Cross Your Mind (An Emerson Novel Book 3)

by K L Finalley

  "Were you busy?" he asked as if he might ask her to commit espionage.

  "No, what's up?" she was too curious to mention they were having dinner.

  "I'm coming into the office on Monday."

  "Okay," she wasn't certain why she was being informed, but she stepped away from dinner. "I have a meeting with Vicki at eight, but I should be in a bit later."

  "What time?" he asked.

  He never asked her when she'd be in. He never came in, so he never questioned the hours she kept. The very question of it made her take pause. "Okay, what's going on?"

  "There's a meeting Monday morning. I wouldn't be calling if it wasn't important," he was still speaking in a hushed tone.

  "Why are you whispering? Is everything okay?" she started to feel anxious.

  "No, everything's fine. I just wanted to talk to you without Misty around," he admitted.

  "Why can't Misty know?" Jacqueline asked.

  "Because she can't keep a secret, so I can't tell her yet. Listen, you're gonna have to trust me. Okay?"

  "Is everything gonna be okay, Jack? I need you to tell me that. On Monday, we're supposed to sign the offer for the house and I don't want to sign if I'm..."

  "What? No! Don't be crazy. Just come to work after the meeting. We'll be in my office. Bye," and he hung up.

  "We?" she repeated. "We?" she said out loud, but he was gone. As she walked back to the table, she continued to say, "We?"

  It was Monday morning and she was riding up the elevator to their floor. She was going to place her things in her office, conference with Grant for a moment, and, then join Jack and his guest in his office for the meeting. While she was curious, she'd decided not to worry. She'd decided that all her time with Jack had proven that his odd behavior was, typically, harmless. Plus, the day had been going so well that she'd try not to let his peculiarities dampen it. Her theory held true - until the elevator door opened.

  She exited to Mrs. Pennington not at her desk. She was always at her desk. She was always typing something, but Jacqueline never knew what. And, she was always typing it with urgency, but she never saw any communication sent.

  In addition, Grant was missing from his desk, but his absence was less significant. Grant had a penchant for wandering. Despite Mrs. Pennington's disappearance, Jacqueline continued with her plan and entered her office. There was no need to open the door. It was open. There was no need to summon Grant; for he was in there. Sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk as if he was waiting on a meeting with her, she stared at him. "Morning, Grant," she said.

  "Oh, hey," he said nervously.

  He'd never been that lax with her. While she didn't mind, it indicated there was a problem. "You okay?"

  "Something's going on?" he whispered with his fingers to his mouth.

  "Why do you say that?" she asked as she unpacked.

  "There's a meeting in Jack's office."

  Trying to comfort him, she said, "Oh, he called me last night. Yeah, there's a meeting this morning."

  "Did they tell you?" he stopped biting his nail and stared at her. His eyes grew big and his mouth hung wide as if he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to see.

  She was drawn in. Unaware of what he'd seen and unsure if she wanted to know, she questioned, "Tell me what?"

  He whispered, "They'd all be coming?"

  She tilted across her desk hoping he'd say more without her having to ask. But, before he could, she heard, "Jacqueline, are you here?"

  "Just got here, Jack. I'm heading over, now," she replied to the open door. Then, she looked back at Grant. "Stay in here. I'll go to the meeting and find out what's going on. I'm sure it's all gonna be okay, but you stay in here. Okay?"

  "Yeah," he said as crudely as he had before. She collected her folio and exited her office shaking her head at Grant. In the hall between her office and Jack's, she was again unsettled by Mrs. Pennington's absence. She considered immediately asking Jack about her whereabouts, but, then she considered what Grant said. There were guests. They didn't need to know that the operation could become unhinged by the absence of the Editor-in-Chief's executive assistant. Before she could consider that she might be home sick, her nose curled at the whiff of medium-bodied tobacco. Her head turned away from the empty desk and eyed Jack's office. It isolated the voices. It discarded Jack's voice and that of another voice she knew but couldn't place. It zoned in on a voice she hadn't heard in quite a while, but a voice that felt like home, a voice that gave her a great deal of comfort.

  She cracked the door open and held it tightly. Peering around it, she saw him. He wasn't what he once was, but he was there. Sitting on Jack's couch, rather than behind his desk where he had been for years. He was smaller. His hair had turned winter white and had cut a path off his head. His face was seasoned and chiseled, but eyes weren't worn or fatigued. She watched as they danced around the room and followed the conversation. His height would forever make him Big Jack but having suffered a stroke and heart attack in the same year just a few years ago, his girth had been lost. In its absence, he was an old man, but oddly to her, he looked more like what a newspaperman should look like than he ever did before.

  With the same boom to his voice, he said, "There's my favorite girl."

  She watched as he pushed off his cane and rose to greet her. His eyes were like earthshine pools and his voice was the cresting of waves upon the beach…. yet wrapped in his arms, he felt unsteady and she wanted him to sit. "Big Jack, I had no idea you were coming into the office. It's great to see you."

  "It's wonderful. Just wonderful to see you. I'm so proud of you," he said as he returned to the couch.

  "How are you? You look so well."

  Brushing her away, he replied, "That's hell you say. Damn nurses won't let me drink or eat steaks. I have to get away to get one of my smokes. Then, this one," pointing to Jack, "won't let me finish it. Little puss..."

  "Okay, Dad. Thanks for that," Jack said. "Jesus, you can't make this guy happy."

  Counting on his bony fingers, he rattled off the things that would make him happy. "A woman. A bottle of bourbon. A steak. A box of Cubans. And a casino. That's all I fuckin' need." Jacqueline laughed. The crude realities of Big Jack's life gave her comfort.

  Finally glancing around the room, she realized the other voice she couldn't place was that of Vergil Landau, the Sun's lead Counsel. Vergil's thin body was hovered over a laptop at Jack's desk.

  "Dad, you can't handle any of those things," Jack said from one of the chairs that surrounded his coffee table. Dressed in a suit and tie, Jack had abandoned his shoes and had his sock-covered toes resting on the side of the coffee table. Talking to Jacqueline, as casually as he normally did, Jack said to her, "But, we should take the girls out to Vegas."

  Jacqueline smiled at the idea, but she went back to Big Jack. "It's so weird to see you sitting on this side of the desk. I remember being in this office taking notes with you on that side of the desk and me on this side," Jacqueline said staring at her aging mentor.

  "Ain't it funny how fast times change," he said looking from Jack to Vergil.

  Vergil stopped typing, cleared his thought as if to garner attention, and spoke, "Jacqueline, we have to make you aware that there've been some allegations made about you from a Miss Clementine Porter."

  "What?" Jacqueline's stroll down memory lane had been ended when Vergil's car careened into her. "Wait a minute. I had Jill present at her meeting. We need to have Jill present at this meeting."

  "It's okay, Jacqueline, let him finish," Jack said.

  "May I?" Vergil looked over the top of his glasses like a mortician preparing to embalm her. He wasn't part of the conversation. There wasn't anything jovial about his personality or his presentation. His long, thin pale fingers were yellowed by the constant presence of cigarettes.

  "I wish the fuck you would," Big Jack scoffed. Jacqueline felt better that Big Jack made light of it.

  Staring at the old man who stared back at him, V
ergil went on. "She insinuated that you made sexual advances at her on six separate..."

  "I did not!"

  "Jacqueline, let him finish. This gets good. Trust me," Jack said.

  Still peering at them over his glasses, Vergil cut his eyes at the three of them, then back at his laptop, then he continued, "Jacqueline Emerson made sexual advances on six separate occasions at work. When Miss Emerson's advances were rejected, Miss Emerson conspired with Mister Boyd Junior to suppress her input on the company's restructure. In addition, Miss Emerson was instructed by Mister Boyd Junior to have Miss Jill Hanover create dubious Human Resources guidelines that were counterintuitive to a creative environment. These guidelines were devised as an effort to punish Miss Porter. As such, she is suing the Tampa Sun Tribune for sixty thousand dollars for unfair termination on the grounds of conspiracy."

  Jacqueline rubbed her face, then she turned to Big Jack. "Big Jack, I swear to you. None of that is true and no formal complaints were ever made public to my knowledge."

  "Well, I know that," he said as he unwrapped a peppermint from his coat pocket. "Sounds like she's a damn nut case."

  "She told me in the exit meeting that she was going to sue us, but I didn't believe her."

  "Oh, this isn't from an attorney," Vergil informed them. "She has written this herself and emailed it to me."

  "What?" Jacqueline said.

  "She's got balls. I tell you that much," Jack said as he stretched out in his chair extending his legs on the table.

  "Well, what does she think we're gonna do?" Jacqueline laughed. "She's crazy. This is insanity."

  "We're not gonna give her sixty thousand dollars for some bullshit letter," Big Jack said.

  "Of course not, dumbass," Jacqueline was still laughing.

  "We're just gonna pay out her contract," he said finally getting the peppermint into this false tooth filled mouth.

  "What! We're gonna give her money knowing all of that is a lie? She's lying about me! She's lying on Jill! And, you, Jack. Jack, tell them we didn't do that. Tell them, Jack!"

  "They know we didn't do it, Jacqueline. That's not the point," he was starting to snuggle in the chair.

  "Someone explain to me what the point is. Because right now, I don't know. Right now, my reputation feels like it just got sold for sixty grand," Jacqueline was standing in the center of the room searching for something that made sense.

  "Jacqueline, come sit down," Big Jack said. Rubbing her face, she did as he asked. "The paper business is a tough business. People think we run after the story. They think we make the story up. They think all kinds of things about us that you and I both know aren't true. Most of us." Then, he looked around the room. "Okay, me and you didn't start in this line of work for the money. We like the news. We liked the story. We liked getting it right even if no one ever knew it was us. It wasn't ever about money," Big Jack was trying to settle her.

  "But, Big Jack, this is defamation. We could go to court. We could win."

  "Darlin', what'd that look like? The paper beating a person." The clank of the peppermint rang like truth. "We're gonna give her money, because some people, like these two, only like money. We aren't even gonna give her a lot of money. What's the figure, Verg?"

  "Forty-two thousand over twenty weeks."

  "That ain't shit. We're gonna make her sign forms," he said with his arm around her as she held her head.

  "A non-disclosure which bars her from ever discussing the matter and a non-compete which prevents her from working in the communications business," Vergil smirked as if to congratulate himself.

  "She ain't getting shit and without references she won't be worth a shit. That award is to the paper. She can't even put it down on her damn resume. She's gonna give up her damn career for forty-two thousand. Damn shame really," he said.

  "You know what's funny," Jack said. "She's not even the reason for this meeting."

  "What?" Jacqueline asked. "I can't take much more."

  "You're gonna have to," Jack mumbled.

  "Shut up, Jack," Big Jack lashed. "Jacqueline, we can't be bothered with a distraction like this Clementine. I didn't even know until this morning that all of this was going on. I came here for another reason. It's time for bigger things." He held his spotted, arthritic hands in the air in front him.

  "Bigger things?" Jacqueline repeated.

  "Yes. Bigger things," he mapped a picture in the air in front of her. "I never intended to fall half dead. I thought I had a few more years to run the Sun, but," he shrugged his shoulders. "Shit happens and your son gets put in charge of your life's work. Look at him curled up in a chair like an infant." Big Jack jabbed him with his cane. "Shit. You must know that this wasn't what I wanted. My plan was to retire and you take over."

  "Big Jack, I never thought of a time without you here. I never thought of replacing you."

  "I know, I know, but this place needs you. You're its future. You've done amazing things. Look at you. You're on the path to overtaking Florida Times Journal."

  "Cross your fingers," Jacqueline said as she crossed hers.

  "I never came close, Jacqueline. Hell, I gave up trying. But, darlin', you never have," Big Jack shook his head. "You had the vision and the path to achieve that dream. You don't just report the news. You have the knack for knowing how to give to the people what they don't even know they want. I couldn't do that."

  "Wait, what about Jack? We're a team." She said looking at him lying in the chair.

  "You've got a soft spot for dead weight, don't ya? You're gonna have to get over that when you're Editor-in-Chief," he said.

  Withdrawing from his eye contact, she sat baffled. "Editor-in-Chief? But, I couldn't," she shouted, then she scanned the room. Vergil was hovered over the laptop without regard for the conversation. Big Jack was engaged in soothing her and Jack was curled in his chair lying in wait. Wanting to help him, she said again, "But, Jack?"

  "Don't worry about him," Big Jack retorted. "Trust me. Do you trust me?"

  "Of course, I do," she asked. "Wait, what's the timeframe on this? This is all too fast. There are things that have to be done. People to talk to. Announcements. The public."

  "We will make an announcement in a few weeks, so we can begin a transition period," Jack answered.

  "A couple of weeks?" Jacqueline was stunned. "That's too soon. There's so much to do."

  "You already do it all," Big Jack said. She looked at him with shock on her face. "Come on, now, we all know. Jack has no ideas. Every movement that's happening in this company is yours. Jack is a figurehead. You're the real Editor-in-Chief and it's time for you to get the title, the money, and the accolades. You've done a great job and you deserve this," he pointed to her with his shaky finger.

  "Big Jack, I don't know what to say," Jacqueline looked at Jack.

  "There's nothing to say. His ass will come in here and make an announcement the second week of April. We will have a transition of power for a few weeks and be up and running with the changes by the first of May. You were strong when we needed you to be strong and the paper is better than ever, because of you. Now, it's time to transition to your legacy."

  Jacqueline sat back against the couch. She hadn't thought about legacy. She had done what needed to be done. As quickly as the past, the present, and the future flooded her thoughts, she cast it aside and asked, "Big Jack, where's Mrs. Pennington?"

  "She retired," Jack replied quickly.

  "When?" Jacqueline asked.

  "This morning," he said quickly. Recognizing she was hoping for information, he explained, "you all don't know this but, Katherine was a beautiful woman. She used to whirl around this office like a daisy floating in a field. She was the best typist. The best. And, she had a helluva pair of legs. Helluva woman, but somewhere along the way, she became a tired, old lady. She was a relic of a time long past. It was time to head home, so I reminded her to go enjoy life again. Just because we get old doesn't mean we're dead," Big Jack wagged his fingers.


  "That doesn't sound like a happy retirement," Jacqueline said. "We could've had a party or something."

  "Trust me. She's happy with how this worked out." Jack said.

  "Wait. Wait," Things were moving too fast for Jacqueline. She held her head, but her stomach hurt. With her eyes closed, she pointed to where Jack sat and said, "Jack's gonna stop being Editor-in-Chief. He's going to announce it mid-April. Mrs. Pennington is gone, so there is no Executive Assistant. I am going to become the Editor-in-Chief. But, who's gonna be Managing Editor?"

  Jack sat up from his chair and looked at Big Jack. Big Jack rested his chin on his cane. Jacqueline glanced from side to side, staring at them both, rather than at the opening office door.

  "Hi, Jack, you wanted to see me," Paige said as she poked her head around the door.

  The edges of Big Jack's lips curled upwards. "Come in, darlin'."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mallory stood at the card table, which had been designated as the checkout, taking money. Alex was seated beside her. She was haggling with a woman wearing a lime green tank top and a pair of white sweatpants that had HOT STUFF written up the leg.

  "The plate set comes with the four plates, the saucers, the bowls, and the mugs for ten dollars," Mallory said.

  "I'll give you five for it,"

  "Ten," Mallory repeated.

  "Eight," the woman negotiated.

  "Sold," Alex said and held out her hand. Quickly, Hot Stuff handed Alex eight dollars and walked away with Jacqueline's former black lacquer plate set that was stored over in the shelves over the built-in microwave. "Mallory," she said, as she waddled back to the chair, "You're going about this all wrong. I thought we just wanted to get rid of stuff. You're acting like you need money for the damn light bill."

  "It has prices on it. Why'd I go through all the trouble of pricing things if people are just gonna give me whatever they want," Mallory said as she rearranged the kitchen wares.

  "That's the point of the yard sale," Olive said. "By the way, this is all the shit y'all own, isn't it?"