by RJ Blain
“Miss Evans? Is that really you? What on Earth…?”
“Could you quietly bring a few friends to hang out around the conference room where the board meeting will be held?” I kissed away all hope of a quiet year and invoked the first rule, smiling until it hurt. “Around the corner, prowling about, just nearby, please.”
“Of course, Miss Evans. Is there a problem?”
“I might be starting one.” I liked the way my tone promised trouble.
Dad never should have let me come to work hopped up on half a pharmacy. By the time I was finished in the board meeting, security might be taking me off premises. I wanted to pop Mr. Harthel’s malicious little bubble and get rid of him, but unless I caught him directly violating company policies, I couldn’t do anything other than bait him and the other board members and hope for the best.
“Understood, ma’am.”
I tipped the brim of his baseball cap. “Thank you. I’ll be borrowing this for a bit, if you don’t mind.”
“Can I get a picture of you wearing it?”
I laughed, leaned against the hallway wall, and posed, dipping the brim down and flipping him another salute. “Photograph away, sir.”
If the images of a casual, rumpled, disheveled, and thoroughly unappealing me circulated through the media, I didn’t care. Maybe it would remove me from the eligible bachelorette pool.
“Thanks, Miss Evans. No one would believe it otherwise.”
“No, thank you for your hard work. Do you know if any of the executives or board members have arrived yet?”
“No, ma’am. You’re the first on the floor.”
“I’ll be in the conference room propping up the wall or something.” In actuality, I’d be inside the room’s kitchenette, preparing coffee and pretending I was one of the caterers. I’d probably have to make room for the real caterers, who wouldn’t be happy I was in their way while they tried to prepare the conference room for a meeting of stuffy sophisticates.
“Yes, ma’am. Give a shout if there are any problems.”
“You can count on it. Thanks.”
The main conference room on the floor, and the only one large enough to hold the entire board, was on the far side of the building, requiring me to hike so far my breathing wheezed by the time I arrived.
I sighed, fetched my inhalers out of my purse, found the one the doctor assured me would work on minor incidents, and gave it a try. It lacked the punch of the first one I had used, but after several deep breaths, I no longer sounded like a whistle. Steadying my nerves, I swept into the conference room, startling the two women inside.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Brenda Cartney, the coordinator of everything food-related in the building, blurted.
I grinned, flicked my cap off, and pressed my fingers to my lips, closing the door behind me. “I’m not here, Brenda. I’m a houseplant some idiot put in the kitchenette.”
The older woman’s mouth dropped open. I didn’t recognize the caterer, which didn’t surprise me; so many of them came and went from the building I wondered how many companies Brenda had to hire to keep us supplied in a business where daily meetings were the way of life.
“Pretend you didn’t see me, okay?”
Brenda’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged. I swept by her, setting my laptop on one of the side tables out of the way. I draped a newspaper over it to hide its presence before taking up residence in the kitchenette. The silence continued for another few moments before one of the women moved, and the chink of porcelain announced they had resumed work and were finishing the preparations for the board meeting.
I waited in silence, wondering what I’d hear once the meeting began.
Chapter Six
To keep board meetings efficient, Dad had one woman—Brenda—serve as the caterer in the room while business was conducted.
She had signed an iron-clad NDA, and I couldn’t remember many times the board had invoked the black-out option for sensitive discussions. I heard the chatter of the gathered executives from my hiding spot in the kitchenette, crammed between the wall and the refrigerator. I had been forced to shove the damned thing six inches to make enough space for me to fit.
Mr. Harthel didn’t have the sense to activate the black-out option. Maybe he thought he was a lot of things, but Brenda reported to Dad—and to me. Once I was finished with my clandestine activities, I’d have to pull the woman aside and take advantage of her vast wealth of knowledge to figure out what the hell was going on within Pallodia Industries.
I flexed my hands as a way to contain my desire to pace and tilted my head to listen. The opened doorway on the other side of the thin wall allowed me to hear the conversations in the conference room.
According to the kitchenette clock, Mr. Harthel arrived ten minutes after the meeting was supposed to start. Dad’s delay accomplished one thing: we were never late for a board meeting, and as often as not, we were there first. Respecting the time of our employees, the executives, and other board members came in as one of Dad’s top priorities, and everyone knew it.
By showing up late for the board meeting he had called, Harthel sent a message to the other members. I smirked, squirming in my cubby so I could cross my arms over my chest. The opening of the meeting went smoothly, and Mrs. Frank ran through the attendance for the minutes. Once she finished, the room fell quiet.
Dad wouldn’t have wasted a single second before diving into business, and I wondered how many of the board members were thinking the same thing I was. Without his presence, the conference room felt empty despite knowing how many people were seated around the massive table.
“Well, Chuck, you brought us all together. What’s going on?” While I didn’t always see eye-to-eye with Percival Luther, the lawyer was one of Dad’s biggest assets, handling the company’s most sensitive matters. For all our differences, Percival belonged in the role of Vice President, something I had complained to Dad about in the past without any results.
Maybe he’d have just cause to listen to me now.
“We need to vote regarding Ralph’s ability to operate the company in light of the tragedy involving his daughter.”
Brenda stepped into the kitchenette, set her coffee pot down on the counter, and stepped out of view of the executives. Focusing her attention on me, she pointed in the Vice President’s direction. Fury splotched the woman’s cheeks dark as coal. Was the color staining her cheeks red?
I missed my phone and its camera, as I wanted to immortalize her righteous wrath. To control her and keep my presence secret, I pressed my finger to my lips.
She jerked her head in a nod, acknowledging my order.
“Do you have a recommendation to submit to the board, Chuck?” The sharp edge in Percival’s voice warned me of trouble for someone, and I wondered who.
Loyalty seemed to be a fleeting thing at Pallodia Industries, and I wondered how long corporate betrayal and treachery had been going on right under our noses.
“Yes, I have a recommendation. I believe we should enact an involuntary leave of absence to permit Ralph sufficient time to handle his personal matters. Missing the meeting in London has caused us substantial problems. We need to recover and fast, ladies and gentlemen.” Papers slapped to the wood surface of the conference room table. “This details the restructuring I think will ensure Pallodia Industries can maintain its superior position in the market.”
Brenda wrinkled her nose and made throttling motions, and I nodded to my accomplice-in-crime. Murder and the resulting jail time started looking like a good idea.
“I have taken the liberty of printing each of you a copy of the proposal. I’ve also created the appropriate sheets for ratification of the proposal should the vote pass.”
“You’re in quite the hurry to move on this. Ah, I see you’ve appointed yourself as the CEO of the company in Mr. Evans’s absence.”
“I am the second-in-command of this corporation, Mr. Luther. It is a direct shift to fill in the ga
p his absence will cause.”
“Actually, Miss Evans is the official heiress of the corporation and second-in-command, Chuck.” Of all the executives, I liked Armand Davies the most. In more traditional companies, he would have ranked as the Chief Operations Officer, although in our hierarchy, he came in right beneath Mr. Harthel and equal in rank to almost everyone else in the room.
One day, I’d have to talk to Dad about restructuring the corporation so it made sense to those outside the company. Hell, too many days, the ranking structure didn’t make any sense to me, and I lived and breathed it most days of the week. I often wondered if Dad had gotten tired of trying to figure out the company’s structuring and put me in charge of it when I had been a toddler. I hadn’t come up with another theory that made sense.
“Miss Evans is no longer a factor in the operation of this corporation, Armand.”
It was my turn to make strangling motions, and it took every bit of my willpower to stay where I was when I wanted to storm into the conference room, grab a chair, and find out how many times I could beat him with it before my abused lungs gave out on me.
Brenda refilled the coffee pot and returned to the room to serve the board members. The silence stretched on, and I listened to the squeak of the chairs, the shuffle of cloth on leather, and the taps of pens on pads of papers.
Someone typed, and I suspected it was Mrs. Frank. Knowing her, under the guise of recording the minutes, she was probably reporting every word to Dad until he decided to come crash my party.
Armand grunted and more papers slapped to the desk. “Until Miss Evans’s death is confirmed, she is the Executive Vice President and official heiress of this corporation. Her functionality has always been as an Executive Vice President, a role above yours, Vice President Harthel. I can provide you with a listing of the current company structure if you need a reminder of her position. You do not have the authority to decree she is not a part of the proceedings. I do not have a death certificate in my filings, and not only does she hold a higher rank, she is a major shareholder.”
Instead of silence, quiet murmurs filled the room. After what felt like an eternity and hadn’t been more than five minutes, Percival said, “Armand is correct. You are wasting our time, Chuck.”
“The man’s daughter is dead, Mr. Luther!” Harthel bellowed, and I heard the crack of his hand on the table. “He is unfit to guide this corporation as necessary.”
The eruption of noise and board members shouting over one another made me sigh. Brenda bolted into the kitchenette, her eyes wide and face pale. “This is insanity!”
It was insanity I had to deal with. I wiggled out of my hiding spot, grabbed one of the pitchers of water, and stepped into the fray. Men and women alike were on their feet with the sole exception of Mrs. Frank, who had pushed her chair back, her laptop on her lap.
No one, save her, noticed me. Adjusting my grip on the pitcher, which easily held more than a gallon of ice-cold water, I swung it in an arc, its contents spraying over the collection of executives and upper management.
Some shrieked, some cursed, and every eye focused on me. As recognition struck the board members, silence fell.
“Sit down,” I ordered in a hoarse rasp, setting the glass pitcher down on the counter so it made a heavy thump. Reaching up, I peeled the baseball cap off my head, turned it around, and crammed it back over my hair.
One by one, the men and women sat, and more mouths hung open than not.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing, Mr. Harthel? You were perfectly well aware my father and I were in the building today. You were on the phone with him before coming here. It seems you neglected to inform him we were having a board meeting today. Why might that be?”
The speech was enough to wind me, but I refused to reach into my purse for one of my inhalers. All I’d do was prove the wretched man was right.
Harthel’s face paled to a gray fringing on white. “M-Miss Evans.”
“Give me a reason I shouldn’t call a vote to have you demoted until you demonstrate you have the integrity to remain an executive.” I got the sentence out without choking on any of the words, but I was aware of the faint wheeze of my lungs failing to keep up with me.
“Use your inhaler, Miss Evans,” Mrs. Frank ordered.
I glowered at the woman, muttered a few curses, and obeyed. If she had noticed halfway across the room, my pitiful state was obvious to everyone else, too. I didn’t pay attention to which one I used, but it helped, and I sighed my relief. “Well? Mr. Luther? You’re the best qualified here to give me a breakdown of legal reasons I shouldn’t propose a motion to demote Mr. Harthel until he remembers the principles of this corporation.”
Percival, who was seated not far away and had caught the full brunt of my pitcher of water, jumped to his feet and held out his chair. When I didn’t move, he grabbed hold of my elbow, dragged me to his seat, and pushed on my shoulders until I sank down onto the leather cushion. “I would need to look over the specific bylaws, but—“
“Unnecessary, Percival. I have the appropriate sections with me,” Dad announced, sweeping in through the conference room door. He held a thick stack of papers in his hand, which he tossed on the table. The security guard I had recruited trailed after him. “Get out of my building, Mr. Harthel. You’re fired. Security will see you out. Your personal belongings will be couriered to your home address.”
Catching my attention with a wave of her hand, Mrs. Frank turned her laptop to face me, and the image of the conference room was displayed on her screen in one window. A black panel occupied the other half of her screen.
Harthel opened his mouth to say something, and Percival cleared his throat, standing behind me with both of his hands on the back of my chair. “Chuck, you lied to the board. It’s a direct violation of this company’s policies. Make your excuses to HR in a formal letter, but I will remind you all conversations in this room are recorded.”
“Get him out of here,” Dad ordered, stepping out of the way of the security guards.
Harthel spewed incoherent curses and fought the men, requiring three of them to haul him out of the conference room. Once he was gone, Dad closed the door. “Well, it’s been an interesting morning. As you can tell, I am in the office today and should be all week. Annamarie is in the process of working out my schedule. I’d like all of you to stop by her desk and make arrangements to meet with me one-on-one. For now, we need to discuss Mr. Harthel’s replacement. Any nominations, suggestions, or volunteers?”
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in Percival’s direction. “He’d do a good job.”
“While I’m flattered, Miss Evans, I’d rather remain in my current position. I feel I can do the company the most good where I’m at now.”
My father stared at me, his eyes narrowing. A creepy-crawly sense of dread worked its way down my spine. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I motion that Miss Evans should handle the hiring of Pallodia Industries’ new Vice President.”
I groaned. Not caring the table was still soaked from my temper tantrum, I slumped over the glossy wooden surface. “I do not second this motion.”
“I second the motion,” several voices chorused.
“All those in favor?”
Every hand except mine went up in the room, which still meant I could overrule the decision if I really wanted.
“All those against?”
Every eye focused on me.
“Abstain,” I hissed, and flipped them all my middle finger, evoking laughter from everyone except my father, who glared at me.
“Motion passes. In the interim, we will split Mr. Harthel’s work over as many personnel as possible. You’ll be in charge of that, too, Miss Evans. You can spend the rest of the day pouring through Mr. Harthel’s emails and files. I had his passwords changed and access blocked on all company devices before I so rudely interrupted this meeting. I expect you in our office as soon as the meeting is finished.”
W
ithout waiting for a reply, Dad swept out of the conference room.
“Yes, sir,” I grumbled to myself, shoving myself upright. “Any other business?”
No one said a word.
While I wanted to find some corner to hide in, nipping rumors in the bud seemed wiser than letting people come to their own conclusions. “I was released from the hospital yesterday. Technically, I’m not supposed to be here today, but Dad wouldn’t come in without me, so here I am. Apparently, I have correspondences to review. If you need me, I’ll be stealing a computer from Mr. Harthel’s office. If you want to talk, schedule an appointment with Annamarie. Mrs. Frank, will you please handle the closure of the meeting?”
“Of course, Miss Evans.”
I nodded my thanks, gathered up my laptop, and left the meeting, wondering what had driven my father to fire Harthel, who had been a part of Pallodia Industries for as long as I could remember.
When I arrived at Harthel’s office, several people were waiting outside of his door, which was closed and locked. I scowled at the barricade, contemplating how to gain access without breaking something.
“Who has the key?”
“We’re not sure, Miss Evans,” one of the men replied. While he wore a dress shirt and slacks like every other man in the building, something about his rumpled hair, lack of a tie, and general nervousness screamed tech to me.
“Got one of those fancy hammers you use to beat computers on you?”
A smile answered me, and stooping down to one of the carry cases on the floor, he pulled out a rubber mallet. “One of these?”
While Dad only bought the best for the building, interior glass was glass. I grabbed the mallet and put all of my annoyance behind my blows. It took three solid smacks to break the glass window above the lock. Instead of shattering into a million pieces, it broke apart in sheets. I crunched out a hole large enough for me to slip my hand through and open the door. “Oh my, it seems like the window was somehow broken. What good fortune.”