Office Play: Freaky Geek Series

by Williams, Stephanie

  She walked the area of the purchasing department again. Looking at the clock on the wall, it was nine o’clock, which meant Renee and Noah were still in bed.

  Lucky dogs.

  She casually walked around the various cubicles and passed the many offices. She was trying to pick up on any bits of conversation that was questionable.

  Again, she heard someone placing a large order. She walked over and hid behind an empty cubicle.

  “That’s five laptops, two scanners, and five mega graphics software. Okay, email that to me then submit your purchase order sheet through the system.”

  Again, nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that that was a lot of laptops and software. But it could have been for another office that were getting new employees.

  She saw the person that took the order stand up and stretch, then walk off.

  It was then that Jeanette made a bold decision.

  When she noticed that the person was nowhere in sight, she looked around and made certain no one else was watching. She went to the desk and saw the paper that the employee wrote the items down on. She grabbed it and quickly ran to the nearest copy machine. After she made several copies, she placed the original back on the desk. Just in time too, the employee was just returning.

  Jeanette went back to meet with Adam.

  ***

  Adam made sure no one could see what he was doing. He controlled the lighting on the foreground on his laptop and it was facing him only.

  He typed furiously all the codes to break through encryptions. He carefully looked at coding for locations, employees and anything out of the ordinary.

  He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he knew something would jump out at him if it was there.

  “Hey, Adam.”

  He jumped a bit, startled by Jeanette’s sudden appearance. But he was so into the screen that she could have standing there all the time. “What is it?” She placed a piece of paper on his desk. “What’s this? He picked it up and looked at it. “Wow, lot of equipment. The software too. You know this graphic design software is thirty five hundred dollars—a piece?”

  “Whoa. This is the second time I heard someone order it too. That other time, they told me that they always order stuff like this for new employees,” Jeanette said, taking a seat next to him.

  “Glad you got this, I can check into it right now since I got this up and going.”

  “Ooh! You were able to get in to some of the employees computers?” she whispered and scooted her chair closer.

  Adam cocked his head. “Of course. Did you have any doubts?”

  “I forgot, you’re the IT geek.”

  “And you love it.” He side glanced over at Jeanette and saw her face flush.

  He was on a natural high since he got up this morning. In fact, he didn’t think he could get anything done, let along hack into his colleagues computers.

  He then looked at the purchase order system and noticed something strange but couldn’t place his finger on it.

  “You see something?” Jeanette asked. She got up and stood over his shoulder.

  “Not sure.” He kept scanning the paper, going carefully line by line. He then looked at his laptop screen. “That’s it!”

  “What? What?” Jeanette took the paper from him.

  “I’m not sure if it means anything, but these orders are going to Alaska.”

  “Oh? That’s it?” Jeanette took a seat in front of him, looking obviously disappointed.

  “I’m looking at a lot of expensive equipment going there too from looking at the system.”

  “Oh, that can be explained.” Jeanette waved her hand dismissively.

  Adam too off his glasses and looked at her. “Oh really?”

  “Yeah, one of the guys yesterday mentioned that whenever one of the other offices hire new people, they stock up a lot. And they could have gotten more employees and temps.”

  Adam nodded. “That’s usually the norm. They have new hires all the time. The advertising industry always had huge turnovers. But not the Alaska office. In fact….” Adam checked a piece of paper. “….this office is not hiring.”

  “Huh? What?” Jeanette’s eyes grew wide.

  “The office is not hiring, in fact they’re laying off.”

  “But….”

  Adam raised his hand, telling her to be quiet. He noticed some people milling around and he saw Kevin. When they left earshot, Adam pulled Jeanette’s chair closer to him.

  “What’s going on? Layoffs?”

  “Yeah. I’m looking at the back of my program and all of these orders are being diverted to the Alaska office. Then there are some direct orders, but they are not huge ticket items like the laptops and software. I see some servers too.”

  “Wow. Now what? We need to actually physically find those items,” Jeanette said.

  “Yeah, I know. We should be hearing from Renee and Noah by the time we leave.”

  “You’re not thinking of sending Renee to Alaska?” Jeanette looked horrified.

  “What, she can’t handle the cold?” Adam smirked. “No, I don’t think there’s a need for that, but we do need to wait to talk to them. You keep doing your thing and I’ll look more into this. I think I’m going to hack into one of the vendor’s systems too. Might as well, I’m already up to my eyeballs in this.”

  “Did you find anything with the employees? And can you hack into the vendors without getting caught too?”

  “I see something going on. Looks like data trying to be erased, but that could be anything. A website visited or a pop-up. I need more time and someplace quiet to really dig in. And yeah, I’m safe as long as I don’t do anything more questionable, like crash the site. I just want to see where a lot of stuff is going directly from the vendor.”

  “Okay, let me do some more snooping. Oh, are we going to update Sam on this?”

  Adam thought a moment. This was definitely something they needed to keep to themselves. If he told her what they found, then he would have to get into why Noah was really there, then that would then lead to Renee.

  This needed to be taken care of behind close doors. It’s not that he didn’t trust Sam, but the less other parties knew the better.

  “Do you trust Sam?”

  Jeanette’s question brought him back and got him to thinking again.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust her, it’s just that the less other people know the better. We don’t need anyone to know what were doing. I have a feeling we’re close to solving this. I doubt very seriously if Sam has anything to do with this. But then again this is getting wackier by the day.

  Jeanette sighed. “So now what?”

  Adam looked at the paper again. Something was bothering him. It wasn’t just the fact that these high end supplies where going to Alaska. It was something else. It was a niggling feeling he was getting that he didn’t like.

  “I’ll be glad when Noah and Renee calls. I need to tell them this, maybe they can figure it out on their end. But….”

  “But what?”

  “There’s something, I don’t know what, but something is bothering me about this beyond someone ordering all this for an office that’s laying off.” Adam slammed down the paper on the desk for the umpteenth time.

  Jeanette nodded, then got up. She patted him on the shoulder. “What are you doing for lunch? You want to eat with Kevin and Deena, she was here earlier asking.”

  “That might be a good idea. We can pick his brain, without him knowing we’re picking his brain. He has to know something.” Adam concluded.

  “He could be in the dark too. This is more than just people ordering extra pens for themselves. This is getting sinister.”

  That last statement hit Adam the wrong way too. He didn’t know why. The niggling feelings strike again.

  It was four forty-five, almost time to leave. Ironically, Noah would be just getting to work. He did say that he would call at his lunchtime. He and Jeanette would be at the hotel by then, ha
ving a late dinner.

  They decided not to have lunch with Kevin and Deena after all. They gave some feeble excuse of having to do some paperwork for the office back in the states and they wouldn’t be great company. Jeanette suggested that she give as much information about Kevin to Renee. She would check him out. Adam thought that was a good idea.

  “Hey you guys, want to go for dinner with us again? You worked through lunch” It was Kevin. He stuck his head around the corner of their office.

  Jeanette looked up, then looked over at Adam. He slightly shook his head.

  “No, that’s okay. I need to catch up on some sleep from the last time we went out.”

  “Ahhh, I see.” Kevin winked at both at them. “Well have fun…I mean get plenty of sleep.”

  Adam saw Jeanette’s face get beet red again. It was so cute.

  “Embarrassed?”

  “No.”

  “Liar.” Adam got up from his seat and stretched. “Let’s get out of here. I’m hungry, that little food we had at lunch did not hit the spot.”

  Jeanette giggled. “I know what you mean. How about ordering some more American fare?”

  “Hmm, something greasy, fattening and overall unhealthy. He rubbed his chin. “Cool.”

  “Maybe with full tummies, we can think better,” Jeanette chuckled.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was nine o’clock in the evening. Jeanette was staring at her plate, trying to figure out how to finish the triple cheeseburger and the few fries left on her plate. Just when she reached to pick up the other half of her burger, her cell rang.

  She put the greasy burger down and wiped her hands, before reaching over and grabbing the cell off the edge if the bed. “Hey Renee.”

  “Hey. I’m here with Noah for lunch going over some things.”

  “Now are you sure no one sees you two together?” Jeanette asked, with obvious concern.

  “Positive. Noah has to drive at least ten minutes to meet me. In fact, he’s complaining cause he doesn’t have enough lunch time.” She chuckled.

  “We get two hours here.” Jeanette retorted with obvious smugness.

  “Well la-de-da. Anyway, I got something for you guys.”

  “Oh, let me put you on speaker, cause we got something for you guys too.”

  “Wow, sounds like we were all productive today.” Renee said.

  Jeanette and Adam put their food aside. Which was a good thing, they both needed a break to get more room in their stomachs.

  Jeanette grabbed her cell and pushed the speaker button. “Okay Renee, watcha got?”

  “Samantha has been running around like a chicken with her head cut off,” Renee said.

  “Nothing new.” Adam smirked and got more comfortable on the floor next to Jeanette.

  “Well, apparently this is different from the norm. Noah told me she went flying straight to the purchasing department and ripped a new one to…what was her name?”

  Jeanette heard Renee talking with Noah.

  “Katie. Is that name familiar with either of you?”

  “Yeah, she’s under Laura,” Adam said. “Noah, did you nose around and see what was up?”

  “Yeah, she and Laura went to lunch together. I think Laura was going to have a talk with her, but that’s all I could get. But then I saw Laura go to Samantha’s office with a stack full of pink papers.”

  “Purchase orders!” Jeanette and Adam both said.

  “Well, something went down in purchasing. I tried listening to Samantha every time she stood next to a person from purchasing,” Noah said.

  Jeanette looked over at Adam. He was shaking his head, looking just as confused as she was.

  What was going on? This was crazy.

  “We were just having a little issue here and there, and now it seemed to have snowballed.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Jeanette said, getting up and grabbing her soda. “Anything else Renee, any background info on Laura and now this Katie?”

  “They’re both clean….but….”

  “But what? Adam asked.

  “They are acting very strange. Laura is a woman of few words, and very abrupt. I told you the run in we had yesterday,” Noah said.

  “Yeah, but that’s her personality.”

  “Or lack thereof,” Noah quipped.

  “We’re going back to the office soon, will you be up later?”

  “Just call, in fact we’ll put in for a wake up call for the time that we think you’ll call.”

  “Cool. Oh, you said you have some info for us.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Jeanette and Adam went over in great detail the findings. They told her about the several orders for large ticket items that the Paris office made for the office in Alaska. They told them about Kevin. Although Jeanette didn’t have any reason to suspect Kevin of anything, she still thought he needed watching since the final stop for all purchases was with him.

  Adam reiterated how the Alaska office was laying off, yet so far over a dozen laptops and software was ordered for them.

  “Did you say the Alaska office?” Noah asked.

  “Yeah, why? You heard something?” Adam sat up a little straighter.

  “Hmm. Oh yeah, when I was trying to snoop when Samantha was talking to one of the people on the order desk. I heard her say something, like ‘Oh, it’s Alaska again.’”

  Jeanette and Adam both looked at each other with alarm.

  “Okay, that’s great, we’re going to let you go, we’re going to finish eating and catch up on some sleep.”

  “Okay, call ya’ later.” Adam disconnected.

  “Why did you hang up so quickly?” Jeanette asked, getting up and reaching for her unfinished burger.

  “I just remembered what you asked me back at the office, about Sam.”

  “Oh, about trusting her?”

  “Yeah. She wanted us to spend more time here. We’re were suppose to come back Wednesday, now we’re coming back over the weekend.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense. She was so desperate to hire me and solve this.”

  Adam held down his head and shook it. “I know, but this is really strange. I mean the phony orders are just out of control now.”

  “Why don’t we call Sam, she should be back from lunch now. I’ll talk with her first, maybe I can get a bead on something.”

  Jeanette grabbed her cell again and punched in the office number. “I’ll just ask if she’s seen anything peculiar or something on her end. I’ll catch her reaction.”

  The phone rang three times, then Paula answered. “Good afternoon, Lambert, Parker and Bradley, how may I direct your call.”

  “Hello Paula, it’s Jeanette.”

  “Hey! How are you? It’s like late there huh? How is Paris? I have yet to get to visit the office. Oops hold on.”

  Jeanette shook her head. To be young again.

  “What is it?” Adam asked scooting closer to her.

  “Pamela started talking a hundred miles her hours, then put me on hold.”

  “That girl. If she wasn’t one of the partners’ niece, she would only be qualified to work at a pizza joint. But she’s a sweet kid.” He shrugged and took another bite of his burger.

  “Wow, I didn’t now that.”

  “It’s a well know ‘secret’ in the office,” Adam said, quoting his fingers.

  “Ahh.”

  “Hello Jeanette! How are you doing?”

  Jeanette was a little started by Sam’s voice. “We’re doing great. Glad we’re here through the end of the week.”

  “Let’s be honest, who can complain about a business trip to Paris.” Sam chuckled.

  “True, true.” Jeanette thought carefully about what she was going to say next.

  If Sam was in on this, which seemed all too weird, she didn’t want to tip her hand to her. Even Adam was beginning to have doubts, and he really liked Sam. But now things were getting desperate.

  Just by Jeanette’s calculation from th
e past few weeks alone, the company has lost over thirty thousand dollars. That wasn’t counting the over quarter million. And it was still adding up.

  “I actually do miss the office. How is everyone there?”

  “Um…great. Hold on a minute.”

  Jeanette pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it.

  “What is it?” Adam asked.

  “She put me on hol—”

  “Sorry about that. I had to close the door. Everything is not going so great.” Sam sighed.

  “Oh?”

  “First, let me start off with some good news. Adam’s brother Noah is back working with us. This was a while ago of course. But he was one of the graphic artists and he recommended Adam to us.”

  “That’s fantastic. So I’ll get to meet him when I get back,”

  “Yep. By the way, he’s just as good looking as his brother.”

  Jeanette rolled her eyes. She knew what was coming next.

  “By the way, I meant to talk to you about that.”

  “About what?”

  “You and Adam.”

  “Oh, aren’t we doing our jobs?”

  “It’s not about work. This is more personal. Word has it, well rumor has it that Adam is interested in you.”

  Damn! Really? How did that rumor get started? She gave no hint that she was even attracted to Adam. And she knows Adam didn’t say anything.

  She looked over at Adam and threw up her hands in frustration. “I don’t have any idea how that rumor got started. You’ve seen us together. Nothing but professionalism.”

  “I know, I know. That’s what I told everyone.”

  Jeanette felt her heart sink. “The whole office knows?”

  “Only certain folks, but enough. But I just want to give you some advice. I’ve known Adam for five years. He’s good people. I don’t know you that well, however I get good vibes from you. There are some people here, not mentioning any names, that are haters.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do. They can make your life miserable. I’ve been though this before.”

  Jeanette thought about the fiasco that Adam told her about. Of course, Sam was there through all of that. She was probably the one that had to send one of the parties to The Alas….”