The LeBaron Secret (18 page)

“Yes.”

“And so,” she says, “that's my sorry decision. I regret having to make it, but I have.”

“But maybe not,” he says.

“What do you mean, darling?”

Leaning forward in his chair, Eric says, “Now let me get to the business I want to discuss with you, Aunt Jo.”

“Of course. I'm simply bursting with curiosity to find out what's going on in that handsome head of yours.”

“As you know, we're one of the very last family-owned wineries in California of any size. One by one, the others have all been taken over by larger corporations, as a result of mergers and acquisitions, and they've profited enormously from this trend, which has placed large amounts of working and expansion capital within their reach.”

“I realize this.”

“Over the years, we've been approached by various outsiders—Uniroyal, Gulf and Western, Pepsi—but we've always been the holdouts. We've refused to sell.”

“Yes. Darling Sari has refused to sell.”

“And, as you also know, I sold some of my shares in Baronet to Harry Tillinghast a while back. It pissed Mother off, but it was a purely private transaction between Harry and me.”

“Pissed her off! She bloody well hit the ceiling, if I know Sari!”

“Now Harry has come up with an acquisition offer for the company that I think we ought to seriously consider. For each Baronet share we own, Harry offers twelve point five shares of Kern-McKittrick. Kern-McKittrick is currently trading at about fifty-three, so I think you'll agree that's not a bad offer, and Kern-McKittrick is as good as gold. I wouldn't be surprised if, when we get into actual negotiations, we can't get Harry to sweeten his offer a bit. But for an opening bid, it isn't bad.”

“Very interesting,” Joanna says. “Of course, Harry Tillinghast isn't exactly my favorite man.”

“Nor mine,” says Eric. “But we're not talking about marrying the man. We're talking about marrying his company. And, as you know, in the marketplace Kern-McKittrick is nothing but blue chip. And Harry himself may not be likable, but he's honest, and he's strong, and he keeps his word.”

“That's true.”

“If we become a subsidiary of Kern-McKittrick, Harry offers to put me in the top spot, with complete autonomy. Of course, he may feel he has a certain amount of control over me, but I'll also have a certain amount of control over him.”

“Oh? How's that?”

“Harry is particularly anxious to keep my somewhat shaky marriage from falling apart.”

“I see,” she says. With a perfectly lacquered fingertip, Joanna touches one of the yellow tulips in a tall vase full of blooms, and rearranges it until it is just so. “Of course, the only thing I really want is your happiness, darling boy,” she says.

“Thank you, Aunt Jo.”

“And,” she says to the still wayward tulip, “for me—besides a lot of Kern-McKittrick stock, what would I get?”

“I'm coming to that. For you, Harry offers an exclusive contract to handle Baronet's advertising for as many years as you care to specify. And he offers to pay you full commission on your billings.”

“Hmm,” she says. “How very nice of Harry.”

“The thing I like about the deal is that it's someone we know. It isn't some anonymous outsider like Pepsi-Cola. It's still like keeping it in the family. We all know Harry, and we know what we can expect from Harry, and we know his track record.”

“Yes. You get to keep the company, and Alix gets to keep her dishy husband.”

Eric clears his throat. “The thing I want to know from you, Aunt Jo, is—if you agree to go along with this, and I hope you will—will Lance go along as well?”

She hesitates, very briefly. The tulip now is posed to her satisfaction, and she steps away from the flower arrangement, giving it one last look of critical appraisal. “Yes,” she says. “I think Lance will do whatever I suggest.”

“Then,” he says, steepling his fingers, “with you and Lance and Harry behind me, we'd have fifty-five percent of the voting shares. Enough to pass the acquisition.”

“And Sari would be—”

“Out.”

“Out,” she repeats. “Poor, darling Sari. How's her health, Eric?”

“She's just fine. Oh, we could toss her some sort of bone—make her honorary board chairman, or something like that.”

“She won't like it.”

“No, probably not,” he says quickly, “but think of what you and I could do together, Aunt Jo. We could take Baronet in the direction we both believe it ought to go. We could take it in any direction we chose. We'd be a real team, at last—think of that. I think we should do it, Aunt Jo.”

She moves across the room and takes a seat on the loveseat beside him, and immediately the air between them is suffused with the wild and heady scent of her perfume, which he knows from many Christmas-stocking presents in the past is always My Sin by Lanvin. With one hand, Joanna lifts the lid of a large silver cigarette box. Inside the box, her almost obsessive fetish for organization continues to reveal itself. Organized, in separate sandalwood compartments of the box, are various kinds and brands of cigarettes—filtered, unfiltered, mentholated, non-mentholated, long and short and extra-length. Each in its own designated cubicle. She selects a long, slender, filtered cigarette with an ivory tip, and lights it carefully with a silver table lighter. This action in itself is significant. Joanna LeBaron rarely smokes, and when she does it is an indication that she is disturbed, or angry, or that she has something very important on her mind. The lighter snaps shut, and Joanna exhales a stream of smoke.

“You're ready for another drink, darling,” she says. “You can't fly on one wing, you know. And while you're up, fix me one, too. I think I'm ready for something a little more serious than sherry. Make mine a neat Scotch this time.” She hands him her empty glass.

Eric rises, and steps toward the bar, where all varieties of liquors are arrayed in matched Baccarat decanters, silver necklaces of labels slung about their necks, and the disembodied odor of My Sin follows him across her living room. Fixing their drinks, he cannot help but think how differently, in style, these two women—Joanna and his mother—go about getting what they want. In technique, Assaria LeBaron is all subtle plots and politics and under-the-counter payoffs—a bit of old-fashioned blackmail is never ruled out—a wily gambler with extra aces up her sleeve. Joanna, in contrast, is all softness and silkiness and sentimentality—breathy and feminine and flirtatious, and seductive, and … My Sin. Joanna is Irene Dunne, and his mother is … a three-card-monte player. And yet both these women are after the same thing, the name of which is: Power. He returns with their freshened drinks.

“Ah, that looks divine, darling,” she says, accepting her glass. Then, plucking an invisible speck of lint from the skirt of her Adolfo gown, she says, “I'm thinking … thinking.”

“A penny for your thoughts, then.”

“It's very tempting, isn't it,” she says at last. “Tempting for you, and also tempting, I must admit, for me. What about Peeper?”

“Mother's been doing a lot of sucking up to Peeper lately. I expect she's got him on her side.”

“And … Melissa?”

“I had breakfast with Melissa this morning,” he says, “and went over with her very roughly what I have in mind. Of course, sooner or later, I intend to bring everyone in on this.”

“What did Melissa say?”

“She seemed—well, interested. But preoccupied a little. I got the impression this morning that Melissa's mind was miles and miles away. You know Melissa.”

“Miles and miles away. In Switzerland, perhaps.”

“Huh? But the point is, we don't need Peeper and we don't need Melissa. We have enough share votes without them.”

“Darling, I wish it were as simple as that.”

“Why isn't it?”

“It—isn't. Not quite. We need Melissa. Or at least we might, depending …”

“Why? With you, with Lance, with me, and—”

“No, Eric. Melissa could be very important. Melissa could be pivotal.”

“But why, Aunt Jo? I don't see why.”

Quickly, she stubs out her mostly unsmoked cigarette in an ashtray and, in the same deft motion, empties the ashtray into a silent butler. With Joanna, even her cigarette ends must be organized, each deposited in its proper place. She takes a quick swallow of her drink.

“Eric,” she says, “there is something you should know about Melissa …”

In California, it is still daylight.

In Gabe Pollack's office at the
Peninsula Gazette
in Palo Alto, a piece of unedited copy has just come across his desk. It is rough-typed on yellow foolscap, and Gabe picks it up and reads:

HEIRESS TO PAY FOR CONTROVERSIAL ROCK PERFORMANCE

San Francisco heiress Melissa LeBaron has let it be known that she will personally pay the full performance fees for The Dildos, the controversial rock group whose appearance at the Odeon Theatre last Thursday night was disrupted by a bizarre outbreak of violence.

Previously, the 11-member board of directors of the Odeon had voted 10 to one to withhold the group's concert fee on the grounds that the concert had included material that was offensive to the public taste, in breach of the group's contract with the board. Miss LeBaron's was the single dissenting vote, it was learned from a source close to the situation today.

At Thursday's concert, pandemonium erupted when, in a solo number, the group's lead singer, Maurice Littlefield, 23, was bitten in the arm by a seven-foot rock python which Littlefield was using as a part of his act. Littlefield, who bills himself as Luscious Lucius, then proceeded to beat the huge snake to death on the Odeon's stage in front of the horrified audience.

Today the Gazette learned that Miss LeBaron has decided to pay the group's fees out of personal funds. Their fees are said to amount to something in the neighborhood of $5000. “I feel responsible, morally responsible,” Miss LeBaron is quoted as having said. “It was all my idea.” It was Miss LeBaron who first proposed the group's concert to the Odeon's board last October.

Melissa LeBaron is the daughter of Mrs. Assaria Latham LeBaron and the late Peter Powell LeBaron of San Francisco. The LeBaron family owns and operates Baronet Vineyards, Inc., and other enterprises in the Bay Area. Miss LeBaron's mother was the principal benefactress of the Odeon Theatre's $3 million restoration last year, though Mrs. LeBaron is not a member of the theatre's board.

Gabe pushes a button on his desk, and speaks into the intercom. “Archie, would you step in here for a minute?”

Archie McPherson appears, and Gabe waves the sheets of yellow paper at him. “Yours, I presume?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very interesting. Now would you mind telling me just who this ‘source close to the situation' might be?”

“Sorry, sir. But my source insisted on absolute confidentiality. I couldn't get the story without promising that.”

“I see.”

“But I assure you, sir, the source is excellent. Every word of the story is true.”

“I see,” Gabe says, looking back at the sheet of copy. “The way you've worded this—‘Melissa LeBaron has let it be known … Miss LeBaron is quoted as having said'—you don't quote her directly, and yet you quote her. So you are quoting what your source said she said—correct? So I am assuming that your source is not Miss LeBaron herself.”

“Correct, sir.”

“Let me just ask you one question, then,” Gabe says. “All I want you to answer is yes or no. Was her mother your source?”

“Sir, I can't—”

“I said yes or no.”

Archie looks at his feet and grins sheepishly. “Yes,” he says.

“Fine. That's all,” and Gabe waves him out of the office with a motion of his hand.

Now Gabe Pollack is mad as hell. This time he is not going to sit like a schoolboy, hat in hand, in an uncomfortable chair in her stuffy south sitting room, waiting for her to arrive and give him a dressing-down—waiting, not even offered coffee or a sweet roll, not offered anything at all while she treats him to the sharp side of her tongue. This time he will beard the lioness in her den himself, and tell her exactly what he thinks of her machinations. Quickly, he dials her private number at the house, and when Thomas answers and, at first, hesitates, Gabe says, “Tell her that this is extremely urgent.”

Presently her voice comes on the phone. “What's up?” she says cheerfully.

“Sari,” he says very slowly and carefully, “I would like to know what the hell you are trying to do, feeding stories to my reporters behind my back.”

“Stories? What stories?”

“This story about Melissa paying for the rock concert, for one.”

“Why, Gabe, I had nothing to do with—”

“Don't lie to me. You've been lying to me all along, haven't you? Pretending to be angry at a story we ran, when it was a story you yourself helped engineer. I should have known. I know how you operate only too well, Sari.”

“Now, Gabe—”

“You,” he says, “can create as much discord and dissension as you want within your own family, and as much discord and dissension as you want within your own company. But when you try to create discord and dissension on my newspaper, you're going too far, and I won't stand for it.”

“Gabe, please let me—”

“Archie McPherson isn't conducting a personal vendetta against Melissa.
You're
conducting a personal vendetta against Melissa—don't ask me why—and Archie is just your little tool. Well, leave my paper out of your little family fights and power battles, Sari—understand? Leave my paper and my reporters out of whatever the hell is going on at Baronet.”

“There may be something big, Gabe. Something's going on—I've got a hunch. When it happens, your paper will be the first to get the scoop.”