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case I had missed that before. “Nice to meet you too, Caroline.”
    She was back at the screen before we moved past the reception area. Fredelle said in a low voice, “Autumn’s father is a very good friend of Mr. Van Zandt’s. She’s just finished first year college. I think she found it really difficult and she’s taking a year off, and she asked Mr. Van Zee if she could have a job. Her father’s not too happy that she’s taking time off from her education, but he agreed to let her work here. Autumn and her father both chat with Mr. Van Zee, so I don’t want her to catch on to what we’re really doing.”
    Not much chance of that , I thought, as we hurried through a door and into a large square office area.
    “Boardroom’s over there,” Fredelle said, pointing a pink fingernail at a glass double door leading into a glass-walled room with an impressive rosewood conference table. “There’s a smaller meeting room here. And this is our main office area. We have salespeople, too, but most of them are out of the office today. Of course, most of the building is given over to warehousing and fulfillment. If you want you can get a tour there, too, but this is where the problem is.”
    “Perhaps another time,” I said. I suspected there might be forklifts and pallets and trucks and other machinery that was not my thing there.
    A cluster of a half-dozen desks filled the central area. “My office is over here.”
    “I see you have a door,” I said. “And walls, even if they are glass.”
    Fredelle stiffened. “But I keep the door open and the blinds up. We have to be available to our employees. Mr. Van Zandt believes in an open-door policy.”
    Hmm. Defensive.
    I glanced around but saw no sign of the legendary leader. I did spot a middle-aged woman in towering heels who turned to sneer at us from the photocopier. I mention those heels not only because I am a shoe lover, but also because she would have been six feet tall even without them. She didn’t really need the shoes to attract attention. Her leopard-print miniskirt would have done that on its own, or perhaps the tank top barely containing a surgically enhanced bosom could have carried the day. I wouldn’t have wanted to foot the bill for her tanning sessions, let alone those hair extensions. She’d definitely dug herself a trench to stop the march of time.
    She checked out my outfit and seemed to barely suppress a snicker.
    As we stood there for an awkward moment, a slight, pale-haired man with vintage eyeglasses skittered past us, carefully avoiding eye contact. Wonder Woman rolled her eyes. Not usually what people do before being introduced, especially if a few of those spiky eyelashes might get dislodged. Never mind, I was secure in my opinion that the tanning, the hair extensions, and even the unlikely jauntiness of her breasts wouldn’t make her a day less than fifty.
    “Now what?” she said.
    Her name was Dyan George, it seemed. Fredelle introduced me, and as I held out my hand, Dyan regarded it the way you’d look at gum under a movie seat.
    “Charlotte is going to help us find some, um, more efficient ways to set up the office.”
    Dyan raised a precisely penciled eyebrow. “Start with the receptionist. I hear that in other offices they actually greet visitors and answer the phone.”
    Fredelle snapped back, “Autumn is coming along just fine. She’s young and she’s pleasant and she’s willing to learn.”
    Dyan managed an exaggerated and insulting shrug. “Anything to hang on to your job, I suppose. Good luck with that.”
    Whoa. Usually it takes more than two minutes before the knives come out in a visit to an office. But even I could see that Dyan George was special.
    Fredelle said, “I don’t have to worry about my job.”
    I liked the fact that a steely edge crept in under the sweet worried tones. No one loves a pushover, not even me.
    “I’ll show you around, Charlotte,” Fredelle continued as we abandoned the photocopier