"Oh, thank goodness!" Tori said when I walked into the office that morning.
She was holding the phone to her ear, but she was talking to me as I approached her U-shaped reception desk. She stared at me from over her reading glasses, and she waved me forward like she had been anxiously awaiting my arrival. I was twenty minutes early, so I had no idea why she was so relieved.
"Abigail's here now," she said to the person on the phone. "She just walked in. I'm looking at her right now. Okay, I'll tell her. Bye."
I stood in front of Tori's desk and watched as she hung up the phone before looking at me with a relieved smile.
"I'm so glad you're here."
"I'm always here," I said cautiously.
"I mean, I'm glad you're early. I was gonna call you and tell you to hurry. That was Lance. We have to rearrange your schedule today. He needs you to head out on a pond job… like right now. It's a priority."
"A pond job?" I asked, a look of confusion crossing my face. I instinctually touched my hair, which was pulled into a ponytail. It was clean. I had just washed it that morning, and I didn't plan on doing it again for a few days. Maybe it was silly, but that was the first thing that crossed my mind at the mention of a pond job. Cleaning a pond nearly always resulted in me getting dirty and nasty. If I had a pond job on my books, I always made an effort to schedule it at the end of the day—that way, I could go directly home and take a shower afterward.
I didn't mind doing them, and I had a few clients who specifically asked for me, but I certainly didn't expect to have one on my books on a Monday morning. My Monday and Tuesday schedules were pretty much set in stone. I had hotels and restaurants with gorgeous saltwater tanks that needed attending.
Let me take a minute and back up a little.
I should explain where I work.
I graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in marine biology, but before I even finished school, a young man named Lance Evans came to talk to one of my professors and wound up recruiting me and two other classmates to work for him. I started training during my senior year, and I had been there for almost four years now.
All Things Fish.
That was the name of the place, and it was a fitting one for sure. Lance had taken over his family business, which was already thriving, but he was determined to prove to his retired father and the founder that he could make it even bigger and better.
There were two elements to the business—the retail department and the team of traveling technicians. We had a huge storefront with a massive selection of fish and fish supplies, both freshwater and saltwater. We were the largest store of this kind in Florida, supplying many of the public aquariums in Miami, and most of the private ones. We not only sold fish and fish supplies, but we had technicians (like me) who traveled the greater Miami area, feeding and caring for fish, and cleaning and maintaining ponds and aquariums in businesses and residences.
Ponds were generally not my thing.
I liked Koi and goldfish, and I serviced a few ponds on my regular route, but I honestly wasn't looking to add another one to my schedule. I had enough on my plate as it was.
My specialty was saltwater aquariums.
Before Lance found me and offered me the job, I always assumed I would work at a public aquarium full-time. I was glad it didn't turn out that way, though. I loved what I did for a living. It enabled me to constantly experience new things. I got to travel the city, meeting new people and becoming friends with the staff at the hotels and restaurants where I serviced aquariums.
Making connections with people was an added bonus, but the fish were the best part of my job. I got to maintain some of the most beautiful private aquariums you could imagine. A few of my clients even trusted me to set the whole thing up myself, ordering the fish, equipment, and accessories I wanted while sparing no expense. This was obviously a real treat.
"You have to do it," Tori said with a somewhat apologetic expression. "Lance asked for you."
"It's Monday," I said. "I already have a full day."
"I know you do, but Lance called and said we had to get to this pond, pronto—like first thing this morning. It's a new client, and it's a special favor. He wanted me to call you and see if you were on your way so you could go ahead and get started on it."
"A new client?" I asked. I wrinkled my nose, looking less than pleased at the prospect of adding a pond to my schedule. "Where is it? How big? Is it just skimming and feeding?"
Tori shook her head, looking regretful.
I put my palms in the air. "Filter change?" I asked hopefully.
Tori blinked as she continued shaking her head. She slid a piece of paper in my direction. It was a client information sheet. These were familiar to me, but this one was almost completely blank. It had a stock photo of a house's silhouette at the top, along with no information whatsoever, save the address.
"It's a new client, so I don't have any pictures yet. I'll need you to take some once you get there. Lance went by on his way out of town, but he forgot to get photos. He said there's an upper and lower pond with a waterfall. Roughly five thousand gallons total, with Koi. Some kind of specialty Koi. That's why he wants you to do it. He said we can't afford to lose any of them. I guess there's some debris from that storm we had a couple of days ago. He said the pump's in the lower pond, and you'll need to drain it and clear the debris, but you can probably get by with just straining the upper pond. You'll know what to do when you get there. Just make it look good."
"Five thousand gallons?" I asked incredulously. "That's gonna take all morning."
"He was just estimating," Tori said with a shrug. "He said it's not that bad—that you could probably have it done in a few hours. He also said that he would do it himself if he didn't have to oversee transferring that shark. He's on his way to Key West now."
"It's fine," I said. "I'll make it work."
"Do you want me to see if I can get Nick to cover the Fairmont for you?"
I shook my head. "The Fairmont's complicated. I have a Triggerfish over there that I'm keeping an eye on. He's being a little aggressive." I glanced at the piece of paper. "Are you sure I can't save it for the end of the day?"
Tori shook her head apologetically, taking off her glasses and glancing around her desk as if trying to come up with something that could help me. "Lance said you need to get on it, A-sap. I can see if Brandon's available," she added. "He might not have class this morning. Maybe he could meet you over there to help you out."
Brandon was a student—a senior at U of M and Lance's newest recruit. He had just started working with us. He was a nice guy, but he was eager to learn and he asked a lot of questions. I knew I would end up having to explain the process to him, which might be more trouble than it was worth.
"It's okay," I said. "I'll work it out. If you don't mind, call the others on my books and give them a heads up that I'm running late today."
"I will, sweetie, thank you," she said. "Lance made me promise to tell you you're a rock star."
I shrugged shyly as I turned to go to my company truck. "Are the clients home?" I asked from over my shoulder.
Tori shook her head. "I don't think so. It's for an Airbnb. I think the owners live in West Palm. They called Lance panicking this morning. I think their guest is arriving or something." She shrugged. "Lance probably knows more about it. You can call him on your way over there."
I aimed a smile at Tori as I turned to walk away. It was a little forced, but there was no point in giving her a hard time when I knew none of this was her fault.
I typed the address into my GPS and set off for the house. It would take me twenty minutes to get there, so I called Lance while I was on my way.
"Abbyyyy," he said, picking up the phone. I could hear the road noise and knew I was on speaker phone.
"You going to get that shark?" I asked.
"Yep. We're on our way now. I've got Connor riding with me. Alex and Paul are behind us in the tanker truck. Are you on your way to Bayshore Drive?"
"Yep."
"Thank you for doing this," he said. "It's a big favor."
"You're welcome," I said. "Tori said you went by there."
"I did," he said. "And I've seen it before. The Fosters ordered their fish through us a few years ago. They don't use us for maintenance, though. They have a couple of properties in the area, and they have a maintenance guy who services them. I met him when they bought the fish. He's a nice guy. I think he had a family emergency in Tampa and isn't back yet. Mandy called me this morning, panicking. I guess the person renting her house is some big deal. Ashley Winters."
"Never heard of her," I said as I turned left onto 26th.
"Me neither," Lance said. "I only remembered the name because Mandy said it like twenty times. She was freaking out."
"Sounds like a tennis player," I said. "Or a TV producer."
"Mandy said something about her being a cellist. I think it was a cellist. Definitely some kind of classical musician."
"A cellist?" I asked.
"Like someone who plays the cello," Lance clarified.
"I know what a cellist is," I said. "I just thought I hadn't heard you right. I don't see how that would be such a big deal."
"I don't either, but Mandy said it was. She and Bill are into all that high society stuff. My parents know them. I guess the tenant had just moved in somewhere else, but they had a last-minute change of plans since Mandy's house had a piano. She mentioned something about the people at the performing arts center setting it up. I don't really remember everything she said. My dad called at six-thirty this morning asking me to call her back, and then she started telling me all this and asking me to come work on the pond. I told her I'd do it tomorrow. I was going to take care of it myself since she's a little particular, but you'll do as good a job as me, anyway. She'll never know the difference. And you're gonna love these fish. I think they spent about forty-thousand on them, and that was three years ago. They're probably worth sixty now. Beautiful. The Fosters have a collection worth about a million at their home in West Palm."
I let out a sigh of disapproval.
"What?" Lance asked.
"I just don't understand why people who are so particular would want to keep nice fish in an Airbnb house. The people who rent it aren't gonna take care of them. They just want to see them eat. They probably feed them pizza crusts. I guess it's not really our problem, once her guy gets back from Tampa."
"It's not like it's a low-end rental," Lance said. "I'm sure it costs a lot to stay there. Plus, I doubt a cellist is going to throw pizza crusts in the pond," he added. "Cellists probably don't even eat pizza."
"Maybe not, but what about the people who check in next week? I just don’t see keeping nice fish at an Airbnb. Tourists don't take care of stuff like the owner would."
"It's long-term," Lance said.
"What?"
"I think the cellist is staying there for months—doing a whole season with the orchestra. I guess that makes it more like a rental than an Airbnb."
"Either way, you just gotta cross your fingers they'll take care of the fish. Is she there now?" I asked. "At the house?"
"The owner, no. She's in West Palm."
"What about the tenant?"
"I don't know. I think so. That's why Mandy was in such a hurry. You won't need to interact, though. Just go through the side gate into the backyard. You can't miss it."
We talked for a few more minutes before hanging up. Lance told me the varieties and sizes of the fish, along with the approximate dimensions of the ponds so that I would know what to expect when I got there. Lance wasn't normally chatty, but he was on the road, and I could tell he was giving more details than necessary for Connor's sake since he was still fairly new to the team.
Once I arrived, I found that Lance was absolutely right. The fish were beautiful. The house was beautiful, too. Maybe I had a dirty job, but I certainly had the pleasure of working in some gorgeous homes and businesses.
The house had a sprawling, private backyard with view of the water, so there were floor to ceiling windows on the back side of the house, making it possible for me to easily see inside. The place was furnished, but three men came in and out, carrying boxes that contained what I assumed were the famed cellist's personal belongings.
There were a few gardeners working in the yard, one of whom was in my vicinity, working in a flowerbed that was near the pond. He made a good bit of conversation with me in spite of the fact that I was listening to music. I turned the volume down so I could talk to him, but during one of my water breaks, I took out my earphones completely so that I could hear what he was saying.
There were five fish in the upper pond and three in the lower. I thought I might have to catch the fish in the lower pond and transfer them to the upper one, but there was a deep spot near the edge where the three of them took refuge while I cleaned. I had worked on the filter and the upper pond first, so by the time I got to the really dirty work in the lower pond, the gardener was done with the bed near the pond and had moved on to other parts of the yard.
I had the pump in my hand and was knee-deep in the nastiest part of the process when one of the movers opened sliding glass door and stepped outside.