35. Lilah
35
LILAH
I spent the first hour at my new job meeting with Meredith, the HR manager, filling out paperwork for taxes and reading the employee handbook. I hadn’t been sure about the dress code, but Mayor Maxwell had been wearing slacks and a blouse when I’d gone for my interview, so I’d played it safe with a simple navy skirt and a floral blouse, one of the few nice things I owned, and I felt like a completely new person as Meredith showed me around.
She was friendly and warm, in her thirties, with curly black hair and the prettiest brown eyes I’d ever seen.
She showed me the break room and told me to help myself to the snacks in the cupboard unless they had someone’s name on them. I was also allowed to bring my own coffee mugs as long as I didn’t leave them in the sink. There was a fridge and a microwave, so I’d be able to bring food from home for lunch, which would save me money. Important, since my savings was basically gone.
After the break room she took me down a long hall, stopping in one of the office’s open doorways. Inside a guy a little older than me sat at a desk, a laptop open in front of him. His brown hair looked like it had been cut with a ruler, his shirt so fitted I wondered if it was tailored. There wasn’t a single whisker on his smoothly shaved face, something that probably only seemed weird because I’d been surrounded by the Bastards who were always in varying states of scruff.
“This is Phillip. He’s Mayor Maxwell’s assistant. You can talk to him about anything related to her schedule,” she said. “This is Lilah. She’s the new part-time receptionist and office admin. Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
He smiled. “Nice to meet you, Lilah. Welcome.”
“Thanks.”
We continued down the hall and Meredith introduced me to an older woman named Terri, the community outreach liaison who had a short purple pixie cut and was around my mom’s age. Then it was on to an empty office, where Meredith said Ashley Wang, the communications director, sat when she was in the office (she wasn’t today).
“There are a couple other people who come and go,” Meredith explained as we hooked a right and started down another hall. “Gary, the IT guy, he works for all the town offices on this floor, and Frank, the lawyer for the Mayor’s Office.”
We stopped at another door, this one closed. A brass plaque on the wall read Mayor Maxwell . “A word to the wise: don’t bother her if the door’s closed unless it’s an emergency.”
“Even if someone calls?” Now I was nervous. What if I screwed this up?
“There’s a hold light on her line when she wants you to hold her calls,” Meredith explained. “I’ll show you when I explain the phone system. If that’s on, take a message. Just don’t knock on her door or otherwise disturb her if it’s closed.”
She gave me a meaningful look which I understood to mean B e prepared to get your ass chewed if you bother Mayor Maxwell when the door is closed .
Okay then.
After that we went back to the greeter’s desk in the lobby, which Meredith said would be mine on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She showed me how to use the phone system (the hold light was lit on the mayor’s line), which didn’t turn out to be too complicated, and gave me a log-in for the computer, plus my company email address and a brief intro to the office’s shared calendar system.
It was all super official and grown up, and a half hour later she was gone, telling me to let her know if I had any questions.
The phone rang as soon as she was out of sight. I hesitated, then answered.
“Blackwell Falls Mayor’s Office, how may I help you?”
“Yeah, hi.” The voice on the other end of the phone was cheerful. “This is Jules at the community garden for Terri.”
“One moment please.” I was like a preprogrammed robot, sounding all official even though I’d never done this before in my life.
I looked at the extension list Meredith had pulled up on my computer and transferred the call to Terri’s line, then breathed a sigh of relief when the light stopped blinking, indicating that Terri had picked up.
It felt good to be doing something, anything to take my mind off of Matt.
He’d been more animated when I’d dropped him off at school, and I wondered if it was because of his plans to go kayaking with the Bastards. It felt scary to let him go — I was responsible for him now — but I wanted to give him this, this glimpse of something else, while I had the chance.
I spent the next few hours answering the calls that came in and getting familiar with the calendar system and the purchase-order generation software Meredith had showed me. I’d use that to order office supplies, and I started a list of things I needed to do, starting with an inventory of the office supplies we already had.
The supply closet was in the hallway next to Phillip’s office. I’d count everything and try to get a feel for whether the office was low on everything and then… I didn’t know, email everyone to see if there was anything they needed before I generated the purchase order?
That sounded right. I was definitely a little out of my depth, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I might not have had a college degree, but I reminded myself I was smart and resourceful. I knew how to figure things out because I’d been doing it alone for a long time.
I walked to the deli for lunch, feeling like a real adult. I shouldn’t have spent money on a sandwich, but I hadn’t brought anything from home — I tried not to think too hard about the fact that the mountain house felt more like home than my apartment now — since I hadn’t known the break-room situation. I told myself that it was a celebration lunch, something I deserved for getting a new job, a good job, and then sat at one of the tables outside to eat it during my lunch break.
I felt refreshed by the time I went back to the office to relieve Terri, who’d watched the phones while I was gone.
By three p.m. I was feeling pretty confident I could handle the job. The phones didn’t ring that often, and I’d already done an inventory of office supplies and sent an email to the group labeled ALL OFFICE asking if anyone needed anything.
Matt had already been picked up by the Bastards, and I tried not to worry about how it was going or whether he’d be okay kayaking when he’d never kayaked a day in his life. The Bastards were soldiers , reckless with themselves but not with other people. Matt couldn’t be in better hands.
I was organizing the receptionist’s desk — it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned out in years — when another call came in. I answered the phone reflexively as I held up a piece of paper from the back of the desk’s top drawer.
“Blackwell Falls mayor’s office, how may I help you?”
“Yes, this is Jean-Luc Laurent’s office calling for Mayor Maxwell.” The woman’s voice was crisp, with an accent that sounded French.
The hold light for Mayor Maxwell’s phone was lit, meaning she wasn’t taking calls.
I set down the receipt (dated ten years earlier) I’d found in the back of the desk and tabbed to the messaging program on the computer.
“I’m sorry, Mayor Maxwell isn’t available at the moment. May I take a message?”
The woman on the other end of the line let out an exasperated sigh. “I have left messages. It’s been months since the… incident involving the Cantwell Resort. Monsieur Laurent demands to know when his investment in the villa will be released to him.”
I froze, organizing the pieces of what she was saying around what Daisy Hammond had told us when we’d gone to her house. I didn’t see how the mayor could help any of the villa owners get their money back — I’d read the unfinished resort had been seized by the FBI pending the investigation into Piers Cantwell’s alleged illegal activities — but what did I know?
“I can… Um, I can let Mayor Maxwell know.” Get it together, Lilah. Do your job. “Would you like to leave a message?”
“Yes, fine.” The sigh again. “Please tell Mayor Maxwell that Monsieur Laurent insists on an update. She has the number.”
“I’ll pass it along,” I said.
The line went dead, and I imagined a beautiful chic Parisian woman across the ocean, shaking her head imperiously at the ineptitude of Americans.
I sat there, staring at the phone and tapping my fingers on the desk. Daisy said the people who’d bought private VIP villas at the Cantwell resort were super rich. If Piers Cantwell had been involved in human trafficking, if he’d planned to use the resort as some kind of hub for it, wasn’t it possible the owners of the VIP villas were involved?
And if they’d been involved when Piers was alive, if they were all part of Imperium Fratrum, what were the odds those people — people like Jean-Luc Laurent — were still involved?
I looked at the computer, contemplated digging around, seeing if I could find out the identities of the other villa owners, all of whom probably wanted their money back now that the Cantwell resort would be sitting empty for the foreseeable future.
But no, I wasn’t about to risk my new job.
I picked up my cell phone instead and scrolled to Daisy’s number. She’d given it to me when we’d left her house, had told me to call or text if there was anything else she could do to help.
And she’d seemed like she meant it.
She picked up on the second ring. “Lilah, hi!”
“Hey! I’m sorry to call out of the blue, but I have a question about those VIP villas at Cantwell.”