Fire Trap

5 - Board meeting

Mark took me to meet everybody. He did the talking while I smiled and shook hands. The only surprise was Janice Hillberg, the daughter of Doug Hillberg. Besides being his daughter, she was one of the three current partners in the venture firm.

She was the only woman in the room and not businesslike in the least. She was totally feminine in a dark cashmere sweater and perfectly fitting black skirt. An alligator belt and a thin silver bracelet were her only accessories. Not an environmentalist.

The belt was probably to remind the others of who had the teeth in the boardroom. Mark might strut around and lead the meeting as CEO, but she had the fifty-one percent incisors to cut off long-winded haggling. Confidence rolled off her like perfume, and several of the board members were trying to suck up the vapors.

She likely thought nothing of the power she held, growing up the daughter of a wheeler-dealer. She looked to be in her early thirties, if that. Probably straight from an ivy-league dorm to the boardroom, skipping all those rungs the grayer heads in the room had spent their whole lives climbing. She might have gotten here by influence, but she couldn't stay without a lot of brains.

Mark finished introducing me to Mitchell Something-or-other, the legal counsel, and turned to the rest of the room. "Shall we get started?"

No one answered, but everyone took their places at a rosewood table that could seat twenty. There were only half that many present, but I gathered it was a typical turnout, even though this was a short-notice special meeting about the fire.

There was a scribe, a timekeeper, minutes, motions with seconds and all the palaver of doing things formally. Even with my nap, I was beginning to doze off when they got to the meat and potatoes.

Mark rapped for attention. "Status on the fire investigation. You've all met Paul Maxwell from Pacific Mutual, and, now, Randy Justice representing the Western Insurance Group. Randy's concern is with the keyman insurance on Simon. That will be the next topic, but first the fire. Paul..."

Paul sat midway down the table, directly across from me. He looked up at me for a moment from behind wire-rim glasses, and I didn't like what I saw. His tailored light gray suit and yellow tie said bureaucrat. He was small and trim. I put him down as a jogger with a health club membership. I'm not against health or jogging, it was the package. He didn't look like a free thinker. What he looked like was a 't' crosser and an 'i' dotter. I guess I was being pretty severe since he hadn't spoken a single word yet, but that's the beauty of first impressions, you don't have to justify them, and they don't have to be fair.

"I've read the police report and the preliminary fire department report," he began, "but it seems some additional investigation will be required."

I didn't have any preliminary reports in my material from Tom. I was irked and made a mental note to quiz Tom about the omission when I called next. Usually, Western was pretty good about such details.

"What length of time?" Mark asked.

"Probably another week."

Mitchell, the legal counsel at Mark 's right, straightened up sharply. "That's impossible. The press have already run several stories. If things drag out another week, people will speculate there's a reason. The funding round will suffer."

"Mr. Petry is right," Mark said, "Why a week?"

"The fire department puts the explosion at about 7:30 p.m., the result of a gas build-up that reached an open flame in Simon's lab. Since the heating system was turned off the first of May," Paul continued, "the major difficulty seems to be understanding how the gas leak occurred."

"Didn't a physical inspection of the site reveal that?" Mark asked.

"Not initially."

"Then what more will you be doing?" Mark asked, voicing everyone's thoughts.