Archer Securities

by Jove Belle

  He turned and went into the house. Laila and Sia followed him through the kitchen and down the hall to his office. Once there, he poured himself a Scotch neat and stared at Laila as he sipped his drink.

  It took her a moment to realize that this was his way of signaling she’d done something wrong. He was good like that, patient about her lack of savvy, and probably wasn’t really upset. Just as Sia did, her uncle Samar took the time to explain when she broke social rules or misread emotional cues, and it really helped her to navigate future situations better. She thought back. She’d interrupted his conversation. That was rude.

  “I interrupted. I’m sorry.” Or, rather, she was pretty sure she would be if sorry was in her emotional arsenal.

  “I appreciate that. Do you know what else you did?”

  She shook her head.

  “I work for a securities company, Laila. Every person I was talking to is an investor in Archer. Telling them we have a thief is bad for our public image.”

  “Oh.” This was one of those subtlety things that Laila would probably never understand, where the truth wasn’t always better. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

  Uncle Samar nodded toward the decanter. “Pour yourself a drink.”

  Sia beat her to it and poured one for herself and another for Laila. They settled on the black leather couch opposite Samar. His office was old-school classy, with a dark mahogany desk, floor to ceiling bookshelves to match, and a leaded crystal service for his liquor. When she was little, Laila would sneak into this room, curl up on the couch, and recite all the words that went with the office. Sumptuous. Luxurious. Decadent. Fancy. Stylish. The list went on and on, and over time, those words became just as closely associated with Uncle Samar as they were with the office.

  As an adult, she still loved this room, and anytime she was feeling especially disconnected from herself, she would recite the list, very quietly under her breath, because people looked at her funny when she talked to herself out loud. Some day, she would have an office like this. Maybe not exactly—she wasn’t crazy about the dark wood—but one that felt like this one. Laila sipped her Scotch. It was smooth in a fiery-apocalypse-in-her-mouth kind of way.

  Laila waited politely for Uncle Samar. She hated the inaction, but he liked to ease into a conversation. Sia put her hand on Laila’s knee and pushed down to stop her jiggling it up and down, something Laila wasn’t aware she was doing.

  “Dad?” Sia prompted her dad.

  “Right. Archer. I haven’t been able to pinpoint it exactly, but our figures are just…off. We expect a certain amount of loss, as you know, but the shrink in certain areas is well over the allowed amount.”

  Calling Archer a securities company, as Uncle Samar had, was an extreme understatement. Yes, they did some work in finance, including divisions in banking and commodities trading. But that was a drop in a very large, diversified global bucket. Archer Securities was an international conglomerate with interest in everything imaginable, from the US commodities market to overseas production of silks. Laila grew up listening to stories of Archer and still couldn’t nail down what they did in precise terms.

  Laila leaned in. This was something she could understand. “Which areas?”

  “Home goods, food products, and electronics.”

  “Home goods and food? That’s weird.” Electronics was an area that invited sticky fingers, so that didn’t surprise her. “Are they real losses, as in actual inventory disappearing? Or is it all on paper?”

  “Neither. So far, everything I’ve looked at balances. The margins are just off.”

  “Can I look at it?” Laila tried to sound cool, but it didn’t work. Stuff like this, solving a puzzle, buzzed through her like a live current. Always had. Sia called it excitement. Laila called it nirvana. Regardless, she was able to see patterns that other people missed, and it gave her a charge like no other.

  Uncle Samar raised his eyebrows. “Do you have time?”

  Laila owned and operated Hollister Investigations, a small private investigations service that had been funded almost entirely by Uncle Samar’s capital investment. Without him, she would still have been able to start the business, but the outlook would have been much different. For instance, she would have been working out of her car rather than a small suite of offices downtown. And she would have worked alone rather than having two employees.

  “Uncle Samar,” she shook her head, “of course I have time for you.” She’d paid back his startup loan within a year of opening the doors, but she certainly hadn’t forgotten his generosity.

  “All right. Come by Archer tomorrow. You’ll have to work on site.” With that, Samar finished his Scotch and set the tumbler on the low coffee table between them. “Now, come on. We have a party to get back to.”

  As they walked out of the office, Sia nudged Laila with her shoulder and said, “Never fear, Laila Hollister is on the case.”

  It was an old joke, left over from a childhood spent chasing down clues in the neighborhood as if she were a real life Encyclopedia Brown. Laila laughed. There was a lightness in her chest that she rarely experienced. It came from being able to do what she loved and help her family at the same time.

  “That thief won’t know what hit him.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The shipping manifest showed twenty cargo containers arriving via barge from The People’s Republic of China. Trinity tapped her pen against her teeth. Twenty containers full of soft goods—mostly pillows and those plush blankets that were really comforting when it was cold out—destined for a local chain store.

  How many could she divert without being obvious? Typically, she worked with smaller quantities. A pallet here or there. When a company such as Archer was moving ten thousand pallets, the loss of one or two was written off. It took more resources to search for it than the value of the product.

  But an entire shipping container, which was what she was contemplating at the moment, would throw up some red flags. There would be an investigation. No, it was better to siphon off a smaller amount than to go for the big haul only to have in-house security track it down and reclaim it.

  That decided it.

  She made a mental note of the delivery schedule. The entire container would arrive at the distribution center tomorrow, be inventoried, and then be routed to the retailer. Except for two pallets, one of pillows and one of blankets, which she earmarked for Open Doors, a local homeless shelter where she routinely volunteered. They would be delivered by the end of the week via a local transport company, along with an invoice for zero dollars.

  After entering the information needed to generate a second manifest and execute the order, her work extension rang. She toggled her screen and tapped the button on her headset to answer the call.

  “Computer services, this is Trinity. How can I help you?” Trinity kept her voice light, playful. People in the tech industry were notorious for being snarky and impatient. She was okay with snarky to a degree, but being impatient was simply rude. There was never a good excuse to be rude.

  “You gotta help me. My boss needs this report for a meeting that starts in ten minutes. I’ve printed it at least twenty times, but it never comes out of the printer.” The man, George Harper according to the readout that popped up on her computer screen, spoke with the unhinged desperation that colored the voices of most of her callers.

  “Okay, George, I’m accessing your system now. Give me just a few moments.” She typed in the commands that allowed her to control his computer remotely and then scrolled through his settings. “George, where is your desk located?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Like most of her callers, George worked locally, at the monolithic Archer Securities building that housed several divisions of the US operations. There were smaller regional offices throughout the country that stretched out from the main location like a spider web over the landscape. Archer’s software, which sometimes moved with the speed of a hobbled elephant, provided Trinity with some basi
c information, such as which office a person was based out of, which department he worked in, and where his desk was located. It also indicated which printer his computer was set to send material to. In George’s case, his location and the printer’s didn’t match up. Before she changed any settings, however, she always verified the data in front of her.

  “Which floor are you on? Which side of the building?” Trinity didn’t understand why some people let themselves get so frazzled before they called her. Sure, print the document twice, just to be sure it wasn’t working, but twenty? Seriously?

  “Oh, the fifth, next to the R&D lab,” George said. His description matched the information in the computer. She changed the printer router to the correct location.

  “Good. Could you try printing another one for me?” Trinity waited, twirling her pen like a drumstick between her fingers.

  “Sure.” George sounded skeptical. A printer whirred to life in the background. “Holy shit! It worked! Thank you!”

  Trinity laughed.

  “Oh crap, I mean…” George stammered. “Sorry. You didn’t record this, did you? My boss would totally fire me for swearing.”

  Of course she’d recorded it. That was part of the protocol for working remotely. Any time her phone rang, the digital recording activated automatically. George would have known that if he’d paid attention to the recorded messaged that played while he waited for her to answer. “Don’t worry, George. Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Great. You totally saved me.”

  “It’s my pleasure. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

  George paused. “Oh, I…I don’t think so.”

  “Great. Take that report to your boss, and then you might want to head down to the second floor and check the printer in the southwest corner. I suspect you’ll find a stack of reports just like the one in your hand. Take care, George.”

  Trinity signed off. When she started with Archer Securities in the IT department, she’d worked five days a week at the main site. Her desk sat in the middle of the bullpen, and she was surrounded by sweaty, competitive tech guys who acted as if they’d never seen a real live girl before, let alone talked to one. Now, almost nine years later, she was part of Archer’s work-from-home program. It was perfect.

  “Trinity?” Carol stepped into her office. “I’m going to take your mom to the park. It’s a beautiful day, perfect for a picnic. Care to join us?”

  At fifty, Carol was a robust woman with smooth, dark skin and a lyrical Jamaican accent. She grew up in Kingston with Trinity’s mom, Ornella Washington. She’d moved to the US two years ago when Ornella’s memory started to slide. Now, she worked full time as Ornella’s primary caregiver.

  “I wish, but I need to stay by the phone.” Trinity could move about her house freely, but in order to venture outside her home, she needed to notify Archer. It was simpler to eat at home and remain available. “Do you need anything from me before you go?”

  “Nope. Your mom is having a good day.” Carol gave her a thumbs up. Ornella suffered from early onset Alzheimer’s. A good day for her could mean she remembered who Trinity was or that she remembered to chew her food without reminders. Lately, her good days were becoming less and less frequent. Together, she and Carol had started the initial groundwork for moving Ornella into a dedicated care home, but Trinity wanted to hold off on that as long as possible.

  Trinity slipped off her headset and stood. “Think she’ll know who I am now?”

  “It’s possible.” Carol squeezed Trinity’s arm gently as she passed on her way to the living room.

  Ornella sat by the window, her face turned up toward the sun, eyes closed, and a peaceful, easy smile just teasing the edges of her lips. In that moment, she looked like the mom of ten years ago, back when Trinity was still in high school and Ornella was still in charge of all her faculties.

  “Hi, Mom.” Trinity reached out and stopped just short of touching Ornella’s shoulder. She waited, suspended mid-motion as she waited to see how Ornella reacted before she made physical contact.

  Ornella inhaled deeply as she opened her eyes. She studied Trinity for a moment, a slight crease in the middle of her forehead, and then her clouded expression cleared. “Hi, baby. You look beautiful today.”

  Trinity let her hand drop onto Ornella’s shoulder and exhaled. The moments between, when her mom had seen her but hadn’t decided if she knew her or not, were the toughest for Trinity. She held her breath every time, as if waiting for permission to continue. Once, before they had really realized what was happening with Ornella, Trinity had touched her mom in a moment when she hadn’t recognized Trinity. Her mom had cried out and jerked away. Now, Trinity knew to wait. Without the spark of recognition, touching her own mother was the same as touching a stranger without consent.

  “No, I look like a computer geek. You, however, are very beautiful.” She stroked Ornella’s cheek with the back of her hand. She had the softest skin, two or three shades darker than Trinity’s and free of makeup.

  “Aren’t you sweet.”

  Carol entered the room carrying a light jacket and a collapsible cooler. “Here we are, Ornella. Are you ready?”

  “Oh, are we going somewhere?” Ornella slipped the jacket on and looked from Carol to Trinity and then back to Carol.

  “Carol’s taking you for a picnic lunch.” Trinity tapped the cooler. “It’s such a beautiful day. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember now.”

  Carol led Ornella to the door. “We shouldn’t be more than an hour. I have my phone if you need anything before we get back.”

  Trinity waved as they left.

  Early in her teens, Trinity had decided that she’d probably never have children of her own. She’d watched her own mom struggle as a single parent and didn’t want to ever feel like she had to give up her own needs for someone else. Around the same time, she also tripped into her first relationship with another girl who made Trinity feel all sorts of things that her boyfriends never did. The realization that she was a lesbian simplified the decision to forgo having children. Yet, here she was, shaping her whole life to fit around the needs of another. What’s more, she was happy for it, because a day taking care of Ornella was another day she got to spend with her rather than without.

  Trinity’s phone rang, and she jogged back to her office. This time, instead of work, it was a personal call via Skype. She pushed the button to initiate the video, and Yvonne, her sometimes friend, sometimes lover from high school, popped up on her screen.

  “Hey, babe!” Yvonne wore a beat up army green jacket with the sleeves rolled up, and her hair stuck out at funny angles. It was a stark difference from the way she looked before she ran off to Costa Rica with her environmental activist boyfriend. She used to be all lipstick, perfect makeup, and runway outfits. A few months after she moved, she’d sheered off her signature long blond hair and had kept it that way ever since. Now, she was relaxed, a little undone, and even more beautiful than ever.

  “Hi. What’s up with you?” Sometimes, when Trinity let herself think about it, her body ached with the loss of her friend. But that wasn’t often because, if nothing else, Trinity was aces at blocking out those kind of emotional twinges.

  “Adam is away on a secret mission involving some rare sea algae and several yards of that chain they use for the anchor on ocean liners.” She waved her hand dismissively. “And I’m stuck here, alone and bored. Wanna fool around?” Yvonne waggled her eyebrows. They’d done that a few times, hooked up via the magic of a kickass Internet connection and video calling, but Trinity was working, and Yvonne didn’t really look like she was into it.

  “Nah. I’m on the clock.” Trinity settled into her seat and kicked one leg up on her desk. “How’s Central America?”

  “Really, really good. I’m almost done with my next novel. Oh, and Adam’s cousin, like, fifty times removed, is staying with us for the summer. She’s this cute thirteen-year-old with nerd glasses
bigger than yours. Seriously, she taught herself how to code. You’d love her.”

  “Oh?” Trinity cherished being able to talk to Yvonne, no matter the topic. But the idea of a geeky young teen who loved computers as much as Trinity hit a special place in her heart. The world of programming needed more female energy. “What’s she working on? Any idea?”

  Yvonne laughed. “I knew you’d be into hearing about her. You’re so predictable in your dedication to all things geeky.”

  “Does that mean you don’t know the answer?”

  “She tried to explain it. Something super smart for some summer school project. I don’t know. I mentioned you, and she got even more excited than you just did. She asked if she could email you.”

  While they were talking, Trinity pulled her lunch from the mini-fridge in her office and spread it out on her desk. Earlier, while on her morning run, she’d stopped at the co-op down the street and picked up a Greek yogurt, two of those delicious little oranges, and a chef salad made with organic veggies. She hated the yogurt, but her body liked her to eat it, so she did. As a special treat because she’d spent an extra fifteen minutes on yoga that morning, she’d also picked up a gourmet cupcake from the bakery.

  “Sure, did you give her my email address?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to check with you. What are you eating?” Yvonne leaned in toward her computer screen, bringing her face close, as if that would help her to better see Trinity’s food.

  “Go ahead and give it to her.” As she spoke, Trinity held up her oranges and yogurt. “Plus salad and dessert.”

  “What kind of salad?”

  “Chef, from the co-op.”

  “God, I miss that place. Remind me again why I moved here.” Why, indeed. The cottage Yvonne shared with Adam was situated on a pristine beach, and Trinity had an excellent view of the surf in the screen behind Yvonne.