Chapter 15
Jo was in shock; frozen in place. She felt Alex grab her arm and pull her up. “Come on, Jo. We’re out of here.”
“Wait, Miss Becker.” Mr. Roberts said. “I apologize for startling you, but what I need to tell you is very important.”
Jo pulled her arm from Alex’s grasp and looked at Mr. Roberts. Then she looked around the café. There were more than a dozen people. If any trouble came, surely there were enough people to help. She looked at Alex, pleading with understanding. Alex sighed, and sat back down. Jo sat back down next to her, Alex at her side ready to grab her. Jo looked at Mr. Roberts. “All right, Mr. Roberts, but I need some answers.”
“I will explain everything.” He began. “First of all, the last of my colleagues. These are Agents Thomas and O’Brian.” Mr. Roberts pointed to the two maintenance men who were the last to arrive.
“Agents?” Jo asked. She looked at the men, then back at the other four.
“I am Agent Roberts, the team leader. These are Agents Davis and Michaels, whom you have already met, and this is Agent Diaz, my partner.
Jo nodded to each of them, acknowledging the introduction.
“We don’t work for the government, or any law agency. We are security agents for the BeckFord Corporation in New York. Our assignment was to follow you and keep you safe until you reached your eighteenth birthday. Once you became a legal adult, our orders were to take you to New York where you would take your rightful place in the company.”
“I don’t understand. Do you mean that you are offering me a job in the BeckFord Company?”
“Actually, Miss Becker, my request is that you allow me to keep my job.”
Jo glanced up, puzzled. “What do you mean, Mr. Roberts?”
Roberts leaned across the table and lowered his voice a little, to keep away prying ears from the nearby table. “What I mean is you own BeckFord Corporation.”
Jo cast a sideways glance at Alex. Alex looked as bewildered as Jo felt. “Mr. Roberts –”
“Just Roberts, please. Leave off the mister. I’m not that old.” Roberts smiled. “We go by our last names, nothing else. I’m Roberts; this is Diaz, Davis, etc. If you choose to keep us on as your security team that is how we would prefer to be referred.”
“Why do I need a security team? What is the BeckFord Corporation?”
Roberts looked around. A few of the other people in the café were watching the excited girls, and trying to listen in to the conversation. He was unhappy about it. “Miss Becker, if you don’t mind, is there some place we can talk in earnest? I’m afraid the rest of what we need to tell you is sensitive. Also, since we know for certain that someone is trying to kill you; I do not wish to invite other people to know your situation.”
Jo looked at Alex. Neither of them was entirely comfortable yet with what was happening, but Jo was intrigued, and so was Alex. “We can use my parents’ store,” Alex suggested to Jo. “There is a small room in the back, sort of like a conference room, and my parents will be there, too.”
Jo smiled. “Perfect. If you don’t mind, we will meet you there, Mr. Rob- I mean, Roberts.”
The group broke up, and went their separate ways. Jo was too nervous to talk to Alex about the little they had discovered so far. The two friends rode in silence the few blocks to the store. Alex and Jo arrived first, with two vehicles pulling in behind them into the parking lot. Jo and Alex went in, Roberts and his team giving the two young ladies time to let the Turners know what was going on.
“Mom, Dad, you know the job offer the guy was going to tell Jo about today?” Alex began as she barged into the travel agency outer office. The parents looked up. They knew immediately that Alex was excited; not in a good way, but in a scared way.
“What’s going on, Alex?” Sam asked.
“They have been following us. There are six of them. They are a security team sent to keep Jo safe from harm. They did stop the man in the black sedan from following us that night, but now they are saying that Jo owns a company and they were sent to get her and take her to New York to work in the company.”
“Alex, calm down. Take a breath,” her mom ordered. “Where are the people you were interviewing with, Jo? Where are they now?”
“Outside,” Jo told her. “They needed a place to talk to me about sensitive things. Mr. Roberts felt that if he told me about the company and my part in it where people could listen in, that I would be vulnerable to more attacks. He said they know that someone is trying to kill me. He didn’t want to discuss things that could make me vulnerable in public,” Jo concluded.
Alex looked at Jo astonished. “Is that what he meant? How did you get that from what he said?”
Jo shrugged. “I told you, my instincts have been telling me all along that this man is okay. I don’t feel threatened by him anymore. I think he was doing his job, and I would like to find out what his job is, and how it concerns me.”
Sam and Kendra looked at Jo, concern evident. “Jo, do you mind if we sit in on this conversation? It would put our minds at rest, and Alex’s too.”
“I would like that,” she replied.
“I will run the store. You go straighten out Jo’s life,” Alex waved her parents and Jo into the conference room, then went outside, and motioned to Roberts to enter.
The six agents in their suits, looking very officious, entered the small travel agency and Alex led them into the back. She then returned to the front office to answer the phones. She was glad her parents were in the room with Jo. As much as she wanted to know what was going on, Jo needed the strength of older, wiser adults, but less than a minute later, Jo came out into the outer office to the front door, turned the sign around that said “Open” and made it read “Closed,” grabbed Alex’s wrist and pulled her back into the back room with her. “I’m not going to be able to repeat all that’s happening, so you better hear it all with me,” Jo explained, grinning ear to ear. This was kind of exciting. She owned a company, wow!
While Jo was out retrieving Alex, the agents had introduced themselves to Alex’s parents.
Jo and Alex settled in the deep chairs, and Roberts began again.
“As I told you at the café, Miss Becker, we are the security team that was assigned to protect you until you became of age. Once you reached eighteen, we were supposed to have this conversation with you, and your mother, and whisk you both off to New York where you were to take your place in the company.” Roberts explained. “Diaz and I were living near you, Davis and Michaels drove behind your bus to school each day, and Thomas and O’Brian took jobs as janitorial and yard staff at the high school you attended.”
“I knew I recognized him,” Alex whispered to Jo.
“The BeckFord Corporation had received a viable threat that you would not reach your eighteenth birthday, Miss Becker, so the Director of Security, Director Johnson, sent us here to make sure that the assassination plot failed. Unfortunately, on the evening that your mother had her accident, we missed an important incident, and let the assassin get through our line of defense. That is my fault, Miss Becker. I failed to protect your home in my rush to secure your well being at the hospital. Once I called you to notify you of your mother’s accident."
“That was you?” Jo interrupted. “You were the one who told me where to go to see my mother?”
“Yes, Miss Becker. Diaz was her detail that day.” Roberts nodded to Diaz. “He had been tailing your mother since she left your mobile home late that afternoon.”
“Why were you following my mother?” Jo interrupted again. She wanted to know all the details possible.
“With your birthday only hours away, we wanted all of the bases covered. If the killer had wanted to try a kidnapping attempt, he might have used your mother for bait. It was all in the protection protocol.”
“So my mother’s accident?” Jo questioned.
“An unfortunate coincidence,” Roberts answered. “Diaz was at your mother’s side immediately. He could tell instantly that she was badly hurt. He notified me by radio, and I called for the ambulance. Then I called you. I guessed which hospital they would head to by the location of the accident, and sent you there. Diaz was able to get the name and information on the drunk driver. When we researched him, it was evident that the accident was unrelated to the threat on your life.”
Jo breathed a sigh of relief. Although Officer Peters had told her the same thing, that the accident and the house fire were unrelated, it was still good to have it verified.
“What about the fire?” Jo asked. “You said you missed something?”
“Earlier in the day, the fake exterminator had sprayed some sort of flammable liquid around your mobile home.”
“That’s what we smelled when we left for the hospital,” asserted Alex.
“Yes. I was aware of it, but was waiting for dark to try to flood it. Once the accident happened, though, my priority was you and your mother, Miss Becker. I used the garden hose at your home and saturated the ground around the mobile for almost ten minutes. I was hoping it would be enough to douse the fire that I was sure the assassin was planning on lighting. Then I left for the hospital; Thomas and O’Brian stayed to watch the suspect. He was in his car on the road outside the mobile home park the entire evening. We all assumed he would leave his vehicle to go light the fire. What I missed was a timing device that the man had planted somewhere near the mobile. If he had left the car, we would have taken him in, handing him over to the authorities as an arsonist, but since he didn’t leave his vehicle, we didn’t realize that he had already lit the fire. My poor saturation job didn’t stop the mobile from being consumed. I let you down, Miss Becker. I apologize.”
“It’s all right, Roberts,” Jo had trouble not using the Mr. in front of his name. “But why did the man burn the house down even though he saw Alex and I leave? And did you know who was trying to kill me, or why? Did you find out who the man was or who hired him?”
Roberts shook his head. “No, that was never discovered. All we were able to do was turn him in for the arson. The police found the exterminator’s uniform on him, which positively identified him as their suspect. They would have just prosecuted him for that, except he opened fire on them. They of course returned fire, and the suspect was killed. As for the other, Thomas and O’Brian didn’t even see you leave, and they were outside with the suspect. When Miss Turner’s car passed the suspect’s car, you were hunched over in the seat. To anyone passing, it looked as if Miss Turner was the only occupant. I even had Davis and Michaels catch up and overtake your vehicle to verify that you were in it before I would leave your mobile home unattended.”
Sam, surprised at the complexity of the operation, interrupted the story at this moment. “Let me get this straight. Mr. Roberts, you are the leader of a six person security team who was assigned to protect Jo until she turned eighteen. Once she turns eighteen you take her to New York to accept a job. Meanwhile, someone at the company that is hiring Jo decides he or she wants Jo dead, so hires an assassin to kill her. You apprehend the killer, but don’t know who hired him. Is that right so far?”
“Well, it’s mostly right. The part about Jo accepting a job is wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
“Miss Becker owns the company, Mr. Turner. She is not accepting a job when we take her to New York. She is receiving her inheritance.”
“My what?” Jo asked stunned. Roberts hadn’t gotten this far in the story before.
“This is the part that I was reluctant to discuss in the café, Miss Becker,” Roberts picked up the story. “About eighteen years ago, your father, Joseph Becker, founded a company with a man named Cliff Hartford. They named the company BeckFord Financial Corporation, combining both of the names of the founders. Three days after the company’s inception, Joseph Becker was killed in an auto accident.”
“Wait,” Sam interrupted. He rose from his seat, excited. “BeckFord Financial?” he asked Roberts. Roberts nodded. “The same BeckFord Financial that has more money than the government?”
Roberts chuckled. “In case you didn’t realize, the government is six trillion dollars in debt, Mr. Turner. Even I have more money than the government.”
Everyone in the room laughed at that comment, even Sam, but then he went on; he wanted to be clear.
“I’m sorry to keep going on about this, but I want to be certain. Jo is the owner of the BeckFord Financial Corporation of New York that has billions of dollars in holdings?”
“Yes, Mr. Turner. Miss Becker is worth about $150 Billion dollars at last count. Give or take a few billion.”
Jo caught her breath, Alex gasped, Kendra fainted, Sam’s jaw dropped and he slowly sank into his chair in shock.
“So that’s why someone wanted to kill Jo, and why you guys were protecting her,” Alex rationalized aloud. She turned and patted her mother’s cheek a few times, until Kendra, blushing, was able to sit up again.
“Please, tell me more about my father,” Jo asked. “And how my mother and I never knew about the inheritance. Why didn’t my mother, as his wife, inherit his fortune? Why did she have to slave away at a thankless job when her husband truly hadn’t left her penniless?” Jo’s eyes were watering. She was devastated to think that her mother could have had a life of luxury all this time, instead of the life of poverty and hard labor.
“The fact that there was a wife and child was not known until about a month ago. Your father had never disclosed to his parents about you, though it is not clear why. His partner, Mr. Hartford, died eight weeks ago of a heart attack. He had no living relatives, and the board of directors has run the company since his death. It was arranged that BeckFord stock would be split proportionately between anyone who was a stockholder at the time of Hartford’s death. The one with most stock would receive a larger portion, the person with the least, a smaller portion. Then, a month ago, Mr. Hartford’s housekeeper was cleaning out his desk to prepare it for auction, and she found several letters from Mr. Becker, your father. The letters indicated that there was indeed a wife and daughter left behind after Mr. Becker’s untimely death. It has been speculated that Mr. Hartford did not share this news simply out of greed. If he didn’t come forth with the information, then he didn’t have to share in the wealth,” Roberts surmised.
“But what about my grandparents?” Jo asked. “Wouldn’t they have inherited my father’s shares of the company since there were no dependents?”
“Yes, and they did, for a whole two days. The company was fledgling, remember, when your father died. Mr. Hartford convinced them that they were best served to sign over their son’s share back to him, rather than be pulled down in debt if the business failed. Since the senior Mr. Becker was already retired, and they were well enough off on their own, Mr. Becker senior had decided that was best. However, before he could do that, he and his wife were the victims of a car jacking. The man who took their vehicle shot them both, and left them for dead. They both died on the way to the hospital. It was a great tragedy in New York; they were a very well-liked couple.”
“And where did their inheritance go? Was there other family?”
“They had left a will leaving everything to their son’s estate. You inherit that too, Miss Becker.” Roberts went on. “So once the letters were unearthed that hinted Joseph Becker had a wife and child, a nationwide hunt was launched to find them. Then we found you, Miss Becker, and your mother, three weeks before your eighteenth birthday. The transferring of the stocks was halted, and the company was informed that an heir was found. Since your father had left no will, it was not possible to hand over the company to his wife, who was not a blood relative. Then the Board of Directors elected to hold off until you turned eighteen, Miss Becker, and bring you in as the head of the company.
“Your heritage was undeniable. We didn’t have DNA from your father to match to you, since DNA profiles weren’t invented at the time of his death, so we requested the records of his accident to see what evidence we might be able to use. We found that they used a combination of blood typing, with dental records, for identifying your father’s remains, and that they had kept a vial of blood from the reference sample they had collected, so we sent it to a laboratory and were able to have a DNA profile created for your father. After that we collected your trash and had your DNA tested against your father’s, and it matched. Joseph Becker was your biological father. You are the only heir to the entire BeckFord Financial Corporation. The photos you have of your parents with you as an infant will help convince the Board of Directors, as well. It is fortunate that those were not destroyed in the fire.”
Alex felt there were some things missing, so she jumped in when Roberts paused for a breath. “The partner, Mr. Hartford, is dead, right?” Roberts nodded yes. “So who would want Jo killed? No one else was an heir; there was no one else to get the money. There is no one to take her claim if she dies, is what I’m saying. So why kill her?”
“If Miss Becker had been killed before her eighteenth birthday, then the inheritance would be null and void. Since there was no will, the company would go to her as an adult, but not as a minor,” Roberts explained. “It was written that way into the corporate bylaws. I would imagine that was Mr. Hartford’s doing, knowing that if the family were ever to surface, they couldn’t get anything from the company until Miss Becker reached legal adulthood. If Miss Becker had died, then the original plan to distribute the stock would have gone back into effect. Director Johnson supposed that one of the owners of a larger amount of stock was behind the assassination plot. There are three in particular that she has another security team investigating. One of them lost three billion dollars when evidence of an heir was discovered. However, now that you are of age, Miss Becker,” Roberts turned to face her, speaking to her directly, “the ownership of the company is yours, legally binding. Yet that still leaves us with finding out who wanted you dead. Because until you make out a will, giving other directions for dividing the company in case of your death, the dispersal of stock plan will go back into effect if you were to die. Therefore, whoever it is that wanted you dead is possibly planning on another assassination attempt.”
Jo listened to Roberts’s story in detail. The story of her father and his partner was interesting. The entire scenario was mind boggling. To think that she, Joanna Becker, was now a millionaire – no, a billionaire, she corrected herself – was unfathomable. She thought of her grandparents – their violent murders so close to the death of their son was odd, in her opinion. She wondered if anyone had seriously considered all three deaths as more than accidents. Maybe she would look into it some day. She pondered the information about the price on her head. To think that she was important enough that someone wished to murder her was also amazing. She was just a poor city girl with no prospects. She had been raised in an old, dilapidated mobile home that leaked, for goodness sakes. Who would consider her a threat? It just didn’t seem possible.
Roberts watched the girl in front of him absorb all he had told her so far. He could see the information bounding around in her head. Her eyes were dancing. He wasn’t sure if it was excitement, fear, or both.
“Was there any other questions you wished to ask, Miss Becker?”
Jo glanced up at him. She looked around the room at the other agents. She looked at her friend, Alex, who was just staring blankly back at Jo. Then Jo looked at Sam and Kendra. Kendra was trying to hold back tears, while Sam was sitting at the end of the table watching Jo, concern evident in his gaze.
“How can an eighteen-year-old girl run an important financial corporation with no business background and no college education? Do you realize what they are asking of you, Jo?” Sam spoke up.
Jo smiled. “I would imagine that BeckFord Financial is like most other huge companies, and is run by a Board of Directors. There is hardly ever one person who single-handedly makes all the decisions.”
Roberts silently saluted her for her response. He was right. This girl was intelligent.
“But even so, Jo, if you take over the head position, you will be throwing away your childhood. This is a heavy responsibility. You need to think about it hard, sweetheart,” Kendra chimed in.
“My childhood left me the moment my mother died,” Jo sadly responded. “I had already informed all of you that I would be finding a job as soon as possible, so I could move out and not sponge off of you.”
“We don’t feel you are doing that, Jo,” Kendra protested. “We love having you live with us.”
“I know you do, and I love being there, too, but I am responsible for my own path now. I have to make my own way. I will not rely on you for spending money or clothing. I need to feel necessary in some capacity.” Jo tried desperately to let them see her heart. She wanted to make a difference in the world. Doesn’t everyone?
“Why not accept the inheritance and leave the company alone then? Stay with us, and live off of the billions your father left you,” Alex suggested. “I will even charge you rent for sharing my room, if that would make you feel better. I think a million a week should do it,” Alex smiled.
Jo grinned at her friend’s attempt to lift the mood in the room. She considered all the things that Sam and Kendra said. She valued their opinion greatly, but she didn’t feel that they understood her reluctance to throw this opportunity away.
Jo looked up at Roberts. “I don’t think that my friends understand what you came here to tell me today, but I think I get it. Tell me if I’m on the right track,” she spoke directly to Roberts. She looked him in the eyes and held his gaze. “My father didn’t leave me an inheritance, he left me a business; a business a lot like this one we are sitting in, but it was owned by a family that wasn’t allowed to enjoy the benefits that ownership gave. The business employs thousands of people, I assume. Maybe hundreds of thousands of people. Each of those people has a family, and depends on their paychecks to get through the month, just as my mother and I did. The business has been operating for two months without a leader. There is no one to sit at the head of the table and say, ‘no that is not in the best interest of the thousands of people who depend on their paychecks.’ The Board of Directors who is now in charge answer to stockholders who want decisions made that would benefi