Chapter 13 #4
“He’s Leonard’s nephew. As in Leonard, the chairman of the board.”
“Oh great. So, who else is on that board of directors?”
As soon as he got the names of the people currently on the board of directors, he told Allen, “Before they meet again, set me up a meeting with … George maybe. You know George Hammond, right?”
“Yeah, I do know him—quite well actually.”
“We could have a one-on-one, ahead of the next board meeting.”
“That could end up being quite the shitshow. Apparently the nephew is Leonard’s favorite among a whole list of family members.”
“That could be, but I’ll be speaking with George. He’s always in my corner, and he has solid sway over the board.”
“You think it’s a good idea to ruffle feathers like that?”
“Probably not, but I just don’t have the time or the stomach for this BS. I want to know what the nephew is up to and the best way to find out is to get it all out in the open. So, confirm you have whatever paperwork we need in order to make this happen.”
“Listen,” Allen began, his tone sharp. “I don’t think you need to start a war here. Plenty of people are around who aren’t that happy with the way you run things.”
“But here’s the thing, … they aren’t happy, but they are making money with me and the way I run things. So, it shouldn’t matter to them.”
“Still, I would advise caution.”
Simon thought about it and realized Allen was probably right.
It wasn’t the first time Simon had been in hot water over finances, and it wouldn’t be the last. “Why don’t you meet with Hammond then?
” he suggested. “Then I can meet with him afterward. That way you could get a feel for things. You think it would be better that way?”
“Oh yeah. You’ve got to give him a chance. Particularly if you have, … if it’s been a decent relationship,” he pointed out. “Then in the second meeting we’ll find out what the nephew’s saying and who he’s saying it to.”
“Yeah, that’ll be fun.”
“I’ll get a subpoena for phone records.”
“And you’ll also need to subpoena Leonard’s records too.”
“Subpoena the phone records of the chairman of the board of the bank you’ve been using for your business loans? You really like to make waves, don’t you? It’s not that simple to get something like that approved, and that will take a lot of pull to get them to comply.”
“Defamation is not a minor charge,” Simon declared, “particularly in my industry. And I haven’t heard from the city on one of the projects that I’m about to start on.
If the nephew has gotten to the point of causing me trouble on that level, there will be a much higher payout required for them to not end up in jail at the end of this. ”
“That’s only if you can prove it,” Allen stated, his tone forceful. “Remember that defamation is still one of the hardest things to prove.”
“It might be the hardest to prove, but something rotten is going on there. David got fired this morning, and that was after the nephew saw us together at the coffee shop,” he shared. “There is that to consider too.”
“Crap. David is your bank, um, your investment advisor, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he was. He had called me in to warn me that there was an issue with some of my loans that shouldn’t have been an issue.
And it took a bit for him to get around to it, but he did admit that it looked as if some sabotage was going on, but he just didn’t know who or why or how.
Then he told me today about this nephew who had moved into a power position with his uncle on the board for the bank.
Then we happened to see the nephew at the coffee shop today.
David was fired within a few minutes of getting back to his office. ”
“Wonderful. Do you happen to have a copy of that, or can you get the video from that coffee house?”
“Of course I don’t have it,” he replied, “but, if you need to get it, you can file a complaint officially and get a copy yourself. I do have a picture of the nephew. I sent it to David when I noticed this guy staring at David as he left the coffee shop.”
“Send it to me.”
Simon pulled it up and fired it off, then took another look.
Honest to God, it was a great photo because it was obviously the coffee shop, complete with their signature logo with coffee cans in the back.
And he’s staring directly at David’s back as he leaves.
His lawyer waited for it to come through.
“Yeah, this’ll be a good start,” he said, a smile in his tone. “But we’ll need a hell of a lot more to win a defamation lawsuit in court.”
“You know how to make that work.”
“And, if you need any help, what about Kate? Is she likely to help you?”
“I don’t want her help,” he stated sharply. “This is something I want to keep completely separate from her.”
As soon as he went to get up from his office chair, he got slammed back down with such force that it knocked the breath out of him.
He could hardly even breathe. Thankfully he was alone in the onsite office, the staff having already left, and he’d been hoping to leave himself now.
He was about to contact Kate and see if she was close to the end of her day.
When this happened though, he sat here, trying to control his breathing, feeling everything inside him clenching tighter and tighter and tighter.
When he was almost to the point of pounding the table in agony, it eased up ever-so-slightly. Then he cried out, “What the hell do you want?” The reply he got was crying again, just crying. And he realized the pressure he’d been feeling in his chest was not his. It was hers, her pain.
He took several minutes to get control and to ease back the pain. Not sure how to help her, he now knew that, whatever this was, it was absolutely killing her. He whispered, “I’m here. You’re not alone, you know?”
And she gasped again.
“And all that stress you have? I’m feeling it in my body as well, and it’s agonizing.”
She gave a harsh, brutal laugh and whispered in his mind, Yeah, so how do you know what I’m feeling?
“You need to tell me something about this, tell me what is going on, so maybe I can help.”
Nobody can help, she whispered, the sobs once again racking through her system. I don’t know that anybody can help.
“I work with a lot of people who can help with various issues.”
She just kept sobbing.
“But you’ll have to open up and tell me something.”
Is this where you ask me what year it is again?
“I do need to know that because I don’t know if you’re a ghost of this century or if you’re alive and well and sitting at a coffee shop around the corner.”
Coffee shops, she murmured. That seems to be a distant memory.
He frowned, not sure what a distant memory would mean in this case.
Then she replied, I have to do something. I can’t keep living like this.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he interjected. “What do you mean by do something?”
She gave that same sobbing, half crying reply, I just … I can’t keep living like this.
“Yeah, I hear you, but I don’t know what living like this means.”
Then you aren’t really feeling what I’m feeling then, are you?
Her bitterness came with the instant flip of a switch.
Her moods were mercurial enough that he wasn’t sure from one minute to the next how she was doing.
“Look. I don’t know what I can do to help, but you could start with where you are or even what city you live in, so I at least know something about you. ”
Vancouver, she muttered.
He closed his eyes and nodded. “Okay. So, I’m in Vancouver too.”
Are you? Well, … of course you are. Otherwise, how would you feel what I’m feeling?
He frowned at that because it made no sense. But this conversation in his head wasn’t making any sense either. “Whereabouts in Vancouver do you live?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Particularly if you’re looking for help—”
I’m not looking for help, she stated bitterly. There is no help for somebody like me.
“What does that mean?”
She cried, and then cried some more.
Finally he began again. “Look. I need a little more information. Why is there no help for you? Are you dying from some disease? Are you incapacitated in some way?”
All he could think about were all the possible scenarios.
But her voice, when she finally whispered her answer, shocked him.
Then she suddenly disappeared. He stared down at the business paperwork in front of him, knowing that he needed to get up and move, but his mind was completely flummoxed by her words.
She was infertile.
And that’s why she was deemed completely useless and why her life wasn’t worth living. He frowned as he stared at the table, his gaze lifting to look around in an almost blind haze. He knew how some women were incredibly overwhelmed at the idea of not being able to have a child.
But did this have something to do with Kate’s cases?
Or was this something completely separate?
And was this—he didn’t mean it the way it sounded—but was this just a woman suffering? Or was this a woman who had taken her suffering to a whole new level?