Dark Garden Part 4

The Rust Belt was scarred with vast abandoned factories, the grim ciphers of a prosperous past. A few had been converted to visitor attractions but most presided like ghouls over the industrial decay around them. Mason's father hadn't allowed the Johnstown factory to fall into ruin. He'd never accepted that because China paid its workers peanuts and was willing to let its citizens live under a shroud of toxic emissions, the U.S. would never be able to compete in core industries like steel. Even to the end, he'd believed that the Cavender Corporation would survive and its steel business would somehow become relevant once more, and he had almost proved it by winning a big government contract connected with the Iraq war.

Thanks to the Blakes, the contract didn't pan out and Mason knew her father realized it had been his last chance. If he'd laid off his workforce ten years earlier and moved Cavender's entire manufacturing base to another country, the corporation would have been thriving instead of going broke. He would have been able to lower his bid and not be undercut. But Henry Cavender had been too stubborn to take advantage of the government incentives for large companies to move their jobs offsh.o.r.e.

Mason could understand his dilemma. For all his faults as a family man, her father had been intensely loyal to the people who worked for him. Many had parents and grandfathers who had been Cavender employees and Henry felt responsible for them. In the end, letting them down had literally killed him.

Mason shared his sense of moral obligation, and reading the business plan for Azaria made her almost light-headed with hope. The global rough diamond market was worth about twenty billion dollars and De Beers controlled seventy percent of the supply. Lately their stranglehold had loosened and they were no longer the only game in town. There was room for other players. If Azaria could guarantee supply and consistent quality, they could do exactly what Lynden had envisioned and restore the family fortunes. Mason would be able to re-employ numerous staff she'd had to let go. She was stunned at the potential of the venture. Perhaps the Cavender curse was nothing more than superst.i.tion. Her brother, it seemed, had been on the brink of proving that they could put the past behind them.

"The engagement ring market is for white, high-clarity stones." Josh continued to explain their market advantage. "The average guy is trying to put the most bling he can afford on his lady's finger. The big issue will be keeping pace with demand."

"Can we get any help from the bank?"

He shook his head. "The concept would blow their minds, and besides, in this economy, they're only interested in getting their money back. Lynden was working on a venture capital deal when...the accident happened. There's a party coming up in New York City later this month. He was going to firm things up there."

"Who's he talking to?"

"A Russian billionaire, Sergei Ivanov. A gangster trying to launder his cash."

"So, I should go to this party and see if he's serious."

Josh hesitated. "I know it's not your scene, but you're the one with the name."

"As if being a Cavender matters anymore. Times have changed."

"Don't underestimate the power of the Cavender mystique." Josh's tone was pensive. "Lynden knew how to capitalize on it."

"And you think I need to do the same." Mason groaned at the prospect. She loathed schmoozing and the thought of attending parties claw-deep in Manhattan socialites made her ill. Lynden went to all the important ones, making sure he took a prestige date, usually an insipid society girl bewitched by her own refection. But with him gone, and the need to woo a potential investor, Mason was going to be stuck with the nightmare of the charity season in New York.

"The Ivanovs seem to be shut out of certain events. That's a big disappointment to them," Josh said.

"In other words, two million bucks buys them the right invitations, and Azaria is just a bonus."

Josh smiled, confirming her worst fears. "Think you can be persuasive?"

His doubt was evident, and Mason could understand why. Normally she only went to the most significant social events every few years to quash rumors that she was either dead or locked up. The Whitney Gala next month loomed largest among the bashes she loved to avoid, but it was the ideal gathering to dangle in front of an upwardly mobile investor normally excluded from the invitation list. The Cavenders were long-term donors and automatically had a place at one of the most desirable tables. To procure an invitation for a new-money Russian and a wife who was probably a sable-draped former hooker would be a challenge, but Mason knew the promise of her own seldom-seen presence could tip the scales.

"I can make it happen," she said with a pained grimace.

"The alternative is getting in bed with De Beers." Josh sounded unenthusiastic.

"Instead of waiting for them to crush us?" Mason could see why the diamond giant would want a piece of the action if cultured diamonds were going to make serious inroads on the market.

"Diamond prices are all about supply and demand," Josh said. "The fewer high-grade stones out there, the higher the prices. De Beers controls huge stockpiles and a vast distribution machine. They could kill us in a price war."

"So what we need is a rich partner and a stockpile of our own," she said. "Not a partners.h.i.+p with our worst enemy." Two could play the De Beers game. If Azaria had a virtual monopoly and only released limited numbers of their cultured stones, they could keep the price up.

"Everything we produce for the next six months has already been ordered," Josh said. "We have more orders but we can't increase production without more plant."

"How much capital do we need?"

"We could swing it on two million up front. Pocket change, really."

"But we owe the bank twenty and we're not earning enough to service those loans, let alone fund Azaria."

"In a nutsh.e.l.l, yes." Josh hesitated. "Plus we're out another ten million for the pension fund."

Mason looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

Josh shuffled through his papers and produced a set of figures. "The numbers you've been seeing...they're bulls.h.i.+t."

Mason scanned the page in bewilderment. "I don't understand. "Are you telling me Lynden borrowed money from the pension fund?"

"There was no option. He thought if we could make this work you wouldn't need to know."

"You and Lynden hid this from me for the last two years?"

Josh had the grace to look ashamed. "We hid it from everyone. We've fled false returns and sent false statements to employees."

"Oh, my G.o.d. Lynden stole the money from our employees?"

"No, nothing so simple as that. We created an investment ent.i.ty that allowed the fund to take a temporary shareholding in Azaria, with buyback provisions for you and Lyndon."

Mason rested her head in her hands. If Azaria failed there would be no way she could buy back that investment. "How many people are depending on us for their retirement?"

"Hundreds."

Mason wiped the perspiration from her forehead. Her damp hair clung to her hand and she realized she was shaking. "What are we going to do?"

"There's an offer on the table," Josh reminded her in a cautious tone. "We could offload the Cavender Corporation to Vienna Blake, pay the bank as much as we can, keep Azaria, and gradually buy back that shareholding."

Mason lifted her head and met his eyes. "Over my dead body. That b.i.t.c.h made a big mistake when she killed my brother. I want her to pay."

"I understand." Josh hesitated. "But please just think about it. We could simplify everything...get lean and mean."

"No." Mason gathered up the paperwork and the bag of diamonds.

"I know she's involved in the accident. I just need some time to prove it. Has that P.I. turned up anything useful?"

"Only what the police already told you. Vienna was out of town when it happened and there's no sign of foul play. The FAA report says engine failure."

Mason snorted in disgust. She'd read the report and it was inconclusive. Something had to have caused the loss of power. For a few minutes, in Vienna's office, she'd almost believed her protestations of innocence, but lying was in the Blake DNA. "There's nothing that family won't sink to, and with Lynden's engagement coming up there was a motive. Tell the P.I. to look harder."

Josh toyed with his pen, his face reflective. "It could be over, Mason. If you both decided to call it a day. You could take the offer and walk away, and she would be the one stuck with the mess. Think about it."

"I will, but I need you to buy me some time." Mason knew from the look Josh gave her that he thought she was only delaying the inevitable, but she had to give the investigator a chance to dig dirt. The Blakes had enemies. If she could get something on Vienna, even some dubious accounting practices that could interest the IRS, she would finally have a lever. And in the meantime she had to obtain the financing for Azaria.

"I'll send the right signals," Josh said. "She'll probably be willing to work with our timetable so long as she thinks she has us on the ropes and you're going to cave."

Smiling bitterly, Mason got to her feet. "I don't think that'll be a problem after today's showdown. She definitely thinks I'm losing it."

"You're lucky you weren't arrested," Josh said.

"Interesting, isn't it, that she didn't want the police involved? She's hiding something. That's obvious."

"I think you're reading too much into it." Josh smoothed his cuffs absently. "Vienna Blake isn't stupid. With an offer on the table, she wouldn't want you in jail, all p.i.s.sed off."

Mason could see his logic, but she didn't buy it. "No, she's up to something. I can feel it. If anything happens to me, the cops won't have far to look."

Josh met her eyes. "Are you saying you're worried for your safety?"

Mason hesitated, not wanting to sound like she was afraid. "I'm on my guard."

"Chill." Josh adopted a casual, confident tone, transparently trying to rea.s.sure her. "She thinks she has this won. Why would she resort to dirty tricks now?"

Mason had asked herself the same question. "I don't know. Maybe because we've been doing this all our lives. Maybe because she needs more than a signature on the bottom line of a contract to feel like she's won."

He was unconvinced. "Have you ever thought that she might want this to be over? And maybe that's why she's made another offer...so you can both move on."

To an outsider, it probably sounded that easy, Mason thought; after all, she and Vienna were two adults. Why not just decide to call it quits? Did either of them even know why their families were still fighting-did it matter anymore? She reminded herself that she'd watched her brother draw his final breath, and but for the grace of G.o.d, she would have died with him. Part of her wished she had, but instead she'd walked away with nothing but a concussion and a few cuts and bruises.

She stifled a sob at the memory of Lynden's eyes in the seconds before they gla.s.sed over. "The Blakes have ruined us, Josh. They as good as killed my father and now my brother, too. I can't let her get away with it."

"I'm sorry," Josh murmured.

"All I have left is my honor." Mason dragged her knuckles across her eyes. "If I give in to Vienna Blake, I'll lose that, too."

Chapter five.

Vienna dropped her cell phone onto the pa.s.senger seat and slowed down to take in the soothing surroundings. She loved the rugged southern end of the Berks.h.i.+re Mountains. Her father always used to stop at the general store in Monterey on their trips back and forth when she was a kid. They had also spent time hiking the Benedict Pond loop and Beartown together. Her mother detested outdoor pursuits. All Vienna and her dad had to do was haul out their hiking boots and backpacks and Marjorie would beg off, claiming she was far to busy to waste a day exploring a frigid pine forest.

Vienna sighed. She missed her father all the time, even more since the full burden of running Blake Industries had settled on her. As a child she'd never understood why he spent all day at the office, then came home and worked in his study. Now she wondered how he'd managed to balance his life as well as he did. She struggled to keep lunch dates with her mother, and as for having a personal life, by the time she'd finished each working week, she was so exhausted all she wanted to do was blob on her sofa with a good book.

She tried to remember when she'd last had a hot date. Eighteen months ago? She didn't have real relations.h.i.+ps, merely interludes, serial dates with women she never really got to know. She wasn't sure where happy lesbian couples in their thirties found one another. It hadn't seemed so hard in her twenties. She'd had a serious relations.h.i.+p in the final year of her MBA at Harvard, but the pressure of her studies had doomed the romance. After graduation her ex had taken a job offer in Hawaii. Their subsequent attempt at long-distance love had lasted for less than a year.

After that failure, Vienna had settled into casual dating, expecting that one day Ms. Right would come walking into her life, complete with brains, good looks, and an independent nature. But all of a sudden everyone she knew started pairing up and hanging out with other nesters. The few close friends who knew she was a lesbian tried to fix her up with cute single women, but what was once a steady stream of potential partners dwindled to a pathetic trickle soon after she hit thirty. All the good ones seemed to be taken.

It probably didn't help that she was semi-closeted and cautious. Vienna knew she was quite a catch for anyone more interested in the material than the emotional, so she tried to avoid revealing her background. It wasn't easy to get close to someone when she was reluctant to invite the women she dated back home. They started to wonder what she was hiding, and after a few dates, if they seemed genuinely nice, Vienna didn't want to insult them by admitting she hadn't trusted them.

She wished she'd cared deeply enough for someone to make an effort. But the women she liked most were the kind she'd rather be friends with. She didn't want to believe, at only thirty-two, that she was unlucky in love, but it was starting to look that way. Worst of all, whenever she tried to gaze into her romantic future, the face that gazed back through the mists of fantasy was Mason Cavender's. That wretched first kiss haunted her like a bad melody; the more she tried to erase it from her memory, the more tenaciously it stuck.

Aggravated that she'd let her mind wander in that direction, Vienna hit the gas and overtook an idiot driving a huge SUV at about thirty miles an hour. Normally she would stop at Monterey for old time's sake, but she wasn't in the mood, so she took the turnoff to Tyringham. The blue tranquility of Lake Garfeld always calmed her, signaling that she was about twenty minutes from home. The trees were rapidly changing color, donning the splendor of autumn. The maples were etched in red and gold, and yellowing willows skirted meadows of pale olive green. Goldenrod and asters lined the roads, and the j.a.panese hydrangeas were in full bloom in the gardens she pa.s.sed.

An avalanche of leaves would descend after September, burying the cowpaths around Penwraithe in a rustic mantle that inspired local hobby artists to paint ever more tacky homages to the New England fall. Vienna allowed them access to the grounds of Penwraithe at this time of year and was always stumbling over someone with an easel. To her annoyance, the most popular view they wanted to paint was the one with the absurd Gothic towers of Laudes Absalom in the background. She had switched to a different bedroom years ago so she wouldn't have to see the place every time she opened the drapes. Yet she often gravitated to her old room, watching for a dark figure walking a dog.

With a sigh of annoyance, she fell in behind a line of traffic crawling along Main Street, a stretch of small-town America made famous by Norman Rockwell. Thanks to him, Stockbridge was always packed with tourists posing for the mandatory photo op in front of the Red Lion Inn before heading up the line to Williamstown. Vienna bypa.s.sed a minor traffic jam and evaded a group of charm-struck visitors standing in the middle of the road. The famous inn seemed to expand farther around the corner every year, its storybook white faade serving as both a landmark and a fixture on souvenir mugs.

Vienna turned off and drove up past Naumkeag, the mansion that overlooked the village. She was thankful the Blakes had built their own summer "cottage" deeper in the surrounding hills. Penwraithe didn't attract the kind of attention reserved for the mock castles of its era. Occasionally tourists would drift from the imposing iron gates of Laudes Absalom to the more welcoming entrance of the Blake estate, but the house wasn't the stuff of dramatic photographs. Modest by Gilded Age standards, it comprised a mere eighteen rooms. Originally it was supposed to be an Italianate mansion, but after the building began Vienna's ancestor, Benedict Blake, decided he wanted a more American feel and switched to a Georgian style with white shutters and bal.u.s.trades around the terraces. Not a man who liked to waste money, however, he retained the imposing white marble entrance hall that had already been built. With its black-and-white mosaic floor, high barrel-vaulted ceiling, huge marble urns, and ornate wrought iron stairway, it promised a home of shameless opulence. Guests were subsequently disconcerted to step into rooms that could only be described as underwhelming, both in dimension and decor.

Vienna slowed her car as she pa.s.sed the gates of Laudes Absalom and approached Penwraithe. Ahead of her, two riders had stopped near the entrance. One of them, her barn manager Rick O'Grady, waved at her and dismounted, leading his horse onto the estate. The other, on a spectacular white mount, continued along the road without looking back. Vienna's pulse accelerated. She was certain, from the n.o.ble carriage and Baroque conformation, that she was looking at a Lipizzan. And there was only one in the vicinity.

Trying not to show her irritation, she rolled slowly up alongside the man who took care of her four horses. The chestnut he was exercising was their boss mare and had a suspensory ligament strain. After months of stall rest, they'd brought her through almost a year of rehabilitation. Rick had just started riding her again.

Vienna lowered her window and greeted him with a smile. "How's she doing?"

"Better every day. It'll take a while before we can try a canter, but she has normal flexion so I think we're out of the woods."

"Who were you riding with?" Vienna struggled to sound casual. "That white is spectacular."

"He's immaculate, all right."

"From the Cavender stables, I take it?"

Rick looked slightly abashed. "Yes, that's Dulcifal."

"Of course." Everyone in the county knew of the stallion after he'd appeared, along with one of Mason's famed Andalusians, in an Animal Planet doc.u.mentary about so-called horse whispering. "Is he as smart as they say?"

"I don't know if it's strictly intelligence." Rick looked thoughtful. "He's been extensively schooled and he has the most amazing manners. That's partly his gene pool, but they also use special training techniques over there. I've been picking up a few pointers, as a matter of fact."

Listening to him enthuse, Vienna reminded herself that her staff had every right to a.s.sociate with other grooms in the neighborhood, regardless of what she might think about their employers. In a pleasant tone, she said, "Well, I'm glad you've found someone nearby to work the horses with. Maybe I'll get to meet Dulcifal sometime."

She felt another rush of shame at her spiteful comment about sending Mason's animals for slaughter. She wished she could take back her vicious words, less for Mason's sake than her own. The very idea was unthinkable and to say such a horrible thing was beneath her. That woman had a knack for bringing out the worst in her.

Rick seemed to miss her hint about meeting the beautiful Lipizzan.

Tightening the wrap around the chestnut mare's hind leg, he asked, "Are you riding tomorrow morning?"

"Yes, no preferences. Whoever needs the work." Vienna avoided disrupting the training regimen on her intermittent visits. She wanted to help out when she was at Penwraithe, not have her staff drop everything to pander to her whims.

Hers were strictly pleasure horses, all of them rescues. She really didn't have the time to be the best of owners, but she could afford to pay for good care. Until recently she'd had six mares, but two were close to thirty and she'd finally let them go before the winter made their arthritis unbearable. Some time soon she would rescue a couple more. She hated to think of unwanted horses neglected and turned out to fend for themselves, and since she could only stable a few personally, she donated to a long list of equine rescue organizations.

"Eight o'clock?" Rick queried.

Vienna normally rose at six but on her days at Penwraithe, she caught up on sleep and appreciated a slower start. "Sounds good. I'll see you then."

She glanced in the side mirror as she drove toward the house and smiled at the sight of Rick patting the mare and feeding her a carrot. He was very calm with the horses and an expert at reading temperament and mood. Her father had employed him on a recommendation from friends in the racing industry after Rick had a serious fall and needed lighter work. He'd been with the Blakes for three years and showed no sign of wanting to return to the race track. Vienna felt fortunate to have him. He was overqualified for his job, having been a head groom with trainer responsibilities, but she gave him a free hand to employ the stable help he needed and he seemed genuinely happy at Penwraithe.

She parked in the garage behind the house and let herself in the back door. A herd of cats immediately laid claim to her, rolling and smooching and coaxing her toward the kitchen.

"You're early." Bridget Hardy dropped a lump of dough on the long butcher block in the center of the room and shook four off her hands. The Blakes' housekeeper for the past fifteen years, she baked whenever she knew Vienna was coming.

"I got away before the rush hour." Vienna inspected the jars of preserves lined up along the counters. "You've been busy."

"If I see another bucket of zucchinis..." Bridget shaped the bread into two focaccia loaves, placed them on a baking stone, and smothered them in olive oil. "Stick some garlic and rosemary sprigs in one of those, would you, while I make us a pot of tea."