With a gaping mouth she had shuttled the child away, lest I slather the tike with barbeque sauce and throw him on the grill, giving new meaning to the phrase shrimp on the barbie. Greg, being used to my sense of humor, found it hilarious, but for the rest of the party I noticed people keeping a closer eye on their offspring, especially when I was handing out the ice cream bars and popsicles. I was sorely tempted to climb up on a picnic table with a bullhorn and shout, “It was a joke, people! Get over it!”
The festering petri dish happily coloring on the other side of my desk was named Lily Marie Holt. She was three years old, with an angelic face, fine curly blond hair, upturned nose, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. The problem was that for the time being she was my responsibility.
There’s never any salt and pepper handy when you need it.
What had started out this week as simply keeping an eye on Lily one day at the office as a favor to my boss was now turning into full-blown daycare. When I had arrived at the office this morning, Lily was there, as she had been for the past couple of days. But today—in addition to the coloring books, crayons, story books, stuffed toys, blanket, and snacks that usually accompanied her—a car seat, a stroller, and a pink suitcase festooned with various Disney princesses had been added. Either Lily was moving in or preparing for a yard sale.
I was not a happy camper.
As I studied the little bundle of joy with the runny nose, trying to decide what to do about this latest turn of events, I pulled a tissue from the box next to my computer monitor and held it out towards the kid. “Here, Lily.”
Instead of taking the tissue, Lily started to drag her left hand across her snot-laden nose while her right hand continued to push the crayon with industry.
“No.” The beginning of the short word came out of my mouth sharper than I intended, then spiraled down into a half hush. She looked up from her coloring book, clearly perplexed by my short-lived outburst. I shook the tissue in Lily’s direction and was heartened to see her eyes brighten with understanding.
Since law firms don’t come equipped with booster seats, I’d pulled a chair up close to my desk. Lily seemed happy to kneel on the seat and color away. If I’d knelt that long, I wouldn’t be able to walk for a week. Sometimes she sprawled belly down on the blanket on the floor of my office. She’d proved herself to be a good-natured child, in spite of being cooped up all day in an office. There were a lot of adults in the firm, me included, who could take a few lessons from the kid.
Instead of taking the offered tissue, Lily crawled down off her chair and circled the desk until she stood beside me. Tilting her head back, she presented her wet nose to me as if offering up a precious gift. With a sigh, I held the tissue to her snout. She gave a small toot. I wiped the nostril and the immediate area clean and tossed the tissue into my wastepaper basket. I followed it up with a squirt of waterless cleaner to my hands. As I rubbed my hands together, the scent of the crisp aloe gel wafted through the air.
“Priddy,” Lily said, meaning she liked the smell of the antiseptic cleaner. In three days, she was no closer to speaking my language, but I was much closer to understanding toddler gibberish, which appeared to be a combination of babble and real words, or reasonable facsimiles of real words.
I smiled and nodded. It was a ritual—the nose, the wiping, the gel—that Lily and I had shared since she’d been assigned to my care.
My smile faded and my blood pressure started to rise as my eyes once again scanned the pile of Lily’s belongings in the corner of my office. Asking me to keep an eye on Lily a day or two was okay, even if it did interfere with my work, but if she were moving in with Greg and me, someone needed to man up and tell me. I’d waited in my office for some explanation, but it had been two hours since my arrival and no one had said a peep about the added baggage.
Getting up from my chair, I held out my hand to Lily. She latched onto it with her own tiny hand as naturally as an infant taking a breast. Together we walked out to the secretarial bay just outside my door.
“Would you watch Lily a moment?” I asked Alyce Allen, who now sat at Jill Bernelli’s desk. “The boss and I need to have a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting, and it may not be something for Lily’s delicate ears.”
Being a religious woman, Alyce winced at my smart-ass phrase involving her savior, but her disapproval quickly melted into curiosity. She clearly wanted me to expand on my huffiness, but I gave up nothing. Alyce wasn’t Jill. I had trusted Jill. The jury was still out on Alyce, though she seemed nice enough.
“Will it take long?” she asked. “I have to get the changes to this agreement done before lunch.”
“Depends,” I answered truthfully. “What I have to say won’t take long.” I deposited Lily on an empty chair at the desk across from Alyce and started to walk away. A few steps later, I turned back to Alyce. “If I get fired, Lily may end up in your care. Her stuff’s in my office.”
Alyce looked from me to Lily and back again with the sort of closed-mouth assurance you offer when you tell someone everything’s going to be fine even though you know they’re probably toast. “I hope it doesn’t come to that. The firing, I mean.”
Steeling my shoulders for confrontation, I walked the few steps to my supervisor’s closed door and knocked. First softly, then again, with more conviction. I never received a call to enter but pretended I did and barged in.
“We need to talk,” I announced to the attorney behind the desk. I shut the door behind me.
“I can’t right now, Odelia,” came the sharp response. “I have something important to do out of the office.”
The boss in question wasn’t Michael Steele, the attorney who’d been a royal pain in my ass for the past several years. Nor was it any of the other attorneys at Wallace, Boer, Brown, and Yates, the law firm where I’d been happily employed for two decades. Woobie, as its employees affectionately referred to the firm, was no more. Shortly after the new year it had entered into a merger with another firm. Woobie was supposedly the surviving entity, but you’d never know it from the way things turned out.
Last June Steele had received an offer from Templin and Tobin to open and manage their new Orange County office, and he’d taken it, leaving at the end of the summer. He’d asked me to go with him. He’d also asked Jill Bernelli, his assistant, to jump the good ship Woobie and sail off to T and T. Jill and I had discussed the offer with our significant others—Greg and her partner, Sally Kipman—and after many separate and joint discussions around our kitchen table and theirs, she decided to go with Steele, and I decided to remain at Woobie. I wasn’t sure either of our spouses were happy with our individual decisions. Greg was nudging me to follow Steele, while Sally point-blank told Jill she was nuts to do so without me on board to run interference.
Jill and Steele had departed Woobie nearly seven months ago. A few months later, after the merger was announced, Jolene McHugh, a senior associate, joined them. That move surprised the tar out of me. Jolene never got along with Steele, but she must have sensed the change at Woobie coming like the smell of burning flesh carried on an ill wind. Shortly after the merger took place, Joan Nuñez, another paralegal at Woobie and a good friend, left for a different firm. Sometimes when I walk down the familiar halls and see all the new faces I feel like an alien trying to adjust to a new planet.
We’d merged with a firm that had been downsized over the past few years. With the economy hitting law firms hard, including Woobie, the idea was to join together to form one large, strong unit of legal muscle. The problem was, Woobie joined forces with a firm that had a totally different management and practice style. Along with their client roster, the other firm had brought with them unhappy, caustic employees and foul-mouthed, ill-tempered attorneys. The firm was now called Hamlin, Hawke, Boer, and Yates. I dare you to make a touchy-feely acronym out of that.
Undeterred by the haughty attitude oozing from my new boss, I stood my ground. “I noticed a lot of kid stuff in my office this morning. Is Lily moving in wi
th me or are you using my office for storage?”
Erica Mayfield looked up from the file she was rummaging through and gave me the stink eye. “Michael Steele might have put up with your insubordinate attitude, Odelia, but I will not.” She put down the file and latched her eyes onto mine with all the warmth of a hired gun. “In fact, I’m quite tired of your old firm treating you like you’re something special. You’re not. Get that through your thick skull.”
Inside I wobbled for a moment, but outside I held firm. “What’s the deal with Lily?” I asked again, trying to infuse my voice with respect, even if it was just for show.
With a deep, exaggerated sigh, Erica stopped what she was doing. “The deal is I need you to take her for a few days.”
I stepped closer to her desk, a beautiful and feminine piece that I liked much better than Steele’s cold, ultra-modern one. Too bad I didn’t like the boss behind it better. “You mean you want me to take her home with me tonight?”
“Yes, and keep her through the weekend. I’ll inform you if I need you to care for her any longer than that.”
In all my years working as both a legal secretary and a paralegal, I’d been called upon to do a lot of odd and annoying things, especially for Mike Steele, but this took the cake.
Before I could answer, Erica located a piece of paper on her desk and held it out to me. “This is a medical release giving you authority to seek medical care for Lily in the event she requires it.”
I took the paper and eyed it. It was signed by a Connie Holt almost a week ago and notarized. “Is this Connie Holt Lily’s mother?”
“Yes, that’s my sister.”
“She doesn’t even know me. Why would she turn her kid over to me? Lily’s a child, not an unwanted puppy.” I shook the paper in my hand at her. “And this was signed a week ago. Clearly this was not a last-minute decision on your part. The least you could have done was given me a heads-up or asked if I could do it. This involves my husband, not just me.”
“I had Connie sign two releases, one for me and one for you, just in case I had to leave Lily in your care. I should have given you yours on Monday but forgot. As for advance notice—my bad.” Her voice dripped with entitled sarcasm.
Erica stuffed a couple of files into a large designer briefcase and stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have something very important to take care of.”
When Erica Mayfield first darkened the doors of our office suite, I had had high hopes of getting along with her. She’s in her early forties, smart and organized, with an impressive background. Standing close to five foot ten, with a thick torso and chunky limbs that she dressed to the nines, I thought we might also be able to bond a bit on the big-gal level, as well as over the legal work. But it was not to be. From the moment we met, Erica made it clear I was expendable. She gave all the plum assignments to Mark Baker, the paralegal brought over from her old firm, and went days without acknowledging my presence. It was quite a change from my days with Steele, when he was in my office as much as his own.
I slapped the medical release down on her desk with a heavy hand. “Demanding this of me, especially without warning, is highly unprofessional and inappropriate, Erica, and you know it.”
Ignoring me, Erica flipped her dark blond hair over her right shoulder and headed for the door with her purse and briefcase. I followed on her heels, which were expensive and pointy.
“Just a cotton-picking minute,” I demanded, but it fell on deaf ears.
She stopped in front of Alyce’s desk. “As soon as you have those changes,” she said to her secretary in a tone as crisp as a fresh apple, “e-mail them to me.”
Alyce nodded. A few feet away, Lily sat frozen in her chair, watching the adults with wide eyes. She made no movement towards her aunt.
“You can’t do this,” I said to Erica. I wanted to say more, but not in front of Lily. I may not have had children of my own, but I did know they picked things up like sensitive satellite dishes.
Erica didn’t seem to care if her niece felt the negative vibes. She turned to face me, standing only a foot way. She was attractive, with large brown eyes, full lips, and a nose just irregular enough to be interesting instead of a negative. “If you value your job here, Odelia, you’ll do what I ask. If not, you know where the door is.”
The words I quit were on my tongue, ready to make the leap into the abyss of unemployment. Instead, I said nothing, knowing I should discuss the matter with Greg first. While his business was doing fine, the economy was not, and a good job wasn’t something a person tossed away without serious consideration and a plan.
Erica handed me a smug, confident smile. “I thought not.” She turned and marched down the hall towards the front door of the suite, leaving me to steam and boil quietly in front of Alyce and the kid. It took me a few seconds and several deep breaths before I held my hand out to Lily.
“Come on,” I told her with a forced smile, “let’s leave Alyce to do her work.”
Lily and I were barely back in my office when I was called to do snot duty again. I had just wiped Lily’s tiny nose when Mark Baker appeared silently at my door.
“Doing Sesame Street duty again, I see.” Mark sneered with glee as he watched me with the kid. “Better you than me.” The words were pregnant with gloat. Lily moved closer to me.
Like me, Mark is a corporate paralegal. He’d been working with Erica for just over a year before the merger. He’s in his mid-thirties, of average height, with a wiry build. He wore his dark hair cropped close to his head, and one brown eye was smaller than the other, like a perpetual half-wink. A small scar ran from the center of his lower lip down across his chin, as if cleaving it in two. It was probably left over from a childhood injury, or maybe from the last paralegal with whom he crossed swords. I could see his smug attitude angering a coworker to the point of wielding a sharp letter opener. Yeah, I could see it easily.
“I have work to do,” I told Mark, eyeing my own letter opener with wishful thinking. “Why don’t we trade off watching Lily so we can both get some work done?”
Mark laughed. It had a nasty underside to it, like Halloween candy laced with razor blades. “No way.” Next to me, Lily buried her head in my soft side.
He looked around my office, his eyes measuring every inch, especially noting my window. Mark had been assigned my old office when Hamlin-Hawke moved in. It was a windowless cell down the hall. He’d made it clear he coveted my larger office with a view. My office was also much closer to Erica’s office—Steele’s old one. Even Erica had campaigned for a switch between Mark and me, but she had been overruled by management, who cited my seniority with the firm. I have no doubt that if I died today at my desk, Mark would move in before my body was cold and traveling down the elevator on a gurney.
“I hear the firm’s thinking of downsizing.” Mark tossed the remark out like a live grenade with a pulled pin.
My head snapped up with a quick pop. Lily started to quietly babble something, but I placed a hand gently on her head. Like magic, she stilled. “I haven’t heard anything about that,” I told Mark as casually as possible.
“Erica told me.” He spoke the words with undisguised confidence. “Management’s reviewing all duplicate positions. Any unnecessary staff will be laid off.”
Duplicate positions—as in two corporate paralegals.
A shudder of fear ran through me. Never, in all my years with the firm, had I feared for my job until this very day. Not even when Steele and I were at each other’s throats did I feel this unsettled.
It was becoming clear why Erica was not giving me much work and why she’d saddled me with daycare. It was a setup. With my billable hours slowly sliding into a deep hole, Erica was making it easier for management to decide between their two corporate paralegals. She was stacking the deck in Mark’s favor, using the firm’s decision to tighten its belt to get rid of me.
Another realization hit me between the eyes. Even the challenge for me to quit a few moments ago might ver
y well have been calculated. Erica knew I would balk at taking care of Lily 24/7 and had laid her trap. Had I quit, I would have walked away with nothing. If they laid me off, I might get a nice severance.
Beneath my desk, my right knee knocked with anxiety. But while it was out of view, I couldn’t hide my concern from Mark’s eagle eyes. A slow, sardonic smile spread across his face like a smear of dull paint. He raised his mug in my direction in a final salute and left—a competitor assured of a victory.
“Odie,” a squeaky voice beside me chimed. I turned to find Lily’s nose needing attention again. Not only did I get trapped with a kid, she was a sick kid. Plucking another tissue from the box, I held it to her tiny nostril and was rewarded with a small, wet honk. With Mark gone, Lily returned to her side of the desk, but instead of climbing up on her chair and getting down to the business of coloring, she picked up her latest masterpiece and returned to me, offering it up like a gift.
“For me?” I took it from her.
She put both hands behind her back, screwed up her face in a chubby giggle, and nodded with vigor.
“Thank you, Lily. It’s lovely.” My eyes fixed on the bulletin board fastened to the wall on the right side of my desk. “Tell you what, how about we pin this up here so I can always see it?” I removed a couple of pushpins from the cork surface, positioned the crayon drawing in a prominent place, and secured it. The child was overjoyed with my art appreciation.
“Don’t let it get to you.”
I looked up to find my doorway again occupied. This time it was Alyce. She pushed a strand of light brown hair away from her eyes and gave me an encouraging, shy smile. She was petite but sturdy and favored casual business attire with flat shoes.
When I’d showed Alyce the ropes around Woobie—it’ll always be Woobie to me, dammit—I’d found her quiet and attentive, and she’d proven herself to be an excellent secretary. She was also supposed to provide me with secretarial support, but Mark and Erica made sure I seldom saw the fruits of her labor. I knew little about her beyond the fact that her husband’s name was Gary. He was the pastor of a small independent church, and they had two children. Although pleasant enough, she hadn’t reached out to make friends with any of the Woobie staff. Alyce was a quiet, private person, which was probably how she survived working with Erica and Mark.
Hide and Snoop (The Odelia Grey Mysteries) Page 2