Revenge of the Cube Dweller (15 page)
Read Revenge of the Cube Dweller Online
Authors: Joanne Fox Phillips
There is a pause on the line, and I can tell Lucy is offended by my preemptive accusation. I suppress the urge to offer a quick apology and wait.
“Got it.” Again, there is some dead air.
“Hey, I’m sorry, Lucy. I’m just so terrified about all of this. On the one hand, this is so exciting and the first interesting thing I’ve done in years. But on the other hand, I’m worried that I’ll make some mistake and wind up in jail or in the papers.”
“Or perhaps let evil fiends get away with murder,” Lucy suggests.
“Yes, that too,” I say. “And yes, I get it. It’s not all about me.”
“I know you do.” That is a lie. Lucy has always considered me a selfish sort. She really wants in, though, I can tell. “It’ll be thrilling, Tanzie,” she says. “We’ll make a good team. I promise I won’t go all WikiLeaks on you.”
“You realize the last time we worked together, you wound up in bankruptcy court. Are you sure you want to become involved?” I ask, getting another painful subject out of the way.
“That wasn’t you; that was Winston,” she says happily. “I’ll get online and send you some flight times that work for me. I can’t wait to see you, Tanzie.”
“Me too. Love you, Lucy!” I hang up, grinning genuinely for the first time in quite a while. I already feel much more comfortable having someone smart to bounce information off of. Lucy is right. This is going to be fun. Shadowy, dangerous fun.
As I stand under the hot shower, it occurs to me that I should probably go over to the office and snoop around some more. Thanks to the cleaning crew, I now have access to every floor and restricted area at Bishop. Given the explosion and all the extra work going on, I am fairly sure that the building will not be abandoned like it was last week at Easter, but most weekend workers probably won’t be there until after church. I can always say I am doing an audit, even if I’m not. Hal might get mad, but so what. I can defray any bad PR with the fraud I have discovered. That would be fairly good insurance against being fired for putting my nose where it didn’t belong.
I dry my hair, get dressed, and head over to the Bishop building. As I cross the street, I am surprised to see two women leaving the building through the huge glass doors on the north side. It is Mazie and a friend who looks familiar. While Mazie is clearly in her fifties, the other woman is probably mid-thirties and quite attractive. “Hi there, Mazie,” I say cheerfully. Mazie
seems nervous but smiles. I wonder for a minute if she is on to me. “I thought I was the only one who had to work weekends around here.”
They both smile, but neither seems to want to make small talk.
“Bless your heart,” Mazie says finally as she moves past me. “Don’t work too hard!”
Mazie’s behavior piques my interest. It is fairly common for fraudsters to work after hours and on weekends. Maybe I can find something incriminating in her desk this time. So, instead of getting off on six, I decide to get off on nine and walk directly to Mazie’s cube. I cannot believe my luck when instead of a blank screen or the three grandchildren, I see the blue Windows screen staring back at me. Computers left unattended usually revert to a screen saver after about five or ten minutes of inactivity and require an ID and password to log back in. It is best to manually log out every time you leave your computer, but hardly anyone ever does.
Maybe Mazie and her friend have only gone to get something to eat and will be returning. I will have to keep my ears open. Most likely she and her buddy are off to worship with Elly May. I access the settings screen and disable the automatic log off feature. That way I am free to do some exploring without worrying that I’ll be kicked out in the middle of accessing Mazie’s files.
I leave Mazie’s cube, looking for another monitor that is still logged on. I go up and down the row of cubes but find nothing. I decide to check the offices and still come up empty. I make a quick stop at the candy lady’s cube to score a mini Kit Kat or two. As I shove the chocolate into my mouth and the wrapper into my pocket, my eyes are drawn to a family photo that’s
tacked to the canvas bulletin board under some hanging cabinets. The picture is a mom, dad, three preschool-aged girls, and an overweight black doggie with white around its muzzle.
The woman is Mazie’s friend—a little younger, perhaps, but I am sure that’s who it is. Amy Larson, I read off the nameplate hanging from her cube’s exterior wall. During my time in Mazie’s cube, Amy’s computer has reverted to the login screen, but I found her password yesterday during my security sweep, so if I want to, I can get in. I wonder what kind of car she drives; if she and Mazie are in cahoots, probably a Mercedes minivan with all those kids.
I return to Mazie’s cube and access her Outlook account to read her e-mail. Nothing exciting here: just some approvals for vendor setup, Bishop communications, and daily Pottery Barn sales alerts. The woman with her had me contemplating whether there is more to her scheme than I have found so far. I wonder if she might be an accomplice. The vendor fraud I found while doing Frank’s test was strictly a one-person gig. When two or more people are involved in a fraud, it’s referred to as collusion. With collusion, controls that rely on segregation of duties for their effectiveness are compromised. Fraudsters tend to work alone.
As Ben Franklin said, “Three may keep a secret, as long as two of them are dead.” Involving more than one person in a crime increases risk exponentially, and you can never fully trust someone else not to turn you in if it saves his or her hide. But if Mazie does have an accomplice, she can get away with a much bigger take, potentially in the millions. I now feel curious to test out some fairly typical scenarios. The first step is to find out exactly what her access allows her to do. I bring up
the invoice-processing screen of her accounting software. All the fields are grayed out, which means Mazie cannot process a voucher for payment. Pretty typical.
I go to the vendor maintenance screen and am trying to figure out how to set up a vendor when I hear the elevator ding and two female voices getting progressively louder.
“Shit,” I whisper and freeze momentarily to assess my limited options.
Staying cool under pressure is one of my best traits. It has allowed me to sink long putts when needed to clinch many a championship in my day. Thinking swiftly, I decide it is better to at least try to make a hasty exit, and I hit the Windows icon, click on the shutdown tab, and click on
log off
. I don’t have enough time to get to the stairs or elevator without being seen, so I grab my purse, crawl into an empty office, and hide under the desk. My activity makes the automatic overhead office light turn on. I suppress panic, tell myself to stay calm, and take a deep breath.
“Is Jane here?” I hear Mazie ask as they walk by.
“I didn’t see her earlier,” Amy replies. From the volume of their voices, I can tell they are standing in the office doorway. Beads of sweat are forming on my brow from a stress-induced hot flash. It is a very real possibility that they might walk around Jane’s desk and find me.
“Go check the coffee bar,” Mazie barks as she approaches the desk.
I hold my breath, trying to think of an excuse. Hide and seek? Testing evasive tactics if a crazed gunman comes in and shoots up the place? I close my eyes.
I remain absolutely still even when I hear Mazie’s foot bump
the bottom of Jane’s desk. Has she seen me? I hear Mazie leave Jane’s office.
“No one’s in the coffee bar,” I hear Amy report.
“Her computer’s not on and I didn’t see a purse. Must have been a janitor or someone from financial reporting stopping by. I think we’re okay.”
The sound of footsteps gets fainter as they head toward the cubes down the hallway.
“Stupid janitor’s been eating my candy,” Amy complains casually.
I can hear their conversation, which means they will hear me if I make any noise.
I am dying to get out of the tight space and rub my calf that has started to cramp. The waiting is almost unbearable. I long to stretch but don’t dare.
To pass the time I go over in my head what they might be up to—Mazie setting up fictitious vendors and Amy processing them through, perhaps. There might be some additional steps required, but that’s generally how a two-crook operation in accounts payable works. A loud ping from my purse gives me a fright. Once again I freeze, but it doesn’t seem as if they heard anything.
“Almost done, Mom?” I hear Amy ask. “I need a smoke break.”
Mom! This is making sense now.
“Give me five minutes and then we can go,” I hear Mazie say.
“Okay, I’ll meet you outside.”
The best accomplices are family. Just ask the O’Leary girls. I smile as I recall an incident from my teenage days in San Francisco.
When Lucy and I were in high school, we both had after-school jobs at Joseph Magnin, a high-end department store in downtown San Francisco. Lucy was sixteen and worked in the gift-wrapping station. I had lied about my age and at fifteen was hired in the Juniors department.
When it came time for our eighteen-year-old sister, Blondie, to graduate, our mother and Mrs. Cosmos, across the street, had fixed Blondie up with Spiro Cosmos to go to their high school prom together. Neither Blondie nor Spiro was very excited about the other, but since neither had any better option, both agreed to go along with the arrangement.
“Blondie, that dress is way too small,” I said as she handed me the silver lamé gown to ring up one afternoon in late April. Chubby Blondie was always on a diet, but discipline was not her long suit, so the regimens never lasted more than a day or two.
“I’ll go on a diet. I have a month before the dance. It’ll be good incentive for me.”
I shook my head. There was no way Blondie, at least a fourteen, was going to skinny down to a size eight in a month, but I knew better than to take issue with her delusion. The dress cost more than $100, a huge sum in those days, and it represented at least a month’s worth of tips from her waitress job.
At home, Blondie hung the dress on the closet door so she could look at it every morning when she got up, presumably to keep the lasagna at bay. Still, as the
days wore on, it was clear that her goal was unrealistic, and panic was starting to percolate inside her.
The hair salon at Magnin’s was at the top of a curved ornate staircase with red plush carpet that was the focal point of the store entrance. The Juniors department was right next to the salon, and I waved to Blondie when she came in for her hair appointment the Saturday of the dance.
“What are you going to do, Blondie? Can we find you another dress?”
“I have a plan. But keep quiet. No matter what. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said and went back to my department.
A few minutes later I heard a scream from near the staircase and watched as customers and employees ran over to see what had happened. There at the foot of the staircase was Blondie, legs akimbo. Even from the top of the stairs I could tell she wasn’t hurt badly, so I ran and got Lucy.
We charged down the stairs and told the store manager, Mr. Gamble, that this was our sister.
“We’ve called an ambulance. It should be here shortly. We are so sorry this happened.”
“Lipstick,” Blondie mumbled. “Lipstick.”
Lucy and I exchanged looks. I went to the top of the staircase and there on the second step was a Revlon lipstick in Passionate Pink. It looked brand new.
“Is this yours?” I asked Blondie as the paramedics were loading her onto a stretcher.
“No. That’s not my shade,” Blondie answered
dramatically. “I think I sprained my ankle. Does it look swollen?”
Lucy and I looked at Blondie’s ankles. Each looked as chubby as the other.
“Hard to tell,” Lucy replied.
Mr. Gamble let us both off work to accompany Blondie to the hospital, where the doctor wrapped one of her ankles in an ace bandage. Not a serious injury, he told us, but she should stay off of it for a few days just to be safe. A nurse came by with some crutches for her to use.
“If you didn’t want to go to the prom, Blondie, why didn’t you just pretend to be sick? That’s what anyone else would have done,” I said while we waited for the number 2 Clement Muni bus to take us home.
“No one would have believed me,” Blondie said. “They would have thought I was faking.”
Mama just sighed and muttered some Greek expression under her breath when the three of us arrived at the house. She was well acquainted with how Blondie’s mind worked and must have suspected the injury was neither real nor accidental. Still, she didn’t pursue the matter beyond what we told her. Spiro sent flowers and candy to the house and we spent the evening watching the
Mary Tyler Moore Show
and eating chocolates. In an effort to thwart a lawsuit, Mr. Gamble refunded the cost of Blondie’s gown, which Lucy wore to her prom two years later.
Blondie never worried that Lucy or I would tell Mama or Mr. Gamble about her caper. She understood
the bond between sisters too well. The following week when I found a Rexall Drug receipt for one Passionate Pink lipstick in the wastebasket I was emptying, I tore it into tiny pieces.