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The next morning, I arrived promptly at the Fremont coffee shop where I’d arranged to meet Harold Earnest. The place was teeming with people, everyone desperate for a caffeine fix before Friday began. The bustle compelled me to say a silent prayer extolling the brilliant creation of alimony, which had absolved me from the need to work for a living.
I stepped in line at the counter and glanced around the room while I waited, attempting to locate Track-It’s co-founder. Although I’d heard my father mention his old college friend throughout the years, I’d never met the man in person.
I spotted a Harold Earnest candidate at a center table, his bespectacled face pressed against a newspaper. Everything about him—from the thick glasses to the mussed hair to the strange metal gadget sticking out of his breast pocket—screamed old-fashioned engineer.
I ordered a green tea and carried my cup to the man’s table. His face and the newspaper had practically merged into one entity, his farsightedness so pronounced that I half expected the day’s headlines to be imprinted backward across his nose as soon as he finished reading.
With the newspaper dropping his visibility near zero, I cleared my throat to announce my presence. The man started, ruffling the newspaper and backing up against the chair. He reminded me of a frightened cockatoo scrambling to escape his cage.
I took a small step backward and held up my teacup to show I didn’t present any mortal danger. “Harold? I’m Betsy Holmes, Rick Clapton’s daughter.”
He settled down, blowing a wisp of hair out of his face and squinting at me. “Yes, Betsy.”
Harold didn’t seem concerned with pleasantries, perhaps a side effect from working alone in a lab all day. He probably didn’t even realize I was still standing next to the table holding up my teacup as people jostled around me.
I sat myself in the wooden chair opposite my father’s former business associate, figuring that Harold deigning to talk to me at all was the closest I’d get to an invitation to join him. “Thanks for agreeing to meet,” I said. “I hoped we could talk some about my father and your company.”
“Your father was a financial whiz,” Harold said.
“He certainly knew a good investment when he saw one,” I concurred. I didn’t mention that this knowledge generally arrived after a company’s success while my father had his own money tied up in doomed enterprises.
“Rick recognized Track-It’s potential the minute I shared my vision with him. We both had high hopes for the company.” Harold folded his newspaper. “I was devastated when James Cantwell refused to further back our venture. That decision quite broke Rick’s heart as well.”
“Couldn’t you have located another investor?” I asked. “James Cantwell couldn’t be the only venture capitalist in town willing to take a risk on microchip technology.”
As Harold shook his head, I took a sip of lukewarm tea. Cringing, I placed the cup back in its saucer and mentally wrote off the three dollars spent on this brew as a necessary investigative expense. My father wasn’t the only person in my family good with financial details.
“No, no . . . Betsy.” Harold arched an eyebrow, evidently verifying that he’d uttered the correct name. He continued once I assured him with a nod. “Most of these rich folks search out the young guns to fund. James was the only person we found willing to support a company headed by two sixty-year-olds. Believe me, your father tried to locate additional backers but with no success.”
I mulled over Harold’s insight, finding it hard to accept that age discrimination would have prevented investors from seeing the value in Track-It’s work. Of course, perhaps my father’s prominent role in the company made me biased.
“Given the state of the economy at the time, we were lucky just to receive James’s initial seed money of three million dollars,” Harold informed me. “The funding allowed us to recruit Leticia, who we hoped would have better success luring in additional investors. But alas, that wasn’t in the cards for us.”
“Leticia?” I said, the name unfamiliar to me.
“Leticia Robinson, the other engineer,” he replied. “She graduated shortly before we formed Track-It.”
“Exactly how young was she?” I asked, struggling to picture my elderly father with a college girl.
“Thirty-something. Perhaps we should have gone for someone younger, but the other graduates we interviewed were children. They’d barely reached drinking age.”
“So you hired Leticia because she could drink?” I wondered whether that decision had contributed to Track-It’s fate.
“Because she had promise,” Harold corrected, regarding me over the frame of his glasses. “She was an ambitious woman. Her being a minority afflicted her with a drive lacking in many of today’s engineering students.”
I nodded. “I imagine it must be hard for a woman to break into a predominantly male field.”
Harold’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t referring to her reproductive organs.”
“No, of course—”
“Even I am not so old-fashioned that I can’t accept women in the workplace.” He bent closer and dropped his voice. “Although, between you and me, I’m rather uneasy about them performing surgery. I feel I can tell you that because you’re Rick’s daughter.”
“Well, stitching up an incision requires mostly the same skill set as knitting,” I said dryly.
Harold sat back and raised his eyebrows, as if seriously considering the commonalities between sewing a quilt and finishing up a heart transplant. “You may be right.”
I told myself that Harold didn’t intend to offend. “So what did you mean about Leticia being a minority?”
He blinked. “She’s black.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t normally say this about women,” Harold went on, “but in Leticia’s case I feel it’s appropriate.”
“What’s that?” I asked, bracing myself for an unwanted racist comment. I was starting to miss Harold’s fearful, bird-like demeanor.
He winked. “Hubba-hubba.”
I studied him, sure I had misunderstood his intended sentiment. “Excuse me?”
“Leticia,” he reiterated. “She was quite a beauty.”
I began to put together a mental picture of Leticia. Could my father have been as enamored with her physical qualities as Harold? Would Leticia herself have been so ambitious as to seal her position within the company by engaging in an affair with my father, a man old enough to be her own father?
“Rick thought so too,” Harold added.
I frowned, trying to imagine my father using the term hubba-hubba in conversation. “He did?”
“He didn’t say as much, naturally, but how could he not?”
I leaned closer. “So, did my father think Leticia was beautiful or not?”
“I’m sure it was one or the other,” Harold said.
I surveyed him, recalling how my father had always admired his friend’s ability to view a problem from all angles before coming up with an intelligent solution. Maybe talk of Leticia had released a debilitating dose of testosterone into his bloodstream, sending logical analysis right out the window.
“Rick and Leticia seemed to enjoy each other’s company, anyway,” Harold continued. “They often went out together.”
I snapped to attention. “Went out? You mean like on dates?”
Harold’s forehead creased. “I meant they left the building together. Normally to eat lunch.”
“And you never joined them?”
“Once I start working, I prefer to plow ahead,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I’m afraid even an earthquake wouldn’t capture my attention when I’m focused. And Rick and Leticia tended to prolong their outings.”
I tried to envision my father and a young black woman goggling at each other over plates of potato salad while Harold toiled away in the company’s offices, oblivious to a massive earthquake rocking the building. My mind refused to accept any part of the image.
I swallowed, reminding myself that if my mother was correct, my father must have fooled around with some woman despite my difficulty adjusting to the notion. “Do you think they were discussing business on these lunch dates?”
“Possibly. As I said, I never joined them.”
“If you had to guess, what do you think they talked about?” I asked.
“Most likely, they brainstormed over strategies to obtain more financial support. Rick thought Leticia was better suited to pitch the company than I was. She usually accompanied him when he went to talk up potential investors.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I never saw her pitch, but I don’t doubt she could mesmerize any man into handing over large sums of money.”
In my mind, a gorgeous African-American woman batted thick eyelashes at a leering man writing out a humongous check. Had this been my father’s strategy for luring in more investors? Had this display somehow lured in my father instead?
“Yet even with Leticia representing Track-It, you didn’t locate any backers besides James Cantwell,” I mused.
Harold lifted one shoulder, as though some people were beyond his ability to understand.
I shook Leticia out of my head, reminding myself that she might not have been my father’s mistress at all. “What about the other Track-It employees? Besides Leticia, my father, and yourself, who worked for the company?”
“It was mostly just the three of us,” Harold replied.
“What do you mean mostly just the three of you?” I said, remembering my father’s mention of an assistant.
“Rick had a helper, but she wasn’t full-time,” he confirmed. “She came on board about a year after the company started.”
I perked up. A year after Track-It’s inception was right around the time my mother had noticed a change in her husband’s attentions. Even if she didn’t work a forty-hour week, a female assistant would have spent enough time in the Track-It offices to get to know my father.
Harold pressed his lips together. “No, that can’t be right. She was there for the anniversary celebration. She must have started a few months after the company got going.”
Despite his correction, I didn’t rule out this assistant as an adultery candidate. It could have taken my father a while to get to know her before things took a turn toward the illicit.
“Kathy Smith was her name,” Harold supplied. “She studied accounting at the university.”
“University of Washington?”
He scratched his head, as though several other local universities didn’t exist. “Well, yes.”
“And would you say Kathy was . . . hubba-hubba?” I asked.
Harold gave my question serious consideration before shaking his head. “Not like Leticia.”
“What about in her own right?” I persisted. “Was she attractive?”
“For a white girl, you mean?” Harold said, showing no concern over whether his question might be interpreted as racist.
I shrugged. “Or any girl.”
“She wasn’t a dog,” he conceded, “but she certainly did not possess what one might call a stellar rack. I always thought she could benefit from a little plastic surgery in that area.”
I self-consciously crossed my arms over my own chest, praying nobody was eavesdropping. “Aside from Kathy’s physical characteristics, what was she like?”
Harold looked blank, evidently having never thought about anything but her body before now.
“Was she nice?” I prompted. “Did she and my father have a good rapport?”
“She acted like your typical twenty-something girl,” he finally said. “Friendly. A tad immature. She seemed to get along fine with Rick.”
I ran an index finger around the rim of my teacup. I couldn’t see my father with an immature girl, but maybe after forty years of marriage he had wanted a change.
Harold cocked his head. “Is there a particular reason why you’re so interested in Rick’s colleagues?”
“Yes,” I began, then stopped.
At the moment, my mother’s mistress theory was confined to the two of us, with only one of us really believing her crazy suspicion. Although I was willing to entertain her hunch, I wasn’t ready to publicly accuse my father.
I grabbed my teacup to occupy my hands. “I’d like to understand my father’s professional commitments better. He worked so hard before he died, yet that part of his world remains a mystery to me.”
Fortunately, Harold accepted my lie with a nod. “Rick was dedicated, that’s for sure. We complemented each other’s skills quite nicely. Rick didn’t understand a whit about the technology, and I didn’t have a clue about the finances. But together, we covered all the bases and made a stellar team.”
“Besides Leticia and Kathy, did anyone else make up your team?” I asked, eager to take over the role of interrogator again.
“No, Track-It could only support the four of us,” Harold said.
“Nobody else showed up part-time?” I pressed, thinking of how he had been content to omit any mention of Kathy earlier. He might happily dismiss any other employees with an even smaller bra cup.
“Three million dollars may sound like a lot of money, but it doesn’t stretch very far when you’re talking technology research.” Harold wrung his hands. “We were really on to a good thing, too. It’s a shame we couldn’t locate more financial backing. With even just another million, I think Leticia and I could have come up with a really impressive prototype.”
I put my cup down. “I’m surprised James Cantwell wouldn’t front the extra money if one more million was all you needed to develop something to show for two years of hard work.”
Harold frowned. “I’m afraid James had become rather disillusioned with Track-It by that point.”
I thought about the startup’s lone backer stopping by to check on his investment only to hear that half the company had gone out for a long lunch. “How involved was James?”
“He stayed extremely hands-off until a few months before the end.” Harold rubbed his chin. “Rick always provided him with monthly updates, and something he reported the autumn before we went bankrupt apparently didn’t sit well. After that, Rick had his hands full attending to James’s demands.”
Although it struck me as counterproductive, maybe James had diverted so much of my father’s attention from day-to-day operations that he became too distracted to keep the company afloat. “What did my father report that had James so concerned?”
Harold turned his palms up. “You would have to ask Kathy. I stayed out of the finances.”
“Do you happen to keep in touch with Leticia or Kathy? I’d like to talk to them.”
“I haven’t seen either of them since Rick’s funeral,” he told me.
I jerked upright. “They attended my father’s funeral?”
I remembered seeing several younger women at the church three years ago, although I had assumed they’d been dragged along by their grieving parents. It had never occurred to me then to question whether anyone in attendance had an intimate relationship with my father.
Harold raised his eyebrows. “I imagine they did.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Yes, I definitely saw Kathy there.”
“What about Leticia?”
He scrunched up his nose, causing his glasses to slide toward its tip. “I don’t recall.”
I myself tried and failed to remember someone fitting Leticia’s description at my father’s funeral. I made a mental note to ask my mother for any photographs she had of the event. A black woman in her thirties standing among my father’s mostly older white group of friends would stick out like a sore thumb. Likewise, so should a flat-chested, university-aged student not accompanied by any older relatives.
Harold adjusted his glasses and looked up at the ceiling. “Rick’s death really threw me. I had been on extended holiday with my retired brother in Florida at the time, but flew back for the funeral. I’m afraid I operated in much of a fog that whole winter, what with Track-It failing then Rick dying so soon afterward. Losing someone after so many years together really takes a toll on a person.”
His thick spectacles magnified the sheen of his unshed tears. I swallowed the lump developing in my own throat.
Harold coughed. “Did you have any other questions? I need to leave soon.”
“What do you do now?” I asked.
“When Track-It went bankrupt, I decided I’m not cut out for the startup world so I returned to my corporate roots,” he said. “Presently I work for Honeywell.”
“There’s something to be said for a steady paycheck and a stable job,” I replied, thinking of how consumed my father could get by his various investments. He was always searching for the next big company to pour his money into, often with disappointing results.
“That’s for sure.” Harold stood up and pushed his chair under the table. The resulting squeak caused me to wince, but he didn’t seem to notice.
I stood up too. “I appreciate your time.”
“Not a problem. Your father was a good man.” Harold took a step away from the table. “I was happy to help you preserve his good memory.”
The irony of his statement left me mute as he walked out of the coffee shop.
