Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [93]
“Your father? Walter Fieldings? My secretary said that you’d given her the impression he was rather aged and incapacitated.”
Eden glanced over her shoulder toward the open doorway of the parlor. For a moment, she looked like a guilty schoolgirl. “My dad has had a number of medical problems over the years. I run the business now.” She laughed, a sudden, caustic laugh. “Not really a business, actually, but I manage our holdings.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s very time-consuming.” It came out condescendingly, which I hadn’t intended, but Eden caught it.
She straightened up and gave me a hard look. “You’ve got five minutes. What do you want to know?”
Now what I really wanted to know was why Walter Fieldings had asked his daughter to meet me. But it was more important to learn the facts of the previous takeover, in case Lamey was able to get them from some other means. Despite everything else, I had a trial coming up.
“What I’m primarily interested in,” I said, “are the events that led to your family selling your business to McKnight. As I’m sure you know, there have been vague allegations that there was some impropriety that caused your family to sell.”
“Yes, vague allegations,” she said. Was she mimicking me?
“Can you tell me how the decision was made?”
“I was only in my twenties then. I wasn’t an integral part of the decision-making process, but it was a family matter, so we all discussed it. And McKnight twisted our arm, so to speak, until it broke.”
“Can you be more specific?”
Eden made that caustic laugh again but stayed silent.
I decided to back up for a second, and ask the question I couldn’t shake. “Can you tell me why your father wanted you to meet with me?”
She blinked a few times. She looked less angry, less sure of herself. Leaning over, she poured tea into a delicate white cup. “He’s gotten sentimental these last few years. It was something to do with your name.”
“My name?”
“Yes. Your last name.”
Just then an elderly man in a golf shirt and khaki pants came into the room. He used a walking stick made of old, gnarled wood. “May I interrupt?” he said.
“Oh, Dad,” Eden said. “You’re supposed to be sitting down.”
He ignored her. He walked into the room slowly, making good use of the walking stick, each step a labor of movement. And yet the whole time, his gray eyes never left mine.
“You are Hailey Sutter?” he said.
“Yes.” I stood to meet him and offered my hand.
It took a long time for him to reach me, and I began to feel awkward, standing with my arm out. Finally, he took my hand in his. It was large, probably once a strong hand, and yet now it felt papery and soft. “I’m Walter Fieldings,” he said. He had a head full of thick gray hair that contrasted with his heavily wrinkled face and the frail stoop of his shoulders.
“Dad, here,” Eden said, pushing her chair toward him. Once he sat, she took a seat on the couch. “Ms. Sutter and I were just talking about McKnight Corporation, but I know this is a tough subject for you. Why don’t you let me finish this, then we’ll have lunch?”
“I was just trying to find out exactly what happened when McKnight took over your company,” I said, sitting again. “From what I understand, there was some early disagreement, but you decided to sell, is that right?”
Mr. Fieldings smiled. “In its most rudimentary form, that is what happened.”
“Can you tell me the not-so-rudimentary version?”
“Dad,” Eden said. Just that one word. A word of caution.
Mr. Fieldings glanced in the direction of his daughter, but seemed not to see her. “How do you spell your last name?” he asked me.
“Sutter. S-U-T-T-E-R.”
“And your family? Where are they from?”
The question threw me. I paused for a moment. “We’re from…Well, we’re from all over. My father and I have lived in New York for many years now.”
“I see,” Mr. Fielding said. “And your father’s name?”
That tightness in my chest that I felt this morning came back. “William Sutter,” I said, my voice coming out low.
“And he goes by Will, does he?”
“Do you know my