CHAPTER FOUR
" morning, Ms. Raines," said the gray-haired woman at the front desk. "Your messages are on your desk and the memo you asked me to type up is in a file folder in your inbox."
"Good morning, Alma," I said with a smile as I set a small, limp potted violet on her desk. "I found this at the open market over the weekend and wondered if you could nurse it back to health?"
"I will do my best, Ms. Raines," she replied as she picked up the pot and gave it a once over. Her disapproving “tsk, tsk, tsk” let me know that there was definitely something wrong with the way the plant had been kept, but when she murmured, "Now, don't you worry, I'll have you back in tiptop shape in no time", I knew I'd made the right decision.
We had hired Alma Granger a few weeks after we'd opened the firm. She was the only secretary that the three of us could agree upon. Roger and Jordie had voted for secretaries who resembled Hooters servers and whose nail appointments and spin classes made them unavailable during business hours. I, on the other hand, wanted someone who was familiar with the law, could work with design programs, and could write like a novelist while answering phones and keeping track of my schedule.
Alma answered our ad in the Times and was the only candidate all three of us could agree upon. She was in her early sixties and had run the front office of a small law firm in San Diego for thirty years before the lawyer (her husband) had dropped dead of a heart attack while meeting with a client about a murder charge. She'd moved to Los Angeles to be closer to her grandchildren and wasn't ready to retire quite yet. She ran our office with an iron fist and idiosyncrasies that ranged from having everything on her desk placed at a ninety-degree angle to calling the three of us by our surnames, and while we'd tried to get her to call us by our first names, Alma was old school and refused to budge.
"Alma, have you seen Roger or Jordie this morning?" I asked as I walked toward my office.
"Not yet, Ms. Raines, but I'm anticipating their arrival in just a few minutes."
"Very well. When they get here, will you please have them stop by my office?"
"Indeed, I will," she replied, making a note on the pad she kept sitting on the far right edge of her desk. Alma was nothing if not extremely organized, and she kept a running list of every single thing that needed to be done on the notepad, which she tucked into a locked drawer every night before she left work.
I walked into my office and stood in the middle of the room contemplating the situation. Jordie, Roger, and I had gone to law school together and then spent two years working as public defenders. By the time we'd hit the two-year mark, we were all burned out and ready for something that would give us a chance to actually practice law rather than play games with the justice system. We were naive, but we had the best of intentions as we set out on our own.
As a young law firm, we dealt with a variety of clients, mostly people looking to beat DWIs and petty crime, and occasionally taking on some contract and tax law cases. We weren't experienced enough to pick and choose, so we took everything that came our way and hoped that at some point we'd attract a case that would bring us a lot of attention – and clients. But we were going on two years in business and things were still depressingly slow.
We were barely scraping by, and now we were facing a crisis of funds that would threaten to shutter the practice if we didn't do something to turn the ship around.
"Morning Brooke," Jordie said as he stuck his head in the door and waved at me.
"Hey, Jordie!" I called as I got up from my desk and walked out into the hallway. "Where's Rog?"
"He's on his way in," he said as he started to go through his mail. "Texted me something about getting caught on the 101."
"He was with a new girl again?" I laughed.
"Yeah, I don't know what that's about," he said shaking his head. "But then again, I never have."
"Jordie, we need to talk about the firm and how we're going to make this work past the summer," I said, changing the trajectory of the conversation.
"I know," he said. "I've been thinking about it a lot and I think I might have a solution, but we need to talk about the positives and negatives."
"Hey guys," Roger called as he walked past my open door on his way to the coffee pot. "How's it hanging?"
"Late night, Rog?" I asked in a knowing tone.
"Hell yeah," he said. "She was super hot, and I think I'm in love!"
Jordie and I exchanged a grin and a pair of eye rolls. Roger was in love, on average, about three times a month. He'd meet a new girl, fall head over heels, and then before he knew it, she'd dump him and move on to greener pastures. Roger didn't blame them, but he couldn't see that their initial interest in him was always as a lawyer with great earning potential. Once they found out the reality of his situation, they were less enamored.
"We need to have a sit down," I called after him.
"Okay, but let me make this quick call," he said as he disappeared into his office.
"We've lost him again," Jordie sighed.
"Nah, he's just on the upswing of the female roller coaster," I said. "He'll be on his way back down in no time."