Chapter 32

There was a light rain the next morning but I ran anyway, enjoying the coolness and the hushed tones of the rain falling lightly all around me. I took my shower and then ate breakfast wearing only a pair of boxers and a pair of socks. I spent a little time on the internet afterward, looking for some pictures of the Santa Rosa parade. I found exactly what I wanted and realized at that moment that I didn't have a printer, so I couldn't print the picture I wanted. I bookmarked the links I'd found and took the laptop with me when I left.

Dressed as nicely as I could, based on the limited clothes shopping I'd been able to do so far, I drove the Wangler to my ten am meeting. Lloyd McCoy was right about how easy close it was and how easy it would be to spot the big red FiberDyne sign. It was a big sign attached to an even bigger five story building.

There was no receptionist. I was met at the door by Lloyd McCoy.

"Cooper, its a pleasure to meet you at last," this handshake was a little milder than others I'd had recently, and a little more timid, though Edwina was right about the voice. Lloyd tended to boom.

"I'm pleased to meet you too, Mr. McCoy," I smiled, looking closely at the man. "I've heard you were close to my parents. Perhaps their closest friend."

"Well, I might nominate Edwina Ibarra for the closest friend position, but Charles and Deanna and I were friends. Its ... sad, knowing they're gone and I get angry every time I think of how they died."

"We'll talk more about that as we get to know each other better, I'm sure. To be honest, I've found out in the past couple of days that I didn't really know my parents at all."

All the while we'd been talking, I had followed Mr. McCoy across the room and into an elevator. There were eight buttons, which was surprising for a five story building, and he punched the number five. During the ride up, which was longer than expected, as the elevator was painfully slow, I listened to a lighthearted recounting of the first time my parents met on a flight from Philadelphia to Santa Rosa.

Cooper and I were both aware, from our separate experiences living in Blackwood, that the Philly airport was the closest to our mutual home town, so for that reason it wasn't surprising to hear. Mr. McCoy had been flying out of there after having attended a conference on the campus of Temple University and Cooper's parents were beginning their move to Santa Monica.

"I just appreciated the obvious tender concern they displayed for each other. That was what attracted me to them at first," he finished.

By this time we were standing in a large area at least as wide as the whole building. There was a wall of glass stretching across the inside wall, with more conventional windows on the outside wall showing the street below and the mostly undeveloped area surrounding it.

There were two men there, both occupied with computers on the desks in front of them. There was a third desk that I assumed was Mr. McCoy's.

"Coffee?" Lloyd asked, pointing at a coffee pot and accessories sitting on a small table near a cluster of casual chairs and small couches.

"Sure," I agreed, walking towards the pot.

"Ben! Sam!" he called out. The other two men looked up, then back down briefly before getting up to come over to the coffee area. "Cooper, this is Dr. Benjamin Girardi and Dr. Samsi Nieminen. Ben, Sam, this is Cooper James."

"Mr. James," they both said. Dr. Nieminen with a slight accent.

"Please, call me Cooper," I said offering a handshake. Both men returned it in turn. "Did you know my parents too?"

"Yes Cooper, and please, call me Sam," Dr. Nieminen answered in his accented English. It sounded Scandinavian, and I thought the last name might be Finnish.

"Not as well as Lloyd, but they were good people," Dr. Girardi added. "And call me Ben."

"Cooper, we're so sorry to have to meet under these circumstances, but I think that things will be very exciting around here very soon, and it will be good to have you here for it."

"Well, that certainly sounds interesting," I laughed. "Are you going to make me rich?"

All three of them laughed at that. "You are already rich, are you not?" Sam asked. "We have made us and you richer."

"And maybe famous," Ben added.

"Famous!" I said. "What did you guys do?"

"What we did, the three of us and your parents, was invent something cool, yes," Lloyd confirmed.

"We invented it," Sam said, his accent a little thicker from his excitement. "Lloyd, Ben and I. But your parents funded it."

"I thought I saw that they invested in a ten percent share of fiberDyne."

"No, that's not right," Ben said.

"I think you mis-read that Cooper," Lloyd sat down in one of the chairs and took a sip of his coffee. There was a long pause while Ben and Sam filled their cups and sat on one of the couches. I sat as well and took a sip of my own coffee. Perhaps Lloyd has used this as a way to collect his thoughts. He continued once we were all seated. "They invested ten percent of their fortune in FiberDyne. It was a considerable amount. For this, they became owners of one third of FiberDyne."