Dead Certain (17 page)

“When my grandfather, Everett Prescott, founded Prescott Memorial, it was with the idea of helping those less fortunate than ourselves. His friends took up his call to do the same, and his children and their children followed in his example. For four generations these families embraced the object of his generosity. Thus, supporting the hospital became more than an obligation, it became a tradition, one that has grown from those few founding families to include many, many members of the community, including all the wonderful people who are here tonight.

“But tonight I’m afraid Prescott Memorial Hospital takes your money under false pretenses,” my mother declared. The room fell silent, and she paused to let what she had just said sink in.

“Oh, no,” I thought to myself, thinking of her signature at the bottom of the confidentiality agreement with HCC and yet powerless to do anything to prevent what I knew was coming next.

“Last Thursday the board of trustees of Prescott Memorial Hospital voted to sell it to a company called Health Care Corporation.” Small gasps of surprise went up around the room, and Mother again waited until they had subsided.

Her eye searched the crowd until she found Gerald Packman. Now she spoke to him directly. “If Health Care Corporation is successful in its bid to acquire the hospital, not only will these traditions end, but every penny that is raised here tonight, along with the millions of dollars in charitable contributions that have been raised in years past, will go to line the pockets of a for-profit corporation. That is why this year’s steering committee and I have just voted to refund to you all contributions made this evening.

“But, please, let’s not let such a sad turn of events put a damper on the lovely evening so many people have worked so hard for. My husband and I have just written a personal check to cover the cost of this evening’s meal, and I hope that you all will continue to enjoy the evening as our guests.”

Of all the possible scenarios that I’d imagined for how this evening would turn out, none came even close to the reality of that night. Like the moment of terrible quiet that follows an accident, as soon as she made her announcement, the entire ballroom seemed to stand still. For a full minute nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Mother folded up the small piece of paper she’d consulted when she spoke, and made her way down off the dais. But the usually bored society reporters who’d come for the open bar expecting to write fluff were still sober enough to recognize a story when it fell out of nowhere and hit them in the head. By the time Mother set her foot atop the bottom step, they were sprinting for the phones.

Not surprisingly, Elliott was the first person to grasp the implications of what was happening. While Gerald Packman gaped and the medical staff buzzed, I remained glued to my seat by my own sense of incredulity. But Elliott was already on his feet and at my mother’s side, whispering in her ear as he walked her back to the table for her purse. As he bent his head to hers I saw her nod, her eyes wide with understanding, as he led her firmly by the arm.

As she bent to get her bag he collected me with his eyes, and I rose and made my way to my father’s side.

“Come on, we’re going,” I whispered to him urgently. Startled, he did not protest, but drained his glass and heaved himself to his feet.

We followed behind Elliott, who laid a protective arm across my mother’s shoulders and steered her through the room, firmly but politely moving her through the press of people rising from their chairs to besiege her with questions and congratulations.

As soon as we’d cleared the door, I led the way, picking up the pace as we ducked down the half flight of stairs '1 past the elevators that led not toward the Walton side of the hotel where the main entrance lay but, like Alice down the rabbit hole, to the now darkened arcade of chichi shops that ran along the Michigan Avenue side past the Cape Cod Room to the seldom used entrance on East Lake Shore Drive.

Compared to the crush of Walton this was a quiet residential street, an urban backwater with neither shops nor businesses, buffered by a small park and the deeper quiet of the lake. Of course, it was only a matter of time before some enterprising reporter realized that there was more than one way out of the Drake. We fled like the Romanovs, as fast as our evening clothes allowed, along the row of elegant apartments until we reached the haven of the lighted portico at the end of the block.

“Evenin’, Ms. Millholland,” said Danny the doorman, touching his cap as he swung the big glass door open to admit us. “And a good evenin’ to you, Mr. and Mrs. Millholland,” he continued, his good-natured face splitting with a grin of pleasure at the sight of my parents.

I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that in Danny we had a solid ally. Danny’s father had been doorman when my parents lived in the building. When I was a little girl, Danny was a lanky teenager, always willing to carry packages and run errands to pick up pocket money.

“It’s so nice to see you again,” beamed my mother, as serenely as if she’d just dropped in for a chat. “How’s your family? Is Michael still in the navy?”

“Yes, ma’am. He’s stationed in the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland. He went back to see my gran’ just this past Christmas. He’ll be so pleased to hear that you asked about him.”

“And your father and mother? Are they still well?”

“Yes, ma’am, though now that they’ve retired and moved out to Arizona, we don’t get to see them nearly as much as we’d like.”

Elliott and I both stood staring at my mother as if she was out of her mind. Without consulting a soul, she’d decided to violate the terms of the confidentiality agreement with HCC by dropping the bombshell of the year in front of a half a dozen reporters. Now, with the press on her tail, she was standing in the lobby of her old building catching up on family gossip with the doorman. I seriously considered strangling her.

“Well, Danny,” she continued calmly, finally getting to the matter at hand, “we seem to have run into a little trouble with some reporters who are following us. Do you think you could be good enough to call us a taxi without drawing too much attention?”

“You just leave that to me, ma’am,” he replied, growing half a foot at the thought of being of service in such an emergency. “You just stay right here and out of sight.”

We waited together in the awkward silence of the lobby, avoiding each other’s gaze. Outside we heard the shrill sound of Danny’s whistle summoning a cab, though we waited until the doorman reported that the coast was clear before hustling my parents out and shoveling them into the cab. At the last minute Elliott thrust his cell phone into my mother’s hand.

“Don’t answer your regular line at home,” he instructed. “Let your answering machine pick it up, or better yet, let it ring. I guarantee the only people who’ll be calling will be reporters. I’ll give Kate the number, and she’ll call you on this line.”

My mother, who never did anything I told her without an argument, took the phone. As the cab pulled away from the curb we spotted a group of middle-aged men in raincoats who’d just turned the corner from Michigan Avenue at a labored jog. Elliott grabbed me by the hand and pulled me back into the shadow of the garage entrance to the adjacent apartment and enveloped me in a passionate embrace. Despite the circumstances I felt my body soften against his, the current crisis momentarily forgotten. I don’t know how long we lingered there until finally, reluctantly, he pulled away.

“Are you sure they’ve gone?” I whispered breathlessly. “Perhaps we should wait a little while longer?”

“You know very well we both have work to do.”

“This was going to be the part of the evening when I invited you upstairs to see my new apartment.”

“At least I got a chance to meet your doorman. I think you should wait in there with him while I go and get the car. I’ve got to get some of my people out to your parents’ house, or they’ll have reporters coming in through the doggie door.”

I sighed and reached into my evening bag for my cell phone.

“You know what the funniest part of all of this is?” I asked as he turned to head back toward the Drake. “What?”

“I think my mother likes you.”

As Elliott disappeared into the darkness I punched in the number Denise Dempsey had given me. I felt guilty enough about handing her the biggest public relations nightmare of her career without adding to it by having her hear about it on the news. Denise picked up on the first ring. From the noises in the background it sounded like she was at a restaurant. It must have been one nearby, because we agreed to meet at her office in ten minutes.

I punched the END button and wondered what my mother had been thinking when she decided to go ahead and ruin my life. No doubt she’d claim that her only thought had been to do the right thing, but that was like saying that you’d invited the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey circus to your cocktail party because you knew they’d be entertaining. It was going to end up being a bigger circus than she could have possibly imagined.

Elliott dropped me in front of Denise’s building, a glass-and-steel skyscraper nestled in the crook of the Chicago River, and gave me a decidedly unchaste kiss good night.

“I’ll call you tomorrow from Springfield,” he said.

I stood on the deserted sidewalk, the thin fabric of my wrap useless in the chill, and found myself blinking back tears of disappointment.

“Get a grip on yourself, Millholland,” I told myself out loud and grimly made my way inside.

Mother’s announcement led the eleven o’clock news on all three networks. We watched them simultaneously on the bank of television sets mounted on the wall of the conference room where Denise and I had set up our command center. With videotape unavailable, the networks settled for photos of my parents taken earlier that evening as they’d greeted arriving guests.

However, there was live footage of Kyle Massius. The president of Prescott Memorial Hospital had apparently decided to give an impromptu press conference in front of the Palm Court fountain. Sweating under the klieg lights, he’d read a hastily prepared and overly shrill press release. In it he’d declared that Astrid Millholland had no authority to refund any of the money that had already been donated to the hospital. The fact that there was live footage of Kyle Massius versus the grainy still of my parents seemed to lend credence to his point of view.

Mother’s initial reaction to all of this was a tirade of indignation delivered through the squawk box of Denise’s speakerphone. She honestly couldn’t believe why she was being blamed for all of the fuss. After all, it was HCC who was clearly at fault. Denise did her best to talk her around to a more realistic point of view, eventually getting her to commit to our battle plan. By then Elliott’s people had arrived at my parents’ house and, having chased a reporter from Channel Eight out of the garbage, had secured the property.

I crossed the bridge of midnight not wrapped in Elliott’s passionate embrace, but at the office of the public relations firm. I didn’t know if Elliott had joined his security chief at my parents’ house, but wherever he was, I hoped he was thinking longingly of me. As the clock struck twelve it occurred to me that all my Cinderella premonitions had come true. The only difference was that instead of my coach turning back into a pumpkin and my dress reverting to rags, I was the one who underwent the transformation—changing from an aspiring princess yearning for romance back into a stressed-out corporate attorney fielding calls from reporters on a headset phone as I paced back and forth along the floor of the conference room, barefoot and in my evening gown.

CHAPTER 12

I woke up to a quiet apartment with no sign that Claudia had come home during the night. A check of the answering machine yielded seventeen calls: three from reporters, thirteen hang-ups, and one message from Elliott. While the message from Elliott was worth listening to twice just to savor the longing in his voice, it was the hang-up calls that captured my attention. Not only were there more of them than we’d ever gotten before, but for the first time they’d come while Claudia was at the hospital. It made me wonder whether yesterday had been on her regular call schedule or if she’d agreed to cover for somebody at the last minute.

In honor of it being Sunday I decided to dress casually— at least for me—blue jeans worn soft as a second skin, an old Ralph Lauren blazer bought back in the days when he still just designed clothes, and a plain white cotton shirt. I had a long day of work ahead of me, and I wanted to at least be comfortable. Besides, I’d already used up too much energy on my hair. After all of Christopher’s teasing and spraying I’d crawled from my bed looking like Frankenstein’s bride. It had taken a stiff brush and a strong arm to get things back to normal.

Once I was dressed, I called Leo to have him bring me my car. Luckily I managed to catch him before he and Angel left for church, which meant that I was treated to a glimpse of Leo in his Sunday best. When he stepped out of the Jag in his double-breasted suit with a matching fedora hat, it occurred to me that the gangsters in Capone’s day hadn’t dressed much differently—except for the fact that Leo’s entire outfit, from shoes to chapeau, was mustard yellow. As I got behind the wheel I slipped him a twenty for the collection plate.

“I’ll make sure they say a prayer for you,” he said with a slow grin.

“Good,” I replied. “Today I’m going to need it.”