by Susan Wolfe
Robbie. She made her response sound nonchalant. “Persistent, aren’t they?”
“It’s driving Mama crazy. She keeps saying, ‘What will the neighbors think?’ I know it’s mean to laugh, but what does she suppose they think now? What do they want with Robbie, anyway? Was he in on that pigeon-drop they got Daddy for?”
“Hard to say. What’d you tell ’em?”
“The truth again. He disappeared all of a sudden, and we haven’t seen him in a long while. The trick is going to be if he does show up again one of these days. What’ll we tell the government people then?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Why not?” Katie-Ann’s curiosity put Georgia on the alert.
“Oh, I just think you’ll be out here with me by the time Robbie shows up. Mama can handle it fine when the time comes. I should probably get back to work now. Look out for Mama, okay? Make sure she gets up in the morning. She really needs to hang onto her job.”
“I know. I’m helping her. I just worry how she’s going to manage once I’m in California. Anyway, bye now.”
Georgia set the receiver back in its cradle and stared at the phone. Katie-Ann had a very good question. Why was the government so interested in Robbie all of a sudden? Were they still after him on the pigeon-drop? Lot of effort for some dumb-ass grifter that her father never should’ve hired in the first place. Had another one of Robbie’s reloaded marks gone to the police? She pushed back from the table and stood up. That was probably the worst it could be. If they’d actually found Robbie they wouldn’t be asking for him.
Would they?
After her second uneventful night on Little Portman Road, she decided to make it her permanent (temporary) sleeping place. Nobody had called the cops on her, and there was just the right amount of coming and going to keep her from feeling completely isolated and vulnerable. Wednesday night was peaceful like the rest, but hot, which thickened that sweet alfalfa smell from her days of hauling feed in her trunk. Amazing how she longed for the luxury of just stretching out to stop the sweat from pooling behind her bent knees. It wasn’t safe to leave the windows down, so she stuck with the quarter-inch crack she always used for oxygen, and tried to sleep under the sleeping bag instead of in it. The slippery nylon bag slid off every time she managed to turn over, and beads of sweat broke free periodically to trickle sideways across her back. Her eyes were probably going to be Early Girl tomato red in the morning when she headed into her meeting with Ken.
“Georgia, come on in.” Ken was alert and cheerful at 7:30 a.m., and his clothes looked like they’d been pressed on the way up in the elevator. Today his bow tie was kelly green. “How you doin’? Your neck okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” She stopped rubbing it. “I just slept funny.” Ugh, was that a whiff of alfalfa coming from her shirt?
“Sometimes it takes a while to get used to sleeping in a new place.”
“Yeah, that must be it.”
He punched a final key on his computer and joined her at the table. “Appreciate you helping out while Nikki’s sick. Let’s start with the purpose of the board meeting. The board meets once a quarter to talk about how the company is performing and set the strategic . . .”
Maggie knocked on the door and opened it. “It’s the court reporter for the deposition tomorrow. She has a quick question.”
“Excuse me, Georgia,” Ken said. “This’ll only take a minute. Hi, this is Ken Madigan. Yes, Ms. Krinker, nice to meet you. I know you’ve been doing some depositions with Zack Stern, and we appreciate your help. Haven’t been paid for any of them? I’m very sorry, I’ll look into it today. Why don’t we meet at 9:45 tomorrow in the lobby and I can go over some of the names with you? Great, you can’t miss me, I’m the one with the bow tie and the big nose. Bye, now.
“Sorry, Georgia. Now, the logistics for the meeting. I’d like you to help me keep track of everything that happens. Attendance, all official votes . . .”
Maggie knocked on the door again. Georgia contemplated his profile as he picked up the phone.
“Yes,” he said. “Ms. Weatherford, I understand you’ll be defending our expert tomorrow. Great, I’d be happy to. How about 9 there in the lobby for a cup of coffee? You’ll have no trouble recognizing me, I’m the one with the bow tie and the big nose. Bye, now.”
Her curiosity got the better of her. “Ken?” she said as he hung up.
“Yes.”
“You don’t have a big nose.”
He turned to look at her. “Well, I know. But if you saw the trouble I’ve gotten into because of my appearance . . .”
She tilted her head, considering. “So saying you have a big nose is camouflage, so people won’t notice you’re really good-looking.”
Red-haired people sure knew how to blush. Maybe she’d been too candid again. “Well, now that you put it that way, Georgia, it does sound a little ridiculous. Maybe I’m just incredibly vain.”
She squinted, then shook her head. “Don’t think you’re vain. Does it work?”
“Does what work?”
“The nose thing.”
“Would you mind if we talk about the board book now?”
So that was what the bow tie was for. She continued to study his profile surreptitiously while they finished up. Strong chin, slightly thin lips, and a straight, very medium-sized nose. He actually was good-looking, now that she thought about it. (She’d make darn sure he never knew she thought about it.) He seemed like such an unguarded person, a crab without a shell who didn’t miss it. How had he lasted for forty-odd years without getting squashed?
“Excuse me,” she called quietly to the woman facing away from her in the cube. “Are you Holly Foxx?” Queen of AP? Ms. Always Pigheaded?
As the woman rotated her chair around, her wavy auburn hair cascaded over her shoulder in slow motion, exactly like in some vintage shampoo commercial. Long, black eyelashes framed her big hazel eyes. She was wearing a thin cotton top so tight it outlined the grommets in her bra straps. “Yes?”
“My name is Georgia Griffin, and I just started about a week ago with the legal team.”
“And?”
“Ken Madigan has asked me to arrange for a simultaneous transcript of a deposition tomorrow for our huge patent litigation. It turns out the court reporter still hasn’t been paid for the depositions she did last month, so I need to hand carry the check . . .”
“Whoa!” Holly interrupted, and held up the palm of her hand. “I don’t know what it is with you people. If you submitted the paperwork properly, then she’ll be paid in due course. I’m way too busy for special requests. I’ve told you guys a thousand times.”
“If we don’t do the simultaneous transcript it might damage the litigation.”
“Wouldn’t it be great for you if that was my problem? See ya.” She turned her back to Georgia and resumed shuffling through a pile of well-thumbed invoices.
Ah. Evidently a graduate of the Roy Zisko School of Courtly Manners.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Georgia said to her back. “Thanks for listening. Nice shirt, by the way. You have a great sense of style.” Holly snickered into her stack of invoices. “Anyway, bye.”
Okay, so Holly Foxx had no intention whatever of doing her job, Georgia thought as she ran lightly up the stairs to her floor. One of those destructive employees her father had just written about. So Holly’s boss, Cliff, just needed to recognize the obvious, and then he’d step in to fix the problem. Well, unless he got distracted by that bright, shiny hair of hers. If for some reason Cliff didn’t fix the problem, was there a way she could help? Definitely something to think about tonight while she dined on slightly gray broccoli at Grace Lutheran.
CHAPTER 4
In addition to the savings, the other big advantage of sleeping in her car was that it motivated her to work late in the office. The long, uninterrupted evening hours helped a lot with her burgeoning workload.
Well, mostly uninterrupted.
“Georgia, here ag
ain tonight? They don’t believe in breaking you in easy, do they?”
Cliff Tanco again, the Chief Financial Officer and so-called manager of Holly Foxx and her Always Pigheaded gang. He leaned his fifty-year-old body companionably against the panel edge that formed the entrance to her cubicle, his pager and iPhone suspended from his belt in leather holsters like six-shooters. “Don’t you have a boyfriend who wants you home?”
She didn’t look up. “Just moved here about a month ago, Cliff. Too busy for a boyfriend.” Not to mention Deke had turned out to be about as steadfast as a wig in a hurricane. A new boyfriend would be more trouble than he was worth. Second prize: two boyfriends.
“Well, that’s too bad. Must be lonely for you, but maybe I can help. Come on down to my office for a nightcap. I have some single malt whiskey, and we can get to know each other better.”
Great. Was there something she needed less than getting to know Cliff Tanco better? He evidently thought that battleship gray hair of his was quite the aphrodisiac with people who were still getting carded in bars. She studied her nondisclosure agreement, calibrating her response. Then she looked up at him with a polite smile. “You know, Cliff, that’s sweet of you, it really is. Can’t do it, though, ’cause I have to finish this for tomorrow.”
“Well, but everybody needs a . . .”
“You know what else, Cliff? I think we know each other the right amount already.” Oops, take it easy. This wasn’t the prison guard. She beamed a disarming smile. “I mean, I already know that I enjoy working with you, and I value that a lot. I just have to get back to my work. Talk to you later, okay?” She offered a little compensatory wave as he backed out of her cubicle and headed down the hall.
“Nicely done,” whispered a voice behind her. Georgia jumped.
“Oh! Nikki!” Roy’s secretary had her hair in the ponytail again, revealing her little square earrings. “I didn’t know anybody else was here.” She lowered her voice. “That must’ve sounded awfully rude . . .”
“Exactly the right amount of rude to get the job done,” Nikki said, grinning. “I’m impressed.”
“Does he, you know, flirt with a lot of women?”
“Only the ones who breathe.” They giggled. “And I hear the third Mrs. Tanco has no sense of humor whatsoever. Anyway, he’s easily deflected. There isn’t a person alive who hates conflict more than Cliff Tanco. Gonna be here much longer? If you leave after me, could you switch off the coffee?”
So Cliff Tanco craved female attention, which would explain why the ordinary corrective channels didn’t seem to be functioning with Holly Foxx. Holly probably figured (correctly) that her great big hazel eyes would keep her fully employed even if she folded all those invoices into paper airplanes and sailed them out the window.
At that instant a solution popped into Georgia’s head.
Unfortunately, it was a lot like one her father would think up, and that stuff was off limits forever. She stretched her arms above her head and returned to marking up the Non-Disclosure Agreement.
Too bad, though. It was sort of clever, really, and it might even work. She finished marking up the Non-Disclosure Agreement, put down her pen and tapped the pages against the desktop to straighten them.
A hundred percent off limits, she admonished herself, narrowing her eyes. Forget about it.
She entered the final changes, shut down her computer, switched off the coffee machine and headed to her car.
Well, but hold on. She paused on the dimly lit sidewalk. What if it wasn’t her father’s special talents that caused so much misery, but the ill-advised use he made of them? What if those skills he’d taught her could be redirected to make the company more productive, and even prevent layoffs? Those very skills might make her a more effective employee and help her keep a roof over Katie-Ann’s head. She resumed walking.
Not that solving this one tiny problem could accomplish all that, she thought as she turned on her headlights and backed her car out, but wasn’t it always better to solve a problem than not to solve it? Maybe it was better to at least try to make a difference. She’d think about that more after tomorrow’s board meeting.
It was after eleven by the time she pulled her car into her sleeping spot on Little Portman Road. She settled in on the passenger side of her Subaru with her Itty Bitty Book Light to read the front-page of Ken’s discarded Wall Street Journal. He always left it on Maggie’s chair at the end of the day, and ten minutes of cruising through the front page had become part of Georgia’s daily ritual.
She’d decided to resist the urge to cover her car windows at night, because she wanted to avoid broadcasting her homelessness. Which meant she should turn her light off, but tonight she was restless. She needed to make a good impression with the big shots at tomorrow’s board meeting. If they noticed her in a good way, if they thought she was useful, it could help her survive the next round of layoffs. One screw-up and she’d be out on the street.
No way those wrinkles were going to just fall out of her pantsuit, even though she’d stretched the pants as carefully as possible over the back of the driver’s seat. And what if she smelled like alfalfa in the morning?
She had to get to sleep. She was thirsty, but if she drank too much she’d have to pee into the mason jar during the night. This Subaru living was becoming more vexatious by the day. Still keyed up, she ventured inside the paper and found an article on page 6 with patent news. Perfect. This would put her to sleep in no time. Cranking her passenger seat back as far as possible, she began to read.
Some guy in St. Louis had just gotten a patent on a new computer switch. A little company in Illinois had used a patent dispute to get the International Trade Commission to block the import of some French computer chip into the U.S. The patent office was now taking an average of 30 months to process a patent application, up from 28 months only a year ago. She suppressed a small yawn.
Sure enough, after ten minutes she jerked awake as the paper dropped onto her lap. She snapped off the light, slid the Journal over to the driver’s seat, and crawled between the seats into the back. New moon tonight, she thought as she punched her pillow and settled in. What was the International Trade Commission? Cliff should flirt less and manage that shiftless Holly Foxx more. Katie-Ann better not be squandering her tip money . . .
Since it was her first board meeting, she was in the room a good fifteen minutes before the start time. This was the fancy room she’d interviewed in, and look! Those fat, fragrant little sandwiches were there on the side table again. She sniffed the air. And something chocolate. She dropped her bag and notepad on the dark, shiny table, and followed the scent to a tray of frosted brownies with a walnut half in the center of each one. Probably ill-bred to pick through the lunch before the board got a chance, and anyway, she had to get the room ready. She’d bide her time.
She dialed in the conference number and muted it, exactly as Nikki had showed her. She tested the console to be sure she could switch between the three screens, and took out her copy of the agenda. She set her new smart phone on the table in case she needed to text Nikki for emergency advice.
The first to arrive was a man in his seventies, whose sweater and slacks draped elegantly from his tall, lean frame, and whose manner reminded her of Cary Grant. “Jared Winters,” he said, gripping her telltale icy hand. “Where’s Nikki today? Are you her able assistant?” This was the investment banker. One down, six to go.
Next to enter was Jean-Claude Hauwel, who was chairman of the board and head of the audit committee. He was small and wiry with stiff gray hair, wearing a green and black plaid shirt tucked into his jeans. Jared immediately began teasing him, and Jean-Claude smiled as he defended himself and finally laughed as he tossed his green parka onto a chair by the wall. That was quite a French accent he had. She hoped she’d be able to follow him.
Four more directors pushed into the room simultaneously, and she didn’t have time to sort them out. Then Cliff Tanco (Don Juan of Finance) and Ken. Oh, and Sally
Kurtz, that dowdy Human Resources person from orientation. Today’s outfit didn’t look homemade, but where did you go exactly to buy a mustard yellow suit? Georgia glanced at her list. Ken must have forgotten to mention Sally Kurtz.
When Roy Zisko pushed open the side door and entered the boardroom a few moments later, the cheerful noise abruptly subsided into stiff greetings and polite handshakes. Then Roy removed his suit coat, kept everyone waiting while he carefully squared its shoulders on the back of his chair, brushed away a piece of lint, held his maroon tie against his chest and finally sat down.
Ken began with an update on the patent litigation, then turned the meeting over to Roy for a twenty-minute corporate overview. After only two minutes a board member with raven black hair and a very square, determined jaw interrupted Roy in mid-sentence.
“You know, Roy, I wonder if you could talk to us about why the sales numbers for the new release are so abysmal, and what it means about our ability to make our numbers for the quarter?” His smile was polite unless you actually looked at it, but his black eyes looked like they could bore through rock. Georgia glanced at her list. Must be Larry Stockton, the one who was CEO of his own software company. Were the sales numbers a real problem?
Roy shrugged. “I intended to get to this in a couple of minutes, but I guess we can go there now. I know we all have different attention spans. The P&L, please?” Whoa! Hostile. Would his bold grin let him get away with it? The board members’ expressions betrayed nothing, but Ken dropped one eyelid in a sly wink. He knew what she was thinking. Georgia ducked her chin to conceal a little smile, and punched a button on the console. Mercifully, the correct columns of numbers appeared, and Roy explained that weak software sales were being offset by better-than-expected maintenance revenue.
“That’s fine,” Larry countered, “but it’s no plan for the long-term. Selling software is our core business, so why aren’t we selling more of it? Is the market down generally?”