Three hours later Larry Saylor’s reasons for wanting to get someone else’s perspective made more sense to me. Stripped of the negative press, Vincent Margoletti appeared to be a great guy, posing with other attendees at charity tennis matches, symphony balls, and art gallery openings. A gushy photo spread of his house in Atherton, which is an estate-studded San Francisco suburb, focused on his taste for luxury. A large, vividly colored Anselm Kiefer painting dominated the white-on-white living room décor and the article mentioned his growing art collection. A photo of him in Town & Country with his son in Florida, the younger Margoletti muscular, grinning in jodhpurs and a helmet and holding a champagne flute, was captioned “Vincent and Jean Paul Margoletti celebrate polo win.” None of this set off alarm bells. There are some people who, through skills, connections, luck and timing, manage to earn vast sums of money. That they spend it lavishly on themselves is none of my business unless it intersects with my fundraising for the Devor.
When I turned back to Vince’s professional bio, something piqued my curiosity. Vince sat on a number of corporate boards, again, no surprise. The people who are on boards tend to look for new members from their own set, which means the same people wind up sitting on numerous boards. It’s not progressive, but it’s not illegal. What caught my eye were penciled asterisks on the page next to the names of several companies on whose boards Vince Margoletti sat, big names in the last decade’s tech burst, still privately owned, the research said.
What did it mean? Possibly nothing, but in my consulting role I needed to make sure the companies weren’t delaying their decisions to go public because they were in financial trouble. That’s something Lynthorpe’s vice president and treasurer would have needed to know. After all, if Margoletti owned ten million shares in a company that was about to go belly up, they would be worthless. Would he have the cash to make good on his pledge once Lynthorpe committed to spend the money on building the art gallery? More than one institution had been left with massive construction loans when a donor failed to follow through on a cash pledge, and a small college like Lynthorpe would be particularly vulnerable.
There was a draft of the gift agreement, of course, in lawyerly terms, with a list of artwork included in the transaction along with a copy from his accountant’s office. On a yellow sheet of lined paper, Saylor had handwritten a list. “Call VM office,” was at the top of the page, which must have been what the development director was unhappy about, wanting to be the big cheese where contact with the donor was concerned. The next said only “Call Sotheby’s.” Sotheby’s and Christie’s are the two major auction houses that handle most of the top tier secondary market for art worldwide. Their breathless promotion of big-ticket paintings gets lots of media coverage and no wonder, with prices in the multimillion-dollar range becoming more common every month. Right after that on the handwritten to-do list, a reminder to “check all against master,” whatever that meant.
Farther down the page was a phone number preceded by an international code I didn’t recognize, with a check in the left margin to show, undoubtedly, that he had made the call. The next two items were times of appointments with the dean and the development director on the same day two weeks ago. The last one noted the meeting with President Brennan two days ago, the day I arrived and saw him coming out of Brennan’s office, too irritated to do more than mutter a greeting to me.
I recalled the discomfort of the three men I had met with, and the implicit messages to avoid stirring up trouble, and wondered if their meetings with Saylor had made them—or him—nervous. How frustrating that Larry Saylor had passed away before we had an opportunity to talk. He must have been seriously concerned to risk making his peers at Lynthorpe angry with him. Who would want to be blamed for losing a huge gift, especially one that so many others were clamoring to take credit for?
And how convenient, my inner voice chimed in, that if he was seriously questioning Margoletti’s gift while the donor and the senior college officials were pushing hard to get it accepted quickly, he should happen to die. The thought made me shiver.
I was tapping my pencil on the pages when Gabby spoke behind me. “There you are.” The girlish enthusiasm and big smiles were gone. Even her ponytail looked less perky. “The president’s assistant says he’d appreciate it if you could drop by for a few minutes this afternoon.”
“Of course. I’m pretty well through with this material, if you want to get it back to Saylor’s office,” I said. “Any chance I could make copies of this handwritten list of meetings?”
She nodded. “Everything if you’d like it.”
“Thanks. Only the material that he annotated for now. You did a great job researching Margoletti’s Silicon Valley ties. Did Saylor satisfy himself about the value of the shares Margoletti owns in the companies on whose boards he sits?”
She dropped into an empty chair, looked around cautiously. “I think so. It’s a humungous position for someone who started out as a solo practitioner thirty years ago, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but not without precedent. I’d guess Margoletti’s a sharp businessman who drives a hard bargain. I thought maybe the college’s chief financial officer was worried that the shares weren’t worth enough to guarantee such a large cash gift.”
Gabby shook her head slowly. “He didn’t discuss that with me. He did ask me to see if there was anything in the California papers about Margoletti’s son, his hobbies or his job, stuff like that.”
“And did you find anything?”
“Sorry. He mentioned it only the day before you came and I was too busy to start looking.” Her voice trailed off and she squirmed in her chair. “I got a message from the dean a little while ago. I need to bring Mr. Saylor’s files over to his office. I’m sorry to rush you, but his assistant was pretty firm that he wants everything related to Mr. Margoletti transferred to him.”
“Let’s walk back to Saylor’s office now. We can talk on the way,” I said, standing as I gathered everything into the folders Gabby had left with me. “Do you have any clue about why he met several times in the last two weeks with the senior leadership here?” I didn’t say that his concerns were apparently pointed enough to spark the animosity of his peers.
“I know he was worried about something he found out,” Gabby said. “I don’t know what it was. He told me he needed to talk directly to Mr. Margoletti.”
“And did he?”
“I assume so,” she said. “That’s who he was playing golf with yesterday.”