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There was one possibility with my theory that I hated to consider. If the object was more to stir things up than to actually spy, it took Owen off my “safe” list. What better way to stir things up than to report spying that hadn’t actually happened?
I wouldn’t be able to bear it if one of the few people I absolutely trusted was actually betraying me.
Now that I knew I was tracking a rumor, I knew exactly how to approach the situation. It was like that old game of telephone—the message changed as it moved farther from the source, and the tone of the message shift gave you a pretty good idea of who was part of the chain. The closer the rumor got to the actual truth (or the obviously manufactured lie), the closer you were to the original source. I hadn’t been a member of any particular clique in high school but had moved freely among all of them, and because of that I’d generally been tapped as the mediator in school rivalries. That made me an expert in figuring out who had said what to whom. I even had the “Miss Congeniality” picture in the yearbook to prove it.
This meant I’d have to leave the office. “I have to look into some things,” I told Trix as I headed out. “All the calls should go straight into voice mail.” Not listening to more gripes and whines was a price I’d have to pay for my diligence.
One thing I knew about gossip is that there’s always someone who sees all and knows all, even if she’s not involved in it. In this company, that was Isabel. If anyone in the company knew what the major feuds were, she’d be the one. She’d probably refereed most of them. The trick would be getting information out of her without giving her anything worth spreading. “Got a minute?” I asked when I got to her office.
“Rod’s out right now.”
“Actually, you were the one I wanted to talk to.”
Her face lit up and I braced myself for a smothering hug, but she stayed seated. “Come on in, then. Can I get you anything?”
I’d had enough caffeine for the week, so I shook my head. “No thanks. But maybe you can help me with something.”
“The spy investigation, huh?” she said with a knowing nod.
“It’s turned into a massive grudge fest, and I need to know who has reason to hate whom so I can sort out the tips from the tattletales.”
“You want a list of the grudges in this company? How much time do you have?”
“Not nearly enough. But anything you can do to help me narrow it down would get me that much further along.”
She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands across her middle. “Well, you know about Gregor and Owen, of course.”
“I know Owen got Gregor’s job after that accident. Is there more?”
“Well, when he was in charge of that division, Gregor and Idris were pretty tight, and neither of them got along with Owen. The rest of the division took sides. It was like there was the Gregor faction and the Owen faction. One of the first things Owen did when he got the promotion after Gregor’s accident and transfer was fire Idris.”
“What happened to the rest of the Gregor faction?”
“The usual things that happen after a regime change. One or two quit. The rest changed which ass they were kissing. You’d have thought they were pulling for Owen all along.”
I wanted to demand names, but this was already sounding too much like a police interview. “Was Gregor into the same dark magic stuff as Idris?” I asked.
“Owen thought so, but there wasn’t any real proof. That spell that turned him into an ogre was definitely a gray area—assuming he was really working on the spell he said he was. Owen always thought that was a huge cover-up.”
“Now I’m even more glad I got out of Verification. And it would explain the number of calls I got from within R and D. Any other big spats?”
“This is between us, right? You’re not going to be telling who told you what?” She looked intensely uncomfortable, an effect the usual company gossip didn’t tend to have on her.
“It’s between us. I can’t use gossip as evidence. Right now, I just need to be pointed in the right direction.”
She leaned forward across her desk and dropped her voice. “I’m not saying this to be mean, but Ari has dated almost every straight, single male in the company—and even some not so single, if you get my drift. To hear her talk, it was all their fault it didn’t work out. The ones she hasn’t dated probably rejected her. I love her to death, but anyone she reported, you can dismiss outright.”
“I don’t think she’s reported anyone.”
Isabel looked relieved. “She must be growing up.”
I was dying to ask where Owen fell on Ari’s list, but to a gossip like Isabel, that was like adding my name to the day’s hotsheet, proving I was interested in him.
“Corporate Sales and Outside Sales have a grudge match going on, but it’s mostly friendly competition. This situation is hurting both of them, so I don’t see either group getting caught up in it.”
“How did word get outside the company?”
She shrugged. “Wives talk to husbands, husbands talk to wives. People talk to friends and lovers. Word gets out. You can’t keep a lid on something like this.”
