Golden Opportunity

by Virginia Taylor

  Now, with her desk space free, she scanned the rest of the room—the rolls of fabric, the cushion innards, a box of curtain tie backs, various handles, and door fittings. A few small articles had no particular meaning at this time, like a stack of old books, multicolored small boxes, and a plant stand. She would find a plant for the stand and take the rest to the warehouse.

  Now she could start work. Setting the Marigold notebook in front of her, she flipped through pages of numbers, addresses, and doodles until she came to the last. Here, Tiggy had itemized tasks headed The Schoolhouse.

  1. Kell will drop in sometime on Tuesday afternoon and drive you to the schoolhouse.

  2. Take color swatches and paint cards.

  Even for Tiggy, that was taking brevity a little too far. Marigold had never designed the innards of a house before. A hint or two would have been appreciated. Sighing, she took the articles out of the bottom drawer and dropped them into her bag, with a handful of pencils and a notebook, in fact, most of the things she had recently put away. She thought about adding the feather and the mints, but decided she could risk having neither of those handy during a house inspection.

  Since she saw no place for the rolls of fabric in the office, she managed the three of them all the way along the passage to the warehouse without any slipping from her grip. She used her foot to pry open the connecting door to the warehouse. As she dropped the rolls with a stack of others, a shadow crossed the doorway.

  She turned, noting a glamorous young woman dressed in a delicious red floral dress and red high heels.

  “Knock, knock,” the woman said as she stepped inside the doorway. After lifting her ombre blond hair to one shoulder, she rehooked the straps of her expensive multicolored leather bag onto her shoulder. “What a ghastly day. Is Tiggy here?” Her smooth face barely creased with her smile.

  “She won’t be back for another three months. I’m Marigold. I’ve taken over Tiggy’s job in the meantime.”

  “How nice to meet you, Marigold. Such a sweet old-fashioned name. I’m Scarlett, and I’m a friend of the Allbrooks, here on a charity mission. The Adelaide Dramatic Society needs a few props for their latest show. I believe the society has borrowed Allbrook’s staging furniture from time to time. They need a three-seater blue couch for their latest production, or so the set designer said. Do you have one?” Scarlett’s perfectly drawn eyebrows queried Marigold.

  Smiling politely, Marigold offered a rueful shrug. “I’m not sure I have the authority to give you furniture. If you don’t mind waiting for a few minutes, I’ll ask Hagen.”

  Scarlett looked amused. “Hagen won’t mind. We’re very good friends.”

  Marigold didn’t doubt that for one moment. Scarlett was Hagen’s type—polished, manicured, and shiny new. “I’ll just check with him.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Please do.” With Scarlett striding behind her, Marigold led the way to the office block and then to Hagen’s suite. “Is Hagen available?” she asked Sandra.

  Sandra glanced at Scarlett. “Mrs. Haines, good morning. Yes, Hagen is in.”

  Scarlett moved in front of Marigold and opened the door of Hagen’s office. “Hagen, darling,” she said and she closed the door behind her.

  “Oops,” Marigold said blinking at Sandra. “She wanted to borrow furniture, and I wasn’t sure who she was.”

  “She was a friend of his wife. She broke up with her husband last year, which might be significant. Or not.” Sandra kept her voice low, staring at the door. “I wonder why she wants to borrow furniture?”

  “For The Adelaide Dramatic Society,” she said.

  “Oh. Tiggy usually lets theater companies borrow whatever they want, but I didn’t know Mrs. Haines had any connection there.”

  “She said something about a charity call. I hope Hagen doesn’t mind having his day interrupted by this.”

  “If you were a man would you mind being confronted with Mrs. Haines in the morning?”

  Marigold laughed. “I see your point. Well, I’ll get back to whatever I was doing.”

  In less than five minutes, while Marigold was finding a place for a set of glass vases, which meant she had to find another space for three porcelain bowls, Scarlett returned with Hagen, who looked slightly ruffled. “Give Scarlett whatever she wants,” he said to Marigold. “I must get back to work.”

  “You’re a sweetheart, Hagen.” Scarlett rested her red fingernails on Hagen’s wide shoulder, and stood on her toes to give him a lingering kiss near his mouth.

  His hand briefly touched her arm. “Marigold will help you.”

  Scarlett’s gaze hooded. “Oh, yes. Marigold.” She stood, watching him leave. Most women would. Then she turned to Marigold, appearing politely bored. “A blue three-seater couch?”

  “Right. This way. Follow me.”

  Scarlett followed Marigold up and down the aisles while she peeked under dust sheets trying to find what the other woman wanted. “Here’s one.” She stopped at a navy-blue couch.

  “That will be perfect. Can your man deliver it today?”

  “My man?”

  “I was told you had a man to do your deliveries,” Scarlett said with an imperious frown.

  Not at all eager to ask Hagen another officious question, Marigold nodded. “We have a delivery team. I’ll see when Billy can deliver.”

  “The company will be finished with the couch in three weeks, they told me. You can get your man to pick it up then. Thank you, Muriel. I’ll tell Hagen how helpful you’ve been.”

  Trying to look like a Muriel, Marigold squeezed out a smile but she doubted Hagen would care to hear about her usefulness. He expected her to do as she was told, and she would, for three months.

  She couldn’t find Billy or Joe, but determined to save them work, she scraped the couch over to the loading bay doors. Finding the furniture for Scarlett wasn’t a waste of time, because she had discovered AA & Co. supported amateur theater productions, a generosity she admired. Without the local productions, young actors wouldn’t have a chance, and many professional actors wouldn’t be able to pay back the start they had received themselves. Nor would hopeful young set designers have the opportunity to show their talents.

  Plus, Marigold had found a kind of method in Tiggy’s madness. Tiggy put any old couch of any old size or color in the aisle nearest to the loading bay, clearly because these were the heaviest articles. The matching armchairs occupied the middle of the same aisle. Single chairs sat at the far end. Tables of all sizes filled the next row. Wardrobes were rare, but those AA owned were antiques and set against the back wall.

  Now that Marigold knew the system, she emptied the boxes, and placed the smaller props—the vases, the cups and saucers, the plates, an umbrella, suitcases, and what-all—on various shelves. Dusting off her hands, she strolled to the staff cafeteria, not only for a coffee but hoping to spot Billy.

  Instead she saw Hagen select a mug from the overhead shelves and turn to the coffee machine.

  “Could you tell me where Billy might be at this time of day?” she asked him with her best professional smile.

  He glanced at her. “He and Joe are at Kell’s workshop. They have a kitchen to pick up and deliver. Why?”

  “I need them to deliver the couch we’ve loaned to The Adelaide Dramatic Society for their latest show.”

  “Why are we delivering the couch?”

  “Scarlett implied that we deliver and pick up.” An element of nervousness lowered her tone.

  He frowned. “We let the companies borrow items, but they are supposed to arrange for the collections and returns themselves.”

  Marigold swallowed. Her chest deflated. “So, will I have to tell her that we won’t deliver and pick up?”

  “That would be unfair, wouldn’t it, when she probably enjoyed conning you?” He dropped a pod into the coffee
machine.

  “So, I’ve been caught in a charity scam.” Marigold made a deliberately exaggerated face of self-disgust. “I should have realized that beneath that highly polished exterior lurked a devious Miss Marple.”

  He examined her expression with eyes as blue and clear as the summer sea. “Treasure the moment. Not too many people would have seen Scarlett touting for charity.” He watched the coffee drizzling into his cup. “Who’s Miss Marple?”

  Marigold cleared her throat, reluctant to admit to watching daytime TV to a man who probably watched the news, at best. “A television detective. She acts like a doddering little old lady and no one recognizes the sharp mind behind her sweet face. Scarlett looks like…well, you know what she looks like.”

  “She looks like my late wife, except for the color of her hair.” His lips clamped.

  She huffed out a slow breath. “That must be hard. Every reminder is hard. We like to pretend they can come back and watch over us while we know they can’t.” Her eyes prickled. Talking about her dead mother to anyone who hadn’t suffered a loss was like talking to a sympathetic brick wall. Those people assumed that mourning the loss of a loved one had a use-by date.

  “I’m sorry about your mother.” A muscle in his jaw ticked as he glanced at her. “Was her death sudden?”

  She glanced away. He didn’t know about her mother’s condition and he hadn’t been notified about her death. Either Tiggy or Calli must have told him. “She’d been ill for some time. I have accepted that I’ll grieve forever without being in mourning forever. It’s harder for you.” She indicated that his cup had filled.

  He nodded briefly, showing he understood, which of course he did, although the shock of losing a young healthy wife was likely far more difficult than watching the suffering of a loved mother end. “I’ll get Billy to deliver whatever she wants as soon as he can.” He pressed the stop button and courteously passed his coffee to her.

  “Thank you. And, in future I’ll watch glamorous women with appealing smiles a little more carefully.” She added milk to the cup, while he started another for himself.

  “I don’t intend to micromanage,” he said, concentrating on the coffee stream, “but we don’t let many people borrow our props. I’m surprised Tiggy didn’t mention this. I’ll leave you to decide who can, based on something other than glamour.”

  “Driver’s license?”

  He gave her a sideways glance and stalked off.

  She didn’t know what to make of Hagen these days, though the death of his wife would have woken him up to the fact that life was short. In his own distant way, he was kind. She couldn’t say the same about him during their school days. His deliberate ignore of her back then had made an impact on a girl who was well aware that everyone knew her mother bought her school uniforms secondhand. This wasn’t necessarily unusual in a school that charged exorbitant fees, but she was a friend of his sisters, and he saw her in his home at least once a week. He could easily have been a lot friendlier.

  Added to that, in his last year Hagen had been the bleeding, bloody captain of everything, the school, the football team, and the swimming team. One thing she had been really good at was swimming. He absolutely hadn’t looked at her during training, and she’d been certain he wouldn’t select her for the inter-schools’ team, but in the end he had to because she had beaten every other girl in the school. She had tried to approach him about her position on the relay team, and he’d said, “Get dressed.”

  Get dressed? Every other person on the team could talk to him wearing a swimsuit, but she had to get dressed? He didn’t tell his girlfriend to get dressed, and she had the biggest breasts in the school, and she wobbled them under everyone’s nose. Marigold liked her body, which wasn’t excessive. The only person on the swimming team she would tell to get dressed was bleeding, bloody Brent, who already had the beginnings of a potbelly at the age of eighteen. Who wanted to see that?

  In retrospect, Hagen looked fabulous in his swimmers, showing most of his golden-tanned, tall, muscular body. Girls tended to approach him wearing as little as possible, in the hope of his attention for reasons other than wanting to swim last in the relay. He probably thought she was trying the same thing, but as a friend of his sisters that would be low, and probably hurt the most, knowing he thought she had been interested in throwing herself at him. Bigheaded jerk.

  But that was then. Time had passed and the few memorable occasions they’d met since schooldays had been put to the back of her mind. Easing her shoulders, again she stared at the sweet treats in the servery and again she deprived herself in favor of getting back to the restacking of the warehouse.

  Billy arrived about an hour later, and he shook his head over the delivery to the theater’s backstage. “If I had known this morning, I could have done it then.” He grumped off.

  Marigold ate her lunch in guilty silence, and then she shifted various chairs around the warehouse. Although any good designer would hear the word ‘schoolhouse’ and instantly see a theme, she was having an attack of procrastination. Perhaps when she saw the schoolhouse, an idea for the color scheme would waft out of the walls and inspire her. In the meantime, she had looked at new bathrooms online until her eyes ached. She needed shortcuts in this eclectic job she had no idea how to manage. Finally, Kell, Calli Allbrook’s husband, found her.

  “Ready?” He waited for her to collect her bag. Kell was a man about the same height as Hagen but there the resemblance ended. Kell had dark hair and the sort of rough handsomeness that model agencies grabbed with both hands. The man was perfect for Calli, Tiggy’s twin, and a quiet and contemplative woman who thought so long before she spoke that mainly she ended up being tactful. She had been the same as a girl, careful, and everyone’s idea of a thoroughly nice person.

  Marigold guessed that Kell was less tactful and far more determined to have his way. His dark good looks used to intimidate her, but now she saw more than his looks. He was ultra-smart and had recently been appointed the project manager of AA by his father-in-law, Alex Allbrook, the general manager of the company, the son of the original founder, Hagen’s grandfather.

  When she arrived back, Kell walked her to his work vehicle, a white pickup bearing the company’s logo. Within ten minutes, Kell unlocked the safety door of the main building of a former primary school. “We’ve got the walls up in this building, which will be converted into a duplex. We’ll want your interior design by the end of the week.” He followed her into the hallway.

  “Right,” she said, swallowing.

  “We’ll do the other buildings later. This is intended to be a two-stage job. As you can see, we have subdivided the site into sixteen lots. The other three buildings left standing will be converted into separate houses. The former gymnasium will have another story added and will end up being single-bedroom apartments. Student accommodation, most likely. Then we’ll build ten new houses on the other lots. I have the architect’s floor plans for each, and I’ll give you a copy.”

  “When are you completing the build?”

  “We’re playing this one by ear, so far, doing the whole thing piecemeal. Most of the men are working on the apartment block we’re building in the city, and they’ll be deployed whenever they have time.”

  She stared at him. “Am I doing a separate design plan for each building?”

  “You or Tiggy, eventually, but the school building needs to go ahead first. We want it done and sold. Alex likes to keep the money moving.”

  Patting her chest as though she had warded off a heart attack, she smiled with overdone relief. “Do you want the same look for both sides of the duplex?”

  He shook his head. “Not necessarily the same, but similar.”

  Marigold checked each of the rooms, taking photos on her phone. She made notes about the windows and the sunlight as she went. Kell busied himself, but he appeared to be checking measurements rather than plotting. W
hen Marigold indicated that she had enough information, he drove her back to AA. Before he disappeared again, he said, “I almost forgot, Calli wants me to ask you to come to dinner on Friday night.”

  “I would be delighted.”

  Then she went back to her office, and sat at her desk with a scale graph of two completely different sized bathrooms. For the next two hours, she went online to make her final choice of baths and vanities. She matched virtual tiles, and then shifted handmade cutouts around on her scale drawing of the plan until she was satisfied she had left enough room for towel rails and a double vanity.

  Hagen’s light shone through the crack beneath his door, but she didn’t see him either come or go. Sandra spent more time away from her desk than Marigold had imagined a personal assistant would, and Hagen spent more time out of his office than in it. Likely she would too once she had worked out her routine.

  She wondered if she was up to the task. For her sort of property designing while she stayed at home looking after her mother, she saved on costs wherever she could. Often, simply moving items around or into different rooms made the house look larger or smarter. If she needed a little extra padding, she knew a secondhand furniture dealer who allowed her to borrow his furniture for a tiny fee. She wasn’t above making new cushion covers or finding prints to frame cheaply, either.

  For AA & Co., she started from scratch. She hadn’t ever been expected to plot out where a fridge would best fit into a new kitchen, though she had certainly shifted a few in old kitchens. Although she could work out all the details given time, compared to a professional like Tiggy, Marigold was a rank amateur. The scary part was that Kell’s team would be making cabinets to fit her specifications. If she made a mistake, she would create extra work and costs. Aside from that, because she worked with whatever articles her private clients already owned, she had no idea of the most saleable colors for new builds.