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  “Sam and I are working out the final details. The seller has agreed to divide the property, and we’re ready to draw up a contract.”

  He acknowledged her response with another curt nod and turned in his chair to address the controller, who was seated on his right. “Allen, what do you have to report?”

  The controller glanced at the lined yellow pad in front of him. As chief financial officer of the Bancroft Corporation, Allen Stanley was responsible for all things financial, including the store’s credit department. His twenty years of stressful, intellectual combat with Philip Bancroft had, in Meredith’s opinion, probably caused Allen to lose much of his hair as well as making him look sixty-five rather than the fifty-five he was. Controllers and their staffs did not generate income for the store. Neither did the legal or the personnel divisions. As far as Philip was concerned, those three divisions had to be tolerated like a necessary evil, but he regarded them as little more than leeches. Moreover, he despised the fact that the heads of those three divisions were forever giving him reasons why he couldn’t do something instead of telling him how he could do it. Allen Stanley still had five years to go until he could take early retirement, and there were times when Meredith wondered how he was going to make it. When Allen spoke, his voice was carefully precise and noticeably hesitant. “We had a record number of new applications for credit cards last month—almost eight thousand of them.”

  “How many did you approve?”

  “Roughly sixty-five percent.”

  “How in the hell,” Philip spat out furiously, tapping the end of his Waterman pen on the table to emphasize each word, “can you justify rejecting three thousand out of eight thousand applications? We’re trying to attract new cardholders, and you’re rejecting them as fast as the applications come in! I shouldn’t have to tell you how profitable interest on those cards is to our operation. And I’m not even counting the loss of revenue from purchases those three thousand people will not make at Bancroft’s because they can’t shop here on credit!” As if he suddenly recalled his bad heart, Meredith watched him make a visible effort to calm himself.

  “The applications we rejected were from people who aren’t credit worthy, Philip,” Allen stated in a firm, reasonable tone. “Deadbeats, as you well know, do not pay for what they purchase or the interest on their accounts. You may think rejecting those applications cost us money, but the way I see it, my staff has saved Bancroft’s a fortune in uncollectible debts. I’ve established basic requirements that must be met before we issue anyone a Bancroft’s card, and the fact is that three thousand people could not meet those requirements.”

  “Because the requirements are too damned high,” Gordon Mitchell put in smoothly.

  “What makes you say that?” Philip demanded eagerly, always prepared to find fault with the controller.

  “I say that,” Mitchell replied with malicious satisfaction, “because my niece told me that Bancroft’s just rejected her application for a credit card.”

  “Then she wasn’t credit worthy,” retorted the controller.

  “Really?” he drawled. “Then why did Field’s and Macy’s just issue her new cards? According to my niece, who’s a junior in college, her rejection letter said that she had an inadequate credit history. I presume that means you couldn’t find out anything about her, either bad or good.”

  The controller nodded, his pale, lined face creased into a glower. “Obviously, if that’s what our letter said, that’s what happened.”

  “What about Field’s and Macy’s?” Philip demanded, leaning forward. “They obviously have access to more information than you and your people do.”

  “No, they don’t. We all use the same credit bureau for reports. It’s obvious their credit requirements are more lenient than mine.”

  “They aren’t yours, dammit, this store is not yours—”

  Meredith interceded, knowing that while the controller would adamantly defend his own actions, and his staff’s, he rarely had the spine to point out Philip’s own mistakes to him, including this particular error in judgment, which happened to be Philip’s own. Motivated by an unselfish desire to defend Allen Stanley and a very selfish desire to avoid another lengthy wrangle that the rest of the executives, including herself, would all have to sit through, Meredith interrupted her father’s tirade. “The last time this topic came up,” she told him, managing to sound both courteous and objective, “you felt that history had shown us that college students are often bad credit risks. You instructed Allen to deny credit cards to all college students except in rare instances.”

  Silence descended on the conference room—the eerie, watchful silence that often ensued whenever Meredith opposed her father, but today it was heavier than ever, because everyone was watching for any sign of leniency in Philip’s rigid attitude toward his daughter—a sign that would indicate that she was his choice to succeed him. In truth, her father was no more exacting than his counterparts at Saks or Macy’s or any other large retailer, and Meredith knew it. It was his brusque, autocratic style that she objected to, not the demands he made. The executives gathered around the conference table had chosen retailing as a career, knowing beforehand that it was a frenetic, demanding business where sixty-hour weeks were the norm, not the exception, for anyone who wanted to make it to the top—and stay there. Meredith, like the others, had known that, just as she had known that in her case she would have to work harder, longer, and more effectively than all the others if she was to claim the presidency that would have automatically been hers had she had the foresight to be born a male.

  Now she entered into the topic under debate, knowing full well that while she might earn her father’s respect, she would incur a disproportionate amount of his resentment. He sent a disdainful glance her way. “What would you suggest, Meredith?” he asked, neither admitting nor denying that the rule had been his.

  “The same thing I suggested last time—that college students with no bad credit information be granted credit cards, but with a low limit—say five hundred dollars—for the first year. At the end of the year, if Allen’s people are satisfied with the payment records, then the cardholder’s maximum can be increased.”

  For a moment he simply looked at her, then he turned away and without appearing to have heard her, he continued the meeting. An hour later he closed the deerskin folder with his meeting notes in it and glanced at the executives at the conference table. “I have an inordinately heavy schedule of meetings today, gentlemen—and ladies—” he added in a condescending tone that always made Meredith long to take a poke at him. “We’ll have to omit going over the best sellers for the week. Thank you for coming. The meeting is adjourned. Allen,” he said in an offhand voice, “go ahead and offer charge accounts with a five-hundred-dollar limit to college students so long as they don’t have bad credit.”

  That was it. He didn’t give Meredith recognition for the idea, or acknowledge her in any way. He behaved as he most often did when his talented daughter showed excellent judgment: He reluctantly took her suggestions without ever admitting their value, or hers, to the store. But they were valuable, and everyone knew it. Including Philip Bancroft.

  Meredith gathered up her notes and left the conference room beside Gordon Mitchell. Of all the candidates for the role of interim president, Mitchell and Meredith were the two most likely to be given the job; Mitchell knew it, and so did Meredith. At thirty-seven, he had more years in retailing than Meredith, and that gave him a slight edge over her, but he’d joined Bancroft’s only three years before. Meredith had been with Bancroft’s seven years, and, more important, she had successfully spearheaded Bancroft’s expansion into other states; she had argued and cajoled and ultimately persuaded her father and then the store’s bankers to finance that expansion. She herself had chosen the locations for the new stores, and she herself remained deeply involved in all the endless details of building and stocking those stores. Because of all that, as well as her prior experience in Bancroft’s oth