“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Charlotte muttered. “This place is freezing. And Marcy keeps marking up all of my spreadsheets because my typewriter’s ink was too faint or because I drew a line without a ruler. I know we’re all supposed to be reformed now, but is it a breach of contract to murder her?”
Marcy turned to glare at her. “Do you even review your own work?”
“Yes!Yes Ido!”
Enne sighed and rubbed her temples. “I don’t even know what you’re all doing. Roy and I just sit in my office all day reading romance or detective novels.”
“Yes, and feeling sorry for yourselves,” Charlotte said dismissively.
Enne frowned. She felt she had a right to be sorry for herself. Apart from a brief telephone call reminding her that their planned “breakup” was approaching within the week, she and Levi hadn’t spoken.Andit’d been her birthday. She wondered if murdering him counted as breach of contract, too.
“Don’t you have to go back to work?” Marcy quipped, looking at Grace expectantly over her glasses. “Weren’t you just complaining about some notes payable that didn’t balance out?”
Grace scowled and stormed back to her office. Hearing her kick the wall angrily, Roy peeked his head out of Enne’s office.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me,” Enne grumbled, fiddling with her pearl necklace. “I’m just here for show. Like an ornament.” Not that Enne wasn’t grateful for Grace’s plan, which provided the Spirits with a steady income and gave Enne a role that suited modern society, but she desperately wished she could be of real use. When she’d attempted to audit a pack of receivable statements that Marcy had given her, she’d made so many errors that it’d taken Marcy more time to correct them than if Marcy had performed the first review herself.
“That makes two of us,” Roy said, sauntering into Grace’s office with Enne following close behind.
“My eyes feel like sandpaper from looking at these papers so long,” Grace complained, squeezing eye drops into them. They watered, making her rings of makeup smear.
“Maybe you should take a break,” Roy said gently.
“I just did, but it doesn’t help. I keep going in circles. Something isn’t making sense.”
“What do you mean?” Enne asked, leaning over Grace’s shoulder to look at her papers.
“So the National Bank—the actual bank part, not the treasury—owns the mortgages to most of the construction projects on the boardwalk,” Grace explained. “And there are a few companies who’ve acquired multiple properties. But some of these...I’m struggling to trace their voltage back to their accounts. These recordslistaccount numbers, but once I start looking those numbers up, it’s like the accounts don’t even exist.”
“Maybe we’re missing some paperwork,” Enne suggested.
“We aren’t. All our papers are numbered, and none of them are missing. I checked. Twice.” Grace dragged her black fingernails down the pages. “See? There’s this company. Brint Water Holding Company. They actually filed an insurance claim recently because one of their properties burned down, but they own a bunch. Then there’s Gregorist & Sons, Inc. And Tropps Street Realty. Really, there’re only five or six companies that seem to own almost the entire boardwalk. In fact, that casino Levi bought was originally purchased by Tropps Street Realty.”
Enne scowled at the mention of Levi’s name, and Grace shot her an apologetic look.
“Oops,” Grace said. “Too soon? Sorry.”
Of course, this only made Enne scowl deeper.
“Then we look up all these companies’ contact information,” Roy said, steering them back to the matter at hand. “We hunt down their accounts.”
Grace sighed and ran a hand through her black hair. “Sure, I guess.” She thrust a handful of papers into Roy’s hands. “Call them. Maybe these numbers are wrong or something.”
After Roy left to claim a spare cubicle, Grace rested her head against the conference table.
“I could help,” Enne said stiffly, feeling left out.
“You could fetch me more coffee,” Grace grumbled.
Enne’s lip quivered. “I thought this job was a good idea—all your ideas are good ideas. But maybe we shouldn’t have signed that contract so quickly. If we’d negotiated more, maybe we could’ve—”
“Gotten you your boyfriend back?” Grace finished, looking up and raising her eyebrows. “I love you, and so I mean this in the kindest, gentlest way possible. Pup dumped you in writing, in a contract where your own life is at stake. Muck him.”
Enne was inclined to agree with her, but even so, she couldn’t stop replaying Levi’s words over in her mind—he hadn’t explicitly and enthusiasticallyagreed. And their last kiss...
“Besides,” Grace continued, “we never celebrated your birthday. We could take all the Spirits to a Casino District cabaret and find you a new beau. Or just party all night because men are the worst.”
