Chapter 23: Shareholders

The Thaxton Group boardroom was on the thirty-first floor.

The table was black glass and seated twenty.

At nine on Monday morning, every chair was full except three.

I came in with Torsten on my left and Edgar on my right.

The board turned in their seats.

At the far end sat a silver-haired man in a gray suit, with two lawyers beside him and a leather portfolio under his hand.

He stood up and smiled at me with all of his teeth.

"Ms. Wren," he said.

"A pleasure. I'm told you've held this company's paper for some time. I'm here to relieve you of it."

"You're offering to buy out my loan," I said.

"And the company. At a price your own board has already found generous."

He sat.

He was very calm.

I looked down the table at the directors.

Two of them had been at my Thanksgiving dinner, and neither would meet my eye.

"Before you vote," I said, "I want to ask the buyer one question."

"Of course."

"Five years ago, who told Thaddeus Thaxton to write to every firm in New York that I was a thief?"

The smile stayed on his face a moment longer than it should have.

"I've no idea what you mean."

"I do," said a voice from the door.

My father walked in.

He had slept in his clothes.

His coat was stiff with frost, and he carried a worn leather wallet in one hand.

The guards had let him through.

I had told them to at seven, when the last receipt came in from a courier he had paid with his watch.

"Thaddeus," the buyer said.

"You're not on this board anymore."

"No," my father said.

"I'm a witness."

He opened the wallet and took out a small folded square of cream stationery.

He laid it on the glass.

"You sent me this the morning she was put out," he said.

"I kept it, because I'm a man who keeps things. The fire took every other paper I had. Not this one."

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