House on Fire

66

I had an instinct about Megan. Everyone else thought she was this hard-shelled corporate storm trooper. But I knew better. All the vilification and all the threats had to take a toll, even on her.

At the tiki-themed bar she ordered a Cosmo and I ordered a Buffalo Trace. The bar was empty — it was early — and the drinks arrived quickly.

I took a sip of the bourbon and said, “So I’m just a management consultant, but the way you restructured the Czech operation? Hats off.”

She turned to me, surprised, pleased. “I got a hell of a lot of pushback on that,” she said, and swigged some more of her Cosmo.

I said, “It’s like, you grab the wheel, you re-steer the boat, and everyone’s howling, You’re off course, you’re off course, you’re off course! And all you can say is, Did you notice I just steered us around a goddamned iceberg? You’re welcome.”

Megan snorted delightedly. “You’re welcome, assholes,” she added, setting down her drink a little harder than she probably meant to. “How long have you and Sukie been seeing each other?”

“Just a few weeks.”

“Are you the reason she’s been taking a sudden interest in the company?”

“Not at all.”

“Because you McKinsey types — you have a tendency to go from the hired hand to the boss. One day you’re a consultant, the next day you’re hiring consultants.”

“Nah, I’m here strictly for support. You heard about how she was attacked at her house in the city, right?”

“Of course. We all heard.”

“After what happened in Katonah, you have to take all these threats seriously. Margret Benson was a private investigator, I understand.” She knew I knew.

“She was.”

“And you hired her?”

She looked at me sharply, nodded.

“Where’d you find her?”

“She did some work for a friend. She came highly recommended.”

“Did she get what you wanted her to get?”

She drew herself up. “I’m sorry, that’s confidential.” She poked her index finger in the air so the waitress would know she wanted another round.

I thought of Maggie’s handwritten notes. The kind of information Megan had hired her to look for. “You must know your father well enough to know what he’s about to do, right?”

“At the family meeting, you mean?”

I nodded. “He’s going to declare bankruptcy, isn’t he? Isn’t the company in terrible financial shape?”

“Ha! Are you kidding?”

“Huh? Kimball Pharma has been losing money for years, hasn’t it?”

She chortled silently. She looked at me, then at her empty Cosmo glass, resentfully. Her next Cosmo, her third, came quickly. She took a big sip and then confided, “My father has been expecting a catastrophe for quite some time. The one thing you can say for him, he’s always a step ahead of everyone else.”

“A catastrophe?”

“All these lawsuits over Oxydone. He knew the day of reckoning was bound to come sooner or later.” She lowered her voice, stared at her glass. She sounded almost proud. “So he’s been sweeping cash aside. Squirreling it away. Into shell companies offshore. And categorizing all that cash as investments in research. So Kimball Pharma has been investing all of its profits into what we’re calling research. He started doing this eleven years ago.”

“Clever,” I said. “So when Kimball is forced to make huge legal settlements, it’ll have no assets to pay out. That actually works?”

“It’s not ethical, but it works. Not that ethics have ever stopped my father before. It’s a clever scam.”

I tried to probe further, but she got quiet. Gloomy, it seemed.

“What do you think happened to Maggie?” I said softly.

She tipped the nearly empty Cosmo glass to her lips and drained it. “Happened to her?” she murmured. “Got too close to the family. Too close to something she wasn’t s’pposed to know.”

“So you think she was murdered?”

She looked at me for a long time, then looked away. “Don’t you think so?” she said.