Fortunately, there was no sign of the security cop. Things were moving along as I’d hoped they would. By the time we reached Julia’s house, four catering vans had just pulled up to the gate. The driver of the first van reached out and pushed the button, then leaned out of the window toward the speaker to identify himself. A moment later the gates swung open and all of the vans drove in. Kate and Cameron crouched down as they slipped in alongside one of the trucks. I waited until the gates closed and there was enough confusion with everyone going in and out of the house before I strolled up to the gates and pushed the speaker button.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“Hi, is that you, Bernice? It’s Kimberly Martin, from the other night. You know, from the party and meeting. I was wondering if I might come in. Yeah, I’m the one who lives here in Seattle. I think I might have left my scarf here yesterday. It’s one of my favorites, and if I could just look for it…”
The unsuspecting maid buzzed me in. By then I had taken off my glasses and was holding the hat in my hand. “Thanks, so much, Bernice. I really love that scarf.”
I kept saying her name because people like it when you remember their name. It makes them feel important.
She smiled. “I’m surprised you remembered me.”
I kept a watch on the catering people as they dis-assembled everything and carried tables and chairs out to the vans. As we had hoped, they were so busy, I was almost positive they hadn’t noticed my partners in crime come in or slip upstairs. Good. Just then my cell phone vibrated.
I reached into my pocket and said, “I’m sorry, Bernice. This will just take a moment.” The text message on the screen from Cami said: we are in.
Now all I had to do was keep Bernice busy.
She looked at me, all smiles. “Of course I remembered you. You’re one of the nice ones.”
My hand swept the messy aftermath of the party. “So, I guess once they clear everything out you have lots of work to do before the owners get back. How many people are they sending to help you clean up?”
She grumbled. “Owners? It’s just that Miss Harris who lives here, and she’s off on a business trip. That woman is a real task master, she is. It’ll just be me doin’ all the work. She’s too cheap to pay any helpers.”
I decided to take a chance. “Miss Harris? You mean my boss owns this place.” I played dumb. “I thought she rented it for the weekend. Shows how much I know.”
Bernice snorted. “Yep. She owns it, alright. Guess she didn’t want anyone to know she’d come into money. I can understand not wanting all those out-of-towners to know, but I’m surprised you didn’t know, working here in her office here and all.”
Her tone made it very clear Bernice didn’t like Julia which made it easier to keep her occupied. If I stoked her resentment, maybe I’d learn something more in the bargain. I patted the areas around sofa cushions to make it look like I was searching for my scarf and even got down on my hands and knees to look under furniture. Of course, she followed behind me as I kept talking. That kept her attention away from the stairs.
I lifted a chair cushion and pretended to see if the scarf was there. “Actually she doesn’t tell me much. If you ask me, Bernice, I think she’s a pretty cold fish.” I slapped my forehead. “Omigod. Please forget I said that. It could get me fired.”
Bernice reacted exactly as I hoped she would. “Cold ain’t the half of it! That woman’s an iceberg. Not at all like those nice Pattersons who owned this house before. They treated me real good. Then they lost all their money in some dot com crashes and had to sell the place. But even then they was lookin’ out for me. They convinced Miss Harris to keep me on.” She lowered her voice. “Quite frankly, I’m looking for another job, though.” She wrinkled her nose. “Can’t stand her.”
Whew. Sharing our dislike of the boss sort of made us comrades.
Time passed with Bernice helping me look for the phantom scarf, sometimes doing more chattering than looking, until finally the crew was almost finished. I knew we had to get out soon, so I reached into my pocket and acted like I had to answer a call on my cell phone. Instead of answering a call or text, I pressed the programmed key to alert Cami that everyone was leaving. A few minutes later, she and Kate had almost reached the bottom of the circular staircase, when the catering crew’s boss spotted them and called out, “Who the hell are you two?”
~29~
Although Kate appeared a bit stunned, Cami immediately snapped back, “What do you mean who are we?” She skipped down the last few stairs, then stood on her tip toes to get right in his face. He took a step back while she jabbed her finger at the name embroidered on his shirt pocket. With a big show of attitude, she challenged, “I’m Maria Marlena Lopez, that’s who I am Howard, and this is my cousin Pepita. Your boss did call you this morning to say he was sending two extra people, didn’t he?” She signaled to Kate to join her. I stood there frozen to the spot.
“Wha—what are you talking about?” Confusion was written all over his face.
She glared at him with an expression of pure disgust. “I wish you people would get it straight. This isn’t the first time this has happened.” She put her hands on her hips and leaned toward him, aggressive as could be. “I told him he better be sure to call you. We work our butts off, and we sure don’t need some bozo shouting ‘Who are you?’ I’ll tell you who we are! We’re the ones who are going to send your boss a big bill for our time, that’s who we are. Come on, Pepita. We don’t need to take this shit.” She dragged a stunned Kate toward the door.
Kate called over her shoulder, “See if we’ll ever work for your company again on such short notice.” The two of them flounced out. I had no doubt they would be waiting for me at the car. I’d caught Cami’s subtle smile before she slammed out, pushing Kate in front of her.
The poor crew chief had no idea what had just happened. I almost felt sorry for him when he dialed his cell phone. I wondered what would happen after he discovered no one had hired extra people. Time for me to get out! I quickly thanked Bernice and said I must have lost the scarf somewhere else. Once I turned the corner, I headed for the post office.
Kate and Cami were sitting on a bench outside the brick building. They had taken the wigs off, and I figured they probably shoved them into the Priority Mail box balanced on Cami’s lap. Kate said, “Quick. Let’s get out of here. I’ll tell you all about it in the car.”
I beeped the remote and we climbed in, secure in the knowledge there would never be a reason for Bernice to connect me to the two angry catering people. Down the street a parking enforcement vehicle cruised the street. The officer leaned out chalking tires. In our haste to get to the mansion, we hadn’t even noticed the sign that said parking restrictions were enforced on Sunday.
A ticket wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but the idea of coming that close to evidence that we were there struck fear in my heart. Kate and Cameron both ducked down below the windows so no one could see there were three people in the car. If the catering guy had called the cops after he discovered “Maria” and “Pepita” had no business being in the house, they might already be checking the area for two women with black hair.
I kept telling myself if I got pulled over for any reason, there was no way my blonde and auburn-haired passengers would be taken for the two home invaders. Kate had even pulled the purple sweater I keep on the backseat over her white blouse. I clenched the wheel with shaking hands, and drove at exactly the speed limit. As soon as we were out of Medina, we all talked at once.
Pumped up on adrenaline, we kept rehashing how scary but satisfying it had been. After all, we actually pulled off our undercover operation. Julia’s computer wasn’t even password protected and Kate had been able to blast through a wealth of emails, documents and spreadsheet listings, searching for anything that looked suspicious. Apparently she’d found plenty. She reached into her purse and pulled out a second flash drive. Brushing her hair back from her face in a nervous gesture, she said, “I th
ought we might need this if we hit pay dirt. Good thing I did. Both of them are just about full. I copied everything, and forwarded a bunch of emails. Dumb cow. She keeps all of this on the computer and I guess she didn’t think she needed to protect it since no one was supposed to know that was her house. Wait until you see what I’ve got.”
Cami pulled a sheaf of papers out of her tote bag. “I grabbed lots of stuff out of her files and copied them using her own all-in-one printer. With so much banging and slamming going on downstairs, I’m sure no one heard anything. Boy, those caterers were noisy. Hey, by the way, I even thought to put more paper in the tray afterward so she wouldn’t suspect anything.”
I felt my body lapse into neutral. “How about stopping for some coffee? I think I need to calm down before I drive any further.”
“Forget coffee, that won’t mellow you out,” Cami said. How about some wine? That place up ahead looks promising.”
I parked in front of the pub-like facade of Hal’s Hangout. Moments later, we lounged in a comfortable booth sipping chardonnay and going over what happened.
Cami said, “Okay, ladies, I’m the advertising pro. To me, image is everything. Think about it. People remember names like First Wives’ Club and Charlie’s Angels—I think we should give ourselves a name, just for fun.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Hmmm, do you like Truth Seekers?” She answered her own question, shaking her head. “Nope, not snappy enough. What do you think of Fraud Busters? I sort of like that.”
Kate shook her head. “Your imagination is running away with you. Sounds like a bad TV show. I’m the marketing person. I think Conspiracy Crunchers is good.”
I broke in. “Hmmm. Has a good ring to it, but sorry Kate, I actually like Fraud Busters better. “
Cami said, “Let’s go with that—at least for now. You know, Kimberly, with a little creative license, it could even apply to your swindling ex-boyfriend Ryan. He may not exactly qualify for fraud, but he was a lying cheat, not to mention a thief. By the way, did you ever hear anything more about him?”
I laughed out loud. “I sure did. A few months back I met some of his other victims and we’re really putting the screws to him. He’ll curse the day he ever met us, but that’s another story. Let’s save it until after we get past this whole mess. You’ll love it. I guarantee. All I’ll say now is that Pretty Boy is going down and I have some serious clout.”
We slapped hands. “To the Fraud Busters, we seek and destroy.”
Then Cami said, “So, Kate, give us the overview of what you found. We can look at the files I copied back at Kimberly’s place.”
“Actually, let’s just enjoy the wine and settle down. We can go over all of it later. I played safe and forwarded every email that meant anything to all three of us and made sure to erase the trail from her sent file. How considerate of her to keep everything lumped together in a few files on her Outlook. I also think we should make DVD copies of the documents I copied to the flash drives, unless you have a few spare flash drives Kimberly. That way each of us will have our own copy of everything that’s incriminating. I know it sounds like cloak and dagger, but if any of us are found out, it’s really important to have extra copies. They always do that on detective shows.”
We were on fire. As it turned out, I did have a couple of spare flash drives I’d won in a drawing plus I always keep two extras on hand. There we sat—three brilliant minds as crafty as the female super sleuths we admired. At least, that’s the way we saw ourselves. Unfortunately, sometimes what you see isn’t reality.
Our waiter stopped at the table and indicated our empty glasses. “Another round ladies?”
~30~
We flaked out on my living room sofas and Kate filled us in about everything she discovered. “What a treasure trove. It never should have been so easy to open those files, but I write it off to Julia’s arrogance. She must figure she’s bulletproof.”
I popped a piece of chocolate into my mouth, savoring its luscious flavor. “I think you could be right. She’s cunning in some ways and so dumb in others.”
Kate nodded. “Imagine. Besides the Outlook files, all I had to do was click an icon on her desktop labeled ‘The Cause’,” and it immediately brought up a file filled with evidence.”
Cami and I both snatched chocolates from the box on the cocktail table. Cami washed hers down with a swig of wine. No question—she was stoked. Cami rarely ate candy.
“The emails I forwarded to both of you were from [email protected], [email protected] and someone who used [email protected]. Ghost might be Bruce, but I’m really not sure. I guess they thought they were being evasive by sending the messages from personal accounts, but Julia’s stupidity in keeping all of them could be their downfall. Some evasion. A kid could have found all of that.”
Cami jumped up from the sofa and began to pace, wine glass in hand. “Okay, Kate, what if Julia is able to tell someone was poking around in her computer? What if you left a cyber trail or whatever they call it?”
“Calm down. First of all Julia isn’t that computer savvy. If she was, she would have encrypted the messages or hidden them in an obscure file. Anyway, since I erased all of the forwarded messages from her sent file, she’ll have no way of knowing her computer was invaded. I skimmed through some files that came up when I clicked ‘The Cause’ before I copied them. Good stuff, but when I opened one marked SuppDep, I took the time to read a few of those documents.”
Cami interrupted, “SuppDep?”
“Well, yeah. Not hard to figure out it probably means Supply Depot. I guess they were using some kind of a dumb code, but as soon as I opened that file and read a reply to one of the emails from Ghost, I knew I’d found gold.”
Kate paused and took a deep breath before she continued.
“That message mentioned something about a very big order for a supply depot. The last line was, “When we started this, who ever thought we’d wind up with such hefty retirement funds? Just a few more and we can walk away from everything.” All I could think was how ridiculous it was to say something like that in writing. I couldn’t take the time to read all the SuppDep documents, so I forwarded the entire file. It should make for some extremely interesting reading. Oh, you’ll love this. This makes it all the more comical. Each of them actually put PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL in caps at the top of everything.”
“Sounds like you’ll have a lot to wade through.”
“Not just me. Since you’ll both have copies, after we sort out the rest of the stuff we’ll split those documents into three groups.”
Cami rubbed her hands together. “I can’t wait to see everything. Apparently this isn’t the small-time operation we thought it was. And, it looks like it’s been going on for a while. Why, from the size of some of the orders, it could add up to millions—many, many millions.
I began to dance around, but my friends looked at me like I was crazy. I finally stopped hopping up and down, put my hands on my hips and said with all innocence, “Whaaat? I’m doing a happy dance.”
Cami chuckled. “Happy dance, my foot. You’re jumping around like a frog on a hot skillet.”
Kate threw her hands in the air. “If that’s a sample of happy, I’d hate to see ecstatic. By the way, I think there might even be a reward.”
“Excuse me? What the hell are you talking about?”
At that moment, I realized she was looking beyond the obvious revenge we wanted. “If those three are stealing from the government, and it’s multi-millions like we suspect, well, maybe we can claim a reward of some sort for exposing them. That would be a piece of luck, wouldn’t it?”
Cami and I nodded agreement.
Between the wine at Hal’s and the bottle we opened at my place, Cami was slurring a bit, obviously feeling no pain. She said, “Even though we may not be sure what we actually have on our hands yet, we have a lot of work ahead of us going through everything Kate and I swiped.”
Kate almost choked on the chocolate in her mouth. “What do
you mean swiped? For heaven’s sake, Cami, we didn’t swipe anything. We simply appropriated copies of readily attainable information. Um, okay, maybe it wasn’t readily available until we invaded Julia’s computer and files, but come on—swiped?”
“Let me rephrase. We availed ourselves of it, right after we snuck into her office.” She stifled a giggle and then another.
The discussions about various aspects of what might lie ahead continued pretty far into the night. Even after we sorted everything, we still had to figure out how to lay a trap that Julia and whoever else turned out to be involved couldn’t wiggle out of.
My mind continued running, and I felt I’d never be able to fall asleep. It was a good thing we had each taken the next day as a vacation day, but even that might not be enough.
Our high at what we’d accomplished finally wore off, replaced by exhaustion. I held my hand against my mouth trying to stifle a yawn. “Can both of you take a few more days off? I never thought we’d find so much so soon.”
Cami said she could list fake appointments for the two or three days following her vacation day and Kate decided she would definitely have to take an emergency trip to help a close relative. After all, cell phones don’t show where the caller is. As for me, I’d come up with something that would keep me out of the office for a few days. A really bad cold or something like that. As I considered all possible ways to set our snares, my mind churned like the wheels on a locomotive speeding down the track.
At six the next morning I was startled out of a deep sleep by loud rock and roll music. It seemed only moments had passed since I’d tumbled into bed, but I must have forgotten to turn off the alarm. A few remnants of my dream lingered, including a vision of me running through a tunnel chasing Matt and someone whose face I couldn’t see. They threw bundles of money in my path and shouted, “Back off.” But I was still hot on their trail when the clock radio ended the pursuit.
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