The Staircase of Dragon Jerico
Chapter Fifteen
PRESTON DIDN’T SHOW UP to play basketball or for Sunday dinner at Jerico House. It wasn’t unheard of. He often got caught up in a project and forgot about the weekly gathering. Lawrence wished he was there. He’d found out some interesting details about Erin Scott and her life in Jerico City. He filled Jacqueline in as they ate.
“Fascinating girl,” Lawrence said. “Picking herself up by the bootstraps after a nasty divorce. Well, nasty as all divorces are. Husband brought her to Jerico City to start a new life and family, then cheated on her. They divorced and he left town, leaving her to figure out what she’d do by herself. She was waiting tables before she came to us, but she’s a natural at what she does. Perceptive. Compassionate. Perfect for Preston.”
“It’s too bad. You know there isn’t a chance he’d consider his personal assistant for anything more than the work environment,” Jacqueline said. “Did you find out about her background at Allard Holding? She’s not only competent at the level we have her, but she was being groomed for the top position in the company.”
“We should keep an eye on her. She could add stability to the company that it doesn’t have at the moment.” Lawrence sat back to contemplate a moment. “You know, I’ve seen a bit of a spark between the two this past week. Not a flame, surely, but a spark. Something changed on Thursday afternoon a week ago. It was like he suddenly saw her for who she was. When have you ever heard of him asking his assistant for an opinion, or turning a presentation over to her to test? She handled Royce in no uncertain terms. I’d be surprised if he shows up for work Monday.”
“I’d bet he was practicing his propositions,” Jacqueline laughed. “That man is impossible. He propositioned me once.”
“I found her wandering on the road after walking the property all around the site for the lodge. He didn’t catch up with us until an hour later at the truck stop. He said he’d fallen into a creek and had to go change clothes. She was definitely not interested in returning to his car.”
“Preston laid down the law a year ago when Duval started messing with Ellen in HR. He told him no more employees. Duval is supposed to keep his male member out of the female employees,” Jacqueline said. “I’m sure Duval didn’t pay attention. You know he wouldn’t take Preston seriously if you weren’t there to scowl at him.”
“That’s another thing I observed about Ms. Scott. She recognized the value of Preston’s plan, and whenever Duval varied, she put him back on track. If he asked her a question, she turned it back to Preston. She was very effective.”
“Let’s keep an eye on her. If she’s really all that, maybe Preston will see it for himself.”
Preston spent the better part of his day cleaning. The regular cleaning service had come Friday afternoon, but he felt his space had been violated Saturday. He needed to scrub everything. There were bags of food on his assistant’s desk. He didn’t bother to open them, but loaded a large garbage bag with everything, including the carefully prepared roulade and pasta. It was ruined. The slices were too thin and fell apart. The sauce was stuck to the bottom of the pan. The pasta was mushy. How could one woman so upset his personal space?
It was all Ms. Scott’s fault! If she hadn’t gone with Duval, Shannon Duval wouldn’t have invaded his space. None of this mess would be here. Perhaps he didn’t know Ms. Scott as well as he thought, but he felt as though he’d built a kinship with Maizie and he was positive they were the same person. He couldn’t believe anything Shannon had said.
He scrubbed the oven, even though nothing had spilled in it. There was pasta sauce on the counter and under the edge of the cooktop. When he finished the kitchen and moved to the office, he discovered where Shannon had tossed her jacket on the model, knocking around and breaking some of the pieces. The grocery receipt was under the table and Preston made a note to reimburse Shannon. He didn’t want even a hint of obligation to the woman. He knew she’d complain about the situation regardless.
A Rubik’s Cube had been all but solved and he twisted it into a random setting so he could work on it Monday. It wouldn’t be as good as if Ms. Scott reset the cube. He couldn’t look at the cube he’d reset and not see the solution as he’d created it. And Ms. Scott took resetting the cubes seriously.
Stuck in his obsessive cleaning mode, Preston washed the large windows that opened to the rooftop patio. Then he moved outside and got his patio furniture out of the storage bin, wiping each piece carefully, and checking for any damage or insect larvae.
Why had Ms. Scott chosen to go with Royce Duval? That question continued to plague him. There had to have been some other reason than seducing him or allowing herself to be seduced. She’d shown no signs of being overly interested in wealth, or any kind of success that wasn’t directly proportional to her own efforts.
Why is this so important to me? He had no interest in Ms. Scott other than as his very capable assistant. Except that if he’d found her when she was Maizie, he would have asked her out. It was getting harder to keep himself from letting his fledgling feelings for Maizie be transferred to Ms. Scott. Why did he feel so betrayed?
That was it, really. His ego was bruised. He accepted that everyone in the company assumed Duval was the brains behind the organization. He simply couldn’t accept that Erin Scott might think that.
When Preston had finished cleaning, he took a shower and then cleaned the bathroom again. Finally, he lay down in bed and fell into anxiety-ridden sleep.
“The slimeball actually put his hand on my leg!” Erin said as she and Dolores sat together with a glass of wine Sunday afternoon. As usual, it would be an early evening since Dolores had to open the diner at five.
“I told you to be careful. Your boss has a reputation as a real womanizer,” Dolores advised.
“Not my boss. He’s a sweetheart. The president of the company, Royce Duval.”
“I thought your boss was the president,” Dolores said, confused.
“No. My boss is the head guy, Chairman of the Board and CEO. Duval is President and COO, but Mr. Carver is the brains of the company. He’s really brilliant. A little socially awkward, but a mind that is incredible,” Erin said enthusiastically.
“That’s news. I didn’t know there was anyone above Duval in the company. He’s the only person you ever see or hear about.”
“Just a pretty face to deliver the news. He’s the visible one, so everyone in the company thinks he’s the reason it’s successful. I spent the entire trip yesterday—I mean the part where I wasn’t fending off his hands—correcting him regarding how the project is supposed to be presented. I’m sure even now, when we go before the board on Wednesday, he’ll change something significant. Positioning things so they are attractive and sellable is an art and Duval has mastered it. But he doesn’t really stick with the product.”
“And here I thought he was a genius.”
“He’s a salesman. You wouldn’t believe the number of emails I get from him on a daily basis. I mean email Mr. Carver gets. I screen all his email. Half the time the questions are so inane that Mr. Carver just tells me to handle it. I’ve got more authority in the company than the company president has.”
“You’ve only worked there a few weeks. You must be a superstar,” Dolores said.
“Not really. No one knows who I am. I’m fine with that. You know one of the things I was told when I first started was that I was expected to make correct decisions 51% of the time. As long as my balance stays positive, I’m golden,” Erin laughed.
“The higher the percentage the better, I’m sure. If you were still with me in the diner, you’d be managing it by now. But I can’t offer anything near what you make at JeriCorp,” Dolores said.
“I loved the diner, but I was really trained and educated for what I’m doing at JeriCorp.”
“Well, not to be a spoil sport, but I have to get up at four in the morning. No more wine for me. I’m headed home.”
“You know, Dolores,” Erin said as she walked her friend to the door, “I had no friends in this town before I met you. I can’t thank you enough for helping me work through my problems and enjoying my successes. You’re really great.”
“Just keep Duval’s hands out of your panties,” Dolores said. “The best thanks you could give me would be to file a harassment suit against him.”
Erin found Mr. Carver to be quieter than usual Monday morning. He came downstairs and went straight to the kitchen for coffee and breakfast. She went upstairs and found the bathroom and bedroom to be even cleaner than usual. The 7x7x7 cube had been solved, so she spent a few extra minutes making sure she had reset it to as random a combination as she could.
It was more difficult to set a cube of any size to a random setting than one might think. If she looked at the cube while resetting it, she couldn’t randomize it. She had to disconnect her mind from the process, making the moves while thinking of something else. If she looked at the cube when she’d finished and could see a solution take shape, she hadn’t done a good enough job. The program Mrs. Carver had showed her helped the process immensely.
When she returned downstairs, she went to her desk and began working through the morning’s email. Most she handled, but there were a couple of messages from Mr. Duval that she forwarded to Mr. Carver. He wanted to change a significant point in the presentation.
“Are you no longer able to make a decision like this?” Carver asked, pointing to the email.
“With the board meeting coming so soon, I thought you might want to respond,” she said. “If you have no comments, I’ll handle it.”
“I really have nothing to say to Royce Duval. If I never see another message from him again it will be too soon.”
“Yes, sir.”
That was considerably more vehement than Erin was accustomed to. She knew Mr. Carver was not fond of Mr. Duval. That had been obvious from their meetings all last week. It sounded like he wanted nothing more to do with the president of the company and that couldn’t be good.
“And please make a personal check from me to Shannon Duval in finance to cover this receipt,” Preston said, handing her the grocery receipt Shannon had dropped over the weekend. Erin scanned the receipt.
“Was there something I should have had on the grocery order last week, sir? I’m sorry Mrs. Duval had to bring a supplement to the list for you.”
“There was nothing missing. I did not invite her attention. Now please do as I asked.”
“Yes, sir.”
Erin wrote the check and attached a copy of the receipt. At lunch, she went down to the finance office and dropped the check off on Shannon’s desk, then left for her break.
“This damn puzzle is broken! What did you do to it?” Preston growled, slamming the cube down on Erin’s desk. He didn’t often come all the way across the room to her work area. He’d been exceptionally aggravated since the weekend, and Erin was lying low so as not to incur his wrath.
“I’ll look at it,” she said. “I don’t believe I did anything to this one. It hadn’t been solved yet.”
“It will never be solved. I tell you it’s broken!”
Erin examined the cube, working the pieces back and forth as Preston watched. Fascinating. She wouldn’t win a speed competition working this deliberately, but she wouldn’t solve this cube anyway. He was sure it was broken. Erin set the cube down and reached in her drawer for a letter opener. Most of the mail Preston cared about was paper. Answers were copied to Duval and he took care of everything after that.
“Here we are,” Erin said, prying a corner piece off the cube. “Did you drop it? The corner has been dislodged and replaced incorrectly.”
“What?” Preston exclaimed. “That’s ridiculous. Did you do this as a practical joke?”
“I assure you, Mr. Carver, I don’t joke around with your puzzles. I understand your need to occupy your hands as you think through a problem. I have my own puzzles I use for that purpose.”
“That bitch!” Preston said under his breath, understanding at once that Shannon must have broken the puzzle when she was in the apartment on Saturday. What else did she sabotage? Beside my relationship with Ms. Scott. He took a deep breath to settle himself down. “What kind of puzzles do you use for disconnecting your mind from a problem?”
“I work sudoku puzzles,” Erin said. “I usually only use them at night when I’m trying to get to sleep. I don’t have problems as pressing as the ones you face.”
“I’ve worked sudoku. It always puts me to sleep.”
“That’s the objective as far as I’m concerned.”
Preston focused on the cube as he continued to stand in front of Erin’s desk. In a minute he had it solved. He smiled and set it in front of her as he was presenting a prize.
“I was interrupted this weekend when I should have been working on the model for the meeting tomorrow. I know Duval doesn’t want to use it in the meeting, but I’d like to move it to the boardroom this afternoon. They’re sure to have questions that will be answered with a glance at the model.”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Duval doesn’t seem to like being tied to anything that might force him to adhere to the plan. The more he can make up on the spot, the better he likes it,” Erin said.
“I’m sure you know better than anyone,” Preston mumbled. He began taking the sections of the map apart and Erin loaded each one on a cart to take down a floor to the boardroom.
She hadn’t actually been to the boardroom before, but Mr. Carver had told her he expected her to be at the meeting to take notes. He didn’t want to be at the meeting himself, but it was expected, even though Duval would handle most of it.
They worked together to assemble the model on the boardroom table. Once it was perfect, they covered it with a cloth so it could be revealed when they were ready for it.
“If Duval never gets around to showing the model, I want you to simply remove the cover at the end of the presentation. I want the board to clearly see what we are planning. I don’t want any conditional commitments. We want approval of the partnership between JeriCorp Architecture and Development, and Interlake Land Holding. He’d better focus on getting that agreement.”
“Certainly, he won’t go so far astray as to not accomplish the purpose of the meeting, will he?”
“I don’t know. Will he? I find I don’t trust him even as much as I once did,” Carver said. “And his wife even less.”
“I don’t blame you for that. I thought my mistrust was unduly influenced by his attitude toward women. I’m glad to find it is shared so widely,” Erin said.
Preston considered his assistant carefully. It did not sound as though she had had an assignation with his president over the weekend. Shannon had been lying to him. He didn’t know who to trust anymore.
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