We flaked out on my living room sofas and Kate filled us in about everything she discovered. “What a treasure trove. It never should have been so easy to open those files, but I write it off to Julia’s arrogance. She must figure she’s bulletproof.”
I popped a piece of chocolate into my mouth, savoring its luscious flavor. “I think you could be right. She’s cunning in some ways and so dumb in others.”
Kate nodded. “Imagine. Besides the Outlook files, all I had to do was click an icon on her desktop labeled ‘The Cause’,” and it immediately brought up a file filled with evidence.”
Cami and I both snatched chocolates from the box on the cocktail table. Cami washed hers down with a swig of wine. No question—she was stoked. Cami rarely ate candy.
“The emails I forwarded to both of you were from jharrison@msn.com, Matt@hotmail.com and someone who used ghost@aol.com. Ghost might be Bruce, but I’m really not sure. I guess they thought they were being evasive by sending the messages from personal accounts, but Julia’s stupidity in keeping all of them could be their downfall. Some evasion. A kid could have found all of that.”
Cami jumped up from the sofa and began to pace, wine glass in hand. “Okay, Kate, what if Julia is able to tell someone was poking around in her computer? What if you left a cyber trail or whatever they call it?”
“Calm down. First of all Julia isn’t that computer savvy. If she was, she would have encrypted the messages or hidden them in an obscure file. Anyway, since I erased all of the forwarded messages from her sent file, she’ll have no way of knowing her computer was invaded. I skimmed through some files that came up when I clicked ‘The Cause’ before I copied them. Good stuff, but when I opened one marked SuppDep, I took the time to read a few of those documents.”
Cami interrupted, “SuppDep?”
“Well, yeah. Not hard to figure out it probably means Supply Depot. I guess they were using some kind of a dumb code, but as soon as I opened that file and read a reply to one of the emails from Ghost, I knew I’d found gold.”
Kate paused and took a deep breath before she continued.
“That message mentioned something about a very big order for a supply depot. The last line was, “When we started this, who ever thought we’d wind up with such hefty retirement funds? Just a few more and we can walk away from everything.” All I could think was how ridiculous it was to say something like that in writing. I couldn’t take the time to read all the SuppDep documents, so I forwarded the entire file. It should make for some extremely interesting reading. Oh, you’ll love this. This makes it all the more comical. Each of them actually put PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL in caps at the top of everything.”
“Sounds like you’ll have a lot to wade through.”
“Not just me. Since you’ll both have copies, after we sort out the rest of the stuff we’ll split those documents into three groups.”
Cami rubbed her hands together. “I can’t wait to see everything. Apparently this isn’t the small-time operation we thought it was. And, it looks like it’s been going on for a while. Why, from the size of some of the orders, it could add up to millions—many, many millions.
I began to dance around, but my friends looked at me like I was crazy. I finally stopped hopping up and down, put my hands on my hips and said with all innocence, “Whaaat? I’m doing a happy dance.”
Cami chuckled. “Happy dance, my foot. You’re jumping around like a frog on a hot skillet.”
Kate threw her hands in the air. “If that’s a sample of happy, I’d hate to see ecstatic. By the way, I think there might even be a reward.”
“Excuse me? What the hell are you talking about?”
At that moment, I realized she was looking beyond the obvious revenge we wanted. “If those three are stealing from the government, and it’s multi-millions like we suspect, well, maybe we can claim a reward of some sort for exposing them. That would be a piece of luck, wouldn’t it?”
Cami and I nodded agreement.
Between the wine at Hal’s and the bottle we opened at my place, Cami was slurring a bit, obviously feeling no pain. She said, “Even though we may not be sure what we actually have on our hands yet, we have a lot of work ahead of us going through everything Kate and I swiped.”
Kate almost choked on the chocolate in her mouth. “What do you mean swiped? For heaven’s sake, Cami, we didn’t swipe anything. We simply appropriated copies of readily attainable information. Um, okay, maybe it wasn’t readily available until we invaded Julia’s computer and files, but come on—swiped?”
“Let me rephrase. We availed ourselves of it, right after we snuck into her office.” She stifled a giggle and then another.
The discussions about various aspects of what might lie ahead continued pretty far into the night. Even after we sorted everything, we still had to figure out how to lay a trap that Julia and whoever else turned out to be involved couldn’t wiggle out of.
My mind continued running, and I felt I’d never be able to fall asleep. It was a good thing we had each taken the next day as a vacation day, but even that might not be enough.
Our high at what we’d accomplished finally wore off, replaced by exhaustion. I held my hand against my mouth trying to stifle a yawn. “Can both of you take a few more days off? I never thought we’d find so much so soon.”
Cami said she could list fake appointments for the two or three days following her vacation day and Kate decided she would definitely have to take an emergency trip to help a close relative. After all, cell phones don’t show where the caller is. As for me, I’d come up with something that would keep me out of the office for a few days. A really bad cold or something like that. As I considered all possible ways to set our snares, my mind churned like the wheels on a locomotive speeding down the track.
At six the next morning I was startled out of a deep sleep by loud rock and roll music. It seemed only moments had passed since I’d tumbled into bed, but I must have forgotten to turn off the alarm. A few remnants of my dream lingered, including a vision of me running through a tunnel chasing Matt and someone whose face I couldn’t see. They threw bundles of money in my path and shouted, “Back off.” But I was still hot on their trail when the clock radio ended the pursuit.
The welcome aroma of coffee filled the kitchen. I followed the scent, half stumbling, half walking, in desperate need of some strong black coffee and a couple of aspirins. Cami looked far too perky as she put the finishing touches on a plate of sliced fruit. I managed to offer a lackluster, “Good morning.”
I knew I must have looked and felt like something that had been dragged out of Lake Washington more dead than alive. And Cami? She was gorgeous. Hair styled and makeup perfect. She handed me a cup of the rich brown liquid. “Here you go. I poured it for myself, but you look like you need it more than me. I guess Kate is still asleep.”