After breakfast we set up our laptops on the dining room table. Kate helped me bring the printer down from my office and we quickly established a local network on my wireless router so we could each print anything that looked important. I took one flash drive, Kate took the other and Cami grabbed the stack she copied from the file cabinet. All of us concentrated on sorting through papers. A plot worthy of a corporate spy movie was unfolding right in my own dining room.
Our first surprise was how far some of the documents went back. It looked like it began when Julia headed a marketing department in the D.C. office, well before CRS became a separate division located in Seattle. Whatever we were in the process of uncovering had been going on a long time.
We planned to attack the financial files and a few other documents Kate had found and saved on the flash drives after we’d gone through all of the emails.
Outside of comments like, “Wait till you see this one,” or “I can’t believe this really happened,” the three of us were completely immersed in plowing through what was slowly developing into an apparent plot to bilk the government out of millions.
Kate grabbed a sheaf of papers from the printer and said, “They are so friggin’ screwed. This stuff is great!” Then she glanced at her watch and added, “Damn. It’s one-thirty already. I’m hungry. How about you two?”
We jotted dates, comments, the addressee and recipient and every type of suspicious information each page contained on a yellow lined pad. In addition, we used sticky notes to add comments on many of the pages. Everything on our hand-written list was coded. ‘O’ meant order, we used ‘P’ for payment, and ‘M’ for miscellaneous.
There’s a corny saying that time flies when you’re having a good time, and we were definitely doing that. I was ravenous, but didn’t want to go anywhere where there might be even a remote chance of running into Matt. As far as he knew, Kate and Cami had gone home.
“Hey, Kate, now that you mention it, I’m hungry, too. I’m afraid Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is pretty bare, though. We can order from a great Chinese place that delivers. I’ve got their menu in the kitchen.”
I stretched my stiff legs and looked around what we were now calling Mission Central. We were on the brink of putting together the pieces and it was going to be huge. I could feel it in every part of my body. Much bigger than cheating sales reps out of commissions. Whatever was happening at CRS, it could land Julia and her buddies in a world of trouble.
When the food was delivered we took a short break. It’s hard to speak with a mouthful of Chinese food from Wan Q’s. Theirs is the best. Between some beef Broccoli and Shrimp in Lobster Sauce, Kate managed to say, “It’s beginning to look like you were right.”
She tapped a place on her yellow pad before picking up several printed sheets. “All of these refer to that supplier Alaric Fabricators—you know, the one you said you didn’t recognize back when this first started. Some of the orders mentioned are pretty large. As I recall, you said you had never seen copies of any of the ones earmarked for HRF commissions but that they were all for merchandise supplied directly by Alaric. Where do you suppose those orders are?”
I considered that for a moment. I’d been asking myself the same question. “Well, there might be hard copies in Julia’s locked file at the office. I really didn’t see anything in the commission tracking software in our accounting program. When Matt told me about it, I wondered how she came up with the figures for what he called “pass-throughs.” No one had ever mentioned that to me before and without paperwork for actual orders, there wouldn’t have been any way to justify commission payments to her mysterious HRF. Just for the record, at this point I really wonder where that money went. I don’t trust the explanation Julia and Matt gave me. Does it sound phony to you?”
Kate and Cami answered at the same time, both agreeing something was really wrong and it appeared HRF and Alaric were right at the heart of whatever it was. Kate polished off more shrimp, then said, “Imagine, if you hadn’t spotted HRF in Julia’s reports, I might not have paid any attention to emails mentioning Alaric.”
We devoured the last of the Mandarin Orange Chicken, Shrimp in Lobster Sauce, and Minced Squab in Lettuce Wraps while discussing more of what we’d seen. A devious scheme involving HRF and Alaric was evolving right before our eyes.
Cami said, “I found some stuff about that Alaric company, too. Here’s another thing. Everything with the subject line SUPPDEP relates to some Supply Depot order.”
I nodded. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all three of the guys I saw talking with Matt at the party are contracting officers for one of the military supply depots on what appear to be pass-through orders. Each of those guys were from different states.”
We dumped the paper plates, bags and the cute pink Wan Q boxes in the garbage and got back to the task of wading through the balance of the emails.
With our hunger pangs satisfied, we worked for several more hours. By that evening, we had a pretty good idea of what we were looking at. Reading email after email had been exhausting, but the research was worth it and would be a great help when we tackled the financial files the next day. We were committed to nailing our three crooked colleagues and I was more certain than ever now we would.
“Why do you suppose Bruce chose the name Ghost for his identity?”
Cami offered, “Maybe it was because the Bruce with his fingers in the till was a ghost to his ultra rich friends.”
“Yeah, and I can imagine Julia seething every time she saw him with his socialite wife. Even though they seem to be in it together, I think she would love to turn him into a real ghost.”
“Do you suppose Bruce is socking away his share without his wife suspecting he has a healthy cash flow of his own?”
Kate looked thoughtful. “Maybe, but that’s not the point. Whatever happens between him and his wife is none of our business.”
You know how fatigue can make you feel like a limp rag doll? At this point we were all drained and in desperate need of a break. I wasn’t sure if we should go out for dinner and chance being spotted, but Cami said she was getting claustrophobic staying in. So we piled into the Mercedes and drove across the bridge to a place I like in Bellevue. Mario’s is a little bistro about half-an-hour from where I live. Although I really didn’t feel like driving that far, Cami kept insisting she had to get out. I was certain we wouldn’t run into anyone I knew there.
The pungent aroma of garlic greeted us before we even opened the heavy oak door inset with a stained glass window that spelled out “Mario’s” in fancy green script. Chianti bottles hung from the ceiling, the bar was populated with happy people and the lights were dim. Who could ask for more? The host knew me by name and seated us in my favorite comfortable red leather booth in the back, out of sight from the other diners.
A while later steaming platters of Eggplant Parmesan, Mario’s Manicotti and Chicken Diablo covered the red checked tablecloth. We washed our feast down with a great bottle of Chianti and topped off the meal with generous servings of Tiramisu and a second bottle of Chianti.
Back at the townhouse, swathed in robes and slippers, we kicked back to go through more of our notes while the Italians and Chinese fought it out in our digestive tracts. By eleven that night, we had a pretty good picture of what we thought the scam was, but little did we realize how many more surprises were in store.