Whispered Secrets by Elizabeth Lennox
Chapter 16
“No, I don’t have time for Desiree right now,” Oliver snapped as he headed down the hall to his next meeting. Jamie struggled to keep up, but he was about a foot shorter than Oliver and looked frazzled. Which was another reason why he didn’t want to deal with Desiree today. The woman was really getting on his nerves!
“But sir, she…” Jamie paused and picked up his cell phone. “Yes?” Oliver ignored his assistant and kept walking, stepping into the conference room and nodding to the people already gathered there. Jamie followed, still nodding even though the meeting was scheduled to start. “Yes. Okay. No, I don’t recognize the name.” More nodding, then Jamie covered the phone. “There is a woman down in the lobby asking to speak with you.”
“Get rid of her,” Oliver snapped, then sat down at the head of the long, polished table and nodded. “Let’s go.”
Jamie sat down as well, but the phone buzzed and he checked the message. “Woman says that Oliver Fenton will be evicted if she doesn’t speak with him.” Jamie re-read the message, trying to understand the words because they were simply too insane.
With a sigh, Jamie stood up and left the room, knowing that he’d have to make the determination to have the woman arrested or just evicted from the building.
When he stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor, he spotted the woman easily enough. She was the only one in the building wearing jeans. She was also lovely. Those green eyes were beautiful and…angry! Her long, brown hair cascaded over her shoulder from a high ponytail, showcasing her delicate cheekbones. The woman was incredibly lovely! And unable to hold still. She was pacing the lobby, muttering to herself.
“Ms. Beauchamp?” he asked.
“Yes,” the pretty woman who, upon closer inspection, was truly beautiful, extended her hand politely. “I’m Maggie Beauchamp,” she replied with a tone that spoke of calm control at great cost. “I need to speak with Oliver Fenton for a moment, if you don’t mind. We have some personal business that needs to be discussed in private.”
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Fenton is in a meeting. May I take a message for him?”
The pretty woman gulped and blinked back tears, seeming to deflate with resignation. Jamie watched the woman for a long moment. She appeared to be coming to terms with something, but Jamie had no idea what that “something” was.
Finally, her shoulders drooped and she shook her head. “No. No message.” She turned away, but after only a few steps, she turned back to him. “Actually, yes. Please tell Oliver that…” she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Tell him Maggie needs his apartment keys back. Tell him that I’ll ensure that he’s reimbursed for the materials, as well as his time and effort. He’ll know what that means.”
With that, she headed towards the doors again. Something about the way she carried herself whispered to Jamie that she was struggling with very strong emotions. Plus, the message…it didn’t make sense. Except that Jamie knew that there had been something very odd going on with his boss over the past several weeks.
“Ms. Beauchamp!” Jamie called out, his instincts kicking in. When the woman stopped, but didn’t turn around, his gut twisted alarmingly, warning him that something was very wrong.
“Why don’t you come with me?” he offered. “Mr. Fenton should be out of his meeting in a few minutes and I’m sure that he can spare you a moment.”
The woman was still for a long moment, obviously mentally debating the issue. Thankfully, in the end, she nodded sharply. Jamie led the way to the elevators and they went up to the executive floor in silence.
“This way,” Jamie explained, leading her down the long, plush hallway towards Oliver’s office. If this truly was a personal issue, Oliver probably wouldn’t want it announced to the world. But at the last minute, Jamie decided to put the woman in one of the executive conference rooms instead of Oliver’s office. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to protect Oliver’s privacy.
“You can wait in here,” Jamie said, opening the door to one of the larger conference rooms. “Can I get you some coffee or tea? Juice or a soda, perhaps?”
Maggie looked around, impressed despite her anger. The short man was staring at her as if expecting her to shatter into a zillion pieces. He wasn’t far off!
“No. Thank you. I’m fine,” she finally replied, then moved deeper into the conference room. It was a nice room with a brightly polished table and expensive, black leather chairs with high backs. It was a power room, she thought, recognizing the effort. A room used to intimidate and impress.
It worked. Maggie was definitely impressed and intimidated. She rubbed sweaty palms down over her worn jeans, wishing that she’d taken the time to change into a dress. Or maybe a suit. Anything that might help her to feel a bit less intimidated. More as if she belonged in this world.
At one point, she would have felt perfectly comfortable in a room like this. Maggie would have assumed that she had every right to a room like this. She would have felt on top of the world to have been shown to this room.
Now, Maggie just wanted to get out of here.
“This was a bad idea,” she muttered, pulling her purse higher onto her shoulder as she turned to leave, determined to get out of here and talk to Oliver later tonight. There had to be an explanation. It was silly to confront him like this. Silly and petty.
Maggie was reaching for the doorknob when the door pushed open and she jumped back.
“Oh!” a guy yelped, startled himself. “Sorry about that!” he laughed. He pulled a cart into the room that had a miniature mock-up of a city on it. “I wasn’t aware that anyone would be in here this early. I was just told to deliver his mock up to this conference room.” He pulled the cart up to the table and hefted one half of the “city” onto the conference room table, then the second half. He carefully adjusted the halves so that they were perfectly aligned.
“Isn’t this just incredible?” the man gushed, bending down to make sure that the parts were perfectly placed. “This part of Crystal City is a dump! But Mr. Fenton has plans to make over the whole area! He has several options. This is just the first. But it’s my favorite.” He chuckled, shaking his head, clearly in awe. “I mean, imagine buying up old buildings and land so that we can replace those decrepit dumps with new, fresh designs that can offer so much more to everyone! It’s just genius!”
Maggie stared, unable to respond as she looked down at the diorama of her neighborhood. She’d spotted Rose Gardens Apartments easily enough because of the courtyard. Someone had taken great pains to make this mockup as real as possible.
“These babies cost a few thousand dollars to create, but Mr. Fenton prefers to visualize the options,” the guy explained, resting his hands on his hips. “Okay, I need to go get the other two options and get them set up too. I’ll be right back.”
He disappeared out the door, leaving Maggie alone. Alone with the truth of Oliver’s betrayal.
It wasn’t that he was engaged. It wasn’t that he was a powerful man who had more money than god!
No, Oliver’s betrayal was that he was going to destroy her world. Literally! Looking closely at the diorama, she spotted the place where the community center, where Molly worked and the residents gathered …used to stand. In its place was a sky rise, with retail shops and restaurants on the bottom floor, several levels of office space and, from the small descriptions alongside each building, condominiums on the top floors. It was perhaps thirty stories high, but that wasn’t the tallest building around. Nope, there were four more buildings. The other three rose up over the shops and small, family owned restaurants that dotted the landscape of the neighborhood. The apartment complex next to Rose Gardens was gone, replaced by condos six floors high. There was a price tag on the condos in that building’s description and Maggie gasped at the amount. Surely no one would pay that much for a one or two bedroom home that didn’t even come with its own butler!
She continued to examine the mockup, pain lashing at her as she searched for the soccer field. It was gone. Several of the high-rise buildings took up the area where her precious neighborhood used to be. Maggie suspected that the base of the buildings needed to be wider than the current city block in order to sustain the weight of thirty or forty floors.
Maggie’s hand flew up to smother a sob. She couldn’t look any longer. Turning, she rushed out of the conference room, practically running down the hallway. She pressed the button for the elevator, then waited impatiently for several people to exit before she stepped in.
For several, painful moments, she waited, fighting to keep her face still and her eyes from leaking. Finally, the elevator opened and, since Maggie was in the back, she waited while the others filed out. But when she finally had a pathway, she rushed out of the elevator, apologizing when she accidentally bumped people in her haste to get away.
When she finally reached her car, which had been parked in the underground parking garage, she felt as if she might just explode from the pain. “Not yet,” she told herself firmly. “Just wait until you get out of here!”
It was a short trip back home, but when she reached the familiar streets of her neighborhood, something else occurred to her. Instead of heading to her home, she drove the extra block to the community center. Sure enough, Molly was outside, plucking apples from the trees and waved cheerfully when Maggie pulled into a parking space.
But as soon as Molly saw her friend’s face drenched in tears, Molly dropped her basket and rushed to comfort Maggie.
“What happened? What did he say? Is he truly engaged?” Molly asked, enveloping Maggie in a tight hug and holding her still.
“Worse!” Maggie whispered through the pain. She squeezed her eyes closed as Molly’s arms tightened around her.
“Okay, we’ll figure this out, together. Let’s go to my office. I’ll call Lilly and we’ll figure this out together.”
Maggie nodded, wiping away her tears with her hands and wishing that she had a tissue.
Finally, they ended up in Molly’s tiny conference room, since her office was too small. Molly parked Maggie on the worn, pleather couch, and handed her a box of tissues. “Okay, start talking. What’s going on?”
Maggie wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then tossed the tissue into the trash and took another. “Remember those rumors about someone buying up the vacant properties around the neighborhood?”
Molly shrugged, but at the look in Maggie’s eyes, she stopped. “No!”
“Yes,” Maggie replied. “Apparently, the new owner of this neighborhood is none other than Oliver Fenton.” She laughed, shaking her head, “Actually, it’s Fenton Companies, one of which is Fenton Development and Fenton Properties. There are numerous other companies, but they all revolve around buying up large parcels of land with the intent of tearing down the entire neighborhood, so they can make room for thirty and forty story buildings.”
“No!”
“Yep!” Maggie confirmed, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. “I just came from Oliver’s office. And yes, he’s in charge. Not the son or the soon to be owner or anything like that. He’s the genius behind all of it. And I saw the layout.” She sniffed again. “Wanna know what’s going here?”
Molly looked around at the messy but comfortable conference room, then back to Maggie. “Here? What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she sniffed again, “Oliver plans on putting boutique stores here. And a restaurant. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if there was a Tiffany’s in this spot? Or maybe a Bergdorf’s?”
Molly stared at Maggie, slowly shaking her head. “No. I don’t think that would be all that amusing.”
Maggie hiccupped and took another tissue. “Yeah, I guess not.”
