A hotel conference room, complete with rows of tables and pitchers of water, was an inauspicious ending to what should have been a success story.  Ian Warnock couldn't help thinking that it just wasn't fair.  Eight months ago, he'd been chief financial officer of a hot new car company, and now he was here, taking a day off of groveling to get his old job at Ford Motor Company back to preside over one last Crane-Packard shareholder's meeting.  He checked his watch; fifteen minutes until they arrived.  Ian had wanted to keep it light-hearted to the last, and organized a small reception prior to the meeting, but in the end he hadn't been able to bring himself to attend.

There were no pictures of the Crane-Packard in the room.  Just the hotel's baroque décor and drapery.  Ian hadn't been able to bring himself to drag out any of the framed publicity photos of the car, either.  He'd gotten over his grief at losing a good friend, but it was still a heavy-hearted business.

Ian sighed, and poured himself a glass of water.  "This sucks," he told the empty room.

Behind him, the door moaned softly open.  "Hello?" 

Recognizing the voice, Ian stood and turned.  He straightened his blazer, though there was no need for formality.  "Ajax," he said.  "You're early."  Ian, Ajax and Ren had been roommates in college.

"I know.  Didn't feel much like having drinks with the Wall Street boys, you know?"

"I know.  Shit, sit down, this is going to start feeling like a second wake if we keep this up."

Albert "Ajax" Jaxon was an unlikely shareholder.  A socialist and sometime political activist, he had scraped together the funds to help Ren get his company started by calling in favors and borrowing heavily from his family.  Ajax didn't care to contribute to any corporate machine, but was willing to slip his principles just this once to help out a friend.  He made an amusing picture among the other money men, as his clothing tended toward Birkenstocks and flannel, and he spoke with a cheerful ignorance of the ins and outs of the stock market.  At one meeting he had actually brought homemade blueberry muffins to pass around.

They sat in silence for a few moments, then Ian said, "I never asked.  Did she contact you, too?"

Ajax nodded, knowing Ian was talking about Becka Packard.  "She offered me four times what I put into it, in fact."  Ren's mother had attempted to buy the company out, making offers that were, in polite speech, more than generous for shares of the suddenly leaderless company.  Ian had managed to get the board to resist selling through sheer force of will, and had invoked the specter of Ren's friendship and what he would have wanted so many times the words barely had meaning any more.  "To be honest, she sent a man to ask me.  I don't think the old lady was interested in coming down to Nashville."

Ian chuckled.  "Thanks for holding fast.  I know you have a lot more at stake than most of these guys." 

"It's only money.  Why would Ren's mom want to buy the company anyway?  Just to shut it down?"

"I doubt it.  Becka knew a good thing when she saw it.  I'm sure she would have hired the best and the brightest, and turned Crane-Packard into quite a boutique company in no time."

"So why go to all the trouble to stop her?"

"You'd understand this, Ajax--it was a matter of principle."  Ajax raised an eyebrow.  "It's what he wanted.  Ren said to me, back in March, 'If something ever happens to me, promise you'll keep an eye on Lexi and on the company, because my family will go after both of them.'" 

"He said that?"

Ian nodded.  "I don't know what had him so morbid, but those were his exact words.  I understood why they'd go after Lexi.  The car company, though…Ren didn't want it to be another Packard family success story, unless it was exactly what he wanted it to be.  He wanted it to earn its success, on his own terms."

"That's pretty much all he ever wanted."

"Right.  So, assume Becka takes control of the company and sets about building Crane-Packards.  What's the first thing she's going to do?"

"Make baby-sealskin leather a standard feature?"

Ian and Ajax laughed together, and the conversation's somber tone broke up for a moment.  Becka's self-serving pragmatism (a polite way of saying "disregard for other living things")was the stuff of legend; even Ren had commonly responded to being called a son of a bitch by saying, "Yes, your point?"  The off-color comment was one he would have made.

The laughter took a moment to wind down.  "Seriously, though.  She'd have fired Lexi."

"No doubt."

"And then," Ian continued, "you'd have Crane-Packards being built without either of the creators on board.  No soul, as he put it."

"Yeah, I can understand that's the last thing Ren would have wanted to see."

"So, here I am.  Shutting down a perfectly viable car company, just to keep that bitch from getting her hands on it."

"What about Lexi?" Ajax asked.

"Oh, they did their best to strip the estate from her.  I think we've still got most of it."  He shrugged ruefully.  "I'm an accountant, not a lawyer, so I couldn't tell you all of the legal ins and outs of what's been going on, but we've got counsel and it sounds like she's out of the woods, as far as the Packards are concerned." 

"I've seen the news.  How's she doing?"

Ian pursed his lips, considering.  Thus far Lexi had contributed almost catatonic grief, spurious suicide attempts and a nervous breakdown (in front of a brace of television cameras no less) to the proceedings.  He didn't mind being left more or less alone in the eye of the storm.  He also didn't feel like telling Ajax that speaking of minds, Lexi seemed to have lost hers.  She moped about her half-restored old house in Arcadia, Michigan (located in the uppermost reaches of the Lower Peninsula and thus convenient to absolutely bupkiss unless you were a big fan of trees), and on the rare occasions that she did speak, it was in indecipherable movie quotes.  The always-cheerful, always-active Lexi Crane that he had known seemed to have died along with Ren.  And to be honest, that suited Ian just fine.  Power of attorney over a fourteen million-dollar estate made up for a lot of hardship.

Of course, the money was there to provide for Lexi for the rest of her life, which could be a long one if she didn't manage to off herself first.  Ian couldn't remember exactly how old she was--five or six years younger than Ren anyway, and he and Ren were the same age, thirty--so that money had a long way to go.  But as long as he remained calm and understanding Lexi seemed willing to let him take care of things and stay out of the way.  Some custom-designed anti-depressants he'd gotten ahold of through the shrink who was taking care of Lexi didn't hurt, either.

"She's here," Ian said finally, realizing that Ajax could see for himself how she was doing.  "She came down for the meeting.  It's the first time she's been away from the house since the funeral, in fact."

"I'm amazed there aren't any news helicopters."

"Hopefully they're too busy talking about the election, now.  We did our best to keep it quiet."  He hadn't expected her to come at all, to be honest.  She'd been acting like a walking mannequin and nothing had done much for her moroseness so far.  Upon getting into the car, Lexi had remarked that it was almost Halloween, then proceeded to recite and sing most of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" during the five-hour drive from Arcadia to Detroit.  It was cute, until she looked him dead in the eye and shrieked, "I am the clown with the tearaway face!" at him, and for some reason it made his blood run cold.  He'd never seen the movie, but now the image of Lexi peeling grease-painted skin away from her skull was stuck in his head and wouldn't go away.  The burst of fire and emotion that had leapt into her voice at that moment was startling, but at least it predicated an apparent return to normalcy. 

"Where is she?" Ajax asked.

"At the reception."

"I didn't see her there."

Ian drained his glass of water.  When they had reached Detroit, she'd been close to her old self and he had dropped her off at the reception before heading up to make sure the meeting room was set up.  "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive.  I was just there.  She's not there; it's just all of the suits."

"Shit."  He was on his feet.

"Maybe she went down to Hart Plaza.  They've got the culture festival going on down there.  She might have gone to get something to eat; they're only serving cocktail favors at the reception."   

"Shit!" Ian said again. "Can you wait here for me, in case I'm not back by the time everyone arrives?"

"Do you want help looking for her?"

"No, I'll feel better knowing there's someone here.  I'll be right back."  He was out the door. 
Hart Plaza was just a short run up the block.  He was in no shape to be running, but hustled anyway.  By the time he got there he had a stitch in his side, and his heart sank.  On a normal fall weekend, Hart Plaza was a mostly-empty expanse of concrete and fountains, thanks in part to the chilly wind blowing off of the Detroit River.  It wouldn't have been hard to find Lexi there.  Today, the place was abustle with people of every color and culture, moving from booth to booth to sample exotic and not-so-exotic dishes for a minimal fee.  Smells collided in the cool, damp October air.  Shouts from children in the crowd and from the dozens of vendors' booths echoed on the high concrete walls and rolled along the ceiling in the underground section of the plaza.  Ian felt like a marble in a loud, humid pipe.  He pushed through the crowd, looking for Lexi.  Realizing that they were just a short run from the Detroit River, Ian's gut went cold.  Dr. Zheng had said Lexi was past her suicidal urges, but you never knew.  Maybe Ajax was right, and she'd just wanted something to eat.  That would have been a blessing in disguise.  Getting Lexi to feed herself was just another of the wonderful challenges his friend Warren had died and left him with.

Dammit Lexi, Ian thought bitterly.  You were perfectly capable of taking care of yourself when he was alive, and probably before you met, too.  Get over it!