The Missing Links. Caroline Mondon

      TUESDAY. 8:00 A.M. Héloïse pulls into the parking lot. She hesitates, and then decides to park again in the spot reserved for her father. She notices Thierry Ambi’s spot is still empty. Feeling her stomach knot up, she picks up her bag and enters the building.

      Georgette’s head appears immediately at the door of her office.

      “Still no news?” asks Héloïse.

      “Still no news,” answers Georgette, approaching somewhat reluctantly. Héloïse motions her toward Henri Rami’s office and follows her in.

      Georgette continues, “Last night, on the way home, I went past Mr. Ambi’s house in town. It was all locked up, and the front yard looked as though it hadn’t been maintained at all the whole summer. I’m quite sure he hasn’t come back from his holidays yet. We could ask the neighbors.”

      “It just doesn’t make sense,” exclaims Héloïse.

      “I called our business advisory association to ask what to do if he’s absent for several days without us having any news of him. I didn’t dare call initially, because Mr. Rami didn’t want to pay the annual fees for the association’s services.”

      “You’ve done the right thing, Georgette. And what did they say? He hasn’t been missing from work for long.”

      “They told me that we can’t file a missing person report with the police. As you know, only the family of someone who has gone missing can do that.”

      “Isn’t there anyone here at the factory who knows him well enough to know where he might be, or who has any means of contacting him or his family?”

      “I haven’t been able to find anyone. But Léon remembered that when he looked up the dialing code for Canada last May, in order to send a request for a quotation on some maple wood, Mr. Ambi was able to give it to him right away. Léon asked him if he knew the dialing codes for every country by heart. Mr. Ambi answered that he knew this particular code because his wife’s family lived there— not far, as it happens, from our wood supplier whom, oddly, he also knew.”

      “Well, that’s not much, but I guess it’s a start. Thank you, Georgette. Everything’s going well otherwise?”

      Georgette shrugs, with the attitude of someone who is always quite certain of things. “Things are fine, ma’am.”

      “Georgette, you can call me Héloïse.”

      Georgette seems to roll her next words in her mouth before she speaks them. “Mr. Rami gave signing authority for large sums of money to no one but Mr. Ambi. Léon’s purchase orders are about to get blocked.”

      “What about Hubert? Can’t he do it?”

      Georgette hesitates still longer, coughing a little, nervously. “It’s just that Mr. Rami withdrew Mr. Lancien’s signing authority when Mr. Ambi joined the company. In any case, Mr. Lancien is often away for long periods, so it isn’t really practical”—she coughs again, and continues—“and it was only ever Mr. Rami who could decide about the temporary workers. Jean-Marc in the metal shop can’t take much more. He’s asked me three times if he can just decide on his own to hire some people.”

      Héloïse looks at Georgette inquisitively. “Why was my father so much more careful when it came to labor costs than he was when it came to buying wood for the factory? Surely the wood must be very expensive.”

      Georgette’s eyes light up and a barely perceptible smile of disdain plays at her lips. “Actually, as I pointed out to Mr. Rami, when it comes to cost of goods sold, the biggest portion, 47 percent, goes toward salaries. But, whether the twenty-four salaried employees are categorized as ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’ employees, their salaries count as fixed expenses, because we pay them every month. We never have more than four temporary workers in the ‘direct’ category during the three months that we hire them, to help during the peak period of production and during our regular workers’ holidays. That is to say, we have a maximum increase in the workforce of 4 percent during one-quarter of the year. Because the salaries for temporary workers are low, they only represent 2 percent of our total expenditure on salaries, so when we hire temporary workers, our cost of goods sold only fluctuates up to 1 percent. Purchasing, on the other hand, represents 46 percent of our cost of goods sold, and more than half of this is spent on wood. A 10 percent increase in the price of wood therefore raises our cost of goods sold more than all of the temporary workers’ salaries put together. I know that Mr. Ambi used to work for a company that also bought wood, but it wasn’t anything like the same quality we use here. It would have been better to give him the authority to hire temporary workers than to supervise the negotiation of purchases. It would have been less risky—”

      “Tell me again: who are these ‘direct’ employees?”

      Georgette puffs out her chest. “Direct employees are workers that vary in number according to the amount of work that has to be done. The indirect employees on the other hand are, well, people like me, for example—office workers and workshop supervisors. Whether there’s a great deal of work or only a little, the indirect workers are always going to be there. But all the workers represent inarguably fixed expenses. It makes sense to hire temporary workers to absorb any sudden increase in the workload and not have to worry about keeping them on if the workload goes back down. The problem is, you need to train them. Once they’re trained, they often leave us, and we have to start all over again. That’s what used to drive Jean-Marc crazy, and that’s why—”

      Héloïse interrupts Georgette, who is getting carried away. “Thank you, I understand. When is Hubert due back?”

      “He left this morning for Saint-Nazaire. To see what happened with that order that we lost. He’ll be back on Friday.”

      Héloïse gives a little smile, and says, “Good. I’ll come back on Friday morning to talk to him then. Tell Jean-Marc to be patient about the temporary direct workers until then.”

      She rises from her desk. Georgette hesitates for a moment, before passing Héloïse a folder she had been concealing behind her back.

      “I have some checks here that I’ve prepared for signature. There are invoices that need to be paid and are getting urgent. Perhaps you can go over them with your mother? If you’d like, I can also give her a copy of the cash-flow plan, now that we know that we won’t be getting any more orders from Saint-Nazaire.”

      Héloïse sits down again and takes the sheaf of papers from her mechanically.

      “Thierry’s probably got his dates mixed up,” she thinks to herself. “He’ll be back next week. Not a problem. I don’t start back at the conservatory until next Tuesday.”

      Héloïse doesn’t wait until Georgette leaves before she begins to shuffle the papers absentmindedly. Her mother is the only one to be able to sign checks, as the major shareholder of the company since her husband’s death, but she is away at a health spa with a friend. Héloïse has not yet told her that “the new CEO who was going to take care of everything” had, in fact, disappeared.

      “It is out of the question for me to become even more involved with the company,” she thinks. “I feel ill simply being here.”

      She stares at the papers without reading them and allows the malaise to invade her very being. Feelings bombard her: irritation at Georgette’s condescending attitude and pity at both Roger Chaillou’s servile behavior and Jean-Marc Gridy’s displaced aggression.

      In a flash, she remembers the resentment she had felt as an adolescent toward this place—before the argument with her father—when he had tried to interest her in