Thank you for calling immediately. Of course. He hung up. I was still standing in the lobby. He thought about the restaurant, about Andrew's face when he'd walked back to the corner table and said something quiet to his father, about the way Thomas Whitmore's expression hadn't changed, just his shoulders, just that small tale of a man absorbing unwelcome news.
Marcus thought, "What if the dinner wasn't only about Clare? What if Thomas Whitmore had wanted that family alliance for reasons that went beyond his son's marriage? What if Vivien Bennett's granddaughter married into the Whitmore family meant access influence a seat at a table that had been refusing him for two years? What if the dinner was a negotiation and Marcus had accidentally walked into the middle of it? He didn't know.
He didn't have enough pieces yet, but he'd been reading engines long enough to know when something was running wrong beneath the surface. Patricia had the records on his desk by 11. Hi went through them methodically the way he went through everything piece by piece building the picture. What he found was not dramatic. No smoking gun, no clear evidence of anything actionable.
But there were small things. An axug showing a visitor badge issued 6 weeks ago to a name that matched a person from Whitmore's development company logged under a routine vendor visit that Patricia said she hadn't authorized. A maintenance request that had been submitted and then cancelled without explanation for a section of the building that happened to overlap with the property boundary at issue in the second acquisition offer. Small things, but small things that pointed. He compiled the documentation and drove to Viven's office that afternoon.
She went through it in silence. He watched her face as she read nothing large, just the small signals, the slight tightening at the corners of her eyes when she found the access log, the brief pause at the maintenance request. She set the folder down. He's probing the property, she said. He wants to know the condition of the systems before he makes another offer.
That's what it looks like. Marcus said he knows a building in poor maintenance condition has a different valuation than one that's been properly managed. She looked at him. When I let the previous manager go, the building's maintenance had slipped badly. If he sent someone in 6 weeks ago, what they saw would have looked like leverage.
The building's in better shape now than it was 6 weeks ago, Marcus said. Vivien looked at him. The deferred maintenance list I got from the vendor meeting. We've addressed 11 of the 14 items. The HVAC replacement is Thursday.
The drainage issue in the parking structure is scheduled for next week. He held her gaze. If he sends someone again, what they see is different. A long pause. Vivien folded her hands on her desk.
I'm not going to sell this building, she said. I haven't been going to sell it for 2 years, but that's not the point. She looked at the folder. The point is that a man who was at my table last month was in my building this morning uninvited. After watching an arrangement he valued fall apart.
She looked at Marcus directly. You understand what I'm telling you. I understand that you need to know if this is going to become a larger problem. Marcus said, "Yes. " A pause. And I need to know that the person managing this property is someone I can trust to tell me what he sees immediately without deciding what I need to know.