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And then I’m lying on my back, and my skirt is around my waist.
Now this is a job I can get into.
34
RHETT
On Tuesday morning, I arrive early, hoping to get to the IT department before Viola can see me and start covering her tracks.
The tech team has a few members who arrive at six to make sure the servers are in good shape before anyone logs in, and a few others who will be the last in the company to leave.
Luke is part of the first wave.
I weave through the sea of cubicles until I get to his. It’s right outside Hammond’s office, which fortunately is still closed and dark.
Luke spots me and waves. “You’re here early.”
“There’s a matter that needs handling. A delicate one.”
Luke spins in his chair to face me. “All right.”
There’s no other chair in his cube, so I lean against the upholstered wall. He has Dilbert cartoons pinned all over the inside, plus a caricature of himself in Dilbert’s outfit, only with his red hair and beard.
“I’m not going to Hammond with this, not yet, so I’m looking for some discretion.” I watch Luke carefully to gauge hisreaction. If something seems off, I will pivot and ask him to pull different logs.
His eyebrows lift, but otherwise, he doesn’t show any nervousness or concern. “Okay, not a problem. What did you need?”
I unfurl the pages from the dailies Bailey and I reviewed yesterday. “I need to know who might have made changes to these requisitions and when they did it.” I set the pages down.
Luke picks them up. “There should be a simple signature trail on these.”
“It’s the client ID I’m looking at. For this client.” I point to the correct agency, the real one. “We have about half a million in requisitions moved to a new client ID that is one digit off. It appears to be a fictitious company.”
Luke shakes his head. “That’s quite a feat. Some of these are old. The audit should have caught it.”
“Which is why I think it was done recently, probably about two to three weeks ago.”
He flips through the pages. “These are completely random dates and numeric values. Did you see any pattern?”
“Only that they were all for Langston & Evans.”
Luke types a few commands into his keyboard. “Oh yeah, they are showing way under-billed compared to old years in accounts payable.”
“But do a quick look at the payment.”
He types again. “Yep. Checks were cut to them. Not to this Anton Archer outfit. I don’t show any money flowing to them.”
“Exactly. Someone wanted it to temporarily appear that someone was funneling money to Archer when it wasn’t actually happening.”
Luke glances at me. “Isn’t this the company that got Bailey…” He trails off.
“It is.”
“Okay.”
“We’re looking for who set her up.”
He blows out a long gust of air. “Okay, so you think it’s someone in IT?”
