“I know it’s a big deal,” Paige responded, insulted. “But it’s also a big deal that she forced Charles to fire you, Bea, and she’s building evidence to get Edna next.”
“That’s the truth,” Edna responded.
“If we force him to get rid of her, then Edna keeps her job, and you, Bea, will regain yours. But she has to go. There is no other way around this. It’s a risk both of you will have to take.”
Beatrice nodded. She knew Paige spoke the truth. “What are we waiting for?” she asked rhetorically, and then escorted Paige to the vault.
It was turning out to be a very hectic day, but Jenay was having a good day. The rooms she inspected last week were in excellent shape this week, and the books, thanks to Megan’s excellent stewardship, were all in order. Now she was focusing on a new marketing strategy and ultimate campaign for the Inn. She had already hired a web designer, and although Charles had rejected all of the name changes for the Inn she proposed to him, she wasn’t going to let that deter her. She would just have to work with that same old, boring-ass name. It was his B & B, after all.
But there were problems too. On any given day, nearly half of the Inn’s guestrooms were vacant. Given the size of the Inn, and the massive overhead in running such a resort style hotel, half of the rooms unoccupied was not financially sustainable. They needed far more traffic, far more exposure, far more travelers willing to stop on their way further north, or on their way headed south and elsewhere. Jenay was making it her responsibility to make Jericho Inn ultimately and finally profitable.
She looked at the clock on her office desk. It was only eleven in the morning, but she had already accomplished a lot for the day. She stood to stretch her muscles, and to take a break from so much paperwork. But just as she walked toward the window, and looked out across the beautiful lawns and gardens of the majestic Inn, she heard a scream, the loudest, the most unapologetic, bloodcurdling scream.
She ran. She knew where the scream was coming from. She knew who was screaming. But that didn’t make it any easier. She ran.
By the time she made it downstairs, around the walls and the rusty old six-feet lockers, and arrived at the door of the vault room, the room that housed the hotel safe, the two desk clerks and the maintenance supervisor were already there.
“What is it?” Jenay asked nervously as she hurried past the others and made her way up to the safe. Megan was standing at the front of the four-foot safe, and was looking ghostly. She had been the screamer.
“What’s wrong?” Jenay asked her.
“It’s gone, Miss Jenay,” Megan cried. “It’s all gone!”
“What’s gone?” Jenay asked.
“All of it.”
“All of what?”
The jewels,” Megan said. “The guest jewels!”
Jenay’s heart fell through her shoe as she flung open the safe and saw nothing inside. Not a ring. Not an earring. Nothing! Her heart began to hammer.
But she couldn’t go to pieces the way Megan had. She had to keep her wits about her. “Rita, call 911,” she ordered one of the desk clerks.
“Yes, ma’am,” Rita said, and hurried to do just that.
“I want this entire hotel on lockdown, Roy,” she said to her maintenance supervisor. “Nobody leaves until the police arrives. And I mean no-one.”
“Yes ma’am,” Roy said, and hurried to lock it down himself.
Jenay looked at Megan. “Has this ever happened before?” she asked.
“Never. Not in all the years I’ve been here, Miss Jenay. It’s never ever happened before.”
Jenay was stumped. In just the second week of her tenure as GM, the guest safe was robbed? The cost of those jewels had to be staggering! There were a lot of wealthy people who patronized this hotel on a weekly basis. They were the only ones who could afford the exuberant costs. Now their jewels were missing? Would Charles blame her? Would Charles fire her?
She leaned back against the wall, before she fell.
“Four!” Charles yelled as his ball sailed across the fairway toward what he hoped would be a clear path onto the green, but he overshot and ended up nearly twenty feet on the other side of the hole. He was a lousy golfer, and the negotiations weren’t going much better. He was looking to purchase a failing textile mill that was long past its prime, but the owners didn’t want to just give it away either. The talks were getting heated. When golf was suggested as a way to unwind and restart the talks, he agreed. He needed the relief.
He watched his golfing partner fare even worse, as his ball ended up in the rough. They walked and talked, not about the negotiations, but about the birds and the condition of the course and anything and everything other than the negotiations. That was how it was done in Charles’s world. Relax first, and then they would talk.