Dark Garden Part 3

"I still have to find a dress for the Whitney Gala," Marjorie griped.

"You have plenty of time to torture the sales clerks at Barney's." The gala was over a month away, in October. "If you need more cash, that's what your Amex card is for. You know I'll take care of it."

Marjorie huffly sipped her Riesling. "You sound just like your father."

"Perhaps you could remember that similarity when you're telling me how incompetent I am and how I should be getting my business advice from your brother."

"I wish you didn't resent Wendell so much. He could be such a support to you. Especially now, with your cousins chomping at the bit."

"Mom, I'm not afraid of my cousins. They're employees, just like anyone else, and if they get in my face I can always sack them."

"Don't be ridiculous. Your aunts are on the board."

"Not indefinitely," Vienna said. "Anyway, all I'm saying is that I don't need a man to prop me up."

"Don't start on that topic. I don't want to hear about it."

"What topic?"

"You know what I'm talking about. I don't mind your lifestyle. I'm not a bigot. But you don't have to prove yourself by emasculating the men around you."

"I'm not even going to respond to that ridiculous statement."

"I blame your father." Marjorie tried to twist her black pearl necklace, but she was wearing one of her Tahitian strands and the pearls were too big. She reverted to cleaning her eyegla.s.ses. "Norris never related to you as a daughter, only a subst.i.tute son."

"Please, can we just drop it?" Vienna gave up on her meal. The sooner she got the check, the sooner the homily would end. "I need to get going. I have a lot to do before I leave for Penwraithe this weekend."

The last thing she felt like doing was driving to the Berks.h.i.+res, but she made the trip at least once a month to ensure the estate was being managed appropriately. She would have been tempted to spend more time there but driving past the gates of Laudes Absalom always unsettled her. Her father's memory was fresh enough without another reminder of the legacy he'd left behind, the task of finis.h.i.+ng what her predecessors had started.

"Why do you take everything so personally?" her mother complained.

"Oh, G.o.d." To bring their lunch date to an immediate close, Vienna asked the question that invariably made Marjorie run for the hills. "Mom, have you thought about dating again?"

"Dating?" Her mother's small, expertly freshened face went rigid with distaste. She fanned herself with the hand that sported her newest ring, a large canary diamond. The hot flashes had stopped five years ago, but she'd retained the fanning mannerism as a means of showing off her jewelry. "Your father left some very big shoes to fill. And I don't have the slightest desire for a replacement. As if that were possible."

"You're only fifty-seven and you could pa.s.s for fortysomething. It's not infra dig to look for a companion."

"Norris was the love of my life," Marjorie replied with an air of injured dignity. "I can't expect you to understand what that means, given the parade of so-called girlfriends you waste your time on."

Vienna choked on a sip of water. "Are you talking about the zero dates I've had in the past year? That's one of the great things about running the business, you know. I have no life."

"Just wait. One day you'll meet someone you can't bear to live without. Then you'll understand what I endure on a daily basis having lost your father."

"I miss him, too, Mom," Vienna said stiffly.

Marjorie conceded their shared sorrow with a tight-lipped nod, then rose and smoothed her dress. It was a charcoal shade that hinted at elegant mourning in its high neckline and modest three-quarter sleeves. Black, she was fond of telling everyone, was strictly graveside and no elegant woman wore it as day attire, even one recently widowed. The sober mood of her outfit was lifted by a Herms scarf in the Axis Mundi design. The blue and gold silk accessory had been a gift from Norris Blake not long before he died.

Hoisting her handbag from the spare chair next to her, Marjorie said, "I must run, sweetheart. They won't stop the auction to wait for me."

Vienna got to her feet. "Good luck. I hope you raise lots of money. What's it for today?"

"Lupus. Such an underrated cause."

They exchanged the usual arm's-length embrace and air kisses.

"Remember," Marjorie could never leave without the last word, "your father's watching from heaven. Don't let him down."

Chapter four.

The sale of the Kirchner painting has brought us some breathing room." Josh Soifer indicated a seven-figure entry on the complex financial report spread out on the desk in his office.

He was his father's son, Mason thought, glancing up at him, a man with an affinity for numbers. Three generations of Soifers had been Cavender accountants, but Josh eschewed the dull conservatism of his forbears in both dress and att.i.tude. Today he wore a sleekly tailored three-piece suit that flattered his sartorial, male-model good looks. His wavy brown hair was cut in a casual style that seemed at odds with his serious expression, but Josh was a man who excelled as naturally at tennis as he did in the boardroom.

Mason had agreed to this meeting, more or less expecting him to tell her they had to accept Vienna Blake's insulting offer. But instead, Josh was talking about a three-year redevelopment plan as if it were feasible.

"If the economy wasn't heading into recession we could probably reduce our debt and trade our way back into the black over the next two years," he summarized after dragging her through various charts and projections. "We're very well positioned because of the way we've diversified. With the Internet companies Lynden set up, we finally have vertical integration for the electronics brands and the auto accessories. Income almost tripled last quarter."

"It's not enough to save us," Mason said. "Although I can see it expands our liquidation options. But it's just too late."

"You're right. Even if we keep trading, all we'd be doing is servicing debt. Which is why," he flipped pages to the balance sheet of a company she'd never heard of, "your brother took a gamble on this."

Mason propped a hand beneath her chin and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. "We own a company called Azaria Technology?"

Josh looked faintly apologetic. "I wanted Lynden to tell you, but he had this fantasy about presenting you with a fait accompli...the family fortunes restored. Azaria is the key."

"Named for our mother?"

"He thought it was appropriate."

Mason stared down at the bottom line and the growth projections. "Are these numbers for real?"

"Actually, they're conservative." Josh's excitement added a higher note to his voice.

"What does Azaria produce? Please tell me we haven't gone into weapons of ma.s.s destruction or something."

"Don't think we didn't consider it," Josh said with bland irony. "But you know Lynden. He couldn't handle the ethical vacuum, or the bad press. We're not the Blakes."

Mason laughed and they shared a few seconds of silent grief. Then Josh took a small plastic container from his pocket. He tipped the contents onto a leather binder in front of them.

Mason picked up one of the glittering stones. "Diamonds?" She had a horrible flash of Lynden setting his scruples aside to deal with criminals and terrorists, buying conflict stones as a fast moneymaker.

"Yes and no." Josh handed her a loupe. "They're cultured diamonds."

"Fakes?"

"No, they're as real as a mined diamond. Identical tetrahedral carbon crystal structure. Same optical qualities. Just as hard and brilliant. But the raw crystals are grown in a lab instead of forming naturally underground."

Mason wasn't sure how to react. She didn't know much about diamonds except that big, flawless ones were very rare and mining them was often a shameful enterprise that would make her think twice about buying one to impress a woman. She'd never regretted the sale of most of the heirloom jewelry she should have inherited. Her father had needed the money.

She examined one of the stones under the loupe, not sure what she was looking for. "I think I see a flaw."

"Exactly," Josh said. "There a tiny inclusion in that stone, proof that it's natural, not some artificial compound engineered to look like a diamond."

"And we made these stones?"

"Yes, you could say we're diamond farmers. We send most of the rough to Mumbai to be cut, but the premium stones go to Antwerp." Josh picked up a squarish diamond and held it to the light. "That's a two carat Radiant Cut. A mined diamond like that one would normally fetch around eighteen thousand dollars. Our price is less than five thousand."

"Why would anyone want these instead of the real thing?"

"Azarias are the real thing," Josh repeated. "And even though fancy colored diamonds are popular, most women still want white. With an Azaria, they get more bling for their buck and a guilt-free diamond. It's the way of the future."

Mason replaced the gem on the binder and studied its companions. "This could be huge."

"De Beers is nervous. They've only had to fight cubic zirconias, Moissanite, and so on. No one has been able to produce cultured white diamonds in quant.i.ties that make commercial sense."

Bewildered by the whole idea that her brother had a secret business venture, let alone the process itself, Mason asked, "How do we farm them?"

"Your bats.h.i.+t-crazy cousin Pansy made it happen."

"We hired Pansy?"

Mason's head was spinning. What else didn't she know about her brother's dealings? After their father died, Lynden had taken over as head of the family business in the oldest son tradition followed by the Cavenders. Mason thought the responsibilities would do him good and they'd made a bargain. She would deal with cleaning up after the past and he would work on building a future. So, while he developed new business opportunities and courted a rich future-wife, she ran Laudes Absalom and handled the nightmare of reorganizing and downsizing various Cavender Corporation enterprises and a.s.sets.

She'd purposely kept her distance, trying not to tread on Lynden's toes, but she hadn't antic.i.p.ated he would cut her out of the loop entirely. The decision to hire their ex-convict cousin should have been made jointly. Pansy wasn't a close relative; the Cavenders applied the term "cousin" loosely to anyone descended from Thomas Blake Cavender. Pansy had been born under a cloud, the only daughter of an illegitimate Cavender. Her mother had fallen into a deep depression after the birth and hanged herself, and the orphaned Pansy was duly cared for by relatives. Brilliantly clever, she'd ended up at MIT, where she fell in love with another science nerd who broke her heart. When he came to a sticky end in suspicious circ.u.mstances, Pansy was arrested for his murder. The state only had circ.u.mstantial evidence and had cut a deal after the family pulled some strings on her behalf. Pansy had served six years for involuntary manslaughter.

"Lynden felt sorry for her after they let her out of prison," Josh said. "She had nowhere to go, so he put her in the factory. She was sleeping out back and cleaning the place, then she got interested in the process so he let her work as a tech. We were only producing industrial-grade stones at the time. The rest is history."

"She would have had a great career if she'd stayed at MIT," Mason said.

"She's doing okay at Azaria. We made her chief developer. She likes the t.i.tle."

Mason took a moment to move beyond an odd feeling of hurt that Josh knew all of this because he and Lynden worked together so closely. She wished she'd been the one to share his excitement over the new business. She also felt guilty that she hadn't made more of an effort after Pansy was released. Lynden had brought her to Laudes Absalom for a few days during the breeding season and said he was taking care of her. Mason had been so busy with the horses she had barely exchanged a word with either of them. Perhaps Lynden had intended to tell her about Azaria then.

"I'll give her a call next week," she said sadly. "We didn't get a chance to talk at the funeral service."

"She'd like that." Josh gathered up the diamonds and extracted a hefty doc.u.ment from the binder. "In case you're interested, she prepared this technical report."

"Science isn't my strong suit."

"Mine either. I asked her to write up something for us laymen."

"Hence the t.i.tle." Mason indicated the contents page. "'Diamonds for Dummies.' Very executive-friendly."

"Pansy thinks you and I should go back to school and get a real education if we can't understand something as rudimentary as this."

"Sayeth the woman with the 170 IQ." Mason grinned as she read the summary.

According to her cousin, the technology Azaria used replicated outer s.p.a.ce, where stars burned out and formed crystallized carbon cores like the white dwarf scientists had identified in the Centaurus constellation. By blasting carbon atoms at low pressure and very high temperatures onto a seed crystal inside a special chamber, the deposits formed a rough diamond. The process sounded so easy Mason wondered why everyone wasn't doing it.

"Is this our own patented technology?" she asked.

"We're working on it," Josh said. "There are compet.i.tors using similar methods. Chatham and Gemesis have been making colored diamonds for a few years. They're easier to grow and very profitable."

"But colorless stones make more sense for us?"

"Absolutely, if we can produce them in a viable quant.i.ty. None of our compet.i.tors has figured out how to grow large white diamonds, so we're poised to grab a significant market share."

"What's our business plan?" Mason asked.

"Basically we need a factory that will hold up to five hundred diamond-growing machines built to Pansy's specs."

Mason turned to the section where Pansy had provided details of her invention. She expected to see something NASA would be proud of, but the chambers looked remarkably simple. She examined the technical specs closely and concluded, "We can CAD her prototypes and build these ourselves."

"How? The car accessories plant is at full capacity."

"We still have the Johnstown factory."

"An abandoned sh.e.l.l in a podunk town."

Mason hesitated. "Not exactly."

"Are you telling me Cavender Steel isn't quite as dead as I think it is."

"Let's just say you and Lynden weren't the only ones doing your own thing." With a faint smile, Mason explained, "I had to lay off our last sixty men a year ago and there was no work for them in the town.

I couldn't give the d.a.m.ned factory or the plant away. The place hasn't seen maintenance in thirty years and the equipment's old-"

"And was supposedly sold for sc.r.a.p." Josh tapped his fountain pen on the binder. "What's going on?"

"I let the workers use the factory and the equipment to set up their own small businesses if they wanted to. Some of the men are making steel kitchen sinks in trendy shapes. And there's a team doing patio fire pits. It's great."

"You're not charging any rent?"

Mason shrugged. "The place was only going sit there and rot."

"So, the security guard we're paying to stop vandalism is actually watching a bunch of our former employees make barbecue furniture?" Josh rolled his eyes.

The guard in question was another laid-off Cavender Steel worker. "Things are going pretty well," Mason said. "So I was thinking about part.i.tioning the s.p.a.ce and setting up additional small business units."

"a.s.suming we don't sell."

"No one wants a disused steel mill, not even the Blakes."