Bitter Business

this rift between you.”
    “Ten million dollars,” Lydia answered in a hard voice without a moment’s hesitation. “I’ve been through the numbers with my hankers and that’s the price I want for my shares. Once my business is concluded, we can go back to being family as family. But until I get my ten million, there is no way that I can separate the two.”
    “I’m sure you know that the company hasn’t concluded its own independent valuation,” I protested, “but I’ll tell you right now I think it’s unlikely that they’ll come anywhere close to ten million as a fair market price for your shares.”
    “That’s your problem.”
    “I understand that you want the money for a good cause,” I said, giving diplomacy my best shot for Daniel’s sake, “so naturally you want to get top dollar. But you have to be realistic. There just aren’t that many people out there who are interested in a minority stake in a family-owned company.”
    “My bankers ran the numbers based on two different scenarios,” she reported. I found it disconcerting to be talking about a multimillion-dollar deal for shares in an industrial concern with a woman who looked like an aging groupie for some sort of grunge band—especially since she’d looked like a Nancy Reagan wannabe the week before. “They said that it would not be inconceivable to net ten million dollars for my shares if the entire company were sold.”
    “But no one has said anything about selling the company,” I protested. I was confident that Jack Cavanaugh’s talk of a sale the day before was the desperate rambling of a grieving man. I certainly didn’t want to give it any more credibility by repeating it in front of Lydia.
    “I don’t care if people think I’m being unreasonable,” Lydia replied, haughtily. “I want my money out of the company and I want ten million dollars for my shares. I might be willing to consider a lower offer from an outsider, but as far as my family is concerned, the price is ten million dollars or nothing.”
    I got to my feet and reached for my briefcase, thanking Lydia Cavanaugh for her time. I’d seen enough of Jack’s youngest daughter not to be completely taken aback, but I was still surprised. I’d come to discuss a fair price for her shares, not blackmail.
     
    When I got back to the office there was a stack of phone messages and twelve yellow roses arrayed in a crystal vase. The card was from Stephen. All it said was Thinking of you. The messages were less remarkable, but I was pleased that they included one from Nora Masterson asking me to join her and Claire for their first meeting over dinner the next day. According to Cheryl, Nora hoped that the presence of someone Claire already knew would put the teenager more at ease. When Cheryl added that we’d be dining at the Hard Rock Café, I knew that I’d picked the right lawyer for the job. I told Cheryl to check my calendar and tell her that I’d be there. Also I needed to see Daniel Babbage’s secretary for fifteen min-utes later that afternoon if there was some time that Cheryl could squeeze her in. I continued flipping through the pink phone slips, dealing them into piles—urgent, must call, leave until tomorrow, delegate—like cards at solitaire. When I came to the message from a Dr. Roger Dorskey, I put the rest of them down and reached for the phone. I didn’t know anyone by that name, but I recognized the number as being from Azor Pharmaceuticals and the message said he’d called about test results.
    I got the good doctor on the phone and introduced myself. He sounded young and eager to please. Better still, he got right to the point.
    “Dr. Azorini asked me to test the two samples that I got yesterday from Dr. Julia Gordon. I’m sure you know that all they’re set up for at the medical examiner’s office is gas chromatography, which is pretty basic stuff. Here we can use something called a spray mass spec, which is what I used on the two samples.”
    “And what did you find?”
    “Lots of things, actually. I hadn’t realized how chemically complex perfume is. There were more than twenty compounds in the control sample that we ran. But I’m assuming you’re interested in the differences we turned up between the two samples, not the composition of the control.”
    “Exactly.”
    “It turns out that the other sample is pretty scary. In addition to the cyanide—and there was enough in the two-cc sample that we tested to take out an