Final Turn: A story of adventure, intrigue and suspense. (4 page)

Roger knocked and entered. Samantha was sitting in the living room, a rare occurrence Roger thought.

"I am expecting a lady from the Armed Forces Historical Society. She’s dropping off some stuff. I went down today and asked for some things. She had to get them ready so she said she would make copies and drop them off."

Sam was sitting in a rocker wearing a long demon skirt and with a shawl about her shoulders, a glass of wine in her hand. She looked comfortable and welcomed Roger with a warm kiss that he came over to collect. Shadow eyed him with interest from beneath Sam's chair.

"People from the Historical Society make house calls?" Roger noted as he poured himself a glass from the wine bottle.

"She lives somewhere around here. She has some things I need for the contract I have with the Grawitz family. Should have been here half-hour ago. Wait 'till you see her! "Sam was looking out the front window expectantly, wearing a mischievous look.

"How’s that contract going? You’re spending a lot of time at it. Having problems?" Roger had a reasonable sense of Sam's work and knew that some of those jobs could become snagged. Digging into someone’s past was not always easy and sometimes the unexpected turned up.

"What do you mean 'wait till you see her?" Roger added to his questions.

"I'll bet you won't be able to take your eyes off her." She passed over that quickly and added, "The contract is going well enough. The military background makes it easier and tougher. Sometimes I get a bit side-tracked." Sam seemed to have her mind elsewhere.

"Side-tracked? Onto what?" Roger studied her face for a sign.

Just then the doorbell chimed its chime and Roger went to open it. He opened it wide, and then wider. A very large woman stood before the door and said.

"Hello, I'm Phyllis Waters. I'm to see Miss Walsh." Her lips made too much of the W's. She occupied the entire doorway. Roger stepped aside, well aside and said. "Please come in, Sam is expecting you."

She did come in, hefted herself into the living room and said her Hello's to Sam. She held a brief case in one hand and held the other hand with the palm flat to her breast as if she were going to sing. She seemed out of breath though. Shadow brought his chin off his paws and perked his floppy ears as best he could.

Phyllis was one of those women who had simply grown too large, everywhere at once. She was nearly six feet but not muscular, not flabby. She appeared perfectly proportioned; the portions were just too large. There were no ungainly bulges, no overhangs. She was just expansive. Her clothes fit her well but she must have had them all special made; probably with greater material than labor costs. She wore a yellow blouse that cut across a massive cleavage separating her partially exposed pearly white breasts. Her breasts were a bold occupation of the space in front of her.

The fabric of her black skirt swept ambitiously to cover her hindquarters; it stopped a couple of inches above her knees. She had shapely legs, nice knees. Her skirt sported a slit along the side and exposed the broad expanse of her white thigh to some advantage. Her clothes were the type she would wear if she were proud of her body and anxious to show it. Her calves were curvaceous, nice; yet they rivaled those of a football player.

Everything about Phyllis seemed right, until you scaled it to relative to other objects in the room. Either she was huge or everything else was diminutive. You almost had to study the scene to decide which way it was.

Roger offered her a chair, an experienced one of sturdy oak that had a look as if it would accept the challenge. She lowered herself with grace until she was about four inches above the chair. There she gave up and let herself fall. The chair held but it sent protests reverberating across the floor. Small things in the kitchen cabinets tinkled against each other. The mirror by the entrance waved the room. Roger stood directly before her, on the precipice of her cleavage. He stepped back as one might from the edge of a cliff.

"I have the information you were looking for." Phyllis began a bit formally. "Colonel Grawitz' family is very well known in the military. Those members of the family who are not associated with the military, I of course have no information on them. There are some other aspects that need extra work to trace. I'm not sure if you want me to go into them."

She handed a thick envelop to Sam. Roger offered a glass of wine but Phyllis declined. She explained with thanks that she was merely dropping these things and couldn't stay. Roger didn't protest, he just stood and looked at her. It was difficult to look anywhere where she wasn't.

"What aspects are those?" Sam asked, leafing through what she had been given after giving Roger an, 'I told you so' look.

"I did see some records which indicated there had been a court martial of some member of the family. That was all there was. It was quite a while ago. I've seen that before and know that it's not easy to get details on that sort of thing. But it can be done." She said that with a hint of temptation in her voice. Roger saw Sam put down the papers and look at Phyllis with increasing interest. He could see that Sam knew she was now listening to a sales pitch for Phyllis' services.

"Where would one go to get more information?” Sam asked with feigned casualness.

"I've had to deal with a few such cases before. Under surreptitious circumstances often." Phyllis glanced at Roger and then back to Sam. "If you’re not well connected or not familiar with the bureaucracy, there is little hope of getting anywhere." Here comes the sales pitch, Roger thought.

Phyllis continued, "Sometimes these requests come from people who have a need for information about others that might be less than complimentary, if you understand me. It might be information about someone who is running for office. Not uncommon."

Roger could see Sam's face suddenly light with understanding.

"I do know there is a library in Ottawa that will supply information up to a point. They know me there and I have a number of other sources I can use." Phyllis said and closed her folder and began to gather her things about her.

"I'm not sure I need that yet. I'll get in touch with you if I do." Sam thanked her warmly and expressed great appreciation. People like Phyllis were invaluable in Sam’s work and she knew how to cultivate contacts and co-operation.

The minute Phyllis was out the door Sam got to Roger, "Well? What do you think of her?"

"She's great!"

"Be serious."

"O.K. She's really great!"

Sam pushed Roger down onto the couch and fell on top of him. Supper apparently was going to wait. Shadow placed his chin onto his paws again and closed his eyes.

Roger sat with his feet on his desk. The door was nearly closed and it was lunch hour. He was skipping lunch and had decided to take the hour to read more of Dick Francis' novel 'Comeback'. They had just found Scott dead, strapped to the veterinary operating table, his mouth stapled shut with a surgical stapler. That was sure to keep him quiet. In the afternoon, Roger would go out to eStorage and pay a courtesy visit. It was a little disconcerting that Jack had gone away just at the critical time when the system was to be turned on. There was nothing to be done about that. Bill had spent the morning looking into things and would give Roger a report on the situation. With luck, there wouldn't be any problems and he could give the client a positive report.

He saw the door ease open a little further and Bill's fuzzy head came through sideways.

"Busy?" Came the inquisitive greeting.

"Come on in. I'm just seeking refuge from the world at large, not specifically from you." Roger lowered his feet and closed his novel.

"I wouldn't barge in with bad news." Bill said as he went over to sit on the table. He was wearing a light gray woolen suit that matched his personal decor perfectly.

"What have you got for me, Bill?" Roger sat up to give him his attention.

"With Jack away I’ve been getting the system for eStorage going. It's all set up and seems to be working well. We ran all the diagnostics and saw no problems. The hardware works, and believe it or not, the software works." Bill was being deliberately modest; it was no coincidence that the software worked. He had spent many long hours making sure that it had been designed and coded correctly. All of the simulations that he and his staff had carried out had apparently flushed out the bugs. Moreover, they had fixed them.

"That's really great. Congratulations! Now we should get those fellows out there to give us some traffic on the system by taking a few vehicles through the gate and sending in the records from the trucks. I'm going out this afternoon and I'll let them know."

"Good idea. But I have reason to believe that things will be O.K. We already have one set of records and they look good." Bill waved a few sheets of paper that he had brought in with him. "Here, let me show you." Bill laid the papers out on the table. He took a chair and sat before them. Roger came across leaning on the edge of the table as Bill pointed to the middle of the first page.

"There. That's the one. This is a record generated when a vehicle, Number 7345, left the compound at 5:15 on the morning of June 14. This other report was produced from the information collected by the computer inside the vehicle. When I saw the record of the vehicle leaving the compound, I called the staff there. Someone named Kevin. I asked Kevin to dump the data from the vehicle using their hand held unit. He transmitted the data into our computer and I ran these reports. Everything looks good." Bill certainly had filled in the gap with Jack away. He had taken it upon himself to see things through. He did have a stake in this as well of course. It was his software on the line and his hope that Roger would take the good news to Lindquist. Roger would do that because he knew Bill would never blow his own horn in front of Lindquist, even though he reported directly to him.

Roger looked over the reports. "They must know that things are working. They must have given out some I.D. cards to clients. Roger was pleased but somewhat surprised that they had put their confidence in the system so quickly. He hoped they were also manually logging things as a backup.

"I'm not sure if that's the case." Bill said politely. "These records were generated by someone using a Test Card. I think there are three of them around. They were likely just playing with the system."

"Test Card? Oh, yeah. So this is the Test Card ID." Roger said pointing to the I.D. in the reports. He felt a bit sheepish for not having recognized it. "Well at least it does show that things are working. I can report that much to them. Now they can start issuing real cards to clients and start using the system."

"Exactly. I'll continue to monitor things from our end. I'll run a set of reports every day for the first few days and look for problems. Maybe you should tell them to keep a manual log until the system makes it through the acceptance tests. That way they won't put any of the accounts at risk." Bill had a careful nature about these things. He knew well enough that if a problem did develop with the software, it would be easier to fix it without the added stress of knowing that the client was loosing money because of it.

"That's a good idea. I'll talk to them about it. If you could gather up this stuff for me I'm going to head out there now." Roger decided it would be good practice to visit the people at the storage compound. Usually he went only to visit their downtown office.

** ** **

Leaning against the wind, Roger wrapped his keys on the window of the guardhouse that held two young men. They kept talking with their backs to him. No one looked towards him. He knocked again. There was a delay that was easy to interpret as a belligerent rebuff. Roger waited a moment for one of them to slide the window open. There was no greeting, no offer of help; just a look that seemed designed to make him feel intrusive.

"Good morning. Is Kevin around? I'm from EDS." He recognized one of them. He had been there with Kevin on Roger's first visit out. He thought of explaining what EDS was again but they likely didn't care. He would talk to Kevin. Kevin seemed to have an interest and was willing to listen.

"You'll have to go around to the office. Come in through the small gate. I'll show the way."

"I know where it is." Roger offered.

"No unescorted visitors in the compound. I'll lead the way."

Roger followed the man to the trailer that held the office. The man was short, stocky and walked with bowed legs and his hair blown forward over his forehead. He looked the type how would normally wear one of those caps from a brewery. He pulled open the trailer door and called inside, "Someone here for you Kevin. Man from that computer company." The man gave Roger a look that said not to expect anything more.

"Come on in." Roger recognized Kevin's voice and stepped into the office.

"Thank you so much." Roger said to the guard hoping the intonation of sarcasm in his voice would be detected. It seemed that it was.

Kevin was seated behind his desk staring into a computer screen.
Kevin barely fit behind the desk, his knees too high to comfortably pass underneath. He looked at the screen with a mixture of curiosity and quandary. Roger had begun to like the man. Kevin waved Roger to the other chair. Neither man succumbed to clichéd greetings.

"Things are all hooked up and runnin’. Talked with one of your people, Bill Whithers. Sent him some data from one of the trucks. He says there was data from a truck being used on Friday. It went through the gate. He asked me to dump the mileage and stuff recorded by the computer in the truck." Kevin looked like a kid who had just opened a Christmas present and found his favorite toy. He went on, “It all went O.K. He must have run the reports because here they are." Kevin pointed to the screen. He had the EDS system running on his terminal and had located the same reports that Roger had in his briefcase. Bill must have set up the reports on-line for Kevin to access. Kevin did seem to be on top of things.

Roger settled into the chair. "That's great. When will your company begin to issue ID cards to your clients?"

"Supposed to get here today. They've assigned us a bunch. Accountants like to log things in you know, they’re doing that first. They say they have their own card reader there and some special programs. You know about that?" Roger explained that eStorage's accounting office had special programs to allow them to enable and disable I.D. cards and to generate the special reports needed maintain the system.

He could see Kevin loose interest as he got too deeply into it. Kevin seemed know where his own responsibility started and stopped. He knew how much he had to know. He captured the essence of what Roger had said in his own version, "So that doesn't affect us out here none." He followed that with, "You heard anything else from them we should know about?"

"Not really." Roger said reticently.  There was a tone of 'us and them' in Kevin's voice. Roger wondered again if Kevin was sniffing for information about possible staff reductions.

"Will you keep a manual log for a while before you switch over completely?" Roger changed the subject.

"Yeah. They told us to do that. We’ll just keep doing what we did for a while." Kevin didn't look the type who was going to take a whole lot of chances with some computer system.

Roger leaned forward to look at the screen in front of Kevin. "Can you tell from this if the records from last Friday are correct?" He saw a blank look occupy Kevin's face. Roger explained further. "The time, date, mileage and those things. Are they about right in the computer report? Have you checked them against your manual logs?"

Kevin's expression changed to puzzlement. "You'd best ask your own people about that one. We didn't use that vehicle. Didn’t know someone had taken one of them large trucks without telling’ us. That's what the test card lets you do, must be OK with the company. Head office gives out the cards. They know what they're doing." There was a tone of resignation in his voice.

"Yes the card allows us to do that. It does. But we haven't been driving around in your equipment. I spoke with Bill just before coming out here and it sure wasn't him. He wouldn't be doing that. In fact, I think our only test card is in Jack Fischer's desk and he is out of the country. You have one of the other test cards and eStorage's accountant has the other. There are only three."

"Well, I don't know. We sure don't have any manual log of that truck." Kevin said picking up the phone. He dialed a number and without introductions said, "Come in here for a minute." He put the phone down and sat waiting as if he didn't want an interruption. Roger stood up so as not to occupy the only other chair in the office when the person whom Kevin had called arrived. There was a crunching of gravel outside before the door opened abruptly and in came the wind and the charming young man from the front gate. He gave Roger a repudiating glance and asked of Kevin, "Yeah?"

"Did anyone take a truck out last Friday? That would be the fourteenth." Kevin asked him directly.

"Take a truck out? What for?" His voice lacked respect and did nothing to hide his dislike of being asked.

"It doesn't matter what for. Do you know if anyone took a truck out?" Kevin looked directly at him expecting an answer.

"What truck?" It was difficult to tell if that was further impudence or just the response from a mind that couldn't deal with such a demanding question.

"Craig. A truck. Truck number 7345." Kevin consulted the screen to get the number. "One of those big units with the ramp and the winch inside. Did anyone take that truck? For maintenance, for whatever?"

"Is that thing telling you a truck went out Friday? Don't surprise me. Computers. Is that thing taking over from us already?" Kevin gave Roger an apologetic look, a look that begged a tolerance which Kevin himself must have acquired out of necessity.

"This thing," Kevin said carefully, "is telling me that truck number 7345 left the compound at 5:15 on Friday morning and was driven about 160 kilometers before it was brought back just before nine. All I want from you is, 'Do you know who took the truck out?'" Kevin made an almost imperceptible motion as if to get up, an action that quickly put an end to the sparing by Craig.

"No. Nobody took a truck. I wasn't here but nobody took a truck. We got no record of nothing."

"Someone did take a truck. That much we know. What I want to know is who?'"  Roger admired Kevin's acquired patience.

"That truck didn't go out of here. There was no maintenance done on anything Friday. Anything that went out for rental we got logged. That truck never went out. I'll bring my log." Now there seemed to be eager cooperation where only seconds ago there had been blatant resistance.

"I don't need to see the log book. A computer doesn't just make up information." Kevin said that with a bit less conviction than he could have. This was Roger's chance to help out.

"I'll review those records with our people back in the office. We'll make sure there wasn't some other problem. It does seem certain that the data is good because the information from the truck; the time and date, corresponded exactly with the data that came from the card reader at the main gate. I'm sure that......" Roger was cut off.

"That's a lot of crap!" Came a rude reaction from Craig. "No one has proved that damned thing works at all. I don't know why they bother with it. All that money spent and now no one knows what in hell is going on. There was nothing wrong with the way we were doing things."

This time Kevin did come to his feet. "Alright Craig. You can get back to the guard house." Craig did know when he had used up all his rope. He left, but not without coming within a breath of knocking into Roger with his shoulder as he turned. He closed the door with defiant clap and could be heard trudging over the graveled surface towards the guardhouse.

"That’s the only kind we can get to sit in a guard house all day and do next to nothing. If you know you're going to hire someone for a job that will drive them nuts, you may as well start off with someone who has a head start." Kevin said by way of explanation. "He's not great to work with but I can probably only replace him with another one like him." That seemed like a seasoned point of view to Roger.