can’t be lounging in paradise and protecting your ass at the same time.”
Nobody there’s ever protected it for me, she thought. “If you’re so smart, answer your own fucking questions.” She slammed down the phone.
She sat on the balcony and drank a nip of Dewar’s out of the bottle as the sun set behind the cloud-banked horizon. The sky took on bands of gray and lemon, and the day entered that half hour of luminous suspension she was coming to treasure.
She pulled out Resort stationery and began to write. Only after ripping up three drafts did she strike the tone she intended. Pithy, irreversible:
I RESIGN, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. APPLY VACATION AND SICK LEAVE TO REMAINDER OF 1999. IF YOU DON’T PAY REASONABLE BONUS, I HAVE THE GOODS ON YOUR F---ING WANKER ASS.
She drank another nip of scotch, took the memo to the front desk, and demanded that it be faxed immediately to Coxe. The clerk scanned the page and said, “You might want to sleep on this, miss.”
“I won’t sleep unless it’s gone,” she said, her giddiness too great to blame on two nips of scotch.
Tony Hallowell’s voice was thick with sleep and maybe rum. “Who the hell is this?” he said.
“Your message said to call back tonight,” Els said. “I’ve only just returned from an interminable dinner at Miss Ivy’s. Do we have a deal?”
“Depends on you,” he said. “Hold a minute.”
She heard a muffled “It’s the Jack’s woman. I’ll take it in the kitchen.” She stretched the phone cord to reach the bathroom, slathered on cleanser with one hand, and wiped off her eye makeup with a tissue.
“They’re firm at six hundred thousand,” he said. “Net.” She heard ice falling into a glass, water rushing, Tony slurping.
The deal had tipped. She smelled victory. But instead of the usual surge of triumph, she felt her bluff of a lifetime being called.
“Your promise of a clean deal was what did it,” Tony said. “You just have to take care of all the nits and let her walk away with a tidy little check.”
“Little, nothing,” she said. “Fees, commission, lawyers . . . that jacks it up for me by what, fifty K?”
“Still a steal,” he said.
Lacking her habitual mania for checking her numbers before agreeing to a deal, Els felt herself plunging toward commitment. To what, she wasn’t sure—an alien place, a mysterious, needy house, an obligation as custodian of Jack Griggs’s belongings and perhaps his legacy?
“Her solicitor won’t promise to have papers before Tuesday,” Tony said. “Don’t plan on leaving before Wednesday, just in case.”
“As it happens, I have the flexibility to stay a few extra days,” she said. “Though I hear there’s a storm brewing. I want to get out before it strikes.”
“It’s late for a hurricane,” he said. “Probably just peter out to a little blow.”
“You’d better be right, Tony,” she said. “Tell them it’s a go.”
part two
CHAPTER 6
Scotland
December 1996
Once the priest had given the blessing to conclude Midnight Mass, Els slipped her arm into her father’s and they let Burtie precede them down the aisle, past the waiting villagers and Cairnoch staff. In the last pew, Malcolm stood alone, watch cap in hand. Burtie picked up her pace at first, but she hesitated when she reached him, and he stepped forward and took his mother into his arms. He looked over her head at Els