I start rummaging around inside her desk. Mazie doesn’t keep her password in the usual places, but she does not lock her desk either. I go through her desk drawers one by one and come up empty. I notice a two-drawer file cabinet under her desk that is locked, and I am unable to find the key anywhere. I help myself to candy left in a bowl in a neighbor’s cube and stuff the wrappers into my back pocket so as not to create a trash trail exposing my unauthorized access to the Accounts Payable department. But search as I may, I cannot find Mazie’s password or any other personal details other than a couple of framed pictures of the grandkids. Leave it to the thief to take security seriously.
I continue my search in the Accounts Payable area, scoring big time at the candy lady’s cube. I suppose she thought it was clever to embed her password in a grocery list kept in a manila folder by her desk. But I knew that trick and noticed 6#sParsley immediately. Who would ever buy six pounds of parsley, anyway? I did give her partial credit; this was not the same as leaving it under a pen set. I hit a couple more floors on the lower levels, and by noon I have sixteen passwords, a list of Social Security numbers I discovered in an HR wastebasket, and a copy of a potential acquisition memo found at a printer in one of the Environmental Health and Safety work areas. I feel bored and decide I have enough information for one day; it is all too easy.
As I exit the elevator, I notice the janitorial crew heading to the executive elevator bank, which I had used to ride up to the thirtieth floor almost a week ago with Keith. On impulse and with total disregard for Moe’s instructions, I step in behind them as they get on the elevator, exit with them on the twenty-fifth floor, and piggyback in as they open the secure door that leads to Business Development and Treasury. This is an unexpected triumph. I smile at the cleaning women who assume I belong on the floor. I pass them and head for an empty office to figure out what to do next. Spanish chitchat is drowned out by the hum of vacuums as the women go about their work. Saturdays are the deep clean days, which means offices are unlocked to perform the extra duties. I decide to walk the floor and snoop around; a password here could prove useful. Not for Moe’s audit, but for my own surveillance of Bishop activities.
I stop by the coffee bar adjacent to a locked wing, and to my astonishment, I see a keychain hanging out of the lock of a door propped open with a trash can. This is the mother lode. There are not only keys on the chain but also security cards for the entire building. As I take the keys and head back to the elevators, I feel a little guilty about the theft. Surely one of the cleaners will lose her job over this. I wonder, too, if the theft will result in security changing locks and badge configurations. I will just have to wait and see. Most likely, I figure, the janitorial group for this building will not report the loss and instead just work around with their additional sets of keys rather than risk all of them getting dumped.
Now, I can easily use the key cards to get up to the thirtieth floor and poke around, but I decide to get out of the building and save any additional recon for another day. I need time to figure out what to do with all this new access. I try to keep calm as I settle into my car but cannot help feeling the nervous excitement of having done something dangerous.
I decide to continue snooping in Baldwin’s computer. Tulsa does not have an Internet café, so I head to the public library near downtown.
“Excuse me,” I ask the librarian at the desk by the entrance. “Do you have Internet terminals for the public?”
“Why yes we do, ma’am. Right over there.” She points to a row of computer stations between the fiction and the children’s section.
I grab a terminal near the back and scoot the thinly padded chair underneath me. After hitting Bishop’s remote system, I log in as Baldwin and access the webmail on the monitor screen. I notice instantly that many of the e-mails I had read Thursday have now been deleted. I read what’s there, but nothing too juicy remains in the account. I suppose Baldwin is being careful. I check his calendar and notice that he is in meetings with the insurance folks, lawyers, and the executive team for the next two weeks almost straight.
I log in as Marla, and she too has purged any explosion-related correspondence on which she had been copied. All that remains are the e-mails organizing lunches, business trips, and other benign communications. I access Marla’s LEAR file, but LEAR_2008_17_Houston_Gas is gone. To me this is a clear signal that Bishop is trying to eliminate any evidence that they knew or should have known that the Houston pipeline was corroded.
So far, I haven’t run across any evidence that corrosion is in fact the cause; it could have been a construction crew or terrorism. Still, it turns my stomach to think they are preparing to dodge responsibility for their decision not to take preventive measures in 2008. As far as I know, I have the only copy of LEAR_2008_17_Houston_Gas in existence, and now I have a responsibility to manage that information, even if I have obtained it illegally.
I feel a sense of importance for the first time in years, but at the same time I am terrified at the thought of mishandling it. This is not a Monday morning staff meeting, after all. I think about calling Bill Matheson to get some advice, but that doesn’t appeal to me; some big ego directing every move and cutting me out of decisions. I shake off my momentary lapse in confidence as I pull the flash drive and zip it into a secure compartment inside my purse. This is going to be great. If nothing else, it is an adventure of a lifetime.
“Did you find what you needed?” asks the librarian as I walk toward the glass doors leading to the parking lot.
“And then some.” I smile back at her as I make my exit.
CHAPTER TEN
The Sunday morning call from Lucy rings right on schedule, and I am in a heavy terry bathrobe sipping coffee on my balcony. Our conversation turns immediately to the explosion and how Lucy has known all along that “those people” I’m working for are evil.
“I’m beginning to agree with you,” I tell her, and I explain that my friends were casualties and what I have found in the files so far.
“What else do you have?” she asks after I tell her about reviewing the LEAR folders.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been through everything yet. This has all been really fast.”
“Why don’t you send me what you have and I’ll take a look?” Lucy offers.
I hesitate. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to send the files over the Internet, Lucy. I’m trying to be very careful. Taking those files was illegal, and I really don’t want to take a chance, even a remote chance, that anything gets traced back to me.”
What I don’t tell her is that I know my sister better than myself. She is an environmental fanatic who is likely to include kindred spirits on our communication if she isn’t under careful supervision. While I’m fairly sure that Lucy would not do anything without my consent, I am not comfortable sending incriminating files to someone who thinks jail time is a badge of honor when it’s for holding up environmental principles. The temptation might be too much for her.
Still, Lucy is brilliant. As Uncle Agamemnon summed up one day, “Tanzie smart, Lucy smarter.” A painful but true assessment, I have to admit. She has an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Cal Tech and a master’s degree in environmental sciences from Stanford. In her younger days, before venturing out into the world of colored cotton and sheep, Lucy worked in the oilfields wearing a hazmat suit that now doubles as her beekeeping outfit. She would no doubt be an excellent source of help in figuring out what other mayhem besides blowing up sleeping Houstonians the Bishop boys are covering up.
“How about coming to Tulsa, Lucy? We can work on this together. I haven’t seen you in ages.”
“I told you before, I have sheep issues,” she starts, but she almost immediately reverses course. “But I’ll make it work, somehow. I can only stay for a couple of days, though. Can you pay for the flight, Tanzie? I have zero cash at the moment.”
Her sudden enthusiasm to leave her beloved farm gives me pause. It is common knowledge
in our family that Lucy rarely travels anymore. In her middle age she has become neurotic about food and prefers to control every bit of what she eats by growing it herself. She is hugely suspicious of mass-produced food and convinced that the genetically modified varieties are the reason for the obesity and bad health of most Americans. On her farm she grows or raises just about every morsel she eats. She even grows her own wheat for flour and churns her own butter. I sometimes refer to her as the original little red hen.
The lure of getting involved in something that could potentially harm those evil Bishop boys must be compelling.
“Now look, Lucy,” I warn. “I want to be very clear before I formally include you in this. You absolutely cannot breathe a word about this to anyone. You cannot send files anywhere without asking me first. If you don’t think you can follow my rules before you commit to helping me, you need to let me know right now.”
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? Testin
g 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.
Revenge of the Cube Dweller Page 11