Chapter 4 - The Reception at the Chase
The Khorassan Ballroom at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel was an expansive, gilded monument to Art Deco excess.
Three tiers of crystal chandeliers hung from a barrel-vaulted ceiling painted with gold leaf; thirty tables draped in silver-gray damask surrounded an enormous, polished parquet dance floor; and along the perimeter walls, three ten-foot motorized projection screens hung motionless, ready for the evening’s visual programming.
At six-thirty, the room was humming with the sound of a seventy-piece brass-and-strings ensemble and the clinking of three hundred crystal champagne flutes.
At Table Nine—tucked between the service doors leading to the pastry kitchen and the service bar—Arthur Holloway sat between Aunt Marlene and his younger brother, Uncle Frank.
His tuxedo collar was completely soaked through with sweat.
"She did it to spite me, Frank," Arthur muttered into his whiskey tumbler, his third since the receiving line closed. "She cut her own hair in the bathroom because she knew I had that meeting arranged with Miles Keene. She’s been trying to undermine Callie’s agency since the day Callie got her first commercial client."
Uncle Frank, a retired diesel mechanic who had never liked Callie's perfume or her three-thousand-dollar handbags, set his beer down with a heavy, glass-on-wood clatter.
"Arthur, shut your damn mouth," Frank said, his voice flat and gravelly. "I looked at the girl's neck during the processional. That wasn't a stylist’s razor cut. That was a jagged tear. Someone took kitchen shears to her skin. If I find out your golden girl had her hands on Tessa before the church, you and I are going out to the parking lot."
"Frank, please!" Marlene hissed, waving her linen napkin frantically. "Keep your voice down! Miles Keene is sitting three tables away with the executive committee from Horizon! Do you want them to think we’re white trash?"
"We are white trash, Marlene," Frank replied, without blinking. "Some of us just don't buy our clothes on credit."
Across the dance floor, at Table Four, Callie was engaged in a desperate, high-stakes charm offensive.
She had positioned herself directly to the right of Miles Keene, leaning in so close that her emerald earrings brushed his shoulder, her voice modulating into that breathless, executive-concierge cadence that had sustained her business for four years.
"The retreat package for the fourth quarter is completely turnkey, Miles," Callie was saying, sliding a gloss-varnished corporate brochure across the silver linen toward an older man with silver hair and a steel-gray suit—Jim Vance (no relation to Dorian), the executive vice president of human resources for Horizon Transport. "We handle the private aviation from Spirit Airport, the five-star lodge buyout in Big Sky, and the private security logistics. It’s the exact high-impact experience your board expects after a record-breaking fiscal year."
Jim Vance looked down at the brochure, then looked across the dance floor toward the head table, where Bennett and I were seated beneath a canopy of white orchids.
"Your sister works for our Midwest intermodal group, doesn't she, Callie?" Jim Vance asked, his voice low, dry, and distinctly unhurried.
Callie’s smile twitched at the left corner. "Tessa? Oh, yes. She’s... well, she’s in middle management at the rail yard. Operational support. Very routine work. We try not to talk about freight rates at family dinners."
"She’s the senior operations director for the Gateway corridor, Miss Holloway," Jim Vance corrected her, without looking up from his water glass. "She managed the emergency reroute during the Mississippi River levee breach last spring. She saved our third-quarter perishable margins by seventeen million dollars in six days. My board doesn't view her work as 'routine.'"
Miles Keene leaned forward, his cold blue eyes fixing upon Callie with the precision of an auditor inspecting an unauthorized line item.
"Callie," Miles murmured, his voice barely audible beneath the sound of the string quartet. "Where did you say you got the seed capital for your corporate expansion five years ago? When you bought out your previous partner in Chicago?"
Callie’s throat clicked as she swallowed. Her fingers tightened around her silver fork. "I... I told you, Miles. It was a private family restructuring. Dad and I liquidated some secondary equipment assets from the distribution firm."
"Is that right?" Miles asked. He pulled a slim, black leather cardholder from his breast pocket, extracted a folded piece of paper that had been delivered to his table by Dorian Vance ten minutes earlier, and tapped it against the damask cloth. "Because your father’s corporate tax filings from twenty-twenty-one show a federal tax lien and a negative retained earnings balance of ninety-four thousand dollars on the date that wire cleared."
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"Miles, this isn't the place—"
"The master of ceremonies is stepping to the podium, Miss Holloway," Jim Vance interrupted, gesturing toward the stage with his water glass. "I believe the father-daughter dance is about to begin. Let's see how well your family handles its choreography."
