Wednesday morning, I awoke to find Kaley deep in sleep beside me. I got up, slipped sweats over my shorts and T-shirt, and went to make coffee. God only knew what time Kaley had gotten in. I hadn’t retired until about midnight. Considering her current condition, I wanted her to get all the sleep she could.
Coffee made, I decided to read my news feed, then make breakfast. I called Margie to let her know I’d be late, and also to reschedule two AM meetings until another day, as I had to make a planned arrival at Ganymede right after lunch. In the den, I logged on and did a quick scan. No world crisis loomed at the moment. There was an E2 story on the front page, as our new initiative was still headline stuff. A dozen countries were petitioning to start colonies too, but the petitioners were quite happy for the present to stand by to see if the first humans managed to survive on their own. So far, so good.
Reading done, I decided on bacon and eggs, with toast and a jar of extraordinary plum jam Kaley had discovered at the organic-only store. No matter how exhausted she might be, her internal alarm wouldn’t let her sleep much past nine.
Sure enough, as I popped the final bacon strip onto paper towels and gave the eggs and cheese one last stir, she dragged in, face pale and a bit the worse for wear.
“If you say one word about my appearance, I will hit you with a frying pan,” she declared.
“Not a very nice thank you for breakfast.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” She came over and kissed me, held tight for a moment.
“Yes, you do look draggy,” I said. “Which means you probably got in long after I hit the sheets.”
“Around three. You’re right about one thing. I can’t carry on like before. That little bugger in my tummy is sucking a lot of my energy. I’m exhausted”
“Given your current status in this odyssey,” I told her. “You’re going to have to give up your travels soon. As in now.”
Although Kaley had thickened in the middle a lot, she hadn’t quite made it to the waddling stage. She didn’t move quite as easily, and fatigue was a problem.
“I want you to eat and go back to bed,” I told her. “You cannot push yourself like this. It’s not only bad for you, it’s bad for baby Susie.”
“Susie? What, you’ve picked a name?”
“No, it’s a place holder name. Call her baby Millie if you want. Don’t make me lock you in the closet. Or maybe, more appropriately, tie you to the bed.”
“I have one teeny call to London today.”
“Not anymore. Call Bets, tell her she’s in charge. She has access to the call chart, right?”
Kaley nodded. “Yeah.”
“Then you’re off today, if not the rest of the week.”
She flared a little. “Now, listen, I may not—”
I cut her off. “This isn’t the boss speaking. It’s your husband, and he’s telling you the time has come to throw in the towel and let your loyal and capable minions take over. You can monitor from here on your computer. I can have a special line set up so you can call via the portal network, but you cannot exhaust yourself from now on. They say you can’t catch up on rest, but you’re going to have to try. As of now, you are off duty for the duration in terms of field calls. You’re a capable manager, and you can do it from right here, or from the office after you catch up on sleep.”
She surprised me by tearing up. “God, I’m so damn tired!”
“Of course, you are. You always push yourself to the limit, and now you’re finding out the limit is lower than before. Call Bets.”
“Okay,” she said, resigned. While she did, I called Overton.
“For today, I am unavailable,” I told him when he came on. “A lot of personal business has piled up, not the least, my wife who is exhausted and needs a day or two at home. I can have video calls with any and all who need my approval or participation. Okay with you?”
He laughed. “Since I work about seventy hours a week, and you add about another ten hours a week to that schedule on average, I couldn’t possibly complain. Things are under control on E-Two. I know you have your buddy and any needed support staff slaving away to pinpoint the Bug home world. Take care of your wife and whatever else. If I need you to save the world, I’ll call.”
“You don’t need me,” I reminded him. “The last time the world needed saving, you were right there to share the load.”
“It probably won’t need saving for at least a couple days, so we’re both safe.” He rang off.
I sipped coffee while Kaley finished. She was giving a lot of specific instructions, when she said, “What? Okay, I get it. Go do your thing. If I can offer advice, consultation, or a shoulder to cry on, let me know.” She disconnected and cast a guilty glance at me.
“You were doing a memory dump on Bets, who doesn’t need it. Did you catch yourself doing it or did she call you on it? You gotta learn to give directions and let the troops go, especially with Bets. I’ve told you this before, my dear: don’t tell Bets how, tell her what. She knows how.”
“Okay, Mr. Smarty. I know you’re a genius manager, but the rest of us need to learn.”
“Not a genius. I’m pretty smart, as are you, but Bobby’s the gold-plated super-brain. I’ve been a manager for a long time, and you’re at the point of changing positions.”
“Changing positions?”
We’d gravitated to the den sofa to make our calls. I motioned her over, put my arm around her. “Kaley, you are the greatest field rep of all time, in any company I know of. You saved our customer’s bacon a hundred times, usually out in the field and frequently for IC. At one time you were the field service department. Now we got, how many, around thirty reps?”
“Thirty-four. Bets is training four new hires right now.”
“Wow. I am behind the times. Okay, you made my point for me. It’s time to make some changes in field service. We’ll start by taking you out of the field permanently and naming you the head of field service.”
“Huh? Are you crazy? I don’t want to leave the field. I love the field, doing problem diagnosis, getting things going!”
I kissed her nose. “Of course, you do. Once Baby Susie is born, she’ll require a lot of care and attention, and with my commitment to the E-Two project, it can’t be me, not for a while.
“So, here’s what we do. We split off service from engineering as an entity. We make you vice president and manager of field service, which I guarantee will grow as we populate more worlds. You start training to make sure that we meet customers’ needs on a regular basis. We’ll install a permanent portal call line in the house so you can stay in touch with any destination at any time. We’ll promote three or four of your best techs, say Bets and Kyle and maybe Faye as group managers, and maybe divide service into on-world and off-world divisions.”
Kaley gave me the side eye in a not-positive way. “Sounds like a lot of paperwork and bullshit to me.”
I hugged her. “Yeah, some of it is. You’re the genius to make it work. Just think about it, you’ll get a big promotion and make more money you won’t have time to spend, plus have more time at home to take care of Baby Susie.”
“I wish you’d quit the Baby Susie crap. I would never, ever name a daughter Susie.”
“Name her what you want. The point is you’ll need to be out of the field, and this’ll give you time to do some of the things you’ve talked about. Field service has needed better management for a while, and that’s my fault. Service and engineering have been my responsibility, and I don’t have time to manage the service operation anymore. You do. You think like a manager, even though you don’t want to admit it. Bets can be your deputy and manage the off-world group but that’s up to you. Now is the time to lay the groundwork for Triple-S service of the future, and you need to be in charge.”
She gave me another long look. “You’re serious. You think I could do it.”
“Of course, you could do it. Even more important, it needs to be done, and sooner rather than later. Starting your time off now gives you a chance to think about the service organization of the next twenty years. By the time Baby Whoever comes, you’ll have the new service unit reorganized and ready. I’ve mentioned this to Virgil before, but now is the perfect opportunity.”
Another long stare. “I think my old boss and my new hubby got together on this, but you might be right. I’ll give it some thought”
“Think fast. I’ll propose it to Virgil later this week. If he approves, and he’ll probably lambast me for not doing it sooner, you could be a vee pee by Friday.”
“Just what I’ve always wanted, to be one of the hated management team.”
“We’re not hated and you know it. Triple-S employees like the management team.”
“It was just a figure of speech. Like I said, I’ll see.”
Before I could reply, my personal chimed.
It turned out to be Guy. “We need to have a quick meeting. The assessment of your former wife’s estate is complete, and you need to review it. It’s a substantial inheritance.”
“I can’t leave home today. What about later this week?”
“Needs to be ASAP. We can do it via com.”
That made sense, and without travel, it would take a lot less time. “I could do that. When?”
“Let’s see. It’s almost ten now. How about eleven? I need to assemble the info and get one or two other participants in the room.”
I agreed and he rang off.
“Do I need to be there?” Kaley asked.
“I don’t think so. If anything pertinent comes up, I’ll let you know.”
She gave me a kiss and stood. “Good, because I’m back to bed. Wake me in the morning if I haven’t surfaced by then.”
“Agreed.”
She trudged back to our bedroom, still exhausted. I hoped the full stomach would help her sleep for most of the day. She couldn’t sleep around the clock twice; her body just didn’t operate like that.
I killed time by checking with Margie. No major problems, she assured me. I spent ten minutes with Bobby, who was setting up our single-portal device for the exploration venture to determine the Bug’s home address and zip code. After all that excitement, I cleaned the kitchen. At eleven, I logged into Guy’s web address, spied a meeting invitation, and joined.
Even though I was on time to the minute, Guy and Maddy were waiting. Maddy. Hmm. She was a surprise, as it implied more than an estate discussion loomed.
“I thought we’d get the dollars-and-cents stuff out of the way first,” he said. “I’m sending you a full summary of Glynnis’s estate, with calculated current values, so I believe this is a true and accurate picture of your ex-wife’s final effects and legacy. I’d like you to read it later and let me know if you have questions.
“Now, as to the financial summary.” A slide popped up on the left side of my display, a financial chart of holdings and values. “She had a varied portfolio of investments managed by one of the largest and most reputable institutions. As the portfolio includes not only cash but bonds, funds, and a small number of specific stocks, its value varies on a daily basis. As of this morning at nine, the value was thirty-seven million, two hundred forty-four thousand, eight hundred fifty dollars. Glynnis’s estate owns a large piece of undeveloped property near the town of Estes Park, Colorado, a beach house in Nag’s Head, North Carolina, and a Park Avenue condominium in New York City, aggregate value in today’s market roughly twenty-two million dollars. In addition, she had bank accounts and cash reserves at two savings and loans amounting to two million, six hundred thousand, four hundred fifty-seven dollars. All told, a total value of just north of sixty-two million dollars.”
Glynnis had built a nice nest egg. Not anywhere near mine, but comfortable. A thought struck me. “What about her condo in Dallas?”
“As manager of the estate per your direction, we were able to sell it several months ago, and that amount is included as part of her investment portfolio now.”
“Wouldn’t she also have a share in the partnership her colleagues would have to buy out?”
“The partnership maintained an insurance policy on each partner which covered that. The amount was about six million dollars, and it is included in the value of her portfolio.”
“It sounds as though her twin is a lucky girl,” I commented.
“It would seem so,” Guy agreed. He flicked a glance to his left. Maddy, only partly visible to that side, awaited her moment to speak.
He continued. “That’s it. Read the more detailed summary and let me know your thoughts. By the way, is Kaley with you?”
“Asleep. Pregnancy and field travel have done her in. She’s out of the field for the duration.”
“Sounds sensible. Maddy has relevant things to add, from the investigation. You can decide how much to fill Kaley in on later.”
Kaley being Kaley, I would never attempt to hold anything back, but I appreciated his concern. “Okay, Maddy. Let me have it.”
The camera automatically shifted over. She was as matter of fact as ever.
“Two main issues of interest. One, continuing to dig among former acquaintances at Glenna’s high school, we uncovered more information about her relationship with her parents. A lot was hearsay, but it does paint a picture.
“Two former students who knew her, said they saw signs of physical abuse, bruises on arms or legs. We found a woman who claimed to be fairly close—her words—to Glenna. She didn’t want to say much because they weren’t BFF’s by any means, but they were friendly enough that this woman didn’t want to be seen as betraying any confidences.
“I had to coax this information out of her. She finally said Glenna told her that she had regular sex with her father.”
There was nothing to say to that. I waited.
Maddy went on. “Several who knew her said she had real affection for her father. Maybe his sexual abuse seemed to her like a special form of attention. It made her equal to her mother. Also, her father treated her fairly well, except when he was drunk. When he’d hurt himself, drunks fall a lot after all, she’d take care of him. A truly complex and sad relationship.”
I digested the tragic and loathsome story. If what appeared to be a normal childhood hadn’t kept Glynnis from her pathological ways, what might such terrifying experiences do to her twin?
“What about her father’s death?” I asked.
“We’ll never know. Brake failure was the stated cause of the accident, which killed not only her father but her mother, too. The wreckage was disposed of years ago, and the bodies of both parents wouldn’t show proof the car had been tampered with. One thing, we did manage to track down a male friend that actually had a couple of dates with Glenna.
“He was convinced that somehow or other, she came up with a way to disable the brakes on her parents’ car and cause the accident. He said she confided in him she wanted to kill both her mother and father. She appeared to have always hated her mother, but in the case of her father, she told the young man, “He doesn’t love me anymore. He doesn’t want me. I used to love him, but now I hate him.”
“Any idea what changed?” I asked. Had he shifted his sexual attention back to his wife, or another woman?
“No. We could speculate, of course. We can’t be certain, but Ms. Patterson could be a disturbed young woman, regardless of appearances.” Which was exactly what you could have said about her twin, at the end, I thought. Not only did it make me worry about Glenna’s intentions, it made me intensely sad for her.
Silence. I perceived Guy was awaiting instructions.
“How long until a court date?”
He shrugged. “It’s closer. Maybe August, the exact date still to be set.”
“Proceed with the action to petition for a change of heir. As for Glenna, keep tabs on her for now. I assume she hasn’t returned to this area, or you would have let me know.”
“We would. I would suggest, if the suit is successful, we find a way to meet and counsel her before turning over a sixty-million-dollar-plus estate. Maybe require a financial manager, set up a trust, insist on psychiatric treatments before we relinquish the reins.”
“That sounds reasonable. Maddy, make sure you keep as close tabs on her as possible. If she heads this way, number one, shadow her from the instant she arrives. Number two, keep me apprised on an hourly basis. You guys got anything else?”
Guy shook his head. “I figure this is enough to give you food for thought for a while.”
“As if I didn’t have a thousand things on my mind anyway.”
He laughed, shot me the pistol finger, and killed the link.
I sat back. Holy shit. I had enough problems without this one being tossed on my plate. I sat back to think.
For the present, I thought to myself, I wasn’t going to put this on Kaley’s shoulders as well.