Elementary, My Dear Watkins (18 page)

“Just to bring you up to speed, Jo,” Eleanor said, “I do believe that all of this insane behavior—both what your parents did to you with the wedding and what happened last night—was probably brought about because of certain stipulations in your grandfather’s trust.”

“His trust?”

The woman sighed heavily, looking every bit of her 86 years.

“As you know, Bosworth Industries is a private company established by your great-great-grandfather. In his lifetime, he was judicious about the company’s stock, following a plan for its distribution that would echo down through many generations—and hopefully keep the company always under family ownership and control.”

“Okay…” Jo said, this information not unfamiliar to her. All of the family members owned shares of Bosworth Industries in varying degrees. Jo had been given two shares herself when she was born, though she hadn’t been allowed to touch the profits from those shares until she came of age, nor could she ever sell them to anyone outside of the family.

“Controlling interest in the company was passed down to your great grandfather and then to your grandfather, my husband. At the time of his death, my husband owned sixty percent of the company’s shares. But rather than divide them evenly between our two daughters, he chose to distribute his shares a bit differently.”

Jo glanced at her father, who looked as though he might burst a blood vessel any moment. Was he embarrassed? Angry? Whatever it was, the vein on his temple was bulging up the way it always did when he became upset.

“Upon my husband’s death,” Eleanor continued, reaching for a piece of paper from the file on her desk, “his will decreed that his shares would go into trust, for my benefit, but that upon my death they would be split.”

“Split?” Jo asked.

“Yes. Half would be divided among our children and half among our grandchildren. Of course, neither your grandfather nor I realized that we would end up having only two grandchildren. His original intention, of course, was to see the shares divided out among a much larger base of descendants. You were quite young when he died, Jo, so you wouldn’t know this, but your grandfather expected Helen and Winnie both to procreate much more prolifically than they did.”

Jo forced herself not to roll her eyes. As though it was any of his business to dictate how many children his daughters had.

“Which brings us to the marriage clause,” Eleanor said, “the part of this whole thing that has a bearing on the situation we now find ourselves in.”

“The marriage clause?” Jo asked, glancing at her father. He was staring straight ahead, his chin set like stone.

“To wit,” her grandmother said, looking down at the paper and skimming it. “‘Upon my wife’s death’…so on and so forth…here we go, ‘shares to be distributed thusly: one-half to be divided equally among my children and one-half to be divided equally among my grandchildren, not including unmarried females.’”

Jo’s head jerked up.

“Excuse me?”

“‘One-half to be divided equally among my grandchildren, not including unmarried females,’” Eleanor repeated.

She set down the paper, folded her hands, and looked directly at Jo.

“It was nothing personal, dear. This was written when your grandfather was just a young man back in the forties, and long before women were respected in the workforce. At that time, it was simply a given that unmarried females would have neither the desire nor the capability to be involved with the company. He was acting to protect both Bosworth Industries and his female descendants.”

Jo tried not to be hurt or look shocked by the fact that her own grandfather had inadvertently cut her out of his will because she wasn’t married. She thought about the implications of such a stupid clause, but she didn’t know enough about who in the family already owned how many shares to calculate where such a bizarre division would place the controlling interest. Judging by the look on her father’s face, though, it couldn’t be good.

“Help me out here,” Jo said slowly to her grandmother. “If you dropped dead tomorrow, once the dust settled, exactly who would have controlling interest of Bosworth Industries?”

By all rights, that should be Jo’s mother, Helen Tulip, since not only was Helen one of the Bosworths’ two daughters, but Helen’s husband, Kent, was the chief executive officer of the company.

The second-best option would be an even division of control between Helen and her sister, Winnie. Winnie’s husband, Neil, was the chief operating officer which made him second in command to Kent. Neil was also one of the few members of the family that Jo actually liked and respected.

“Unfortunately,” Eleanor said, “if I died tomorrow, once the dust settled, controlling interest would end up in the hands of your cousin, Ian.”

Ian?

Even Sidney, who had known all of this already, looked mortified at the thought.

The only offspring of Winnie and Neil, Ian was a few years older than Jo. As a child, she had adored him. Riotously funny in a subversive way, Ian had made long family dinners and boring get-togethers feel wild and exciting. As a teen, Jo didn’t find his dangerous antics quite so funny, and as an adult her feelings for him vacillated between concern and disgust. Quite simply, Ian had never really grown up, choosing instead to live the lifestyle of a rich, self-indulgent playboy. Now Jo realized that once her grandmother died, Ian would be a millionaire many times over—not to mention the deciding voice for Bosworth Industries.

Given the circumstances, in a way Jo could almost understand why her parents had tried to buy her a husband.

M
r. Bashiri was looking tired.

It was only 3:30 in the afternoon, but already he seemed weary and in pain. Danny was concerned because their itinerary called for a full day’s shoot with only a two-hour break to grab dinner and check into the hotel, and then they had a night shoot at a benefit gala in Zurich’s Old Town district. They would be up quite late, something Danny suddenly realized might not happen if Mr. Bashiri was already fading fast this early in the game.

Danny didn’t want to insult or embarrass the man, but after a while he discreetly pulled him aside and asked if he needed to take a break.

“You’re holding your back very stiffly, sir,” Danny said out of the earshot of the others. “You don’t want to push yourself too hard or you might end up completely incapacitated.”

Mr. Bashiri thought for a moment and finally agreed.

“I will pull up a chair and rest my feet right over here,” he said. “Why don’t you switch to the digital and finish this series for me? I’m using the 82B cooling filter. Make sure you turn the fire on under the meat for some of the photos, but keep the flames as low as possible. I’m looking specifically for that low, blue glow of gas, not the higher oranges or yellows of the flames.”

“Okay.”

Danny got Mr. Bashiri settled on a full-length lawn chair and then went to work, switching out the cameras and filters to photograph the doctor on the patio near the pool, pretending to cook giant hamburgers on his grill. At first, Danny took the shots exactly as Mr. Bashiri had said, but once he was finished with those, he decided to experiment a little. First, he told the doctor to turn up the flames and try flipping a burger. After about ten tries, Danny managed to capture the shot perfectly, with the burger high in the air, the doctor grinning widely, and the spatula glinting in his hand.

Next, Danny had Luc bring out more raw meat and stack it artfully on a tray near the grill. Focusing was tricky, but by playing with the camera settings to increase the depth of field, he was finally able to focus sharply on the bright red meat in the foreground while still depicting the man at his grill in the background. There was something almost obscene about the meat and its gristly, bleeding abundance that would juxtapose well against shots of starving children in Africa.

When Danny was finished, he was surprised to see that Mr. Bashiri had fallen asleep. Watching the man there with his head tilted back against the lawn chair, his mouth slightly agape, Danny felt a surge of sadness for him. This great man could not keep up the pace of his youth. Soon, perhaps, he would have to give up these sorts of photographic assignments completely.

“I guess we can load the car first and then wake him up,” Danny said, gesturing toward Mr. Bashiri.

Luc nodded, apparently lost in thought as they disassembled the flash units, light stands, reflectors, and other equipment and carried it all out to the van.

“I think that went well,” Danny said to Luc as they reached the vehicle. “Long day, but we got a lot of good stuff.”

“Oui.”

Luc seemed oddly preoccupied, and as they walked back to awaken Mr. Bashiri, Danny asked his friend if he was okay.

“Sorry. There is much weighing on my mind. Nothing to do with any of this.”

“You got a lot of phone calls today. Is everything okay back home?”

“Oui
. I just have some thinking to do.”

They woke up Mr. Bashiri and thanked the doctor for his time and hospitality before getting underway.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Danny?” Luc asked as he pulled onto the main road and sped up. He was obviously starting to feel more chatty.

“Sure.”

“This Jo person that you so love and hope to marry, have you met your future in-laws? The extended family?”

“Wow, that’s out of left field.”

“
Eh
, I only ask because I am thinking of a young woman I know. We might have become serious once, but her family was too difficult for me.”

“Well, to tell the truth, Jo’s parents would not be my first choice for in-laws. They’re very cold and uncaring people. Self-centered. The flip side is at least they won’t bother us much. As it is now, Jo only sees them a few times a year. I can deal with that.”

“Just remember,” Mr. Bashiri said, wagging a gnarled finger, “when you marry a woman, you marry her family as well.”

Mr. Bashiri had never mentioned a wife, and Danny wondered if he spoke from experience.

“Actually, Jo will probably have a much harder time with my family because they’ll be around a lot and sticking their noses into everything. They’re nice and all, but I’ve got three sisters, and from the way they act, sometimes you’d think I have three extra mothers.”

“Three sisters?” Mr. Bashiri laughed. “Growing up with sisters will teach a man much about the female mind. Other women sense this and are drawn to it, like the lion is to the gazelle.”

“Don’t lions devour gazelles?”

“Yes, I suppose they do. Okay, then like the gazelle is drawn to the watering hole. This is how women are drawn to Danny.”

Luc laughed as well.

“You see, Danny?” Luc said. “Women flock to you wherever you go, even if you are oblivious to it. Why not forget about this girl back home and sample the delights of Europe instead? Mr. Bashiri, tell him that he needs to loosen up a bit.”

Mr. Bashiri was quiet for a long moment, as the light mood of the moment seemed to dissipate into the air.

“When a man finds his true love,” he said slowly, “he should hold on to her with every fiber of his being. No price is too high for the right woman.”

After that, all three men were silent on the ride back to the city, each lost in his own thoughts.

Jo felt like a puppet.

As they sat in her grandmother’s office and discussed the legalities and stipulations of the trust, all Jo could think about was how easily she had allowed herself to be manipulated. It was bad enough that her parents had paid Bradford to make her fall in love with him. Worse yet was that she had stepped right into their trap, convincing herself that she loved Bradford in return and that the two of them were going to live some sort of fairy-tale life together. Truly, for the first time since the failed wedding, Jo was realizing how utterly foolish she had been. Desperate for normalcy and companionship and romance, she had allowed herself to be swept up into an incredible deception. All through that time, as the wedding date had drawn closer and closer, the only voice of reason in her ear had been Danny’s. His influence on her at that time had been merely as a friend, and essentially Jo had cut him out of her life. When she thought of how she’d ignored his advice, resisted his warnings, and finally told him to butt out of her business, she felt a deep flash of shame.

Thank You, God, for Bradford’s last-minute exit, as it saved me from a lifetime with the wrong man!

Now that she knew about the terms of the trust, Jo wished she could believe that her parents had done what they had done for her own protection, to ensure her inheritance for her sake. But she knew that wasn’t what had motivated them.

They had done what they’d done so that they could protect themselves. With Jo married, Eleanor’s death would have meant an even split of stock shares down both sides of the family. Jo had no interest in running the company and would have gladly given her proxy over to her father to do with as he saw best. And that would have given Kent the control and the profits he coveted.

The simple truth, Jo realized now, was that her parents had played with her life like a pair of puppet masters, trading off her future and happiness for the sake of their own money and power. That’s what life had always been about for her parents: money and power. It was no wonder she had chosen to turn her back on both, live a simple life, and eschew all of the riches she had always assumed would eventually be dumped in her lap. Now that she knew there was a condition in the trust that could prevent her from inheriting those riches, she was almost relieved.