Martin was demanding but generous. What more could you want in a boss?
She ended her phone call as Bree pushed open the door and said, “Hello, Elena. Am I early?”
Martin smiled, stood, and extended her hand. “Bree,” she said. “How good to see you.” The two shook, and Martin gestured for Bree to sit. “I saw there’s been another Family Man killing. Alex must be busy.”
“Up to his eyeballs, as our boys, Ali and Damon, like to say,” Bree said, sitting.
“Any leads?”
“None that I’ve heard,” she said, feeling slightly uncomfortable. “Because he doesn’t share much with me about the case. He can’t.”
“Understood,” Martin said, also sitting down. “The whole thing’s just wrong. On another, happier note, I read your report on the Wallace Industries investigation. Well done.”
“Thank you. It didn’t take me long to figure out who was embezzling from their research fund.”
“Well, they couldn’t figure it out, and Ken Wallace himself called yesterday to say how pleased they were with the results of your work,” Martin said. “He also gave us a hefty contract to examine his company’s security protocol worldwide, which I believe calls for a hefty bonus for you in your next paycheck, Ms. Stone.”
Bree was happily surprised. “Thank you, Elena. I didn’t expect that, but I’m not going to turn it down if you’re offering.”
“Who would? And I’m insisting,” Martin said. She steepled her fingers. “You were the one.”
Raising her eyebrows, Bree said, “The one?”
Martin pointed to the two boxes on the conference table. “The first and only one I thought of when this delicate case came our way. We have a client with very deep pockets who wishes to remain deeply anonymous.”
“Do you know the client?”
“I know the client’s representative but not the client, no.”
“What am I doing?” Bree said, reaching for the boxes. “Where am I going?”
Martin put her hand on Bree’s. “You need to sign a nondisclosure agreement.”
“Isn’t nondisclosure boilerplate in our contracts?”
“Not in this case,” Martin said. “The client’s nondisclosure agreement is punitive.”
“Punitive?”
“If anything leaks, you and I and the firm could be sued for damages.”
Bree frowned at that. “Elena, I’m not saying anything is going to leak, but—”
“Don’t worry,” Martin said. “I’m taking out an insurance policy to cover any damages we might incur from this case.”
“Is the contract worth it?”
“Yes, and you have no idea what it might mean down the road for you, for me, and for Bluestone if we can prove ourselves with this case.” Martin slid three documents across the table to Bree. “Sign if you’re in. If not, no problem, I can find someone less talented to do the job for a smaller piece of the company’s future.”
Bree hesitated for a moment, then smiled as she found a pen in her purse. “Well done yourself, Elena. You got me hook, line, and sinker.”
“Thank you, Bree,” Martin said. “I’d hoped that would work.”
CHAPTER 9
AFTER BREE SIGNED THE NDA, Elena Martin left for another meeting. Bree took the two cardboard boxes into her office and locked the door behind her.
She removed her jacket and got out a pad of paper and her phone in case she wanted to take photographs for later reference. Bree opened the first file and was intrigued to see it held the records of a lawsuit from several years before; the file was stamped DISMISSED and SEALED in red letters.
The case had been brought in Raleigh, North Carolina, by two women and a man she’d never heard of against a defendant whose name was instantly recognizable. It shocked her.
“Frances Duchaine,” she whispered. “The Frances Duchaine? Really?”
Bree read the first few sentences of the dismissed suit and her free hand traveled to her mouth. By the time she was halfway through the document, she was not only thoroughly engrossed but also angry. When she finished, she was furious and wanted to throw the file away. But then she went back to the start of the complaint and that stamped word dismissed and wondered how much, if anything, she’d read was true.
Bree forced herself to withhold judgment, calm down, and be open-minded. She set that file to one side and chose another from the box.
Before Bree opened it, though, she thought: What if it is true? But how could it be? Wouldn’t someone have known? Duchaine is not exactly a secretive billionaire. A billionaire, yes, but not some secretive financier. She’s a marketer at heart. She’s her own brand. In the public eye all the time. Someone should have known. But again, why would a woman as successful as Frances Duchaine take the risks alleged in the suit?
Bree looked back at the first suit and the date of its dismissal, then wrote down the name of the plaintiffs’ attorney—Nora Jessup—and her address. She also noted the superior court judge’s name—Eloise Carmichael. Only then did she open the second file.
It contained a stapled sheaf of photocopied press clippings about Frances Duchaine and her meteoric rise and sustained position in the world of high fashion. Bree knew some of her history, but she spent the next hour studying the woman in greater depth.
Duchaine had suddenly appeared twenty-five years earlier, plucked from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology by no less an icon than Tess Jackson.
At that time, Tess Jackson’s eponymous brand was growing so fast, she couldn’t keep up with design demands. Jackson had graduated from FIT herself and was a generous alum. She’d called the president of the school and asked to see the portfolios of the three senior students the faculty believed showed the most promise.
Jackson was scheduled to give a lecture at FIT a few days later. Of course, word of the three chosen students got out. Duchaine, at that time a sophomore, was not among them. But she heard Jackson was looking for a young designer and ambushed her near her car when she arrived at the school.
“Frances looked like a model then too,” Jackson told New York magazine ten years later. “In fact, that’s what I thought she had in her portfolio, headshots and such. And when she told me she was a sophomore in the design program, I said I was interested only in the most experienced students. Frances would not take no for an answer and said I should at least look at her drawings. So I did. Right there in the parking lot.”
Jackson was floored by what she saw, and on the spot, she offered Duchaine a job as her personal assistant to learn the business while she coached her on her designs. Not long after that, Duchaine’s fashion started to appear under Jackson’s label.
And not long after that, Duchaine became Jackson’s sometime lover.
It worked until it didn’t. For almost seven years, Jackson’s brand and its subsidiaries grew and prospered. At age twenty-seven, however, and with Jackson in her late forties, Duchaine left the company and the relationship and started her own brand.
“It was inevitable, but it still broke my heart,” Jackson said in the article. “Now we are friends and I know it was the right choice for Frances. She is not the kind of woman who likes to be contained by any sort of convention. That’s what I loved and still love about her.”