Its 4:10 a.m. in California and here I sit. This has become a bad habit. I write for a few hours and go back to bed. Why, I have no idea. Perhaps I’m on New York time due to writing this novel.
Chapter Sixteen
Chad’s year had been a good one. He and his father had helped one of their best and wealthiest friends in the pharmaceutical business, go public.
Chad and his father’s company had made tons of money on the work he had done on the initial public offering and on the quickly rising stock prices of the shares of stock he had secretly purchased in it. Chad hoped that the first run up was a good indication of things to come. That was the hope of he and his father, anyway.
He didn’t give much thought about the harm the newest drug created by this company was doing or the long troubled history the company had before when it was only owned by the family of his best friend. Now it was a publicly traded entity and those problems of litigation would fall on someone else in the distant future.
Chad and Suzan had looked for weeks for a fitting wedding venue.
Suzan was unaware of the riches her fiancé now possessed. He gave her a budget that amazed her and she soon was looking at what seemed to be hundreds of pamphlets on marriage venues. She soon found herself in an unfamiliar world of having nearly unlimited choices and funds at her disposal. She couldn’t make a decision and explained that to Chad.
“Alright dear, just tell me the five most important features you want in a venue,” he asked as they sat and talked over her frustrations.
“I need enough room for our guests.”
“Great. That’s a good place to start. How many do you want to invite?”
“I have a large family and several good friends from work and college I’d like to invite. I think perhaps fifty.”
“Great, lets start with that.”
She sat on his long, leather sofa and pondered the question with a pencil and a yellow legal pad in her hands she had taken off Chad’s desk, nearby. Her feet were warm from wearing a pair of Chad’s thick socks. They rested on an antique chest with a glass top over the flat lid.
Chad had told her when she came to his apartment the first time that it had once belonged to one of the kings of France, a few centuries ago. She didn’t believe him at the time, of course. She thought that he was just trying to show off a little to impress her. He didn’t have to. The apartment did that for him. As the story went, he bought it on one of his many business trips to Europe and brought it home with him on the company’s private jet. Chad had seen it in an antique shop while he looked for a place to eat lunch in Paris. She thought at the time, that the story was ridiculous.
At this point she still wasn’t sure but it looked more likely. The money Chad gave her was absurd. But his apartment was on the sixteenth floor overlooking Central Park.
It was furnished with antiques and modern pieces as well. Chad’s mother had brought in a decorator when she bought him the apartment. She was used to doing things “properly” and Chad let her go crazy. The cost was not an issue, obviously.
Suzan hadn’t noticed at first, but over time it was clear that there was some real money involved in the interior design of Chad’s apartment. Some of the wonderful things around her turned out to be real. Suzan thought the paintings were just very well done prints. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.
I wan to thank all of you who have been coming along on this little adventure.
More are joining us each day, or so it seems.
Remember, “Atlanta,” one of my wild detective novels, is available on Amazon and Audible.
I will be leaving for India and Sri Lanka in September. That should be fun and interesting.
Oh, I will be doing another podcast on the 9th of July. More on that tomorrw.