Ashwood Page 3

  “Tell me about the agreement with this catering vendor. Did they sign a confidentiality agreement? Is it a long-term contract?”

  “I order a week in advance, and they deliver meals to our cold storage. There’s no need for a contract or agreement. Everyone’s grateful for business.”

  “The directors understand how this arrangement is negatively impacting Ashwood’s ability to meet this year’s taxes?”

  “I don’t think we’re in any danger of falling below our food production goals. I’ll look at the reports after dinner. Then we can sit down for a talk. directors David and Tia have no interest in such things. They have important jobs.”

  From the state of the reports I went over with an estate productivity specialist, I wondered what Barbara thought she could “square away” in a few hours. I chose to save her the effort. “Systems control has already transferred to me. You won’t be able to access the data files.”

  “Everyone has their own way of keeping household books,” she responded.

  “Matron Barbara, I didn’t mean to imply anything. I thought it would save you the frustration of trying to access files this evening.”

  Her face said she didn’t believe me. “I’m sure there will be backroom people from the bureau to help you through your first quarter and I suggest you take advantage of that because at some point they’ll let you hang. I always argued for a personal assistant to keep up the business office.”

  Part of the first wave of estate matrons, Barbara received a simple salary. With expansion of the role into estate business manager, my compensation would rely on Ashwood’s profitability. Underfed workers and missing food demanded attention. “Where is the directors’ food allocation going? There should be surplus food in storage.”

  Not far down the hall, near an archway opening to the public gathering room, I saw a boy worker’s image reflected in a window. He may have been on his way to summon us to dinner, he may have been listening to our conversation. I put up a hand to let Barbara know of his presence, but she had entered a different emotional place.

  “I’ve made a great many decisions with full trust of directors David and Tia.” I could see the hand in her sweater pocket clench. “I suspect you’ll do things in different ways. That said, if you intend to approach the next forty-six hours with such a critical and, frankly, intimidating manner, you may find yourself with more questions than answers. Didn’t your mother ever teach you that honey attracts bees more than vinegar?”

  “My mother taught me many things.” With my eyes and voice I let Barbara know she’d walked on sacred grounds with dirty shoes. “And when everything changed, she was rewarded by losing her job to some outsourced business in India, her home was turned into a boarding house, and her financial security was stripped by medical bills. So much for honey and vinegar.”

  Barbara shook her head and wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. “You still had less to lose than me. You’ll never understand what life could really be like at the top.” she said.

  We stood still. I suspect we were both a bit wound up in our own disgust for what the other represented. I didn’t want to be the first to turn and walk away.

  Behind us a girl’s voice said, “Dinner’s ready.”

  4

  Solar tubes illuminated Ashwood’s formal dining room creating irregular pools of light that gave the space a feeling of intimacy, softening the faces of both adults and young workers sitting around its cherry wood table. Children clustered around the middle of the table, young Amber sitting next to the only empty chair, Lana perching near the dining room entrance, Ladd to one side of the adult grouping. The lighting made it difficult to judge if Ashwood’s adults were as thin as its workers.

  From studying Bureau files, I recognized Lao, Ashwood’s chief engineer, a slight man known for his creativity and almost superhuman strength. His shaved head tilted toward Ladd as if half-listening to the boy. Lao’s eyes moved upward as Barbara and I entered the room. I saw him tap Ladd’s arm, nod toward us.

  Magda, the estate’s Chief Agronomist, appeared to be oblivious to others as she focused across the table at a bonsai tree displayed in a wall niche. The most attractive person in the room, she wore her dark curly hair loose around her shoulders. I felt her eyes wash across me like a fast splash of cool coffee. We were about the same age.

  Ashwood’s maintenance engineer, Rashad, and animal manager, Jack, looked like images from a Bureau of Human Capital Management poster—two rugged middle-age men with short hair and weathered faces. Almost in unison they conducted a visual assessment of me. I tried to replace my look of concentration with a smile of some sort before their eyes reached my face. Next to Jack, a young woman who looked like she should be in post-secondary training sat in front of a plate holding toast and fruit spread. Crumbs and a missing toast corner suggested this stranger had sampled my dinner.

  Barbara headed to her chair, an old-world matron assuming head of the table as if surrounded by familiar dinner guests. With the exception of Magda and the unknown young woman, faces turned to follow Barbara. At this next-to-last dinner of her era, despite our conversation, she appeared to ignore that there was no chair for me.

  “Jack’s niece wanted to meet the new matron, so I invited her to join us.” Ladd’s pre-adolescent voice wobbled. “I tried to tell you in the front hall.” He paused, looked toward Lao, and then said with exaggeration, “You were talking.”

  A dozen pair of innocent eyes moved from Barbara to Ladd to the now identified young woman and back to Barbara. Magda broke her reverie, focusing on me with the same level of intensity the bonsai formerly claimed. “Get our new leader a chair, Ladd,” she said in an accented and low voice that hit me as incongruent with her slender build and beauty. “Move down, kids. Make room next to Lao and set a place. Lana, make Matron Anne a plate.”

  “There’s no provisions left for this meal.” All attention directed to the child. Tension ratcheted up. Worry lines appeared across the foreheads of more than one of the diners. “I can make you a cup of tea,” Lana offered.

  “How can there be no extra food?” Magda stood. Child workers rustled, adult disagreement more interesting than cooling fish. “Barbara, we harvested vegetables yesterday that I don’t see on the table and I know the hens produced almost three dozen eggs this morning.” I thought I heard a threatening tone under Magda’s words.

  Barbara shrugged. “You don’t know what’s set aside for tomorrow’s meals.”

  “Come, Lana, we’ll look around the kitchen.” Magda extended a hand toward the scrawny twelve-year-old whose head hung down over a plate of cooling fish. Jack’s unnamed niece took a second bite from her toast, producing a rude crunching sound while others waited to begin dinner.

  “Thank you for your concern, Magda,” I said. “Lana, you stay here. I’ll find something in the kitchen.” I gave Lana’s shoulder a small squeeze, hoping the child would not cry. No one spoke as Magda and I left the dining room.

  In the food preparation area, I took my data pad from a pocket to complete changing security to my thumbprint over Barbara’s. Magda’s words confirmed a growing sense of suspicion that the current matron had much to hide. Where protocol directed that foods canned on the estate be stored, empty jars and containers almost filled ten deep shelves. Little remained in the pantry—two dozen jam pots, an equal number of bottled tomato juice, seven jugs of sauerkraut, ten jars of canned peppers and a handful of large containers of stewed beef—enough to feed the estate through a few days. The fruit and vegetable closet had ample supplies of potatoes, onions and carrots—all under lock requiring a cleared adult thumb. Lana had access to just one unsecured cabinet which held dried onions and a small amount of garlic.

  “Since she gave up our cook, Matron Barbara barters everything we raise.” Magda stood behind me, her voice breaking my astonished review of the shelves. “I no longer have access to the kitchen storage areas to take inventory of provisions or help that poor child with menu plan
s.” She made a tetchy sound while trying the door to a cooler. “I’ll be honest, we adults keep a little food in our quarters. At times I sneak fruit to the kids.”

  I continued exploring the storage areas, looking for what we would eat tomorrow or the next day, knowing there wasn’t food here to carry us through the week much less a long winter. Magda stayed at my side, her frustration throwing heat into the cool rooms. The dry-food shelving area held boxes of oatmeal, powdered milk, a canister of coffee beans, tins of tea, powdered eggs, a dozen jars of nuts, three gallons of maple syrup, a few cartons of simple cookies, a half case of peanut butter, a day or two supply of purchased bread as well as a rather meager supply of baking goods and seasonings.

  I now doubted Barbara’s story about Director Tia’s request for an outside caterer and wondered what the real impetus was behind eliminating Ashwood’s cook, a professional who would process the estate’s produce, bake its bread, and not allow resources to be depleted. I gestured around the open cupboards. “Is this bartering part of the directors’ catering arrangement?”

  Ashwood’s agronomist shook her head. “I suppose you could say that if you include keeping the wine cellar stocked to satisfy at least one director a part of outside catering.” She closed a cabinet.

  The Directors’ Bureau files said nothing about alcohol issues. I didn’t acknowledge the discrepancy, or her emotions, as I continued my inventory.

  “If we’re really lucky, the cold storage units will have more food.” I pressed my thumb against the cooler’s security pad, heard a small click free the door lock. Turning my back to Magda, I pressed a numerical code into the pad as well to validate my first-time entry into the cooler.

  “I saw Matron Barbara’s favorite trader here this afternoon. I’d guess we’re cleaned out.”

  The cooler, larger than a bathroom in most homes, almost fulfilled Magda’s prediction. From looking at the nearly empty dairy bins, the meat locker’s skimpy pile of ground beef, sausage rings, odd packages of poultry, large box of fish products, no one would know almost two dozen people were fed on the estate each day. Four transport packing boxes, each knee-high and almost as wide, waited to be picked up the next day by a company or person named Jensen. Magda swept past me to break open the seal of the closest box. Under cushioned wrap, rows of eggs, some white and some brown, made a beautiful display.

  She muttered in anger, moving from box to box, breaking each seal. One held a variety of cheeses as well as small buckets of yogurt; the other released the smell of freshly harvested vegetables and fruit. Magda knelt next to this box and dug her hands into the greens. “This is only about a third of what we brought to the house. The children had apples yesterday, and Lana said she put aside fresh beans tonight. The rest is gone.”

  Ashwood stood near crisis. Underfed workers, no food preserved for the coming months, almost no cash reserves to buy in the public market, and two high-profile directors to keep healthy and focused. There would be no forty-eight-hour transition period. I stepped in to my responsibility immediately.

  “Can you cook?” I asked Magda. “Lana probably did her best, but that meal can’t possibly fill a worker’s stomach. I’d like to mix up something simple—maybe eggs with cheese, onions, some herbs.”

  “It would be a pleasure.” Again I noticed the growl under her words. “I’m the oldest of six children and learned to cook before I started school. What do you want me to do?”

  “Start the eggs. Use just what you need for a good dish. And, be sure each of the storage areas is locked when you’re through. We’ll talk in the morning about restoring provisions. If I’m not back before the food is ready, serve without me.” She didn’t ask questions, didn’t display emotion. “Thanks, Magda.” I added.

  “If we don’t develop a plan and get a cook soon, tonight will seem like a good memory, heh? I never want your assignment.” The way she lifted an egg tray and placed it next to the cook surface, as if respecting the hens’ output, gave me confidence to leave her and go back to the dining room. One thought stopped me.

  “Why is Jack’s niece really at the table?”

  “She’s an idiot. She wants to be Ashwood’s cook so she can have her own sleeping unit. She has the manners of a street person and the brains of a donkey.” Magda drew up a bowl from under the counter. “Matron Barbara gave her a trial. A bad idea.”

  “Thanks again. I appreciate your help.” I moved quickly to the dining room, saw Lana’s stillness, her untouched food. In the five or ten minutes I’d spent exploring the storage units, most of the children had finished their dinner and sat waiting for the adults to signal the meal over. Barbara spoke with Amber, either ignoring my presence or fascinated by the child’s chatter.

  “Please stay for a few minutes,” I announced. “Magda is mixing up an extra course for this cold night.” Lana stood, but I touched her shoulder. “You can join her in the kitchen if you want, or just rest here. Sometimes cooks appreciate being fed.” She bobbed her head and eased away from my hand to leave the table. “We’ll be back in a few minutes. Please finish your fish and vegetables.” Somehow I managed not to look at Barbara as I said, “We don’t want to waste food.”

  From the dining room, I found my way to the estate office, closed the door and placed a call to my Bureau coordinator. After a brief discussion about the food situation, the bureaucrat set all balls in play. I opened the office door, readied myself for the possible chaos of the next hour.

  From where I sat, I could hear the data pad Barbara wore bleat a crisis code in the dining room. Within seconds, she stormed in to the office to de-activate her device. Staff stayed behind with the children, normal crisis practice.

  Closing the door, I moved to block possible egress. Barbara’s pale skin flushed, her eyes widened, her hands pulled back from reaching for the system control panel while her device continued its excruciating, high-pitched sound.

  “Please give me your data pad,” I said, holding out a hand. She hesitated. “Give me the data pad and sit down.”

  “You have control of the system. You shut it off,” she said, not with arrogance but more like a child frightened by the alarm. Her hands trembled. I looked into her face and realized she expected a rough transition.

  “How did you think the food supplies wouldn’t be noticed?” I knew I let anger loosen my tongue as I reached for her device. My instructors called me straight-forward and decisive. My matron training peers sometimes called me insensitive or blunt. Richard liked to suggest I try asking questions before forming opinions.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” she asked in the empty silence.

  “Transport will be here in a few minutes to deliver you to a Bureau officer. Beyond that, I didn’t ask.” My limited tolerance for Barbara’s type intensified as I thought ahead to rebuilding food stock while feeding Ashwood’s managers and child workers throughout the winter. “You’ve put the health of every person at that dining room table in jeopardy by stealing from this estate. What happens to you isn’t of interest to me. ”

  When Barbara tipped her head as if to study my face, I realized I might have used these few minutes to better discover more about her bartering pattern instead of expressing disdain. We sat in silence for an uncomfortable thirty seconds. I spoke first. “Whatever started this mess?”

  “Who knows what you might have learned in the next forty hours?” Barbara sat back in her chair, her hands folded on one thigh, a tired grand dame aware of diminishing audience time. “You don’t like what I represent, you found a few problems, and you pulled the alarm. Someone with more maturity would have swallowed their personal feelings and studied the situation, would have talked with me before spouting.”

  She may have been egging me on to tell what I had discovered. I wasn’t giving her the last word. “Can you tell me that my Ashwood welcome wasn’t staged to set me on edge? If you had directed Lana to cook one more piece of that unappealing white fish, I may have gone to bed tonight without walking through the
kitchen storage areas. Seems to me you wanted to bring the stack of cards down quickly.”

  “A psychologist as well,” she murmured while looking behind me at the estate control board. “Shouldn’t take you long to figure this place out. Now, do you mind if I finish packing?” Standing, she nodded toward the board. “Looks like my driver is approaching the front door. Someone forgot to set the gates. That would be Rashad. He’s bright but doesn’t pay attention to things he’d like to have others do.” She turned toward the door.

  “I have to walk with you,” I said. In the small room, I maneuvered to be the one with control of the door, an uncomfortable movement that caused us to knock elbows. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.”

  Barbara drew her arms tight to her body, shifted her feet to move away from the door. “Are you going to trail behind me? I have one suitcase and my personal things left to put into a travel bag. I don’t need supervision.”

  “That’s Bureau policy.” At a knock on the door, I turned the handle. Barbara fumed next to me. I couldn’t open the door entirely without it catching her toes. She didn’t move.

  Magda, wearing an immaculate white cook’s jacket, leaned in the partially open door and spoke in a quiet, calm voice that evened out her accented tones. “Eggs are on the table. I kept a plate warm for you. There are two officials right behind me to escort Matron back to the city.” She turned while beckoning to a tall man who wore what I recognized as the supposedly “undercover” Vice Squad navy blue uniform. A woman of approximately Barbara’s age stood behind him. She wore matrons’ clothing, but could have been Vice Squad as well.

  Barbara may have lived a sheltered life at Ashwood, where Vice Squad would almost never be seen, or she may not have understood the seriousness of her situation. I didn’t see her grow anxious as the two joined us in the suddenly crowded office.

  “Matron Barbara, I am Agent Chen.” He had a voice that required concentrated listening. “Agent Agnes will be accompanying you to your room through the back hall to finish packing. Just take your personal bag with items for a few days. Everyone will be held in the dining room until we leave. Estate security items need to stay with me. Take nothing from Ashwood with you.”