“Annie and Michael Prince. We got a confirmation email yesterday.”
“Right. I see Veuve Cliquot is reserved for you.” The booking was there in the system, as it should be — apparently, all the cottages were named after famous champagne brands. At three in the afternoon, there was absolutely no reason the site office at Champagne should be closed. And the policy at all sites was, if you had to close up the office during business hours for any amount of time, even five minutes, you had to place a notice on the door saying why the office was closed and for how long. “Well, the office should not be closed at this hour. If I may put you on hold, Mrs. Prince, I’ll see what I can do from here.”
Mrs. Prince made a frustrated noise into the phone, a sort of huffing sigh of annoyance. “I guess, okay. I’ll hold.”
As soon as Nell placed Mrs. Prince on hold, she tried the office line, but as expected got no answer. She then tried the mobile number in the company records for Jessalyn Roberts and got no answer there either. Now what? She decided to try the restaurant — there should be two full-time staff there, though she couldn’t remember their names off-hand from her glance through the information binder: a cook and a waitress.
A man with a thick Québécois accent answered. “Allo, Pink Champagne Dining Room. François speaking.”
“François, this is Nell Whelan. I’m the new property supervisor for Champagne Cascades. Have you seen Jessalyn today?”
“Non. She hasn’t been here today. Mary and I didn’t know what to do. Guests at breakfast ask us when they can check out, but we don’t know. We had Aidan’s cell number but he says he doesn’t work for the company anymore.”
And you didn’t think to call the main office? But recriminations wouldn’t help anything now. “Either you or Mary is going to need to go and open the office. I’ll have to walk you through the check-in and check-out process over the phone.”
“Better be Mary,” said François. “She’s better with computers and things. I’m just a cook.”
“Don’t knock yourself. It’s a gift to be good with food. Okay. Send Mary up to the office and have her call me when she gets there. Oh, and warn her there’s a hot top waiting to be checked in.”
“Hot top?” the cook asked, sounding puzzled.
“Angry guest,” Nell clarified, surprised to find that they didn’t use the office code words on-site. She gave François her phone number to give Mary, in case Jessalyn hadn’t updated the site office’s speed dial and emergency call list, and then hung up. Taking a deep breath, she picked up line four. “Mrs. Prince, thanks for waiting. We don’t know what’s happened to our site manager at this time, but Mary from the dining room is on her way to the office and I’ll help her check you in. You should be all right for this evening, and someone from Wildforest Vacations will be up there tomorrow morning to take charge.”
“Will you come?” Mrs. Prince asked. “You seem like a sensible person.”
“I’ll ask my boss,” Nell said, knowing that she would indeed likely be the person sent up, but thinking it wouldn’t hurt to have Mrs. Prince believe she’d asked to come.
“Good.”
“I’ll hang up with you now, but I’ll be here waiting to take Mary’s call once she gets into the office.” Hopefully, Mary would prove competent to follow instructions over the phone, just to get them by overnight. What had happened to Jessalyn Roberts? Why had she not turned up for work that morning?
Nell knocked on Tommy’s door. “Come in!” he barked. Not a happy afternoon, then.
“Tommy, you’re not going to like this, but one of our site managers seems to have disappeared.”
“You’re kidding me, right? Tell me you’re kidding me.”
“Unfortunately, no. Jessalyn Roberts from Champagne Cascades didn’t turn up for work this morning — no note, no message, nothing. I’ve got the waitress from the restaurant doing office duty for tonight, but she’s not trained and has to be talked through everything over the phone.”
“Smart thinking, Nell. You and Eamonn will have to get up there tomorrow to take over, of course. Sign out a company vehicle; here’s the authorization slip. I’ll get HR working on finding a new site manager right away.”
The thought of the unknown Jessalyn losing her job made Nell wince, no matter what difficulties she was causing. “Give me twenty-four hours to look into it up there, Tommy? If she’s just down with a violent flu or something, it may not be worth the expense of finding a new site manager.”
“Twenty-four hours, then,” Tommy said, looking displeased. Torn between wanting to fire her and wanting to save the cost of hiring and training someone new, probably. “And only if she has a damn good reason.”
Then something else he’d said struck Nell. “I can make the trip alone,” she said quickly. “I’ve never taken an assistant along on site visits before.”
“You’ve never had to cover for and investigate a missing site manager before, either,” Tommy snapped back. “Plus, I want him to get some on-site experience, and it’s safer for you to have a man along on trips like this.”
Seriously? She was plenty safe on her own. But that wasn’t a conversation Nell wanted to have with Tommy. “Fine.”
“It had better be fine with you, Nell. You’re taking Eamonn with you, and that’s an order. Now, send him down to see me. And get Lila to bring us coffee.”
I hate my job. I hate my job. Nell nodded, not trusting her voice to come out evenly over the fury inside her. At least she’d get to go on-site for two or three days. If nothing else, it would get her away from the office. But it wouldn’t get her away from Eamonn.
Lila came floating into Nell’s office. “You lucky bitch.”
“What, now?” Nell gave Lila a hard look.
“I hear you’re going on
