The Staircase of Dragon Jerico
Chapter Sixteen
WEDNESDAY MORNING, the air in the penthouse was alive with excitement. Erin was at her desk at seven forty-five. She swept through the office and kitchen, wiping things down with a vengeance. The large table in the center of the room was empty for the first time since she started working and she scrubbed it thoroughly. When Mr. Carver came downstairs, she rushed up to his bedroom to reset cubes and clean the bathroom.
He carried a cup of coffee out of the kitchen with him, which Erin thought was odd. He never brought food or drink into the office area unless he was meeting in the sitting room near the windows. He set the coffee down on Erin’s desk and she looked up at him in surprise.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Carver?” she asked.
“No! This is the best coffee I’ve ever had. I had to bring you a cup. Have a taste and let’s go to the meeting area and go over the plan for this afternoon. It’s a great day!”
Erin breathed a sigh of relief and took her tablet and coffee to the lounge area where the sun was shining through the tall windows. Preston brought a cup for himself and sat across from her.
“Now, I don’t do much in the board meeting. I’ll call the meeting to order and announce that we have just one item of business to attend to, then ask Duval to address the board. You’ll have the computer set up with the slides ready to project at the end of the room. Duval never stays in one place while he’s presenting. Motion to him to move when he’s blocking people’s view of the screen. The vote should be a formality. If Duval does his job, everyone will vote in favor. Of course, the family votes will all be in favor so we actually only need one more. Jerico won’t attend the meeting, but Mother will cast his vote.”
“So, that’s you, Mrs. Carver, and Mr. Jerico? I show six others on the board. Doesn’t that mean you need two more votes?” Erin asked.
“Hathaway and Vaughn nearly always vote with the family. That’s what has enabled us to maintain control of the company for more than fifty years. Always pack the board with supporters, according to Jerico.”
“Okay. I’ll record the vote and then what?”
“Then I’ll adjourn the meeting. They’ll hang around a while. Duval will probably take them all out for a drink. He can’t stand to have a meeting end without an opportunity to schmooze. We’ll pack the model back up and bring it up here to reassemble. It’s likely that we’ll have a number of visitors up to the office next week as pieces of the project get sent to different departments. Everyone will want to look at what we are building. I… don’t think I’ll be here. You can host the guests.”
“I’m sure people will want to congratulate you on the plan and design,” Erin said.
“Maybe I’ll sit at my desk and nod at them. If you need to ask me a question, call.”
“Okay. I can do that. It will be nice for you to be present, though.”
“The board may want to spend some time looking more closely at the model after the presentation. If they start asking questions there that Duval can’t or doesn’t answer, you’ll answer them. For the past two weeks, I’ve tried to make sure you are as prepared for this as you can be. I… Ms. Scott, I trust you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Carver. I will not betray your trust in me.”
The phone rang and Carver waved her toward the phone on his desk since they were at that end of the office.
“JeriCorp, Mr. Carver’s office,” Erin said.
“I’m sick,” Duval said over the phone. His voice was scarcely there at all. “I can’t come in today.”
“What? Wait. You have to! The presentation is this afternoon,” Erin said in alarm.
“Can’t help it. Started getting sick after I fell in the creek Saturday. I haven’t been in the office all week—not that you or your boss would have noticed,” Duval said.
“Just a moment,” Erin said, turning to Preston. “Mr. Carver, Mr. Duval is on the line for you. It isn’t good,” she said. It was less than an hour until the board meeting. Preston went to his desk and Erin handed him the phone.
“Wh-what? What’s wrong?” he said into the line.
“I’m sick. I can’t do the presentation. I can hardly talk at all.”
“But you have to!”
“No amount of having to is going to move me out of this bed,” Duval said. “You’ll have to do it yourself. If you can’t, have the old man come in. I’m out of the game.”
“You might be out of a job!” Preston growled, slamming down the phone.
Erin stepped away from Preston’s desk, gathered the coffee cups and rushed to the kitchen to clean them up just to be out of Preston’s line of sight. She’d never seen him so angry. Preston dialed his grandfather’s number. Since handing control of the company to his grandson, Lawrence avoided most board meetings, so people didn’t turn to him instead of Preston. Jacqueline, however, attended most of the meetings.
“Duval is sick and can’t present to the board!” Preston shouted into the phone when his grandfather answered. “I need you to come in and do the presentation.”
“Preston, you know I can’t do that. It’s a conflict of interest. The presentation is to authorize a partnership between Interlake Land Holding and JeriCorp Architecture and Development. It would confuse the arguments to have me in the meeting at all,” Lawrence said.
“What’ll I… What’ll I… do?” Preston began to hyperventilate. “I… I can’t… They wouldn’t even listen. I need… need help!”
“Son, take a deep breath. There’s no need to panic. What did we find out this past week? You have the answer right there in your office. In fact, I’d bet she’s not five feet away, waiting to jump in and help you however you need. Have Ms. Scott make the presentation. She can do it. Put your trust in her.”
“C-c-can I?” Preston panted. “Can I trust her? She was with Duval over the weekend.”
“No, she wasn’t. Oh, he took her out to the site so she could walk it, but I met her there and brought her back to Jerico City. Trust her, Preston.”
“Trust. Trust. Trust.”
Preston looked up from the phone to the lounge a few feet away where Erin was waiting for him. He could trust her. He had to trust her. He hung up the phone and stepped off his dais to meet Erin. She headed toward him.
“I have everything together you need to make the presentation, Mr. Carver. It will be just like we practiced. You know all the slides and even have the personal insight that makes the project come alive. You can do this.”
“No. No, I can’t, Ms. Scott. I may need to throw up from even thinking about it. I can’t stand in front of them and open my mouth.”
“Oh, Mr. Carver. Shall I call the board members and postpone the meeting? They’ll understand illness.”
Preston gulped in several lungsful of air and collapsed in his chair. Erin immediately poured him a glass of water, which he drank hurriedly.
“Ms. Scott, you’ll do it. You’ve practiced the presentation and know it even better than Duval does. I’m asking… I’m begging you… please make the presentation on my behalf. P-p-please.”
Preston was near a complete collapse. Tears leaked from his eyes and he was having difficulty catching his breath. Erin snatched up a tissue and wiped his eyes, handing him another so he could blow his nose. Preston stripped off his mask, which had already become soaked.
“I’ll do it, Mr. Carver. I don’t know why you think I’m capable, but I’ll do anything for you,” Erin said. “If you’ll give me a few minutes to use the lavatory. I may need to throw up as well.”
“We have just one item of business for this meeting,” Preston rasped when he called the meeting to order. He was barely audible to the five men and three women in the room. He pushed away from the table to give Erin room. “My assistant, Ms. Scott, will present.” She removed her mask as she stood before the board.
“Gentlemen and ladies,” Erin began. “As I am sure you are aware, a new virus variant is making the rounds. While both have tested negative, we find that both Mr. Duval and Mr. Carver have lost their voices and are unable to present before the board today. Mr. Carver has asked me to speak on their behalf, as the matter to be brought before the board today is critical and time sensitive.”
There was a little shuffling among the members, but they were all curious regarding the draped model on the table and Erin’s first slide on the screen.
“Please let me introduce you to the future of JeriCorp Architecture and Development: Cloudhaven, a work and leisure destination for today’s digital professional.”
Erin launched straight into the presentation, just as she had done in the rehearsals. She knew the presentation better than any of the executives who had been involved—especially Royce Duval.
The board members gasped in amazement when Erin slowly unveiled the completed model.
“We have been working on this plan for ten years,” Erin said, though she herself had been involved for less than two months. “Moving ahead too soon would have left it in jeopardy. The effect of the pandemic on our businesses was an unexpected hurdle, but the new work-from-home routines inspired actually advanced the project.”
“And how do we afford to launch this project?” one of the members asked.
“First, the land has been acquired through an acquisition project nearly twenty years old. It is fully held by Interlake Land Holding Company, which is ready to enter into a partnership agreement with JeriCorp to make the project feasible,” Erin said.
“I see old man Jerico’s hand in this. If he’s in it, I’m in,” said another board member.
“What about this bit at the entrance you’ve marked as ‘not acquired?’ It would be a shame if someone built substandard housing right up against our community,” the youngest of the men asked.
“I don’t believe we need to worry about this, Mr. Hathaway. Obviously, the senior executives of JeriCorp have been aware of this project for a long time. Showing a unique initiative, Mr. Duval joined a consortium to invest in that bit of land some five years ago.”
“Duval? So, he’s on board with the whole project?” Jacqueline asked.
“Yes, ma’am. His consortium has been lying in wait for the right time to enter into a limited partnership with Interlake Land and JeriCorp. The consortium is a company known for its development of golf courses. The parcel is a perfect size for a course adjacent to the resort, and even provides a bit of a buffer between the rest of the community and land that might be developed in the future by others,” Erin said.
“How do you know that?” Carver exclaimed, belying his loss of voice.
“This past weekend, Mr. Duval convinced me to walk the property with him so I could better assist you in planning this presentation, Mr. Carver. When we got to the site, he could not contain himself from bragging about what a good investment he’d made in that property and how it would pay back.”
“So, you’ve walked the entire site?” the oldest man asked.
“The entire site is a little over two square miles—1400 acres,” Erin said. “I walked this area described as Phase One in your information packet. While the model before you is accurate in every detail, it does not do justice to the beauty of the future Cloudhaven. Let’s all refill our coffee cups and I’ll take you on a deep dive into the philosophy and features of Cloudhaven.”
The board members turned to talk to each other and Erin put her mask on so she could sit next to Preston and check in with him.
“Am I doing okay? Is there something else I should emphasize?” she whispered.
“Fine. That’s why you went away with Duval for the weekend?”
“Away for the weekend? Hardly! I rode out to the site with him while trying to get him to practice the presentation. When I saw the location, I headed out to walk it as I thought we’d agreed. When I got back to the road, Mr. Duval was nowhere to be found. It turns out that he’d wandered across the parcel his consortium owns and fell in a creek. If he’d spent any time studying the map, he’d have seen where it is. As it was, I was lucky that Mr. Jerico came driving up in his big truck. He gave me a ride back to the city.”
“That bastard!”
“Mr. Jerico?”
“No. Duval. And he’s part of the consortium that owns this other parcel? Grandfather will shit. Pardon me.”
“I think it will work out. The golf course is a good idea. Hmm. Much better than I’d credit Mr. Duval with. I’m sure someone else came up with it.”
“You are doing great. Take us into the dream, Miss Scott. I’m almost sold myself.”
Erin returned to the head of the table and called the meeting back to order.
“Let’s take a look at the first people who will move to Cloudhaven. If you are curious about the name, think of it as a retreat for people who work in the cloud—digital employees who are not tied to an office to do their work. We are talking about people who live and breathe the internet. These workers have been awakened during the shutdown period. They held jobs in offices and were tied up for hours each day in unproductive meetings, commuting, and office politics when the real work they had to do was done on a keyboard in front of a monitor. JeriCorp still has ten percent of its employee population working remotely. Studies indicate the vast majority of the people who began working remotely never want to return to an office.”
That started a discussion about the pluses and minuses of remote workers and who couldn’t work from home because of the nature of their jobs. Erin used the discussion to sell the idea that community infrastructure had to include adequate power and high-speed communications technology from the get-go.
“Of course, the entire community will be a construction zone for a year before we are ready to open even the first units to the public. And that will only be possible through an intensive effort that will enable us to have residents in the community by mid-summer. Construction crews and equipment operators will have a place to stay while they are building so that they don’t need to make a seventy-mile commute each day.
“This is a way of capturing the workforce for greater productivity. I encourage you to look at the cruise ship model. Employees are hired for a period of time to reside on board the ship. Their modest housing and food costs, their uniforms, and even their recreation are included as a part of their compensation package. Nearly fifty percent of an employment package at Cloudhaven will be in non-monetary compensation, making their earnings nearly all profit for the employee. This also keeps our direct cash expenses down.”
There was a little debate, but when they cross-checked the distance of the resort to the nearest communities where they might hire people, the board quickly agreed the resident staff model was positive.
“The timeshare model has been shown to be shaky at its best and flat-out fraudulent at its worst, but the investment in timeshares is what pays for the development. We’re proposing an alternate model in which people own their property outright. It is not a shared ownership unless the buyers decide to create their own partnerships. We would expect that buyers will want to be the primary occupants of their property and will pay actual maintenance costs annually. We will, however, provide a rental agency that will endeavor to keep property occupied when the owners are not resident. Of course, the resort will receive a percentage of all rental fees. Since all the properties in phase one will be townhomes, a lot is deeded to the property owner.”
Since the concept was a unique variant of models they had seen before, there was less discussion of that aspect than might have been expected. Erin launched straightaway into how they intended to attract businesses to the area so that essential goods and services were available as soon as people began to show up.
“Finally, members of the board, it is time to pony up and put money where our enthusiasm has headed. The single order of business before the board today is to authorize the corporate executives to negotiate a partnership and investment with the landholder, and to begin infrastructure at once. You have before you a corporate resolution to authorize the creation of Cloudhaven Partners, LLC with sufficient funding to launch the project. The chair will entertain a motion to approve,” Erin said.
The board approved the motion and finally adjourned for dinner after they approved the motion, but they did not all depart at once. Some members surrounded Erin and began prodding her regarding who she worked for and how she had come up with all the ideas for this project.
“Please, I’m not the creative mind behind this. I think Mr. Duval referred to me as a demo dolly. I was simply here to show you why you needed to approve the plan. I have no authority to negotiate or change the contract.”
“While that was refreshing, perhaps we should see about getting you the authority. We’ll have to see what Carver says about that,” Mr. Hathaway said. He was the youngest on the board at about the same age as Mr. Carver.
“I am happy to carry out whatever Mr. Carver wishes,” Erin said.
Preston left the boardroom in the company of Gene Hathaway, and Erin stayed to clean up the display materials and presentation notes. Two of the board members, including Jacqueline Carver, paused to congratulate her on an effective presentation. They said they’d be keeping an eye on her. Then they, too, left. Erin was reminded that she was just Mr. Carver’s personal assistant. She wasn’t an executive.
She carefully broke down the model and loaded it on her cart, then made her way back to the elevator and the penthouse. He wasn’t there. Well, she knew what needed to be done. She reassembled the model on the work table in the center of the room, reconnected her computer, and started transcribing what she remembered from her notes regarding the questions board members had asked.
At five, she closed her laptop, put away all her notes, cleaned and wiped down the office, and went home.
“Good job, Erin,” she muttered to herself as she turned out the lights.
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