“I’m Annabelle Martin,” I said. “I’m staying in the guest house.”
“I know.” His brown eyes twinkled, and his mustache curved up on the ends when he smiled. “I’m Juan Guzman, groundskeeper, handyman, and driver.”
“That’s quite a résumé.”
“My wife, Lupita, is the cook and housekeeper,” he said. “You’ll meet her, I’m sure.”
“That also seems like an awful lot of work for one person,” I said.
“Mr. Daire is just one man, so it’s not so much,” he said. “We couldn’t believe it when he said he was renting out the guest house. That place has been empty since he bought the estate.”
I supposed that explained the lack of art. Maybe Daire just hadn’t gotten to it yet. Curiosity got the better of me. Shocker, I know.
“What’s Mr. Daire like?” I asked.
And just like that, our friendly chat was over. Mr. Guzman turned his back to me and began clipping the tree. Over the motor of the trimmer, he yelled, “I’d best get back to work. Lots to do today.”
I nodded, waved, and continued on my way. It was clear I’d crossed a line—the “do not ask questions about the boss” line. Huh. No problem. This was exactly why the Internet existed.
* * *
I had another meeting with my chief graphic designers, Christian and Luz, where we tweaked the print ad we were confirming with a client that afternoon. It was exhilarating to be working with other people again when the ideas started popping. Before I knew it, I was eating a peanut butter and strawberry jelly Uncrustable—don’t judge, those frozen sandwiches might be made for kids but they are yummy—at my desk while opening the Internet to do a deep dive on my landlord.
I started wide with a search engine using his name and city of residence. Nick Daire and Phoenix. Nothing came up, so I tried variations of Nick, like Nicholas and Nicolai, still nothing. I opted to be more specific and pulled up the website for the local paper, but there was nothing.
That seemed weird. Wealthy old guy in a premier neighborhood in Phoenix, and there was no mention of him. Hmm.
I opened up the social media apps and started searching those. Not surprisingly, there were no listings for Nick Daire in Phoenix. While every generation seemed to have an app that reflected their demographic, like Facebook for oldsters, Instagram for middles, and Snapchat for youth, it was possible that my landlord, given his decidedly introverted tendencies and being of an advanced age that required around-the-clock care, wasn’t interested in any of those or in social media at all. Good for him. Bad for me.
I doubled back to the newspaper. Not to have any articles about him seemed so strange. Had he never been married? Divorced? Had children? Had he done nothing noteworthy in the community all these years? Maybe he was a typical Midwestern transplant, who retired to Arizona after a full life in Iowa. Maybe I had to search out of state. Great. Which state? I had so many questions. How did a person live in this world and leave no cyber footprint? It boggled.
All too soon, my lunch hour was over and I had gotten nowhere in my quest for information. With great reluctance, I closed my browser and went to the large meeting room to prep for our presentation to a local brewery, who wanted to revamp their brand. This was one of those meetings where I needed to assess the real ask. What did they want? Sales? Recognition? What problem were they looking to solve? This was my favorite part of the work, second to the designing, figuring out how we could help our client achieve their goals. Plus, I was very interested in watching my team perform.
* * *
Not to be all braggy, but we crushed it. My designers wowed our client, who it turned out was looking for a boost in sales, with their new packaging and we were happily signing an agreement, which was handled by Nyah and Trent, just before I walked our client out the door. It felt good to have a win under my belt, even if I’d only been operating in an advisory capacity this week. My team was ecstatic, and I was surprised by how gratifying it was to share a victory with others. I was so used to working alone, I usually just celebrated a new client’s acceptance of a finished project by having a drink with Jeremy.
Jeremy. Ugh. I’d been so busy trying to acclimate to my new life that I hadn’t really thought about him. I guessed that more than anything proved that he was not husband material, at least not for me. I felt an odd mixture of relief that I’d been right to end things and move away and guilt for the exact same reason. I wondered if Jeremy would ever speak to me again, but I honestly didn’t know. I supposed I should have been more upset. After all, he’d been my closest friend in Boston, but I just wasn’t.
Needless to say, it was a cheerful group that left work and tromped our way to happy hour. We happened to pick a place that specialized in burgers and beer and trivia. Luz, Shanna, and I grabbed a table while Booker and Christian ordered several pitchers of beer. Trent did buffet recon while Nyah went to sign us up as a team for trivia. If the questions were art history or pop culture, I was golden. Too bad we didn’t have an in-house librarian; those bookish ones knew their stuff.
We scored an extra-long picnic table just as the pitchers arrived. Trent followed with a tray full of chicken wings with a disproportionately low number of celery and carrot sticks. The trivia match had just begun, and Nyah logged us in as Team V2. The first category was movie quotes, and Trent knew them all.
It made sense. Whoever had come up with this subject hadn’t moved the needle out of the eighties, which was when Trent had been a teen. There was an overload of John Hughes references, and he got every one.
Four teams were active in the bar. As the subject moved to sports, Booker became our guy with some backup from Shanna. Nyah brought it home with music, and at the end of round three, we were solidly in the lead in answers and beer consumption. My head was getting fuzzy in the best possible way.
When Christian locked down the answer to a classic television sitcom, he put us over the top. High fives were exchanged, but as I reached up to slap Luz’s hand, I saw her smile dim. She was staring at the door but quickly turned her head away as if she was trying to avoid making eye contact. I glanced at the doorway, and my gaze was caught by Carson West. Mother of pearl, what was he doing here?
I reached for my beer. I had no idea what his relationship was with the staff of Vasquez Squared, but I knew how I felt about him. I didn’t trust him. I glanced back at Luz, because she certainly hadn’t seemed thrilled to see him either and I wondered if there was some history there.
Luz Dominguez, who was the assistant art director, had large brown eyes and thick black hair, which she wore in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. She was dressed in a cute floral dress and a pair of pink and aqua Fluevogs with a sassy bow that tied in front. She appeared to be on the older side of twenty-five, and I had the feeling that Carson West could destroy her with one mean comment. Maybe I wasn’t giving her enough credit, since she reported directly to him, but as he strode across the bar toward our table, she looked like she wanted to run. Interesting.