CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - LITTLE ACORNS

"What if he can't say it?" Amanda said suddenly. They'd come straight back to the Agency after their meeting with Terwiliger, Lee operating at a slow boil the entire drive while Amanda tried to puzzle it out via her usual verbal stream-of-consciousness. For the last half-hour, she'd been pacing the Q the way Lee often did, back and forth in her stocking feet, her heels abandoned beside her desk.

"What do you mean?" Lee asked.

"What if he doesn't know?"

"Plausible deniability " Smyth said from the doorway. "You might be right, King."

"Yeah," Lee agreed. "You might be." He paused. "I get the feeling this Nancy knows all the details, though."

"Sir, something has been bothering me since I saw it last night and I wonder if you have any insight, since you know Mr Warren so well." Amanda reached into her purse and drew out a booklet. She flipped to a page near the back. "It's this photo."

Smyth frowned at it. "I don't know who Alice Bircher is."

"Well, it's a funny thing. My mother worked with her at the store one summer. Her name was Alice Goodwin then and my mother said there was a lot of bad blood between the Warrens and the Goodwins. But it doesn't look like that here."

"That feud goes back to Marsh's grandfather," Smyth said. "They settled out of court. Paid the Goodwins off, essentially." He frowned. "What are you driving at, King?"

"I don't know, sir. Something feels familiar about this woman but I can't place it. It's been driving me crazy since I saw the photo last night."

"Give the old Goodwin family tree a shake and see what falls out." Smyth dragged on his cigarette. "We might be surprised where little acorns have landed."

Amanda nodded. "Already on it, sir. I just thought I'd ask to cover our bases."

Smyth nodded. "Fair enough. we need to get moving on this. I have some news that takes things from bad to worse for old Marshall," Smyth said, his expression grim. "Seems someone's making a move on the Warren Company."

"What, like a hostile takeover?" Lee asked.

"A proxy fight," Smyth said. "A group of shareholders got together and they're making a move to push Marshall out."

"What's their angle? Declining returns? Lower market share?"

"Unethical business practices."

"The bank accounts?" Amanda asked.

"Bingo."

"Let me guess," Lee said. "Bellingham?"

"No." Smyth drew on his cigarette. "That's the strange thing."

Amanda frowned. "Who could it be, then? We looked into everyone and nothing came up that'd point to any of them doing this."

"It's someone outside the company," Lee said. "Right?"

Smyth nodded. "Looks that way."

"How does that work?" Amanda asked.

"If someone wants to take over a corporation, they can encourage shareholders to band together to vote in favor of the deal. Or they can remove members of the board if they're unhappy with their performance," Lee explained.

"That's right on the money, Scarecrow," Smyth said. "In this case it's a neat little attempt at dethroning."

"Think it's gonna work?" Amanda asked.

Smyth looked grim. "Uness we can prove someone else is behind all these shenanigans, then yes."

"Nancy has to be behind it all," Amanda said, when Smyth had disappeared down the hallway again and Lee had taken over pacing duties. She sat on the sofa now, her feet curled underneath her. "She's the one who came up with the blackmail scheme — the fake murder, having Bert Bellingham see them in the parking lot. Robert Terwilliger said he thought she'd gone too far. Maybe he just thinks he's getting some kind of reward for facilitating a corporate takeover."

Lee kept pacing. Amanda studied the photo in her mother's little booklet. Alice Bircher and Marshall Warren, standing with their arms laced around each other's shoulders. Alice looked well-off, perfectly coiffed and dressed in a designer suit, a diamond brooch, in the shape of a cluster of grapes, pinned on her collar.

"Let's bring them in," Lee said.

Amanda looked up. "Nancy too?"

"Both of them. I'm tired of waiting on this and we have enough to question them. I don't think we're going to get anywhere with this Carrington Textiles thing."

"No, probably not."

"And we need to get a handle on this before the whole proxy battle goes too far."

Amanda frowned. "How do we even stop that?"

"Evidence, I guess. If we have enough to sway the vote we can possibly stop them from ousting Warren."

"Don't we have enough now?"

Lee sighed. "You know Smyth doesn't want to go after the minnows, and Terwilliger and Nancy are both probably minnows."

"All right, well, let's go catch a big fish." She pushed up from the sofa, ready to slip her feet back into her shoes, when she felt Lee's hand on her arm.

"I'll take care of it. You have class."

"What? No. Lee, I —"

"Amanda."

She let out a groan and slumped back into her seat. "This is so frustrating sometimes."

"Well, you wanted training."

"Class doesn't start until one," she said, looking at her watch. "That's ninety minutes from now."

"I can't guarantee we'll be done by then. Anyway, you can work on your pitch."

She raised her chin. "My pitch is finished," she said.

"Really?"

"Yes. Isn't yours?"

"Uh." Lee stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked on his feet. "Pretty close."

Amanda smirked. "Really?"

"It'll be done. Don't you worry."

"I'm not worried," she said. "But maybe you should be."

"Ha." He grinned at her. "I'll be fine." He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose as he spoke, and she caught his tie to hold him there for a minute. As it always did, his proximity made her lightheaded — she leaned toward him, enjoying his warmth and the faintly spicy smell of his aftershave, and she was just about to press her mouth against his when a knock on the doorframe made them both jerk apart.

"Sorry to interrupt," Francine said, in a tone that said she wasn't sorry at all, "but I wanted to run up the info you were looking for on Alice Bircher."

"That was fast," Lee said.

"Well, the Goodwins are pretty easy to track," she admitted, holding out a folder. "Alice Goodwin, married to Thomas Bircher. Together they founded Bircher and Burke, a fine wine distributor. They had two children. Thomas, who lives in France, and Ann, who lives in D.C. and is a… well… a housewife, basically." Amanda was surprised to find there was no judgment in the statement — probably a first, but then Ann Bircher wasn't trying to work at the Agency.

"What about her connection to Marshall Warren?" Amanda asked.

"Nothing concrete beyond the old feud between the two families. Bircher and Burke was founded in part using money from the Warren Company settlement."

"Do you have contact information for her?"

"Um, that's where it falls apart. She died last year."

Amanda blinked. She looked at Lee, who was similarly surprised, then annoyed.

"Wait a minute," she said, as a puzzle piece fell into place. "You said Alice Bircher's daughter's name is Ann, right? Nancy is a — a — pet name for Ann."

Francine's brow wrinkled. "You think Nancy is Ann Bircher?"

"It would give her a motive for all this, wouldn't it? Her family was pushed out of the business and had to settle for a fraction of what they could have earned if they'd been real partners. And — and I think I know why this photo looks so familiar."

Francine and Lee were both looking at her, expectantly.

"It's the room," she said. "It's the Marvel Room, where we were trying on dresses the other day. They're at the dedication. You can see the windows behind them. And the woman on the phone told Marshall Warren she wasn't going to wait in the marble room anymore. Isn't that where Nancy works? And where her mother worked, too?"

Francine's eyes widened. "You're right. But why wouldn't her connection to Alice Bircher have come up by now?"

"We didn't do a real deep dive," Amanda said. "I bet if we look again we'll find out her parents are Alice Goodwin and Thomas Bircher."

"Why don't you get going on that. If we're going to pick them up we'd better do it now," Lee said, reaching for his jacket. He turned to Francine. "You want to come along?"

"Ah, I can't. Sorry." Francine sighed. "I'd love to sit in on the interrogation later, if I have time. But Amanda, you and I have an appointment at three again."

"Right." Amanda sighed. "Right after class."

"Oh, you aren't going on this little excursion?"

"I'm not allowed," she said, shooting Lee a look of resentment. Francine's mouth curved in a smile. "He's pulling rank on me."

"And making you go to class," Lee said. "I thought you were a dedicated student."

"I am," Amanda said. "I guess I just like on-the-job training better." She saw Francine open her mouth, about to speak, and held up a hand. "Don't say it. Don't say anything."

"Who, me?" Francine batted her lashes. "I wasn't going to say a word."