“Was this recorded?” Shondrella asks. “If we could hear the recording, maybe we could ID the voices.”
Freaking brilliant of Shondrella to try and see if they have a recording.
“Thirty seconds,” Bert says.
A text under my desk.
Renata: NOOOOOOOOOOO
I stand. I have to confess.
Bert frowns at me. “Jada?”
Lacey strolls up next to me, casually sets her phone down on my desk, and taps a long pink fingernail onto the screen. I glance down to see a text from Bruce in shipping.
Bruce: He’s telling every department he knows it’s them.
TOTAL BLUFF.
“Jada?” Bert barks.
I swallow. “Why would we stay after the call and goof off when we had that two-piece to finish?”
Bert comes up to me. “Is this insubordination? Is that what this is?”
I straighten up. “Just pointing it out…”
He stares at my eyes for an uncomfortably long time, and I stare right back, all confused and concerned. Did he know I was about to confess? Sometimes I feel like he has evil psychic abilities. “We’ll keep our ears open,” I chirp.
“You’ll keep your ears open, will you?” he says.
I give him a polite smile. “Yup.”
“Nobody?” Bert looks around.
There’s more silence.
“Last chance.” He settles his gaze on Lacey, who looks like she just woke up. With her two demerits and her health issues, she’s vulnerable, and he knows it. Anybody who helps me out, of course, would be rewarded.
Lacey shakes her head.
“What do you think would happen if I sent the recording to a lab for voice analysis? Am I going to find out it was somebody in this department? Am I going to find out that you all know exactly who it is and are refusing to tell?” He strolls across the room, staring as he goes. “You’d best hope not.” He pauses to let that sink in, then he leaves.
“There is no way he’s got a recording,” somebody mumbles. People agree. No way.
“Even if he does,” Renata says. “A hundred women work here. He’d voice print us all? Puhlllease.”
“God, I’m so sorry!” I sink into my seat. “I am going to be all business from now on. So serious!”
“Dude, it was worth it!” Dave says.
“Yeah, seeing Bert freak?” Shondrella says. “Priceless.”
“The family,” Renata says in her Godfather impression. “You come for one of us, you come for us all.”
“That’s not a thing anybody ever said in The Godfather,” Dave says.
“Maybe it should’ve been,” Renata says. “Anyway, it’s a thing in our family.”
Six
Jaxon
Four Weeks Later: London
Workers scurry around, packing up my parents’ London residence. Charley’s sprawled out on a priceless couch he’s thinking of taking for one of his residences. Arnold comes in with a large, framed photo.
“Christie’s,” I say.
“Jaxon, no!” Charley says. “It’s the first signed print. Iconic Danbery. And look how happy you are!”
I glower at the photo that fooled the world, taken by a celebrity photog my parents hired at great expense. Mom and Dad and me on a picnic blanket, the three of us smiling out at the world. The richest little richie-rich boy with his doting parents, the splendidly groomed grounds of our Türenbourg castle unfolding in the background.
Totally fake.
Arnold comes in with an original oil painting of my parents in their prime.
“Christie’s,” I say.
“If nothing else, keep it for your kids,” Charley tries.
“As if I would inflict the Von Henningsly bullshit on another generation.”
“Mark my words, you’ll want a family someday.”
I point. “Christie’s.”
Charley still believes in the fairy tale. His entire family does, a fact that I witnessed over the many Christmases I spent there. Always laughing and clinging to each other and creating their own traditions. They’d put an old Dolly Parton doll on the top of the tree and then do this whole dance to the song “We are the Champions.” They always watch scary movies on Christmas Day, huddled together. The ridiculous lore and traditions they developed over the years seemed to create this illusion of togetherness that they cling to.
Who can blame them? You’re born alone and you die alone. It’s not an easy truth to face.
Charley sighs and leans on a nearby wall, watching Arnold place the portrait to be crated for auction. “Congrats on getting the share prices back up, by the way,” he says. “That pompous speechwriter, though.”
“Never again,” I say. “Shoot me if I sound like my father ever again.”
“Will you be selling Wycliff now?”
“Eventually. I still have to destroy the butt-dialer.”
“What?” Charley pushes off the wall, straightening up. “I thought you dropped that whole sordid thing.”
“Of course not. Management hasn’t been able to identify the offender, so I’ll be taking the investigation into my own hands. I’ll take a position there under an assumed identity and find the perpetrator myself.”
Charley blinks at me, confused. “A position?”
“A position at the company,” I explain. “As in job. If you want a thing done right, you have to do it yourself, it seems. I’m having Soto arrange it.” Mr. Soto is my business guy. My parents’ guy, Barclay, quit soon after the conference call.
“That’s madness,” Charley says. “You can’t take a job.”
“Why not?” I say.
He stares at me as though he can’t get his mind around the question. “Forget the company. Come out to my villa, Jaxon. You can clear your head there. The sudden loss of both one’s parents is huge, whether you’ll admit it or not.”
“Soto lined me up with a position already. Office-gopher-slash-delivery assistant. I’ll be undercover.” I grin. “What do you think?”
“You’re not thinking straight,” Charley says. “You don’t know how an office works. You have no actual skills. You’ve never held a job in your life.”
“That’s not true,” I protest. “I’ve had a job.”
“Motorsport is different from a job,” he says.
“What do you mean? I built a team and showed up at a specific time to do a specific task.”
People thought I didn’t have the discipline to become a driver for a Formula One team. I was too unruly, too hotheaded, not disciplined enough for the long hours on the track and in the gym, but I proved them wrong.
“You got booted out for fighting,” Charley reminds me.
“Gundrun deserved it,” I say.
“A lot of people deserve it. You go to some office and you’re gonna find a lot of people who deserve to be hit. You might even end up with a boss who deserves to be taken down a peg or two, but guess what? You’ll have to sit there and smile. No brawling allowed. You won’t last a day.”