The Sandstone Affair

“I’ll be glad when I don’t have to be Lucy Conway anymore,” I spout, annoyed that I still have to use the cleaning lady’s name, as I come off the elevator in his apartment.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to give her up,” Mark responds with wry humor. “If you don’t get Lynx back, you could use the job.”

“That’s not funny,” I pout.

“Neither is ignoring my summons. I needed to speak with you.”

“Look, I’ve already got enough problems in the world without you,” I start, my volume rising with every other word. “I’m trying to sit with my father. I’ve got the clock on Lynx ticking down like a bomb and now I’ve got you with your expectations, distractions and plans. You need to back off.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we had a deal.”

“We do, but until I have all this other stuff in the bag you’ll have to sit some time out. Our deal is only a deal because I say it is.” I stick out my chin like I’m fourteen and he notices. He smiles and nods, clearly indulging my fantasy that I am in some way in charge.

“We’ll deal with that temper tantrum in a minute. And trust me when I say: we will deal with it. But in the meantime, I need to tell you what happened with Blake today.” Mark motions for me to sit down on the couch.

“Let me guess, you summoned Blake to a meeting and he’s decided to give Lynx back to me and we’re all going to a picnic on Sunday,” I mumble caustically.

“If you insist on acting like a child, we can deal with your attitude now and save the news until later.” I realize I am way out of line with him, deal or no.

“I’m sorry,” I say truly apologetic. “I’m so full of doubt, guilt and just…”

“That’s fine,” he soothes. “So, good news or bad news?”

“Good. Please, God, anything that’s good.”

“I got into the system and found out which IT person Blake sent over to Lynx. As luck would have it, it was Howard. I asked him to write down everything he did for Blake, including uploading a remote desktop connection which lets him into Lynx. I had him sign it in front of my assistant and I locked it in my private safe. So we have that part of the puzzle for the package we file with the judge. That part was easy.”

“Are you crazy? He’s going to tell Blake and he’ll know we’re up to something!”

“No, he won’t. Let’s just say two tickets to the San Diego Comicon that he happened to win for outstanding service to the company, along with airfare and hotel, made him a little forgetful of the events of today.”

“So you bribed him?”

“I said it was easy. I didn’t say it was cheap.”

“And the bad news?” I fear to ask. I’m relieved Mark got the kid to confess and put it in writing, but lately I’ve developed “second shoe syndrome” where I expect something bad to happen at any time.

“Today at work I had a little run-in with Blake. I was trying to get into his office and see if he had a hard copy of the records of his transactions. He does, but I had to leave before I could get it.”

“Won’t he move it now that you’ve seen it? Or shred it?”

“I don’t think he knows that’s what I was in there for. I waited until he went out to lunch. I saw Valerie’s car in the lot so I knew he’d be gone for some time.”

“Valerie James? He has lunch with her?”

“Well, it’s not in the nature of the Stone family to kiss and tell, but, of all the assets we’re involved in, she’s the one who gets the most personal attention or with whom he… ah… makes the ‘deposits’. Anyway with those two at lunch, it gave me time. I called a nearby florist and had them bring over a dozen roses from a secret admirer to Rona, Blake’s’ assistant. I figured she would be so curious and awestruck she would stay downstairs long enough for me to look around.”

“So, Valerie and Blake, sitting in a tree. F-U-C-K-I—”

“That’s enough! Anyway, I got in there and the place is a wreck. How he even manages to make evil schemes work is beyond me. Papers everywhere! Then I realized he wouldn’t hide something as private as this where anyone could find it. I remembered when we were kids, Blake went through a brief and odd sort of kleptomania as a child.”

“So he’s been stealing people’s things for a long time?”

“No, not things, exactly. Pictures. As a small child he would take people’s pictures from their homes or school or whatever. If someone had a picture sitting in a drawer or in a frame easily opened he would nab it and hide it. He would always keep them behind the bookshelf in his room. He would pull out the books, put the pictures against the back of the shelf, and replace the books. It was the perfect hiding place.”

“Not if you knew about it,” I scoffed.

“I found out by accident. We were wrestling and tussling around. Our mother came in to tell us to stop and right as she was walking the door I lost balance and fell into the bookshelf, knocking it over and all the pictures came out. There were so many. Some showed people my mother didn’t even know.”

“Okay, you know this story just moved your brother from the evil bastard category to the totally psycho group?”

“It wasn’t really that odd. All the pictures showed smiling adults and families doing happy things. Some were magazine clippings and advertisements. Our parents were busy, stoic and somewhat jaded. I think Blake was trying to steal a little happiness and once he got caught, it never happened again. But, he continued to use the back of the bookshelf to hide things. Porn, condoms, report cards - anything that needed to be kept private.”

“So he’s stealing my happiness, so he can get laid by Valerie James?”

“No, I think he’s getting that already. But I did discover a folder, behind a set of tax law books, that has ledgers, printouts and things. I’m sure it’s Lynx. I thumbed through it but before I could get all the books out to get it, Rona was back. I guess she’s getting a divorce and assumed the flowers were from her soon-to-be ex. Instead of trying to get the name out of the florist, she threw a fit, shredded the roses in front of him and told him to tell the jerk he could ‘sit on the thorns’. Then she rushed back upstairs so I had to leave the folder where it was.”

“Did she figure out what you were doing there?”