Office Play: Freaky Geek Series (25 page)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Adam pulled into the driveway of his home. He turned off the radio and grabbed his briefcase from the back. “Okay, we’re here. I actually cleaned the place as soon as I walked in.”

“You did? I am indeed impressed. I was barely able to take off my clothes to sleep,” Jeanette said unfastening her seatbelt.

Adam came around the car and helped her out. They then made there way to the front door.

“Nice house. Very modern.”

“I bought it from an architect. He made this house like super modern, too modern for some people, so I got it at a great price.”

They entered through the front foyer. “You can put your stuff right there. He pointed to his antique curio cabinet. She placed her things down and he took her by the elbow and led her into the living area. “Have a seat and I’ll get you something to drink.  Water or soda?”

“Soda’s fine.”

“So, what did you think about our meeting?” Adam asked, as he walked into the kitchen.

“I think it was very productive. You think we’ll get these people before somebody knows what we’re up too?” Jeanette asked, making herself comfortable.

“I think so, if we just put our heads together. And that’s another reason why I wanted to bring you home with me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You worked on mob stuff for the IRS, You know what you needed to do to catch those people. Do you think you can apply any of those skills to this case? It’s not as glamorous as mafia take downs, but I think it’s just as intersecting.”

“Hmm. I could. I’m thinking about a case now, in fact two. I have to call some people. But I think we can use a method we used for a case I did four years ago.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, among other things,” Adam said, coming into the living area with her soda.

“What?” She took the cold beverage and immediately started drinking it.

“How did a pretty thing like you get involved in something messy and potentially dangerous job.”

“Wow, that was sexiest.”

“Sorry.” Adam felt his face blush.

“If you must know, I actually saw an ad in the paper. I’ve been doing this for fourteen years. I started out just going over the books of regular millionaires trying to dodge the IRS. The head guy saw how good and efficient I was, and how I paid attention to little details, that they asked me to join BUNCO. I move up from there.”

“Impressive.”

“I’ll admit it’s exciting. You won’t believe some of the stuff I found. Money laundering, embezzlement, wire fraud. A lot of stuff was easy to find, but then there were those few cases that went on for years.”

“God, I hope that’s not the case with this.”

Jeanette chuckled. “I doubt it. Admittedly it’s crazy, but I think we can resolve this in less than a week. We know who the players are, that’s half the battle.”

“True. So how about Renee being a P.I.? Which came first? You investigating the mob or she investigating everyone?”

Jeanette laughed. “Hey, that’s good. Actually it was her first. I never dreamed I would be doing the stuff I was doing. I just wanted to be a simple auditor.”

“I don’t think you can ever be a simple anything.” Adam got up. “So, would you like a tour of the place?”

“Actually, I would like to catch up on some sleep and think about our next move.”

Adam thought a moment. Asleep in his house, on his bed. She felt comfortable enough to actually ask to take a nap at his place. This was good.

“I think I can accommodate you.”

Jeanette was real tired, she couldn’t think straight. She really needed to catch up on some sleep. In doing so, she could devise a plan to help catch these creeps.

Adam took her by the hand and led her down a long wide hallway.

Jeanette was taken back a bit by Adam’s home. It was super modern. When he mentioned how he got it and who from, it made sense. And even though the outside looked like something from the Jetsons, it seemed like Adam made it a point to make the interior as homey as possible.

Plush furniture, woods, some antiques. Old fashioned widow dressings. Art replicas of the masters even. Nice.

When they reached the end of the hall, there was one of those spiral staircases. The ones that Jeanette always hated because it looked as though one would fall over.

“My bedroom is upstairs,” Adam said smiling.

“Uh….”

“Wait. You’re not having second thoughts?” His face had disappointed written all over it.

“Oh no! It’s not that. I hate these staircases. It looks like I’ll slip through the slats.”

Adam laughed. “Don’t worry. It seems dizzying, but it’s perfectly safe. Besides. I’m right here to catch you.” He winked.

They ascended the stairs and walked into an open area. It was the bedroom.

“Look over the rail.”

“Wow, talk about open concept.”

“Yeah, one has to be open to no privacy too.” Adam chuckled. He walked over to a closet on the wall and took out some blankets. “It gets a bit cold.”

“Thanks.”

“Lay down, make yourself comfortable. I have some work to do.”

“Wake me in two.”

“You got it.”

Jeanette watched Adam as he descended the stairs. She then thought about the past four weeks. It’s seems like she lived a lifetime.

What she thought was a simple auditing job turned out to be employees stealing and selling stolen goods and trying to frame another. She got caught up in a whirlwind romance with the head IT guy. She just didn’t fall for him, they started hot and heavy the first day and it hasn’t cooled off since.

Then a business trip to Paris and more crazy sex.

Yeah, the past fourteen years of her career where dull compared to this.

She drifted off to sleep, thinking of their next move.

“Hey sleepy head.”

Jeanette rolled over and rubbed her eyes. She could have slept for another day. When her eyes focused, they feasted on the stunning man above her. “Two hours already?”

“Yep. Like some dinner?”

“Yeah, I need brain food.”

“I’ll order something. Pizza, Chinese, Sandwiches, Chicken or Burgers?”

“Hmm. Pizza sounds good.” Jeanette rubbed her tummy.

“Pizza it is.” Adam dialed the number on his cell. “By the way, Renee called, I told her you were napping and I also told her that you might have a plan, something you did from your old job. Do you mind?”

“No at all. In fact, let me find and call this person and see what I can put together.”

After calling several old co-workers, she finally caught up with the person in question. She told him what was going on and what she needed. In return, he offered his services and made sure they had several numbers to various law enforcements agencies when it was all said and done.

These people were going to serve some time.

Jeanette then called Renee to go over the plan. Adam sat close to her.

“Hey, I was just about to come over and bring you back your fur baby,” Renee said. Jeanette heard Oscar meowing in the background.

“Um…could you bring him tomorrow morning first thing? I’m not at home.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“Sooo…where are you?”

Jeanette sighed and braced herself for another squeal. “I’m at Adam’s and will be here until morning.”

“Squeeeee!”

Jeanette removed the cell far from her ear. After the squealing, she went back to the conversation at hand. “Did you get that out of your system?”

Renee giggled. “Yup.”

Jeanette rolled her eyes. “Okay, I called to get this sting going. I talked to Doug from one of my old cases and this is the plan he told me.”

“Shoot.”

Jeanette got comfortable as the delivery person came with the pizza. She watched Adam as he took the two pizzas and went to the kitchen. He then came back and paid the person.

“Want yours now?” He mouthed to her.

She nodded. “Okay, this is what we need to do. We need to get these folks on something big. Remember when I told you Sam said some company cars were missing?”

“Ooh, yeah. How did they get away with that?”

“Doug thinks they were selling them overseas. They’re very nice cars. Audis and Benzes.”

“Wow, changing the plate and selling them on the black market. No doubt there’s a customs agent with some extra cash in his pocket.”

“Got that right.”

“We can also trap them on the online auction sites too. We’re gonna need your help and Noah’s.

Adam came and sat by her. He placed a plate with pizza slices, mozzarella sticks and a soda beside her.

“Thanks.” Jeanette grabbed a mozzarella stick. “Now we have to plan this right. Timing is everything.”

“When does this go down?” Renee asked.

“Next week Monday. We’re going back to the office to finish out the week. We’ll be watching Laura and seeing if we can find out who she’s in contact with besides Miriam. Someone from the Paris office is helping. Hell, they could be the brains behind all of this.”

“This is true.”

“I’m going to let you go and eat. We’ll connect tomorrow.”

“Great. Try to get some sleep tonight.” Renee giggled and hung up.

“So what’s the plan?” Adam asked, stuffing some pizza in his mouth.

“You heard some of it. We’ll go in tomorrow and act like everything is cool, but keeping our eyes and ears open for the usual suspects.”

“And this plan is happening next Monday?”

“Yeah, we all need to meet up with Doug. You, me, Renee, Noah and Sam.”

“I hope we catch these creeps. I can’t believe Laura would do this. And Miriam. Hell, I never even kissed her, let alone fucked her.”

“Never knew the influence you had over women.”

“I only care about the influence I have over one woman.”

He bent down and leaned in and kissed her while she was still chewing on her mozzarella stick.

Chapter Thirty-Three

He and Jeanette received a warm welcome at the office. Adam was overwhelmed by questions from his IT team.

He wasn’t giving up anything. Not yet. They talked to Sam earlier in the morning about he and Jeanette going public about their relationship. They thought it best to lay low until all of this was over. It was bad enough trying to catch
these
orders; they didn’t need them to get any more out of control stuff disappearing all over the place.

However, when he saw the hordes of women heading over to Jeanette’s office, Adam had to make an appearance. He grabbed his computer repair case as if he needed to fix something of hers, and parked himself in her office until the biddies left.

Later that morning, he checked his clock on his computer screen and saw it was an hour before lunch. He needed to make a pit stop to Laura’s office. This should be interesting.

“Hello Laura. I need some things for the new software that’s coming in.”

“Okay. Did you submit your order already?”

“Nah, I thought I come straight here, it’s kinda detailed and I want to make sure I get the order right.”

“Alright.” Laura took out her pen and a blank rec, then did some typing on her laptop. “What’s the first item?”

“Five one-terabyte laptops with a five hundred giga-byte external drive for each, twenty-two inch screens. Then the new super mega graphics software for ten users, five motherboards one thousand and sixty six megahertz each.”

Adam watched as Laura wrote down the information. Her hands moving quickly, but he noticed that every now and them her brow lifted, especially when he mentioned the new super mega graphics software. That alone was worth over six thousand dollars.

“Okay. Wow. Who is this for?” Laura asked, as she turned to her laptop. Most likely to start typing in the order to the system.

“Someone in the Alaska office.”

Laura stopped typing all of a sudden, then resumed. “Oh, I see. So it’s going to….”

“I want it to come here first. I need to check some things,” Adam said, as he watched Laura’s reaction.

“Oh. Okay.” She did some more typing.

“When should I expect it? I want to keep an eye out on this.”

“In two business days. Let’s see, by Friday afternoon.” She smiled.”

“Great. Thanks.” He left and went straight to Sam’s office. He knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

He walked in and noticed that Jeanette was already there. “I placed my order. Now all we have to do is watch.”

“If nothing happens to this order and you get it, then it’s definitely Laura and her minions,” Sam said. “Otherwise they would snatch this stuff up and put it in an auction.”

“And if something happens to the order, it’s still them. So they’re trapped either way,” Jeanette said, as she took a sip of her coffee.

“This is phase one of this sting. The phase two is a bit more complicated,” Adam said.

“Yes, Jeanette has been telling me. So you guys are actually going to pretend to be buyers of stolen goods?” Sam asked her eyes wide.

“Yep, I’m going to hack into Laura’s system overnight tonight to see who she’s communication with. I need to look for emails. She’s making contact with someone.”

“How will you know it’s from crooked buyers?” Sam asked.

“Jeanette is going to be with me and an ex-coworker of hers. They will be able to tell. Once I get that info, I’ll hack their system and get their emails and start emailing Laura as if I was them,” Adam said.

“In the meantime, me, Renee and Noah will start buying stuff off of the online auctions. We’ll make accounts and start right away,” Jeanette said.

“So after the transactions go through, we’ll have them.” Sam surmised.

“Yep, just have to make sure the proper authorities are around for all transactions.”

Sam tapped her pen on her desk. She then got up and walked to the window. “I hate that this happened, but at the same time I’m glad that we finally found the source and we’ll be able to stop it once and for all.”

“You and me both, “Adam said.

“We still don’t know who in the Paris office is helping,” Jeanette said.

“No one comes to mind?” Sam asked, turning from the window to face her.

“Nope. I’m thinking hard, but nothing.”

“Same here,” Adam said, throwing up his hands.

“Well, all we do is wait. You better get back to your office. Jeanette could you stay a moment, I want to talk to you.”

“Sure.”

Adam left the room. It was killing him to know what they were talking about. Was it about he and Jeanette’s relationship? This case? Would Jeanette tell him about the discussion when they were done?

***

Jeanette sat there sipping her coffee and eating her doughnut. She wondered what Sam wanted to talk to her about, that Adam couldn’t be the room.

“So Jeanette, besides this problem. How do you feel about this company as a whole?”

“Oh, well, unfortunately I haven’t had time to really settle in.”

“Yes, this is true,” Sam said, tapping her pen again on the table. “You came in here head already buried in work, then off to Paris, fun but still not a way to get to know your work colleagues.”

“It’s okay, that’s what you hired me for.”

“Still. Tell you what. After this is over, we’ll have a proper welcoming a new employee party. And let you just settle in. Then after a couple of weeks, I’ll give you and Adam a week off, before you come back to work with us permanently.” Sam smiled widely.

Jeanette was taken back a bit. “Oh…um….so you want me as a permanent employee?”

“Yes, most definitely. You don’t mind do you? I mean besides Laura and her gang, everyone else has treated you well, right?”

“Oh yes, it has nothing to do with the employees. I was just wondering that since this case will be solved, you wouldn’t be needing my services.”

“Oh, yes, I see. You’re an investigative auditor. We won’t have anything to investigate hopefully after this. Hmmm. You’ll probably want to get back to doing the kind of work you’re use to. Not becoming a glorified financial analysis, huh?”

Jeanette sat there and thought a moment. She loved doing investigative work. And just doing the books for a company was not too stimulating. She really liked Sam and didn’t want to disappoint her.

“Tell you what. I know that after we bust these people, we have a lot of books to go over. I can probably keep you for….I don’t know another, three months at least. I will need you to investigate all the books from all our offices.”

“Oh, that’s going to take more than three months, we’re talking at least eight to ten.”

“Great!” Sam smiled. “Then we’ll keep you for as long as it takes to do your job. Is that fair?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“Now, that we have that settled, I can get some more coffee and attend my conference call. And please, if you think of anyone from the Paris office that you have suspicions of, let me know right away.”

“Will do.”

Jeanette left, and went straight to her office. She closed the door and buzzed Adam.

“Hello.”

Jeanette went over verbatim the conversation she had with Sam.

“Wow. So are you going to take her up on it?” Adam’s voice sounded hopeful.

“It sounds good. I mean I am a contract worker anyway, and my assignments can be a month to a year….”

“But it’s not as exciting as the mafia stuff.”

“To be perfectly honesty, nothing has come across like that in a year and half. So it’s not like I’m busy.”

“I hope you take it. I love working with you, and not just for obvious reasons.”

“I enjoy working with you too. I have to think about it. Right now I need to focus on this. We have some big days ahead of us.” Jeanette sighed.

“Got that right.”

Jeanette went back to work looking over purchases orders and trying to think of anyone in the Paris office that could be in cahoots with Laura and her minions. She went employee by employee in her head, then….

“Henry!”

Jeanette called Sam’s. Office. “Yeah, Jeanette.”

“Get Adam on conference.”

After about a minute, “Hello.”

“Adam, I know who the person is in Paris.”

“Oooh, who,” Sam squealed.

“Henry, that Henry…Otter or something.”

“Henry Ottman? Adam yelled. “He was transferred from the Dallas office as a bonus!”

“I can’t believe that. Are you sure?” Sam asked.

“I’m positive. I’ve been doing this long enough to know shady people, and I had a gut feeling when he saw me at purchasing and kinda questioned me being there.”

“That’s right, he said that he was seeing a lot of you there,” Adam said.

“Yep. I thought that was weird to say, and he kinda said it with some cynicism,” Jeanette said, looking for a particular purchase order. “Here we go. This is one of the purchase orders I copied. I think he took it.” She looked for the employee code. “Yep. Let me read you the items and tell me if you see a dupe.”

“Shoot,” Adam said.

“Three laptops, one server, three mega graphics software, four five inch, D-ring binders.”

Jeanette waited a moment. She could hear Adam typing away in the background.

“Found it! It’s a dupe and it says it went to Alaska.”

“But we know it’s not really going there, it’s online being auctioned off,” Sam said.

“No it’s going there. Someone has physical possession of the merchandise, they’re just not keeping it long,” Adam said.

“Exactly. Miriam, Laura and Henry probably thought that no one would look at Alaska, since it’s like the Western Front.” Jeanette giggled in spite of herself.

“Okay, let me stalk my order I put in earlier. When are we all going to get together for the big stuff?” Adam asked.

“This weekend. Sam, do you mind coming over to my place?”

“Of course not. In fact, I’ll bring pizza.”

Jeanette walked into Adam’s office; it was quitting time. She closed the door behind her and sat down. “I still feel like I need some sleep,” Jeanette said, yawing. “Sorry.”

“You’re been on go ever since you started here. Plus our extracurricular activities,” Adam said winking at her.

Jeanette’s face flushed.

Adam walked around her desk and sat on the edge of it in front of her. “I can’t wait until this assignment is over. Then we can take those days off and really work on our relationship.”

“I think that’s what Sam had in mind when she mentioned it to me,” Jeanette said.

“Good ole’ Sam.”

Jeanette chuckled. “Yeah, I guess she’s Team Jeanette/Adam.”

“You know what?”

“What?”

“I am too.”