“Something wrong with three?” Gabe inquired with deadly calm.

“We always have tea at three,” Beatrice said. Everyone nodded.

Gabe sucked in a breath. “Bring the pot. I’ll have coffee. Black.”

“We don’t have coffee.”

“Then that’s the first thing we’ll change.”

The day went downhill from there.

They didn’t have meetings on Tuesdays, Percy informed him.

“Well, we’re having one today,” Gabe said. “And if you don’t want to come, I suggest you start cleaning out your desk.”

There was a collective gasp.

Percy drew himself up to his full five feet seven. “You cannot threaten me, Mr. McBride. Nor can you fire me.”

Gabe lifted a brow. “No?”

“No.” Percy went into his own office where he opened a desk drawer and pulled out some papers. “It’s a condition of the sale. It guarantees my employment.”

Gabe skimmed them rapidly. It was there in black and white: if someone came to oversee the running of the Gazette, Percy Pomfret-Mumphrey was to be retained.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me I was getting Percy the Albatross hung around my neck?” he groused at Earl later.

“Ah, met Percy, have you?” Earl chuckled. “Well, I’m sure you can handle him. What did you say, two weeks and you’d have it all shaped up?”

“Two months,” Gabe said through gritted teeth. He banged down the phone.

Save the Buckworthy Gazette in two months? Two millennia, more like!

He shut the door on them all and pored over recent editions of the Gazette, determined to get a feel for the newspaper. He had to start somewhere, and the end product seemed like the best place to figure out where things had gone wrong.

It was just like rebuilding a herd, actually. You looked at the beef and figured out why things weren’t turning out the way you wanted them to. Then you set to work changing it. But you couldn’t do that unless you knew your animals and the lay of the land.