Chapter 1 Excerpt

The phone rang.

Swan Shreve ignored it, and continued to flip through files in the black, metal file cabinet until she reached the right tab. The phone had been ringing like a malfunctioning car alarm all morning. It was as though every idiot in the world had signed a pact to call her today to ensure she wouldn’t get the filing done. In all, she’d gotten two sales calls for magazines, one man selling siding, three irate and rude customers, and a woman who called to complain about a bill and when Swan explained she’d called the wrong department said, “Why don’t you know? Can’t you just call it up on your computer?” Swan said she couldn’t look it up and she’d transfer the woman to accounts receivable. The woman brightly explained that they never pick up there. That’s why she’d called this office instead. The phone rang again as Swan slid a piece of paper into the file. She hated filing.

“Are you going to get that?” Mr. Kowalchik yelled from his office.

She closed the drawer with her hip and reached for the phone. “Good morning. Mr. Kowalchik’s office. Swan speaking.” Mr. Kowalchik’s front office was predominately white with mass produced office furniture. The fake cherry veneer was chipping off a corner of the desk. Swan considered herself fairly lucky because Mr. Kowalchik, as head of a section in the engineering department, had a corner office with wide windows and this meant she too had a window, overlooking the vast green lawn of the Bova Technologies campus. No one was ever out on the lawn and it probably had more chemicals spread on it than it was healthy to think about, but Swan liked it just the same.

“Is Mr. Kowalchik there?” asked the caller. He had the harsh, impatient voice of someone who wanted to convince her he was very important.

Swan braced herself. “May I ask who’s calling, sir?”

“I asked you a question first,” the man said.

“I’m sorry?” She considered herself well schooled in caller rudeness by now, but this tactic was new. It was also not working.

“Don’t be sorry. Put Mr. Kowalchik on the damn phone,” said the man.

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way,” she said, trying to keep her voice mostly pleasant. “You have to give me your name and an idea of what you want.”

“Well, if you aren’t going to put me through to Mr. Kowalchik, what good are you?” the man demanded.

Swan clutched the phone, largely because she couldn’t clutch the caller’s neck. “I’m good for screening out rude, idiot callers. I’m not going to give you Mr. Kowalchik, because I’d rather hang up on you.” She hung up on him.

“Miss Shreve,” Mr. Kowalchik said from behind her.

“Yes, Mr. Kowalchik?”

“Who was the caller?”

“He didn’t give a name. I’m guessing a sales call.” Swan turned back to the stack of filing.

Mr. Kowalchik continued to loom in the doorway between his office and hers. He was good at looming. He had the size for it, about six foot, and had been a right tackle in college. He never stopped eating like a football player and now at middle age had developed a belly that on top of his short legs made him resemble a substantial highboy. And being a serious man in a serious business, his face had permanently set itself into a displeased and superior expression, proof that mother was right, an expression kept for too long would stick that way. “Did you ask his name?” Mr. Kowalchik asked.

“No, Mr. Kowalchik, I don’t ask names anymore. I’ve decided to take up mind reading.” She opened a drawer in the black, metal filing cabinet and started thumbing through the files, hoping to finally finish and go to lunch.

“What if that was Magnus Wade?”

Swan turned to face him. He tended to get angrier when she continued to work while he wanted to talk at her. Seemed to think it meant she wasn’t listening. “It wasn’t,” she said.

“But it might have been. I did not hire you to slam down phones or be rude to callers. As my administrative assistant you are a representation of me.” He held both index fingers up and used them for emphasis like a conductor conducting his own performance. “If that was Wade, imagine the sort of image he has of me now.” Mr. Kowalchik’s fat face was slowly turning pink on its way to a hearty red. Swan figured she’d better stop this before his head blew off. Secretaries get blamed for everything and if he were to have an aneurysm now, she’d probably be accused of murdering him by answering the phone wrong.

“Why would Mr. Wade refuse to give his name when he has legitimate business and giving his name will get him through? People who refuse to give information are trying to pitch something and know as soon as they say they are trying to sell something I will get rid of them. This guy was a salesman. A rude salesman. Okay?”

Mr. Kowalchik stood there, his face still a nice shade of baby pink, but further coloration seemed to have been arrested. Still, this would not do. He had come out here with the express purpose of being angry at her and now she was being reasonable. She would at the very least have to sit through a lecture on being a lady. “You still had no call to be rude back to him,” Mr. Kowalchik blustered.

Swan tried to put the stack of filing out of her mind. There was no way she’d get it done before lunch now. It would have to take a little longer. She settled herself for the oncoming lecture. It is an old idea…

“It’s an old idea, and one which your generation has gotten rid of, but I’d like it if you would think of yourself as a lady when you are in my office. Well mannered, considerate, proper, listening to all comers and giving everyone their due. A lady would not slam the phone down, nor would she call someone rude and an idiot no matter how badly she had been treated. Do I make myself clear?”

Swan’s stomach gurgled loudly as if in answer.

Mr. Kowalchik looked at her midsection and frowned. A lady’s stomach should be quiet and decorous even if it is nearly an hour after the usual lunch time.

“Yes, Mr. Kowalchik. I understand.”

“Thank you, Miss Shreve.”

“Doctor,” she corrected.

“Hmm?”

“Doctor Shreve. The Ph.D.?” she reminded him.

Mr. Kowalchik frowned some more. A lady should not insist on her title, or even reference it, when she is better educated than her boss and she knows it bothers his ego. “Yes. Doctor,” he muttered and returned to his office.

“And I’m going to lunch,” she called after him. It was inviting another Mr. Kowalchik speech to leave all that mess on her desk, but she could no longer file on an empty stomach. He grunted, which she took as assent. She grabbed her purse and opened the door.

“Hey Dr. Shreve,” the mail guy swung his cart right into Swan’s path, nearly taking out her knees. “Couple of packages for you today.” He was a skinny kid named Garrett who’d been in her Intro to American Lit class last spring semester.

“Don’t call me that,” she said as she relieved him of a few packages addressed to Mr. Kowalchik. “I’m not your professor anymore. Just call me Swan.”

He grinned. “But that wouldn’t drive you crazy.”

“Thanks,” Swan said.

“Hey, I have to find some fun around here. See you Doctor Shreve.”

Swan slipped back into the office and set the boxes on her desk. Mr. Kowalchik came out of his office again.

“Ran into the mail guy,” she explained.

Mr. Kowalchik grunted. “Take these over to Brian’s office on your lunch break.” He shoved a file at her.

Swan grabbed it and cursed herself for coming back. No good deed goes unpunished. “Okay,” she said. At least she’d get to see Brenda.

***

“She’s late today,” Mrs. Strand remarked.

Mrs. Hamel and Mrs. Strand sat in a light blue Prius at the bottom of the parking ramp of Bova Technologies campus, watching the activity around the side door of the south building. A security guard nosed by their car and stopped to tap on the driver’s side window. He was in a gray uniform that said Bova Technologies on the left breast. He had a stick in his belt but no gun. The uniform was more fitted than the usual mass produced shirts most companies gave security. Bova was serious. But then technology companies needed to be these days. The guard looked about two days over the age of twenty-three and probably had a criminal justice degree and was working here while trying to become a real cop.

Mrs. Hamel rolled down her window and looked up expectantly at the guard.

“You ladies lost?”

“No. Just waiting to take my granddaughter to lunch,” Mrs. Hamel said.

The two ladies plastered mild, grandmotherly smiles on their faces. Mrs. Strand was the older of the two by twenty years. She sat, prim as a gray cat in the passenger seat, holding a pair of knitting needles and half a sweater in orange and brown acrylic. Mrs. Hamel was younger and thicker, her middle age spread had not yet given way to old age frailness. She was one of those grandmothers who always opens stuck pickle jars herself.

The security guard looked them over and seemed unsure. Finally he said, “Well, I’m not allowed to let you just sit here. Does she know you’re coming?”

Mrs. Hamel broadened her smile. “She’ll be out soon.”

“Can you call her?”

“Well, no,” Mrs. Strand said. “There’s no phone around.”

“Cell phone?” the guard asked.

“Oh I don’t like those things. I never understand them.” Mrs. Hamel waved her hand by her head. “My grandson always has to help me with these technological doodads.”

The guard smiled. “Yeah. My grandparents just got a computer second hand from the neighbors and their always calling me.”

“Oh, I bet your just a whiz at those things,” Mrs. Hamel said.

The guard shrugged. “I do okay. Not like some, but I get by.” He stared at the old ladies as if they’d just appeared out of nowhere and finally decided to break the rules. “I need to get back in the booth,” he said. “But I guess you’re okay as long as you aren’t blocking traffic.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Hamel said. The guard went back to his booth and Mrs. Hamel closed the window.

“She should have been out by now,” Mrs. Strand said. She dug in her purse and for a moment two inches of gun barrel stuck out. Mrs. Strand tucked it back in and came out with a pack of Trident. “Gum?” she offered to Mrs. Hamel.

Mrs. Hamel took a piece. “I hate tailing people.”