The Locked Office
Chapter 06 - The Locked Office
Grant changed the locks on the executive floor that afternoon.
It was a mistake.
Claire arrived with Richard and three board members.
Security opened the doors.
Grant was waiting inside.
“You have no authority here,” he told Claire.
Richard answered.
“She owns forty-nine percent of the holding company.”
Grant laughed.
“Non-voting shares.”
“Not anymore.”
The smile vanished.
Richard placed a document on the conference table.
Six months earlier, when he first became suspicious of Grant’s finances, Richard had quietly amended the voting rights attached to part of his own stake.
The transfer had become effective the morning after the gala.
Claire now controlled fifty-one percent.
She stared at Richard.
“You never told me.”
“I wasn’t sure you would accept it.”
“You were right.”
Grant slammed his hand against the table.
“You can’t do this.”
Richard turned toward his son.
“You already did.”
The emergency board meeting lasted four hours.
Grant was suspended as chief executive pending an independent audit.
Claire refused the CEO position.
Instead, she asked that longtime operations director Marcus Hill serve temporarily.
Grant looked almost relieved.
“You see?” he told the board. “She can’t handle it.”
Claire opened the gold folder again.
“I’m not interested in sitting in your chair, Grant.”
She looked around the table.
“I’m interested in making sure the six hundred people who work for this company still have jobs next month.”
The board approved the audit unanimously.
Grant left without speaking to Claire.
That evening, she returned to the house they had shared for eighteen years.
Half his clothes were gone.
So was the painting from the living room.
And the antique watch Richard had given him.
Claire walked upstairs.
Her jewelry drawer had been opened.
Her mother’s diamond earrings were missing.
But it was not the jewelry that frightened her.
On Grant’s side of the closet floor, beneath an empty shoe box, Claire found a hotel key card.
Not from a Bennett property.
From a small hotel near the Canadian border.
The date printed on the receipt attached to it was only two days away.
Claire called Richard.
“Do we have any company accounts in Canada?”
Silence.
Then Richard said, “We shouldn’t.”
Claire looked at Grant’s empty closet.
May you like
For the first time, she wondered whether her husband was planning something more serious than saving his reputation.
Maybe he was planning to disappear.
