1 Executive Lunch

by Maria E. Schneider

  I snagged a notebook that I liked and snacks from a drawer before heading out for the shortened weekend.

  Chapter 16

  Saturday I managed to miss my karate class. Since I was out of shape anyway, it was probably a good thing. I used the day to buy some decent luggage and travel stuff. The entire time, especially as I picked out a few necessities for the condo, I ignored the fact that I hadn't quit the undercover work, even though I was pretty sure that I should.

  When Sunday rolled around, I wasn't in the mood to deal with Sean and church. I knew Sean would hassle me about the fouled up favor, so I slept in and ignored the phone until it was time to leave for Tamarron.

  I flew into Durango on Sunday afternoon. The resort was a half-hour drive up the mountains. In the summer, a lot of people took the train ride in Durango and maybe played a round of golf before they moved on. In the winter there was excellent skiing at Purgatory or Wolf Creek over by Pagosa Springs.

  The resort catered to these types of tourists, and it was fabulous. When I walked in, I couldn't contain a whispered, "Wow." As far as I was concerned, if Strandfrost wanted to foot the bill, they could forget all about me and leave me here. It was possible that I had just found the first real hint of appeal to being an executive.

  My biggest challenge was to keep my teeth from falling out of my open mouth while checking in. The front lobby came complete with a grand piano, a bar off to the side and a discreet front desk. I almost missed the desk because I was agog at the grandeur.

  "Hi, I'm here for the conference," I managed.

  The woman checking me in was more than polite. Refusing the bellboy's service was out of the question. He did not accept a tip.

  There were two king beds in my room and a view of the mountains that was close enough to reach out and touch. The kitchen was better stocked than Huntington's condo back in Denton. Below the sparkling clean windows, a pool and hot tub waited. "Oh my!" I stared down, salivating. "That hour-long flight was exhausting. And how can anyone approach me with dirty deals if I am holed up in my room? It is my duty to go to the hot tub."

  I sighed with regret over my horrible job, jumped into my bathing suit and grabbed the big fluffy hotel robe. I made a mental note to order a flowing beach wrap. In fact, deciding the robe just didn't cut my new image, I grabbed a luxuriously fluffy towel instead. On my way to the pool, I stopped in the resort shop on the lower floor. It was hard, but I purchased only two beautiful print cover-ups before heading outside.

  It wasn't even Monday, and I was already having to shop and wait around in a hot tub for business. "Tsk, tsk. Will I never get any rest?" I giggled and stepped into the pool area.

  I had dawdled long enough that someone had beat me to the hot tub. Two someones actually. I stopped dead in my tracks and barely stifled a groan.

  Allen and Turbo were sitting awash with bubbles. Allen had a drink in a plastic cup. His thinning black hair was damp and sticking to the sides of his portly neck. Turbo looked better, but only because he was thinner.

  "Hi," I mumbled unhappily. I glared at Turbo. Why had it slipped my mind to ask if he was coming?

  Because he had no reason to be here, that was why. Warily, I untied my new wrap. It was hard not to screech with frustration. I had planned on slipping into an empty hot tub to wait for a Romeo. Allen and Turbo were more like a cross between The Simpsons and Dilbert.

  Turbo lifted his drink in my direction. "Welcome."

  Allen smiled rather blearily. "'lo."

  I stepped carefully into the tub and addressed Turbo stiffly. "I didn't know you would be attending."

  Turbo shrugged. "Allen and Dan needed some equipment setup for a demo."

  I started to say that I thought I was going to be setting up the equipment, but Turbo gave me his bulging eye look. I clamped my mouth shut.

  "Didn't see why Sedona couldn't do it, but I forgot…about the promotion," Allen said. "Con…grashulations."

  "Thanks." The tub had been empty when I started down here. Allen must have started on the drinks way before the hot tub.

  We chit-chatted for a bit, but it was a difficult mix. Allen wasn't comfortable using buzzwords with someone as technical as Turbo and myself, and Turbo and I were too smart to want to waste off-time discussing the pros and cons of a particular operating system.

  When it got too warm, I tucked myself into the outdoor pool for a lap or two. It was heated with a window that didn't quite touch down to the water. Ducking under the panel, I was actually back inside.

  Cooled off, I headed back to the hot tub to warm up.

  To my complete dismay, Dan sauntered through the hotel door as I walked over. A gorgeous blond babe held onto his arm. I tried to remember if he was married or not. With his hard-to-resist ass-grabbing openers, marriage wasn't likely.

  Allen jumped up enthusiastically. "Dan! Autumn! Houz are you guys? Come on out!"

  Apparently blond-babe, Autumn, knew Allen. She waved and blew him a kiss.

  Allen put one foot out of the tub and leaned to slap Dan across the shoulders. His other foot was still in the tub.

  "Be careful!" I yelled.

  The warning was too late. Allen's drink went flying. There was a magnificent splash as he slid back into the tub, rinsing off the drink he had just thrown all over himself and the tiles.

  Autumn gasped. Dan reached a half-hearted hand towards the tub, but unless Allen's arms suddenly tripled in length, Dan wasn't leaning close enough to actually be of any help. Of course, with his girlfriend in tow, he couldn't really afford to get his toupee wet, now could he?

  Turbo squeezed himself over to one side, trying to avoid getting smacked by flailing limbs.

  Like a bad apple, Allen's head bopped back up after only seconds. "Fi..ne, Fine," he sputtered.

  I closed my eyes. This was too embarrassing for words. Without wasting any, I turned to go, not even waiting to see if Allen could still walk.

  Turbo caught up with me before I made it to the elevator.

  "I hope you don't mind that I showed up." Turbo was ever polite.

  I didn't answer. Looking at his knobby knees and unshaven legs poking from the bottom of the robe, I was ecstatic with my purchase of the swimsuit cover-up. I made an additional note to never be seen in the room slippers even if the hotel was on fire.

  With my hand hovering, I waited for him to specify a floor. He was one floor up from me.

  "You're showing up late tomorrow, right?" he hinted.

  "Is there a particular time you want me to make an entrance?"

  He tilted his head a bit. "I don't want you thinking you need to help with the demo equipment."

  "Is that why you decided to come along?"

  He nodded. "Dan was in the hallway the other day, talking to Allen. Dan suggested to Allen that he was happy to have you along to do the grunt work." He smiled. "I thought it might tarnish your image."

  My new image maybe. My old one, hardly. But Dan had already made it clear he was going to do everything possible to keep me in my place. "Gary just let you sign up? They never send techs unless they're desperately afraid the equipment won't work."

  "Gary set it up, said it was a good idea."

  "I think he knows about the Feds and the investigation," I said. "He seems to anyway."

  Turbo swept a warning glance around the entire four-foot space, but unless the elevator had been bugged, our secret was safe.

  I waved good night and got off on my floor, feeling depressed. Only a moron would approach this new team of people. Then again, the old team wasn't that impressive. Dan was a womanizer, Allen a lush, and between the two of them, they almost had enough brains to kill a mosquito.

  At least the bed was comfortable. I had a bad feeling that tomorrow wasn't going to be.

  Chapter 17

  The conference was a fairly large draw, partly because of its peaceful location tucked in the mountains of Colorado. Strandfrost had pulled out all the stops, providing enough demonstrations to fill a large ba
llroom. Partitions went all the way around the outside walls of the room, each blocking off a demo and providing a semblance of a private consultation. I found Turbo hard at work inside the partition where I would be giving my demo. Bruce was helping him. My fingers itched to dig in and get the setup running, but Turbo gave me one of his looks. He may as well have worn a sign that said, "Go Away."

  "Hi."

  "Good morning," Turbo replied in his most deferential tone.

  I rolled my eyes. "You guys want some coffee?" This earned another dirty look, but hey, they were helping me get my show ready, and I figured that some of the executives had to be human.

  Bruce wasn't as wary as Turbo, so he nodded. "That would be really decent."

  There was a table with donuts and goodies on the way in, so I made my way back there and got a tray with some food and coffee.

  When I returned to the booth, Turbo reluctantly helped himself from the tray. "You might want to check things. You know, give us some orders on how you want this set up."

  Turbo could do a more perfect job than God's angels when it came to setting up equipment. "Uh…yeah, right."

  "Is this where you want this?" he prodded helpfully. It was a ridiculous question. The booth was ten by ten facing the center of the room where people could crowd at will. I didn't care how high a person was in the chain of command, there was only so much anyone could do with the space. "Yeah, that's great. Just perfect."

  Bruce tried not to laugh and ended up snorting coffee.

  "His stuff could be closer together," I said, just to goad him. "We don't want people to try and get between those racks and trip on the power cords." I batted my eyes at a now scowling Bruce. The only person small enough to fit through the space might have been me before breakfast, turned sideways and with no air in my lungs.

  Turbo looked pleased enough to have kissed me except for the fact that it would have ruined everything. He helped himself to another donut. Now that he was certain I wouldn't screw things up too badly, he went back to plugging things in. Bruce gave me a snarl, but his heart wasn't in it.

  I wandered off to check out the other demonstrations. On my way back around the square, I saw the woman that had been with Dan the night before approach Turbo and Bruce. What was her name? Alice? Autumn? Something like that. Bruce didn't bother to take his eyes off her cleavage, but Turbo stared politely at her face and answered a question. She must not be used to meeting men's eyes because she sashayed away pretty quickly.

  It was almost time for the customers to start asking questions. Bald suits, tall suits, fat suits and skinny suits were lining up in front of the donuts. Dan had a couple of banker-types hanging on his arm, and Allen went by with an entourage.

  The parade had started, and I was one of the caged. I scurried to find the fliers. The computer screens were big and bold and the lights on the storage drives flashed busily as the server commanded that data be moved back and forth. There were lights for failures and lights for idle and a pretty flow of numbers for the monitor.

  The first two hours weren't bad; the only problem was that I was the only one doing the demo. My feet started to hurt, and I was hungry, but I kept on going. "Yes," I answered for what felt like the millionth time. "Let me show you." I turned to draw on my white board, but it was already full of scritches and scratches.

  Turning to apologize, I noticed one of the hard drives had failed. Good. It gave me something different to brag about. "Don't worry folks. The data is still protected!" A few people stepped closer; the steady red light was like a beacon for trouble.

  By the time I was done explaining the protection, it was lunch and the crowds started to thin. I had to replace the failed hard drive, so I set out a stack of fliers on the table and stepped behind the partition walls. The small hallway space stretched over to the booths next to me. "Hmm." I sorted through boxes of packing material, but didn't see what I needed. Turbo had to have left some extra equipment somewhere.

  Trying to hurry, I stepped over cables that were plugged into electrical outlets and made my way towards Allen and Dan's demos. Turbo probably figured I could handle my stuff and left the extra for the guys.

  Given my grace and the dim lighting, it was inevitable that I tripped over a cord. Like a large sack of potatoes, I fell hard, landing on my knees. "Oomph!" I sucked in a breath of air and held perfectly still while the pain radiated through me. It took me a minute of whining before I could untangle myself from the cable. I then had to make sure it was still plugged in so that none of the other demos would be ruined.

  With the thinner lunchtime crowd, I could hear Dan easily on the other side of the partition. "We can make a special deal. You don't have to go through Strandfrost. I know someone that can help you. Come on back here where we can talk."

  I froze. Back here? No one ever took the customers behind the partitions. The place was a mess and dangerous, not to mention kind of dark.

  I looked around, trying to figure out if I was behind Dan's booth or Allen's. Either way, I didn't want to be caught back here, especially sitting on the floor checking cables. I scrambled to my feet.

  "You tell me what you need," he said.

  I paused in my panic. His voice wasn't getting closer. Was it?

  "How…spending?"

  He sounded further away. The only problem was that his conversation seemed to be something I should hear. Spending on what? What kind of deals was he making?

  I jammed my way behind a stack of boxes. Maybe I'd be able to hear and not be seen. My foot hit something soft, twisting my ankle sideways. I nearly fell and took the boxes with me.

  Holding my breath and the box in front of me, I tried to step over whatever cable had nearly killed me. I couldn't see it, but it...groaned.

  My feet jumped a foot in the air. They came down, along with the empty box on the top of the stack. I stifled a scream.

  The darkness whimpered back.

  I spun around, smacking my shoulder against another tall box. In the dim light I could see an arm...a leg...it took me several heartbeats to figure out where the head was. At first there seemed to be a bunch of body parts completely unrelated to anything else.

  "Hello?" My voice sounded like a badly oiled door.

  The arm moved, but not in a threatening manner. "Ow." The head raised off the floor and the arm reached towards it.

  "Are you okay?" My brain finally accepted that the prone person wasn't a threat. I scooted closer. "Ann?"

  "No...it's...I'm Kathy."

  "Kathy! Are you okay?" I barely knew her well enough to identify her in broad daylight. She worked in marketing under Ross, but I had never said more than "hi" in a Strandfrost hallway before.

  "I think my head is falling off." She moved to sit up. I helped her.

  "What happened?"

  "We were out of give-aways upfront." She sat, dazed. "I ran into something." She pulled her legs in, crossing them and leaned her head down. "Oh my God, it hurts."

  I reached out and felt along where her hands were touching. The bump was all the way in the back, towards the left side of her head. It was sticky, but she used a lot more hairspray than I did. I couldn't tell if she was mortally wounded or not. "We need to get you into the light. Can you stand?"

  She sniffled. "Gimme a minute. It hurts. Damn. I must have fallen over these boxes. I've got another lump on my arm."

  "I'm going to go get--"

  "No, no. Just give me a minute." She leaned her head back.

  I hovered nervously until she moved her legs to stand. When she was ready, I helped her up.

  She was shaky, but she didn't sit right back down. "I need to go to my room. My God, I am a mess."

  I wasn't sure how she could tell in the dim light, but it was probably true. "We can go back over this way. My booth is closer to the ballroom doors."

  We walked carefully. She leaned on me at first, but got stronger as we went. Thankfully we were both in pants and low shoes. I peeked inside my booth before waving her out. "Come o
n."

  She stepped into the display area, looked down and winced. Her pants looked like she had slid through a dust-bunny derby. I was slightly cleaner, but only because my pants were blue, rather than black.

  I checked her head, but other than her hair sticking sideways, it looked intact. "Let's get you upstairs."

  I took the outside, letting her walk along the partitions as much as possible. Most people were at lunch, so no one paid us much attention. Sadly, we both limped a bit. We kept our heads together as though conversing quietly, hoping no one would notice us. Kathy was shorter than me by a head even with her light brown hair sticking up. Her lipstick was chewed partially off, and she must have shed a tear or two because black mascara streaked underneath her eyes. Her skin was pale; tiny freckles stood out against smeared makeup.

  Once we got to her room, I headed for the phone to order an ice pack. She leaned against the bathroom sink and waved me off. "I'll call room service. You go on, change."

  "Do you want a doctor? I would guess the hotel has one or can get one."

  "No." Her hands were shaking, but she peered at herself in the bathroom mirror. "Two lumps. One in front and one in back." The one on her forehead wasn't really a bump, but it was red. "No blood. I'm good."

  I wasn't too keen on leaving her, but I wasn't sure what else to do. I made a note of her room number before going to mine to change. Once cleaned up, I called her room, checked on her again and then went downstairs. Lunchtime was fast fading. I hadn't eaten, and I hadn't gotten my hard drive yet either.

  Boldly, I went straight to Dan's booth. He was gone, of course, still at lunch. I stared around at the posters and fliers. It was Dan's job to make deals. Just because he said something about not going through Strandfrost…shoot, he'd probably tell customers that he would build the stuff by hand if he thought it would make them buy it.

  I tapped my foot. I hadn't even seen who he was talking to. Could have been one person, could have been a group of six. Before I could decide what to do next, a voice hailed me. "Excuse me, miss?"