Catherine’s stopover in New York was another publicity triumph. She was on the board of a small but important East Side gallery that was hosting the American debut of an important Israeli painter. New York society was on hand for the opening, then scattered to half a dozen very private supper parties. Catherine made them all, changing her gown between each event, her attire more sensational and revealing as the hour grew later. She was on the late-night news of two networks and had two different photos on the society page of the
Times
.
She came into the office like Cleopatra returning to Egypt, trailed by junior executives and secretaries who wrote furiously to keep up with her dictated instructions. Behind them trailed security guards who had been pressed into carrying her luggage. She set up dinners with television producers who were delivering their shows over the satellite network, and with the chairman of a computer company that was using the satellites for data traffic. When all her arrangements were completed, she called Peter Barnes to let him know that she was in and wanted to see him. Jennifer got word thirdhand through Peter’s secretary.
“A triumph,” Catherine announced, tossing the newspaper reviews onto the conference table. “Three of the major exhibitors have agreed to take it as a downlink from our satellites. That adds up to over a thousand screens.”
Peter and Jennifer offered their congratulations and added praise for her success at the gallery opening. “Too bad we can’t carry fine art on the network,” Peter teased. “That would be another business that you could get us into.”
But Catherine quickly got to the additional funding for Padraig.
The figure caused Jennifer’s jaw to drop and nearly sent Peter into shock. “Out of the question,” he said the instant he recovered. “The plan is to find a buyer who might give us fifty cents on the dollar for all we’ve invested. We don’t want to go any further into the hole.”
Catherine snapped that he was being shortsighted. The production company, she claimed, was a hot property. The new film, coming on the heels of this success, was bound to be big at the box office. “Why should we take a loss so that a studio can come in and skim off the profits?”
They argued well into the evening, Catherine moving from one justification to the next while Peter dug in his heels and fell back on their original decision. Jennifer listened, asked for clarifications, and commented. She never stated her own preference. When it came to a vote, she joined with Peter in denying any more money to the Irish film. Catherine left in a huff but promised to carry the company’s decision to Padraig.
“You were on the fence,” Peter said to Jennifer when they sat down to an early dinner at a small Italian restaurant. “For a while, I thought you wanted to pull O’Connell’s coals out of the fire.”
Jennifer dismissed the idea and restated her commitment to their plan. But then she shared the details of her last meeting with her husband. “Tell me, Peter,” she said in conclusion. “If Padraig had nothing to do with my auto accident, would you still have reason for hating him?”
He nodded. “Because he took advantage of you.”
“Is that what you believe? Why do both you and Catherine think that anyone who shows an interest in me must be after my money?”
“I don’t think anything of the kind,” he protested. “I just think that you deserve better.”
They paused while the waiter took their orders, and sat in silence while the wine was being poured. But as soon as they were by themselves, Jennifer took up the topic again.
“Do you remember, in Cannes, when I first met Padraig?”
Peter nodded. He remembered the film festival very well.
“You and Catherine were both thrilled that I was mingling with the beautiful people. Catherine was overjoyed that someone with the dash of Padraig O’Connell was paying attention to me.”
“Of course. You were working too hard. We were happy to see you enjoying yourself.”
“Was that it? Or were you happy that someone was finally paying attention to the ugly duckling?”
He was speechless for a moment. Then he laughed out the words “ugly duckling,” making them sound preposterous. “Jennifer, you’re anything but an ugly duckling.”
“I know I’m reasonably attractive,” she said factually. “But there are two of us. Catherine is glamorous, fashionable, witty, popular … all the things I’m not. So when you look at the Pegan sisters, she’s queen of the barnyard and I’m the ugly duckling. And I must admit that it gets to me. Particularly when my closest friends decide that they have to protect me from fortune hunters. As if anyone who shows an interest in me must be out for money.”
“That’s not true,” Peter said.
“No? Then why did you both turn against Padraig the instant he got serious about me? All of a sudden you weren’t thrilled to see me out with the beautiful people, enjoying myself. My God, you even hired detectives.”
“Jennifer, you own forty percent of the stock in a major corporation. Protecting you isn’t an intrusion into your life. It’s a business necessity.”
“You weren’t protecting me, Peter. You were trying to keep me away from a man I was falling in love with. You just assumed that all a celebrity like Padraig could see in me was forty percent of the stock.”
“We checked him out, Jennifer, and what we found wasn’t encouraging. He wasn’t going to get his next movie, he was broke, in debt, and trying to get into producing. The man was desperate for money.”
Jennifer sneered. “He was still broke, in debt, and trying to get into producing when Catherine took an interest in him, but I haven’t noticed you trying to break them up. How much of our money have they made off with? Eighty million? Next to that, all he ever got from me was pocket change.”
They waited anxiously while the waiter placed their dinners before them. Neither of them even looked at the food.
Peter resumed immediately. “It’s not at all the same. Padraig was pursuing you. Catherine, on the other hand, went after him to make use of his connections.”
“Sure,” she said scornfully. “I’ve seen pictures of his connections.”
“She also wanted to show you that it was the money he was after. That he’d drop you in an instant if he could get the money somewhere else.”
Jennifer sighed and lifted her fork but kept it hovering above her plate. “Why do I think that a loving sister would try to hide that fact? Do you think she was really doing me a favor by breaking up my marriage?”
“I thought it was an outrageous idea,” he answered. “I was against it.”
“But?”
“But I can’t control Catherine, any more than I can control you. I thought it was a mistake for her to get involved with him. I thought it was a mistake to keep him on to finish his great Irish epic.”
Jennifer had to admit that there was consistency in Peter’s actions. He seemed to hate O’Connell no matter which of the sisters was involved with him. But still, Peter couldn’t see the possibility that Padraig had ever loved her. And she had to believe that her husband’s interest hadn’t been entirely in her money.
They ate in silence, but both pushed their plates away half full. While they were waiting for their coffee, Jennifer dropped her bomb.
“I think I’m going to invest in Padraig’s movie.”
Peter’s face sank. “Jesus,” he said, shaking his head.
“Not company money,” Jennifer clarified. “I’m going to make a private investment. I’ll lend him my personal money. At interest. Strictly a business venture.”
“Don’t,” Peter told her. “You’ll never get it back. There are preferred creditors. When this project bellies up—and it will—there won’t be anything left to pay you.”
“I’m betting he’ll be able to pull it off,” Jennifer answered.
He studied her for several seconds. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I am. I know I miss him.”
“Miss him how?”
Jennifer smiled. “I don’t think you can use your questions this time, Peter, because I’m not going to try to answer. The thing is, I think he’s still in love with me.”
“He needs money,” Peter warned.
“That’s what you think, isn’t it? If anyone falls in love with the ugly duckling, it must be because he needs her money.”
“You’re not an ugly duckling,” he snapped back. Then he glanced around the room and found that he was drawing attention from the nearby tables. In a softer voice he wondered, “What the hell has that guy got? How did he get such mindless devotion from you and your sister?”
“Now isn’t that a coincidence,” Jennifer said. “That’s the very question that Padraig asked about you.”
She regretted the comment as soon as it was out of her mouth. She could tell that she had hurt him, and he handled the check in pained silence. Outside, he got her a taxi, which she accepted though she generally used the subway. She mumbled an apology as he was showing her into the cab, but he closed the door before she finished. All the way down the West Side she kept berating herself. Peter hadn’t done anything except look out for her interests, which he’d been doing as long as she had known him.
Nonetheless, his loyalty didn’t exonerate him. Someone had ordered the brakes cut on Padraig’s car, and Peter had to be a prime suspect. Whether it was to protect her, or his own privileged
status, he was one of the few people she knew with the clout to track an enemy to the ends of the earth and the determination to destroy him. And there was no doubt that he hated Padraig. She could see it in his eyes every time her husband’s name was mentioned.
When she reached her loft, she saw the divorce agreement on her desk, exactly where it had been placed when she had refused to sign it. She wasn’t planning to reread it. She had read it in each of its redrafts and knew she could probably recite pages of it from memory. She understood exactly what it meant. What held her back was the thought that Padraig had planted, probably unintentionally. Neither of them were getting what they wanted. Peter and Catherine were the winners. Once she signed it, she and Padraig lost what they had both cherished—each other.
Maybe she and her husband should talk before she cut the last ties that bound them. Up to now, all the conversation had been bridged through attorneys who were completely indifferent to their feelings and their futures, who were obsessed with words instead of the people speaking them.
She thumbed her Rolodex and looked at Padraig’s phone number in Ireland. Maybe she should respond to the emotions he had made so obvious during his visit. She lifted the phone, but then set it down again. The fact was that he and her sister had hurt her terribly. She wasn’t sure that she had it in her to forgive.
GIVEN HIS loyal fans, and the crowd of camp followers that had gathered around his first production effort, Padraig’s rift with Catherine would have automatically made all the tabloids. What elevated it to the front pages of serious dailies, and earned it fifteen seconds on the evening television news, were the public location of the breakup and the hilarious details of their spat. Not since James Cagney crushed a breakfast grapefruit in the face of Mae Clarke had the industry found so much to write about.
They had begun fighting the moment Catherine returned from New York with the news that there would be no more money from Pegasus Satellite Services. Padraig, according to gossip columnists, had suggested that Catherine put up her own money, and she had responded that she had already invested her whole career in Padraig O’Connell and that there was nothing more to give.
The filming had wrapped up without enough money to pay shipping costs back to California, or to redeem the surety bonds from the communities they had invaded. Padraig had returned to Hollywood to arrange financing for his postfilming costs. Catherine had gone back to New York in her last effort to borrow the money. She had flown out to the coast empty-handed to meet the actor, who had just been turned down by all the legitimate financiers. His best offer had been money equal to 15 percent of the total production investment for a 50 percent interest in the film. It had been offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
Padraig’s only visible alternative was to sell the footage to a studio for fifty cents on the dollar. To ease his embarrassment, they had promised him an executive producer’s card in the titles.
He took Catherine to lunch at Le Dome. He still had two credit cards that would go through, and he insisted that it was important to put on a show of strength for the deal makers who used the restaurant as a personal stock exchange.
They made a grand entrance, Padraig in a clan cravat and Catherine in a bare-midriff pantsuit. They stopped at every table along the way to shake hands, laugh cordially, and demonstrate their confidence. “I hear you need money,” someone whispered to Padraig.
“You’re damn right I need money. I always need money. But I’m not selling even one second of my picture,” he said.
“What’s this about funding difficulties?” someone asked Catherine. Her response was a wry smile. “I spend more on cosmetics than you’ve ever spent on a movie,” she answered.
They took an obvious table and ordered a cocktail and an appetizer they could split. Their attitude fairly shouted that if Padraig’s picture was in trouble, he and his angel certainly weren’t worried. The suggestion was that if some lab owner or film editor wanted to offer his services against a percentage of the box office, they might be persuaded to entertain the idea.
But their nonchalance disappeared over the main course. Twice Padraig was seen to throw down his fork and yell that something or other was “out of the question” or simply “unacceptable.” Catherine was heard to raise her voice with “Use your head, Padraig. This isn’t a screenplay, this is real!” As dessert was being served, Catherine jumped up, apparently on the verge of tears, and rushed to the powder room. When she returned, people who had already paid their checks stayed pinned to their seats to see how the luncheon would wrap up.
They weren’t disappointed. While eating the chocolate truffle cake, Catherine had suddenly snapped in a raised voice, “How can you say that? It’s simply not true!” Padraig had responded, “How would you know? You were out with the lighting crew.”
At which point Catherine had lifted her dessert plate, weighted it for a second in the palm of her hand, then smashed it into Padraig’s face.
The actor did his best take, letting the chocolate and whipped cream run down his chin while he ceremoniously folded his napkin and scraped the mousse out of his eyes. For her part, Catherine took her time folding her napkin and gathering her purse. She finished her coffee, took a final sip of her water, got up and left. She reached the front step just in time to run into the photographers and television crews that had rushed to cover the event.
Catherine’s comment was that Padraig was too used to getting his way with women who were probably brain-dead to begin with. Padraig told reporters that Catherine’s artistic judgment came from painting by the numbers. There was little doubt that their torrid personal relationship and dazzling business partnership had come to an end. Catherine made a great show of processing her six bags of California clothing through ticketing, then caught the red-eye back to New York. Padraig went directly to his beach house and was seen sitting on his deck with a bottle of Scotch. He didn’t return phone calls.
In the morning Catherine flashed through the Pegasus reception area in a neat-as-a-pin business suit, her face as fresh and rested as if she were returning from a spa rather than the infamous overnight flight from California. She made a visit to her sister’s office, where she told Jennifer how lucky they were to be rid of O’Connell. “He frustrates directors, infuriates actors, and thinks a budget is some sort of record that he has to surpass.” Catherine detailed the pleasure she had felt at grinding a pie into his “heroic face,” and swore that her partnership with him was over. “I went to bat for him every time he promised to get things under control,” she lamented, detailing the amount of funding she had brought to his efforts. “And then the bastard has the nerve to blame me for his own failure.”
Jennifer found herself laughing at her sister’s rage. “Seems to me that you both got what you deserved. You screwed me over and then he screwed you over. What could be fairer?”
“No, that’s not what happened,” Catherine corrected. “He screwed you over. But I got even. Padraig O’Connell is going down in flames, his movie shot out from under him. Believe me, he’s finished in Hollywood. We’re going to get most of our money back, and then we’re going to leave the bastard for dead.”
She was even more confident when she got to Peter’s office. “Someone’s going to pick up that film for pocket change and make a killing,” she explained. “I think it ought to be us. If Pegasus buys it, we can offset our part of the loss and stick Padraig with his. What do you think?”
He answered with a question. “Did Jennifer tell you that she’s planning to lend Padraig the money he needs to finish?”
Catherine’s face fell. “For God’s sake! That little fool. He’ll take her to the cleaners.”
“That’s about what I told her,” Peter said. “It’s a bad investment. But she thinks I’m biased. According to her, I’m the one who tampered with the brakes on Padraig’s car and hired the man who broke into your apartment.”
“What?” Catherine looked amazed.
“She also thinks I made a second attempt at Padraig when his helicopter went down. It strikes her as too much of a coincidence that I arrived there the day before.”
Catherine rose slowly and wandered to the windows. He watched her as she stared out for a moment and then came back to the conference table. “Peter …” she began hesitantly, “I think that Jennifer may need some help. Medical, psychiatric, whatever.”
He said nothing, but his expression showed she had his full attention.
“I think she’s terribly … confused. Somehow Padraig comes through all this as her unblemished hero. You and I are the enemies?”
He nodded. “Maybe she has reasons. You and I never wanted to see her and Padraig together.”
“True, but her reasons go back a long way. Jennifer has this obsession that I’m out to ruin her life. She’s had it since we were children. Now she hates me for proving that Padraig was just after her money.”
“You chose a rather heavy-handed way of making your point,” he reminded her. “From her viewpoint, you stole her husband.”
She nodded. It was certainly true that Jennifer had every right to be furious with her. “But this goes further,” she said. Then she said, “Peter, I think Jennifer was behind the attempt on my life?”
“Why would you think that?” he questioned.
“For the same reasons that the police suspect her. The man worked in her gym, waited tables at her favorite coffee shop, and lived in her building. It’s just not credible that she never spoke to him and didn’t even remember seeing him.”
“It happens in the city. I don’t know my next-door neighbor. I think the police understand those things.”
“But there’s something the police don’t know. This isn’t the first time that Jennifer tried to kill me. Several years ago, when we were diving in Belize, she tried to pull out my air hose. And she had much less reason then for wanting me dead than she does now.”
He was flabbergasted. “She tried to kill you?”
Catherine nodded gravely. “She denied it. Even implied that I was reaching for her air hose. And, to be truthful, we were swimming very close to each other and it was confusing. But I know what I saw. There was no doubt in my mind that she wanted to rip the air line off my tank.”
Peter took off his glasses and dangled them from his fingertips. “I’ve always felt the undercurrent between you and Jennifer. Maybe even a little jealousy, although I have no idea what either of you could be jealous of. You’re both so talented, both such attractive people. But … murder. I simply can’t believe it.”
“I don’t want to believe it, either,” Catherine said. “But I no
longer go to Jennifer’s apartment, and I don’t have her over to my place unless someone else is there. So I guess, deep down, I know that it’s true.”
Peter stood, paused thoughtfully, and walked to a window. “I can’t believe what’s happened to us,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I always thought that when I left the company you and Jennifer would be a perfect management team, despite your differences.”
“Left the company?” Catherine was shocked. “What are you talking about?”
“My resignation. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. My work here is pretty well finished.” He refitted his glasses.
“You can’t! Not now. You’ve never been more needed than you are now.”
“No,” he answered calmly. “Lately, I’ve simply been in the way. I’ve made an enemy of Jennifer by trying to stop her from bringing in Padraig O’Connell. And I’ve made an enemy of you by blocking any more funding for Padraig’s company. Pegasus is your company, and I should be working for you and Jennifer. The fact is that I’m still working for your father. That has to stop.”
“But not now,” Catherine pleaded. “You can’t walk out of here and leave me in partnership with someone who wants to kill me.”
“I don’t believe Jennifer is capable of that. As for the business problems, the two of you will work them out.”
Catherine was becoming frantic. “The two of us? You just said that she’s going to fund Padraig. That means there will be two of them against me.”
“I can’t solve that problem. It’s not a business problem. It’s a personal problem that involves you and your sister. I blame myself because I should have nipped it in the bud. That’s what your father would have done, but I’m not your father. I’m a hired manager, and that doesn’t give me any right to get involved in your personal affairs.”
“You can’t go now,” Catherine persisted.
“I’ll give it another month,” he said. “But I’m not going to come between you and your sister, and I’m not going to take sides. If you ask me, I’ll tell you what I think. That gives you and Jennifer a month to decide what the real issues are.”
Padraig O’Connell smiled when he heard that Jennifer was on the line. He took a sip of water and cleared his throat before he picked up the phone, then answered with his most charming Irish lilt. “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“A business proposition,” Jennifer said, making no attempt to match his cordial tone. “I want to lend you some money at a very high interest rate. Say, nine percent.”
“I can get eight from a bank,” he answered.
“I’m not a bank.”
“True,” he said. “And as you probably know already, the only thing the bank will give me is a home mortgage. So I guess I’ll pay you nine.” Then he asked how much she was planning on lending him.
“How much do you need?”
He purred for a few seconds. “Would ten million be out of the question?”
“It would. I’ve done my homework, and it looks as if you need five.”
“Five? That wouldn’t get me back to even.”
Jennifer laughed. “I’m not proposing to pay your bar bill. Just editing and music. If we make a profit, then you can get back to even.”
“Done,” he announced. “Where do I sign?”
“The paperwork will come by overnight messenger. The check will follow as soon as I get the signed note.”
“Jennifer,” he said before she could hang up, “thank you. I’ve made a great many mistakes recently, but you weren’t one of them.”
The phone clicked dead in his hand.
Jennifer still hadn’t signed the divorce agreement. In fact, she hadn’t touched it since her attorney had left it on her desk. She had been happy with Padraig in their brief time together. And it wasn’t simply that she had enjoyed the moments of celebrity that came from holding his hand. Padraig had given her a new vision of herself. When she saw herself reflected in his eyes, she was a totally different person than she was used to seeing in mirrors.