As usual, there was no chitchat. Brendon preferred to get straight to business. “Have any of you been down Woodland Drive lately?” he barked at his colleagues.
They all had. Woodland Drive was a main route to the train station. But no one in the room spoke up. They’d known this moment was coming, and they’d made a pact.
Their silence only fed Brendon’s indignation. “Does anyone here know”—he glanced down at his phone and the notes he’d taken—“a woman named Harriett Osborne?”
A couple pairs of eyes inadvertently darted in the same direction.
“Celeste?” Brendon asked.
“Yes, I know her.” Celeste Howard had won a seat on the board the previous fall after her youngest had started kindergarten. She was a perfect example of the kind of woman the HOA attracted, Brendon thought. Her most recent work experience was limited to changing diapers and singing nursery rhymes. He suspected that just like the rest of them, Celeste had no real interest in community management. For her, the board was a social club—and a sad attempt to justify the fancy education she’d wasted.
“Is the Osborne woman a friend of yours?” he asked.
“Harriett used to work with my husband. I can’t call us friends.”
Celeste considered herself more of a secret admirer. Years earlier, when Celeste and her husband had started out in the advertising business, most of their equals had been women. Then Andrew was tapped on the shoulder to become the COO’s latest protégé. The higher he rose, the less estrogen there seemed to be in the atmosphere. Harriett was one of the few women who never slipped or got shoved off the ladder. She managed to hold on far longer than Celeste had. In fact, for a while, everyone had assumed Harriett would be the company’s first female president.
“Last night, I received an anonymous tip from one of Harriett Osborne’s neighbors,” Brendon announced. As a favor, he’d promised to keep Jeremy’s name out of it. Situations such as these were likely to become emotionally charged. “I have to say, I had a hard time believing what the gentleman told me. So I drove past the house, and turns out, it was true. The place is a jungle. What the hell happened to all of the gardeners?”
The question was directed at Celeste. She knew he would wait until she responded. “It seems they’ve stopped showing up.”
“You think? And where is the husband?” Brendon asked. “My source says he hasn’t been in town since last fall.”
This time, Celeste refused to speak. She failed to see how Harriett’s marital status had anything to do with her lawn.
“He’s gone,” someone else confirmed. Chase Osborne was, by all accounts, living in the couple’s Brooklyn apartment with the head of his agency’s production department.
Brendon nodded as if everything suddenly made sense.
“I believe Harriett might be going through a bit of a rough patch,” Celeste offered. She wasn’t going to give him any more than that.
The previous October, Celeste’s husband, Andrew, claimed he’d seen two security officers drag Harriett Osborne out of the advertising agency where they worked and deposit her at the curb. Rumor had it that an altercation had taken place behind the closed doors of the CEO’s office. The promotion Harriett had been expecting hadn’t come through, and she hadn’t received the news gracefully. After hours, Andrew had peeked inside the office to confirm the stories he’d heard. The Cannes Lions and One Show pencils were back on the windowsill, but telltale gouges in the Sheetrock confirmed they had, indeed, been flung at the walls.
“I don’t understand. Why would they let her go?” Celeste knew she sounded like a fan whose idol had fallen. “You always said she was excellent.”
“And she is,” Andrew said. “But sometimes good’s not enough. The president is the face of the company. They decided to go with someone younger and fresher.” Celeste was on the verge of asking the obvious follow-up question when the grin on her husband’s face stopped her.