Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

"It was my mother's maiden name," Matt said, "no one will connect it to me."

"If this bomb-scare business comes to an end without doing serious damage to B and C's overall worth," the banker added, "we might be interested in retaining the loans ourselves—once they're stabilized."

"In that case, we'll discuss terms then," Matt agreed, but his main concern was more immediate. "Once you've offered to take the loans off Reynolds's hands, make certain you tell him the Trust wants to finance the Houston project for Bancroft as well. Get him to call Meredith Bancroft right away and tell her that. I want her to know she's got the funds available to her."

"We'll handle it"

After hanging up the phone, Matt asked Eleanor to bring Richard Olsen into his office. He waited with strained patience as Olsen surrendered his coat, but before the man had settled into a chair across from him, Matt asked the question that was uppermost on his mind: "What do the police know about the bombings?"

"They don't know a great deal," Olsen said, unlocking his briefcase and removing a file which he opened on his lap. "They've drawn some interesting conclusions however, and so have I."

"Let's hear them."

"For starters, the police think the bombs were meant to be discovered before they went off—a theory which is borne out by the fact that warnings were phoned to the police in plenty of time, and the bombs were placed where they'd be easy to find. The bombs themselves were the work of a pro. My gut feeling is that we aren't dealing with a demented crank here who's retaliating for some imagined offense or indignity he suffered at a Bancroft store. If the police are right—and I think they are—then whoever planted those bombs obviously didn't intend to cause harm to the stores themselves or anyone in them. If that's true, the only remaining logical motive is to cause harm to the store's profits by scaring away shoppers. I understand B and C's sales plummeted all over the country yesterday and the value of their stock has already dropped significantly. Now, the question is, who would want to cause that to happen and why?"

"I don't know," Matt said, striving to keep the frustration out of his voice. "I told you on the phone yesterday that there's a rumor that some entity—other than myself —has been planning to try to take them over. Whoever that is has been quietly buying up their shares. When I got into the game and started buying, too, I drove the price of Bancroft's shares up. Presumably, there's a predator company out there, other than mine, who decided to either scare me off with the uproar over bombings and the risk to Bancroft's earnings, or they're simply trying to drive down the price of the shares so they could grab them cheaper."

"Do you have any idea who that company could be?"

"None whatsoever. Whoever it is wants B and C so badly that they aren't thinking straight. The corporation's in debt and B and C is a bad buy for the short-term gain."

"Obviously you don't care about that."

"I'm not in it for profit," Matt replied.

With characteristic bluntness Olsen said, "Why are you buying up their shares, then?" When his question was answered with a quelling stare and total silence, Olsen lifted his hands. "I'm looking for motives other than profit, Matt. If I know yours, maybe I can find someone else with a similar motive or motives and that will give me some leads."

"My original motive was revenge against Philip Bancroft," Matt said when his desire for privacy lost out to his greater desire to get this solved.

"Is there anyone else—with a great deal of money— who might also want revenge against him?"

"How the hell should I know?" Matt said, getting up and beginning to pace. "He's an arrogant son of a bitch. I can't be his only enemy."

"Okay. We'll start there—we'll look for enemies he might have made who now see a long-term shot at revenge and profit, and who can afford to go after it by taking over B and C."

"That sounds absolutely ridiculous."

"Not nearly as much when you consider the fact that no legitimate corporation with motives of pure profit would resort to bomb threats as a means of weakening their prey."

"It's still ridiculous," Matt argued. "Sooner or later they're going to have to make their intentions known, and the minute they do, they're going to be suspect in the bomb threats."

"Being suspect doesn't mean anything unless there's proof," Olsen said flatly.

Chapter 53

By midafternoon, business had not picked up at any of the stores, and Meredith was trying not to hover at the computers in her office. Mark Braden was due back from New Orleans at any moment, and she'd been expecting her father to descend on her since early morning. Phyllis's announcement that Parker was on the phone was a welcome diversion from her present worries. He'd called her once already to cheer her up, and she assumed this was another such friendly call. It dawned on her, not for the first time as she reached for the phone, that her feelings for Parker couldn't have been nearly as deep as she'd thought they were if she could shift from being his fiancee to his friend so easily. And the fact that Parker seemed to be adapting to that switch as easily as she made her wonder why on earth they'd ever considered getting married in the first place. Lisa's repeated jibes that Parker and Meredith's relationship lacked fire were obviously founded in fact. But Meredith now had good reason to wonder if Lisa's objections to their engagement hadn't been selfishly motivated. That possibility hurt a little, and if Meredith weren't so deluged with problems, she'd have called Lisa and tried to talk to her. On the other hand, it seemed to her that Lisa was the one who should initiate that talk, and she should have done so before now. Dismissing that problem for the time being, Meredith picked up her phone.

"Hi, beautiful," Parker said with a smile in his voice. "Could you stand a little good news for a change?"

"I'm not certain I'll know how to handle it, but give me a try," Meredith replied, and she was smiling too.

"I have lenders who'll make the loan to buy the Houston land, and who'll finance the whole building project for you when you're ready to go on it. They walked into my office like angels from heaven this morning, looking for loans to take off our hands."

"That's wonderful news," Meredith replied, but her enthusiasm was dampened by worry about how they were going to make payments on all three existing expansion loans six months from now if business were to stay bad.