I pinched the bridge of my nose and breathed deeply. Yes. I had sent that report. I wasn’t aware that it made Charlie and Eleanor targets of some kind though. “I did hear about the new hire packets. The recruiters are concerned that the salaries they’ve been told to offer potential candidates aren’t competitive with the local market.”
“That’s preposterous,” Dan said loftily. “If your recruiting managers were any good, they could make it work.”
“Unlikely when we’re the beggar in the local market and offering ten percent less than competitors who are considered less of a contender in this market and more than twenty percent less than Gateway IT,” I retorted. I couldn’t help it. There was an edge to my voice. I felt as though I were being set up to fail. Actually, I was almost positive that was it.
Then I heard Dan snickering and I knew it beyond doubt. The little ass. He was trying to shove this in my face for some reason. Were they trying to make this office fail? Why? Dan cleared his throat, but it was Todd who spoke in a very clear tone of voice. “If the employees are demanding an expensive benefits plan, then it’s obvious their salary will work out to be less. It’s your job to explain that to them. They can simply cut back on benefits in order to increase salary. It’s a simple game of financial balancing.”
“I see.” I paused for a second. I wondered how I could best continue without shooting myself in the face. “I suppose benefits here in St. Louis are more comparable to that of your Cincinnati office.”
“It’s the same as Kansas City,” Dan snapped. “You and the rest of those idiots over in the Gateway City never can seem to understand what it means to be a part of the same state and markets that the rest of us are.”
“Because the market isn’t the same,” I said quietly. “We’re also part of Southern Illinois. You’re part of Kansas. That’s different. Very different when it comes to income and the cost of living.”
“So let me get this straight,” Todd said loftily. It was the first time I could ever remember feeling like Todd was straight-up against me. When had this happened? “You’re demanding more money for your St. Louis office just to placate the already overpaid IT market employees?”
“Never mind,” I snapped. “I’m not going to stand here and argue it with you. You have an entire department back in Kansas City that runs numbers for this sort of thing in each new city that you attempt to open an office in. I cannot believe that they would be this far off. That tells me that you both have your own reasons for wanting me to fail here in St. Louis.”
The silence was electric. I half wondered if they had hung up, but I could hear them arguing in hushed whispers on the other end of the line. What was going on? Really going on? I wanted to know and simultaneously knew that I probably never would.
“Fine.” Dan sounded like a petulant child forced to give up his favorite toy. “Increase the salary packages by five percent to offset some of the cost of benefits.”
“All the salary packages?” I wanted clarification because if I didn’t I was about to really step in it.
“All of them,” Dan snarled. “What? I gave you what you wanted! Do you want me to hold your hand too? I told you, Kevin, we’re all just waiting for you to fall flat on your face. You think you’re the best, then prove it!”
This irrational hatred of me personally was getting way out of hand. I could not imagine what I could have possibly done to illicit this kind of response from the man. It didn’t make any sense. It was one thing to want me out of your hair locally, in Kansas City, but to try and intentionally make this takeover more difficult and to ruin your own reputation in the local market? What purpose did that serve? It was a literal case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
“That will be very much appreciated around here,” I told them both in what I hoped was a very neutral voice. “I will continue to update you on the reports from here in the office. I will be sitting down with the administrative staff and finding ways to cut costs there too. It seems that Mr. Moss enjoyed keeping a bit more staff than Midwest IT typically employs.”
“That was noted in the initial reports,” Todd said stiffly. “Trim the fat where need be but be careful not to harm the inner workings of the office.”
“At this point, there aren’t any inner workings.” I wondered if either of them had actually been here to this office or done any real preliminary studies on what it would take to make the place truly profitable again. It had been skating by for years now. That much had become obvious to me over the last week. “But I will certainly continue to put in place the same procedures and way of doing business that have made Midwest IT successful in its other locations.”
“Thanks,” Dan said sarcastically. “We look forward to seeing your results.”
Without another word or warning, the phone slammed and the call was over. I happened to glance up at my door and realized that I could see Ruth standing right behind it. The door might be closed, but what I could see of her through the windows suggested she had her ear pressed up against the wood to hear whatever she could.
“Ruth!” I shouted.
I actually saw her jump. Did she not realize that she was totally visible there behind the windows? Surely she had noticed the huge plate glass on either side of my office door. Had Mr. Moss been so elderly and so completely out of it that he had conducted all of his business with Ruth just hanging over his shoulder to basically take notes for the rest of the office?
I half suspected this was true. “Ruth! Get in here!”
She stumbled through my door, tripping on her huge heels and nearly splatting to the floor. Her fire engine red dress was a bit much. Combined with her fake hair and the ridiculous ruffled bottom of her skirt nearly strangulating her legs, she looked like a caricature of a secretary from the fifties or maybe the sixties. I didn’t know anything about fashion. I just knew I didn’t like her sense of it.
“Ruth, this is a problem.”
“What’s a problem?” she squeaked the words and looked property terrified. Of course, now she was going to pretend to know nothing about what I had just caught her doing. “I was trying to take some measurements of the door for the new lettering I was going to order.”
“For whom?” I raised my eyebrows at her.
“What?”
I was ready to throttle her now. This just wasn’t going to work. “Whom were you planning to order lettering for?”
“Why, for you of course!” Ruth looked confused now. “You’re the new CEO here in St. Louis. Or at least the manager. Right? I was going to come to you before I finally ordered that part.”
“Yeah, which is when I would have told you not to order anything for me because I won’t be staying here in St. Louis.” I told her this with no small amount of satisfaction. “I’m not the CEO. I’m not even the manager. I don’t know who will be. Probably Ms. Schulte. She’s the most competent person for the job.”
I realized as I said this that I wasn’t actually happy about that. Not that I didn’t think that Eleanor wasn’t the perfect person to run this office. She would do the best job of it for sure. It was more that I did not actually like the idea of leaving her here. At all. Why was that?
“Sir?” Ruth’s mouth was hanging open and her eyes were opened so wide that I half expected to see her fake eyelashes tacking onto her fake hair and sticking there permanently. “What are you talking about? Ms. Schulte? I thought you fired her today.”
“Then I suggest you go make the necessary corrections to your rumor as soon as possible,” I told her drily. “And you can add one more thing, Ruth.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re fired.”
“Excuse me, sir?” She now goggled at me with her mouth open and her eyes wide and the most vacant and unbelieving expression I believe I have ever seen before or since. “You can’t fire me. I’m in charge. Mr. Moss said so.”
“Mr. Moss doesn’t work here anymore.”
Her mouth opened. It closed. It opened
again. And finally she found what she wanted to say. “You can’t run this place without me, Mr. Landau. You should know that. I know everything. I’m the one who keeps my eyes and ears open. I can even tell you who the drug addicts are.” She held her breath as though she honestly believed that I didn’t already know the answer to that.
“Yeah. Do you mean Mr. Mulligan and Mr. Pevely and their constant bathroom breaks to go do lines of cocaine in the men’s room?” I purposely sounded bored. “Believe me. They’re on my list, Ms. Powers. Now could you please pack up your things? You get two weeks’ severance and no more. At least now you know how to find out what your COBRA benefits will cost you, hmm?”
“You! You!” Her face was turning red. So red. Good God, I wondered if she was actually in danger of exploding. “You are a bastard!”
“I’ve been called worse,” I informed her. “Now please excuse yourself. I can hardly stand having you anywhere near me anymore. You’ve really worn out your welcome here in my office with the spying, the lying, and acting like you have a one-up on everyone else. I wish you good luck elsewhere. Please don’t bother asking for a reference. One will not be provided. I suggest if you want a good reference you wait until Mr. Moss is back from Florida. He is the only one I can tell who was ever pleased with your work.”
At least I didn’t have to wait a second longer to see the back of her. Not that the back was any more appealing than the front. Ruth Powers swished her way out of my office and was gone within a matter of minutes. Then all was quiet. Unfortunately, that sense of peace and quiet did not extend to me personally. I was too busy wondering how I was going to keep my ass out of the fire with a five percent margin of wiggle room.
Chapter Sixteen
Eleanor
To say I wasn’t nervous about meeting Thayla Landau for dinner would have been the most blatant lie I’ve ever told. I wasn’t just nervous. I was about three seconds from not showing up. It wasn’t like the two of us would be likely to see each other in passing. Right? I didn’t have her phone number. What if I had an emergency? I could manufacture one easily enough. Broken water pipe. Flooded basement. Okay. I didn’t have a basement, but still. It was one of those moments where you cast about for anything because you just don’t want to walk into the restaurant and run the risk of the other person not showing up. Total cowardice. That’s what I’m talking about here.
But Eleanor Schulte wasn’t a coward. At least not about that sort of thing. So, I forced myself to step out of my car onto the street.
I had managed to grab a great spot on Grand Street pretty much right across from the Chinese restaurant. It was called Wong’s Dumpling House. I had never actually had their dumplings before. I liked the Lo Mein and the Kung Pao chicken. I was a total creature of habit and I’m comfortable enough admitting that. I rarely order anything different from visit to visit. If I can’t find a regular item to order on a menu within three visits, I won’t go back. My sister is brutal about that. She has been known to call me the OCDOM. This of course, means obsessive compulsive disordered old maid. Lena is such a great little sister sometimes. So supportive.
I pulled open the front door of Wong’s and brought a bit of the outdoors inside with me. It had started raining again. It appeared we were going to slop our way through the rest of fall until it got cold enough for ice to form. At that point there would be three or four inches of ice coating just about every surface whether it was round, flat, horizontal, or vertical.
There was a huge folding yellow caution sign right inside the door to prevent anyone from suing Wong’s dumplings off when they took a spill on the wet tile floor. I sidestepped the sign and was surprised to notice someone waving at me from the back corner of the restaurant. It was Thayla. Not only that, but she looked absolutely thrilled to see me. I felt the first lift in my spirits since the immediate emotional crash just after that kiss with Kevin.
No. I was not thinking about that.
I waved back to Thayla and carefully made my way through the restaurant. Wong’s is decorated like every single American’s stereotypical idea of how a Chinese restaurant should look. Murals painted on the walls of fields and rice paddies and Zen gardens with bamboo plants and arched bridges. There were paper lanterns hanging everywhere and traditional Chinese music playing softly in the background. The worn booths and tables were covered in red vinyl and each table sported paper placemats featuring the Chinese calendar so guests could find their birth date and see what animal was supposed to represent them.
“Hi!” Thayla said just a little breathlessly. “I’ll admit, I was worried you weren’t going to show up. It’s not like I have your phone number or you have mine and it would be easy enough to make up an excuse.”
I wondered if my guilt showed on my face. I unwound my scarf from around my neck and placed that and my purse on the second chair beside me. “I’m glad I came. I was sitting outside in my car wondering if you might have changed your mind. I was thinking that it would probably be a really embarrassing moment to come in here and just sit by myself with nobody showing up to meet me.”
Thayla laughed. “I ordered hot mint tea. You can have some if you want?” She gestured to a little dark-haired waitress of some non-distinct Asian American descent.
The young woman smiled and set the tea down. Then she grinned at me. “Do you know what you’d like to drink?”
“I think I’ll just have some hot tea. Thank you.” I gestured to the good sized teapot with a curl of steam coming from the spout. “It looks really good and I feel like I’m freezing just from walking across the street.”
“I will get you a cup,” the waitress said quickly. “I’ll be back in just a sec.”
“Do you know what you want to eat?” Thayla did not wait a single second. “I’m starving. I didn’t have time to grab lunch. I love their dumplings. I always get a huge mountain of them and take some home.”
“Steamed or fried?” I wondered out loud. Wait. Was I actually considering changing my order or even adding to it? Holy cow! That was so out of the ordinary for me that I wondered if it was time to go buy a lottery ticket. “I usually get the Kung Pao chicken with Lo Mein noodles.”
“That sounds good.” Thayla looked thoughtful. “I’ll just get my dumplings steamed and fried and you can have a bit of them if you’d like.”
I was taken aback by the kind and rather unexpected offer. “That sounds great, but I don’t want to steal your supper! So I’ll split the cost with you. All right?”
“Oh!” She looked surprised. Pleasantly so actually. Was she so used to paying for… Yeah. She was dating Brock Mortensen. She was probably used to paying for everything no questions asked and nobody offering to pitch in a dime. “That would be great! I wanted some fried rice and wonton soup too. You’re right. It’s freezing out there.”
The waitress appeared with the extra tea mug, the little red stamped porcelain number without any handles on it. Then she quickly took our orders. Thayla and I poured our tea and within minutes we were chatting away like old friends who had so much to say that we were practically talking over each other in our eagerness to get it all out.
What was happening? I almost could not put my finger on what I was feeling right now. I had never imagined that I would have so much in common with a woman who was nearly ten years older than I was. But Thayla was filled with ideas and questions about the recruiting business and interests in my home and how I had handled the redecoration after Mom and Dad passed.
The food had come and we were tucking in with all of the aplomb of two women who don’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone else says about what they’re eating. I hadn’t eaten this much food in ages. It felt good!
“So, you’re really into interior design,” I commented to Thayla after she was describing to me a new display she was trying to work out in the store. “It’s something you seem super passionate about. How long have you been into that?”
“I think my whole life, actually.” Thayla sighed and stab
bed another fried dumpling with her fork. “I used to rearrange my room all the time. I would just move stuff and see what worked and what didn’t. I think that started to give me an appreciation for traffic patterns and the like.” Thayla’s smile was so bright and infectious that I could not help but smile back. “I can remember a lot of stubbed toes over the years. My room is hella small. I would want my bed to be close to the window or something and wind up stubbing toes on that old iron bedstead because it was hanging out too far in front of the door or the closet. It was a good learning situation.”
“It sounds like it.” I thought about my own house. “I used to think I wanted to move all the stuff around in my parents’ house, but when I finally could I realized that there was nowhere for it to go.” I sighed and shrugged. “So, it’s pretty much as is. I’ve been gradually buying new stuff, but that takes money.”
“Tell me about it.” Thayla sighed and wrinkled her nose. “Of course Kevin the perfect gave my parents a bunch of money last night for his part of the groceries and rent. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mother happier. I feel bad. I really do. But I don’t have anything left to give them! Maybe once Brock and I are married and he moves in with us.”
I swallowed a piece of chicken and nearly choked. Move in with them? She really meant that. I could tell. I wondered if she realized what a disaster that might be for her family. I decided to approach this from a different direction than I wanted to. I picked up my tea and sipped the hot minty liquid for a moment.
“What?” Thayla prompted. At least she wasn’t being aggressive. “I can tell that you want to say something. Say it.”
“I’m not trying to judge you or Brock or your situation,” I began slowly. “But you know, it’s totally possible to get court documents. They’re public record.”
Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy Page 35
