2 Executive Retention

by Maria E. Schneider

  Uh-oh. Straight from the fat into the fire. "What makes you so certain I know?" Suzy had replied to my email, but pointed out that she hadn't had a job when baby Maureen came along because she was already a stay-at-home-mom for Jimmy.

  "Simple. You lie to people all the time. It's all that undercover work you do. This should be easy. All you have to do is lay out a plan for how we keep the entire hospital fooled."

  Oh...boy.

  Chapter 18

  Sunday morning I visited Huntington at his condo and told him to expect a visit from Derrick. I also mentioned Jacques' previous job history. Since I didn't think he would be any help at all with Brenda's problem, I left that out of the conversation.

  Huntington must have taken painkillers because he didn't seem to be focusing too well. He split his gaze between me and the ceiling. He sat on the couch with his arm in a sling. I couldn't tell how bad his leg might be because he was dressed in dark blue pants. There was a cane propped on the couch next to him. He smiled for no reason that I could see.

  Maybe it wasn't such a bad time to ask him some questions. I started with an easy one. "I think it would be a good idea if I had Mark's cell number in case of an emergency." I had a list of good reasons for needing it, but before I could mention a single one, Huntington recited a number in an almost sing-song voice.

  "Oh. Great! Thanks." Since he was so cooperative, I plunged ahead. "I'd like to meet the accountant that put you on the case in the first place. I mean, I know I'm not working on the case anymore, but just to clear up a few questions."

  Huntington didn't even look at me. I plowed ahead. "Ben something? Remember? Do you know his phone number?"

  His eyes drifted to his briefcase. I helpfully offered to look it up.

  When he didn't protest, I opened his briefcase and quickly located a Blackberry tucked inside. It was quite tempting to take the whole electronic gadget and mine it for information, but I settled for the phone number. "Now then, his name was Ben…?"

  "Martineeez," Huntington had gone from mellow to slurred.

  I found the name Ben Martinez without further help from Huntington. "How about we meet tonight if I can get hold of him?" I figured my luck would run out if I waited to get Huntington's agreement after the medication had worn off, plus the guy probably had to work tomorrow, and I know I did.

  Since Huntington didn't say a word, I said, "I'll just call him." I zipped over to the phone and dialed. Sadly, Mr. Martinez was out. I took a huge chance and left a message. "I'm calling for Steve Huntington. I work for Mr. Huntington and was wondering if you could meet tonight…" I wracked my brains for a good place and then settled on the condo. "Can you meet at Huntington's condo to discuss the Acetel account? Say five-thirty or six? Here's a phone number where you can reach me if you're unable to make it." I could bring Chinese. We would all be one happy family while I pumped Mr. Ben Martinez for the information that Huntington was so fond of leaving out.

  I hung up and went into the sparkling stainless steel kitchen to make some coffee in the little four-cup pot. Huntington looked like he might need some later. I would have offered him some right away, but when I turned back around, his head had fallen back against the plush leather couch. He was snoring very softly.

  I snuck into the bedroom and stole a pillow. I tried to gently coax Huntington over sideways, but it didn't work. Finally, I put the pillow down and shoved him over, making sure his bad arm was on top. He was dead to the world, so I put his feet up on the couch and took off his silly dress shoes. Man was sick at home on a Sunday and dressed for business.

  With his eyes closed and his face relaxed...it was amazing how much he looked like Mark. My heart skipped. Bad direction to be thinking.

  I left Huntington a note about the meeting at five-thirty since he probably hadn't heard the phone call, and if he had, he wasn't likely to remember. I checked his breathing one more time and was quite satisfied that he wasn't going to die immediately. Since I had been visiting the poor and sick, I figured I could skip church. Well, I had visited the sick, anyway.

  After grocery shopping and house cleaning, I was a nervous wreck, afraid to answer the phone in case it was Huntington, but scared not to in case it was the accountant. Even if Martinez called to cancel, I wanted to talk to him.

  By four o'clock, I had worn a groove in the carpet and worked up a sweat. I took a shower and dressed in a nice professional pantsuit, one of the leftovers from helping Huntington the last time. It was a rich dark purple and brought out the depth in my gray eyes.

  Not wanting to be late, I hurried along, picked up food at Happy Family Chinese and made it to the condo with five minutes to spare. I breezed past Michael, the attendant, with a casual, "No need to announce me."

  Michael wasn't fooled. He had his hand on the phone as I darted into the elevator. He probably had special instructions where I was concerned.

  Huntington was less pleased than I anticipated. The door was open, and he glowered from within, one hand on his cane and the other holding onto the door hard enough to break the wood.

  "Hungry?" I queried, holding up the peace offering.

  He stared at me, a muscle in his jaw working. "You drugged me."

  "I most certainly did not!"

  My honest denial seemed to throw him. He backed off slightly, allowing me entrance.

  "Why exactly did I want to meet with Ben? And I thought you weren't working on the case any longer?" Huntington would have towered over me, but I skipped on into the kitchen. He leaned heavily on the cane and had to gimp after me. He stopped at the couch, but since I was busy setting food out on the little glass breakfast table, he forced himself to walk to the kitchen nook and sat there instead.

  I gave him my best professional smile. "We need to discuss the case. Remember, I told you that Jacques used to work for Kronology, and he is really pushing their client case hard--more so than it deserves. It's possible Jacques is our prime candidate for getting paid on the side." I laid out my theory with enthusiastic detail. "Jacques may be lining his pockets by taking on Kronology cases and getting Acetel employees to help with the problems for his own gain. Once Kronology publicly tells Acetel there is no solution, Jacques probably gets one of his old buddies to provide the customer with the solution on the side, and he pockets the money from the customer."

  It was pretty obvious that Huntington didn't remember any part of our earlier conversation. It was also clear that he didn't trust me. The knock on the door saved me from further embellishment. Since he was already sitting, I helpfully answered the door.

  "Ben?"

  The man at the door was not the expected bald little fat stereotype with round glasses. He was businessman polished, and although he was probably in his late thirties, he still had most of his dark hair. "Hi, you must be Sedona?"

  His long stride brought him forward, and we shook hands. He set down his black leather briefcase and shrugged out of a dark wool trench coat. A gold Cartier watch briefly snagged on the lining. "What's with the sling?" he greeted Huntington. "You been up skiing already and take a spill?"

  Huntington grunted some sort of response while I slid into the kitchen. "Can I get you something to drink? I hope you like Chinese. It's dinnertime, so we thought it would be nice to feed you since you came all this way on your day off."

  Ben looked a little perplexed, and I realized that except for the trench coat, "all this way" could have been the downstairs condo for all I knew. He looked at Huntington who said, "Help yourself. Bar is right behind you."

  Ben did, and I served the cartons of food. "I was just telling Huntington a few things that I've learned, but nothing is concrete. I was hoping we might brainstorm a few ideas and figure out areas that need a closer look."

  Ben missed the tension in the air despite the fact that Huntington glared at me every time he looked my direction. "I never had much more than suspicions," Ben confessed. "The numbers look good, but a few quarters back, I started getting a bit of run around when I asked th
e managers for particular files. It's standard procedure to dig into greater detail every now and then to make sure the company is keeping proper records and can back up their write-offs. I wanted to see some of the original expenses broken down by unit and project." He shrugged. "When I finally asked Pete, the CFO about it, everything was turned over properly. Like I told Huntington, I wouldn't have thought anything of it except I happened to notice the file attributes."

  My mind went racing. "Attributes?"

  Ben wiped his mouth with one of the cloth napkins and explained, "After Acetel gave me access to their database, I was sorting through the list, comparing file names with some I had already looked through when I noticed in the file folder window the author of several of the official files showed up as "Silvanus" instead of A.J., Pete or one of the managers."

  "Silvanus?" That didn't sound like anyone I had met or heard of. "Silvanus what?"

  Ben chuckled. "There wasn't a last name, but the file attribute did list Acetel as licensing the software so at least it looked as though the files had been created at Acetel by someone who worked there. I actually thought it was kind of comical. Since when do the project managers use Roman gods as their ID?"

  I swallowed and choked. Roman gods? I could think of a few personality types, that might use a Roman god as a name. I didn't like the implication. "Which files had this name on them?"

  Ben helped himself to another serving. "About half of them that I requested, maybe more. It really doesn't matter who created the files as long as they are accurate. It was one of those little things out of place."

  Huntington finally put his two cents in. "The most obvious files were customer account files, which is why you're supposed to be sniffing through the customer accounts."

  But Radar had told me that the customer files weren't being tampered with. Had he been lying? Was one of his gamer IDs a Roman god?

  "This is excellent Chinese," Ben said. "Where did you get it?"

  "Happy Family Chinese. Were there any other clues in the files?"

  "Only the fact that if someone isn't skimming, this is one poorly run company. Other companies in the industry are on solid ground, and Acetel has plenty of work. Acetel charges hefty prices for the work that they do. There's no excuse for things to have gotten so bad they had to lay me off."

  Ben managed to hide most of his annoyance over being laid off, but it did make me wonder again about his motives for suggesting the investigation. Not all whistle blowers were innocent--and some might be after revenge. Regardless, I went after more information. "The only work I know of that Acetel has been providing, but not being paid for is when Acetel works on Kronology problems. Acetel tries to find a solution for the customer, but Kronology won't supply one so the customer never pays Acetel. What if a guy like Jacques were to provide a solution to the customer on the side? He could then talk the customer into paying him under the table."

  Ben shook his head. "The kind of losses we're talking about have to be more than one customer. If it were a single fifty thousand dollar contract missing now and then, it would be a blip on the balance sheet and wouldn't require layoffs."

  I pushed food around on my plate. "Kronology is the only company that I've come across so far that supposedly doesn't fix their problems, but there could be more."

  "The balance sheet has some unpaid accounts, but no huge red flags. It has to be subtle, whatever it is." Ben leaned back. "I don't think I can eat another bite."

  Huntington said, "The inside guy must be deleting records because there aren't enough unsolved cases to explain the loses. Whoever is guilty doesn't want the customers or Acetel to know. The only way to do that is to delete the evidence. Sooner or later our cameras are going to catch the guy with his fingers typing the keys on the wrong computer at the right time."

  I wasn't sure about that, but we had already discussed the cameras and their limitations.

  Ben got up and helped himself to another drink. "It's possible the company is just very poorly run. Little things don't make sense though. It appears they have more work than they can handle and plenty of large contracts. It should be more profitable."

  Huntington half closed his eyes. He was quiet for so long I wondered if he had passed out.

  "Huntington?"

  "No, there's definitely a problem somewhere," he said. "Because if everyone involved is so innocent, why did someone come after me with bullets?"

  Instead of feeling triumphant, I was even more dejected. "There is that," I agreed. The new facts didn't offer any additional hints that Jacques was involved either. Worse, Silvanus sounded like a really good gamer name, and I knew of at least two people at Acetel that fit that description. One of them also happened to be a very good hacker.

  Chapter 19

  Having officially resigned from Strandfrost, Monday morning, I marched into Acetel intent on getting some answers. Of course I still had company assignments, so I headed to the lab first. Before I could gather the data from the weekend performance run, I got lucky and saw Radar unlock the server room. The door was a whisker ahead of slamming when I nabbed it. Sliding in, I whispered, "Where are the cameras?" I looked up, but didn't see any. "Are there bugs too?"

  He looked amused. "No, but if you're worried stand this way and don't move your lips."

  To his surprise, I did as he suggested and then asked furtively, "I know you said you can tell if someone tampers with the service contract records, but have you checked to see if they deleted any records completely?" I told myself one more time that I was only substituting for Huntington until he recovered.

  Radar exhaled hard as if I'd punched him. He glanced up at the ceiling before leaning over to tie his shoe. "Those records aren't kept on these servers," he hissed.

  "I didn't ask you where they are," I clarified, uneasy in my own right. "I asked if you could look at them. I need to know a couple of things." When he didn't refuse, I continued. "First, how many contracts are completely unpaid. For example, how many times has a customer hired Acetel to obtain a solution for non-working equipment from Kronology, but never been paid because Kronology refused to admit there was a problem?" Ben wasn't convinced there were enough unpaid accounts to be the cause of the layoff, but I still thought Jacques might be running an illegal side deal, especially if solving Kronology problems might help his stock.

  Radar looked at me askance. "Why do you want to know how many failures Acetel has? Thinking of solving the cases to make yourself look good?"

  I ignored his smirk. "I also need to know if anyone is deleting service contracts entirely either before or after they have been paid." If an inside guy filled out a service contract, got the problem fixed and then somehow diverted funds to his own account, he could delete the record and he'd be home free. No one would notice that money was missing, because the whole case would be missing.

  Radar sat back up, but he fidgeted. "I told you, no one that shouldn't be is accessing those files. What are you looking for?"

  There were several holes in my theory, but Radar was going to be a lot more help than any cameras so I took a deep breath and plunged in. "I'm really not sure. I know you are tracking certain files, because you're wondering who is accessing them, but what if someone that has legitimate access goes in, creates the contract, but then later deletes part of the record or the entire record after the work has been completed?"

  He thought for a long time about it. He even sat down at the console and did some typing. I got more and more nervous while I waited. There was one big problem with asking Radar for help. He was good, and he was obviously a hacker. A very good hacker could mess with the service contracts any time, in any way. I didn't think Radar was guilty. He was the one that had mentioned to me that he thought something weird was happening. If he were guilty would he do that?

  Plus, I doubted that he carried a weapon. Unless he strangled me and left my body behind the computers, I was probably safe. That and there were cameras watching even if they didn't pick up on what we were s
aying.

  He finally answered. "I don't see how that could work. Why would the inside guy bother? He'd have to siphon money from a lot of contracts over time to make it worth his while. And he'd have to convince the customers to pay him under the table." Radar shook his head. "Plus, if he deleted the whole contract, someone might notice the missing contract eventually."

  "I don't see how it can work either," I agreed. "It would probably be safer for a thief to take money from part of a contract rather than delete the whole thing, but I don't want to overlook any possibilities."

  Surprised, he faced me again. "If you don't think the scheme would work, then why bother to look through the contracts?"

  I shrugged helplessly. Because if I didn't know how an inside guy was stealing money, maybe I could prove how he wasn't. And if Huntington happened to be right about the method, maybe I'd stumble across the proof he needed. Of course we'd still have to figure out who was changing or deleting the reports, but Jacques was an excellent candidate.

  "Who are you working for? The cameraman?"

  I pressed my lips shut.

  He rolled his eyes. "Okay, I can check file dates and see if there is a pattern of some contracts that started out huge and then later had stuff deleted. I haven't actually looked for deleted records either, but I can pull some things from tape backup to see if records are missing."

  "That would be excellent." I could tell he thought I was crazy.

  Radar shook his head. "The customers would have to be handing this guy a check or cash. You'd think that would make them a bit suspicious in this day and age of electronic payments."

  He was right. I could see Kronology paying Jacques on the side, but if he tried to work private deals too often, one or more of the companies would smell a rat and complain. "Maybe he gives them a fifty percent discount to pay him in cash under the table. Might make it worth it for some."

  I didn't want to stick around and give Radar time to shoot even more holes in my theories, so I scurried out and tried to look innocent when Vi saw me coming out of the server room.