‘Why wouldn’t I be? Go. Let Harry drive you and take a couple of guards, just in case.’
‘No. Harry should stay with you. I’ll take Kit.’
When I reached Mira Joie, Priya was waiting at the door. She let out a huge sigh of relief.
‘Thank God you’re here. The client’s upstairs in the conference room, and she’s furious.’
‘Which client?’ I asked.
‘It’s Mrs Mitchell,’ Priya whispered, glancing towards the stairs. ‘She says we gave her all the wrong sizes.’
I remembered Penelope Mitchell. She’d come through a string of referrals, one leading to another, and placed a generous order for a diamond parure: a necklace, earrings, a bracelet, a bangle, a ring, a brooch, and even a tiara.
‘What does she mean, wrong sizes?’ I pressed.
‘That’s what baffled me,’ Priya said. ‘She claims every measurement is wrong, not what she sent us. The necklace is too long, the earrings are too heavy and make her ears ache, and she’s got a whole list of other complaints.’
I shook my head. ‘Impossible. How could something happen? I’ve worked in this business for years and never once made such a basic mistake.’
Every piece from Mira Joie was bespoke. There was always a fitting before casting, and clients signed off on the final designs, measurements included, before production. How could the sizes possibly be wrong?
‘No way. Maybe the factory mixed it up,’ I muttered. I refused to believe I could have made such an amateur error.
‘I don’t know,’ Priya said. ‘All I know is she’s livid and threatening to blast us online. She wants a refund, an apology, and God knows what else. I tried calming her down, but she won’t hear it.’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ I said, though unease prickled at me.
When we stepped into the conference room, Penelope Mitchell’s icy hostility was immediate. She didn’t rise to greet me, didn’t even acknowledge my hello.
Her glare could have cut glass. ‘What sort of shoddy outfit are you running? How could you make such a stupid mistake?’
‘Mrs Mitchell, I’m sorry the order isn’t what you expected. I’m just as confused about the discrepancy in the measurements—’ ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ novęlfire.net
‘Don’t give me excuses!’ she snapped, cutting me off.
She shoved a jewellery box across the table. ‘See for yourself. The necklace is far longer than what I asked for, the tiara’s too tight, and the rest is just as bad.’ She shoved a sheet of paper at me. ‘And look here. That’s your signature.’
‘I...’ I could hardly believe it.
‘Look for yourself.’ Penelope downed a glass of water, still fuming.
I lifted the box. Even at a glance, she was right. The pieces were all the wrong sizes. They matched the figures on the job sheet, but those weren’t the ones Penelope had approved.
‘And before you try blaming me,’ she said, her voice implacable, ‘the job sheet your staff sent originally had the correct measurements. That’s the one I signed. I never signed off on this version. I don’t know whether it was your staff or your factory that bungled it, but it’s unacceptable. I needed this set for an important event, and it was too late to replace it. I had to buy something off the shelf!’
I held the job sheet in my hands. It bore her signature, my own, and the studio’s seal. Everything looked authentic, yet everything was wrong.
How could this be? Something was definitely off.
‘Whatever you say now is meaningless,’ Penelope spat. ‘I don’t care how it happened. What I know is that your studio is at fault. You’ll bear the loss.’
‘Mrs Mitchell,’ I said carefully, ‘I completely understand your anger. Yes, something went wrong. It looks as if we’ve made a mistake, and of course we’ll reimburse you in full.’
‘Not enough,’ she shot back. ‘You made me lose face at the event. You’ll pay damages. I’m suing, and I’ll tell everyone I know to steer clear of your studio. I trusted you on a friend’s recommendation. I saw the pieces she bought and thought you were reliable. Clearly, you only did a good job then to reel in more business, and I was the fool who got palmed off with garbage.’
She stood abruptly. ‘My lawyer will contact you about payment and redress.’
Without another word, she swept out.
Priya crept in after she’d gone. ‘What do we do, Mirabelle?’
My brows knitted tight. ‘We’ll pay. Whatever went wrong, we didn’t deliver what she ordered, and we have to take responsibility.’
Priya winced. ‘That’ll cost us a fortune.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s what we have to do. But I also need to know what happened. Let’s check the archived job sheet on the computer.’
Priya hurried me to her workstation and pulled up the saved file. The measurements there were wrong too.
Impossible. Had someone tampered with the database?
‘Do you think someone’s framing us?’ Priya asked.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. Let’s check the surveillance footage. Maybe whoever meddled with the computer forgot about the cameras.’
Though deep down, I doubted it. Whoever did this was no amateur. The job sheet was probably altered remotely. Priya’s computer might have been hacked.
She nodded. ‘I’ll get on it.’