House on Fire

13

Another woman was approaching: a tall, broad-shouldered woman. Megan, the second-oldest, was blond, her hair parted at the center and going down to her shoulders, cool gray eyes like her father’s. And the sharp Kimball nose, a family emblem.

A graduate of Princeton and Stanford Business School, Megan had started at Kimball Pharma as an assistant in the marketing department. Therefore she was most likely to succeed her father as CEO. She was divorced and had four sons, who were clearly the ones in the blazers. She was wearing a gray pantsuit and a white blouse and could not have looked more corporate-generic. Not fashionable at all. Everything I’d read painted her as ferociously ambitious, intimidatingly smart, and a cold fish.

She extended her hand toward me and offered a controlled smile. She shook firmly, almost bone-crushingly, and said, “You’re the only one here I don’t recognize. Megan Kimball.” Her voice was surprisingly deep.

“Nick Brown,” I said. I noticed Megan hadn’t greeted her sister Hayden and was standing at a distance from her.

“Did I hear you say something about McKinsey? I have ears like a bat.”

“I work there.”

“McKinsey New York?”

“Boston.”

“Oh, you must know Chuck Neely!”

Chuck who? My brain raced.

I paused for a long moment and then said, “Plugs or rugs? What’s your money on?”

She arched her brow, smiled genuinely this time, said, “I’m sorry?”

“C’mon. The only guy I know whose hairline advances as he ages.”

She laughed. “To be honest, I haven’t seen him in, like, ten years. But I know what you mean.”

I let out a silent breath. It had taken a moment to call Chuck Neely’s photo and details to mind. “Anyway, Chuck’s no longer in charge of the Boston office.” That was true. I’d done my homework. “It’s now Jim French.”

“I don’t know him.”

Neither did I, and I sighed relief inwardly. The two moppet-headed child terrorists began tugging on Megan’s arms and nagging, “When do we get to eat? When do we get to eat?” and “I don’t like those sliders. Those are yucky.” These kids could have starred in a social media campaign for vasectomies. Their older brothers, the teenage boys, were off to one side laughing raucously, looking at something on one of the kids’ phones.

“Grandpa’s coming down right now, and as soon as he gets here, we’ll sit down to dinner,” Megan said to her boys. “That’s how it always works. There he is.” She pointed. An ancient elevator off the foyer, which I hadn’t noticed before, opened, and Conrad Kimball emerged, with a much younger woman in a white suit on his arm. He walked slowly but erect and with assurance. In his photographs he looked frail. In person, in motion, he looked far more powerful.