Office Play: Freaky Geek Series

Office Play

By Stephanie Williams Copyright 2013 and 2014

All Rights reserved 2014

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement (including infringement without monetary gain) is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, or other status is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2013 and 2014 Stephanie Williams

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever known, not known or hereafter invented, or stored in any storage or retrieval system, is forbidden and punishable by the fullest extent of the law without written permission of the author.

Cover Art: Tara

FantasiaFrog Designs

AUTHOR'S DISCLAIMER

The crimes perpetrated and described in the story are a work of fiction. As are the way the crimes are solved. They are not true representations of any actually crimes or police work, but stems from the author's imagination. So don't go getting any ideas.

Chapter One

Jeanette Foster walked into the offices of Lambert, Parker and Bradley, excited about starting a new job after being on such a long hiatus. Not of her own doing unfortunately, but investigating embezzlement from the mafia seemed to have slowed down a bit, and the Feds haven’t caught a mob boss in the past year and half.

How she missed auditing the books of the crooked. Her last one was for mob boss, Joe Astaniona. He claimed he ran an honest hobby shop and declared only $65,000.00 on his taxes.

Jeanette pointed out to the Feds, after months of pouring over the books, he left a few figures out of that tax return. It was more like $20,165,000.00 that year. And his hobbies were smuggling guns and heroine.

Jeanette didn’t deal with the real dirty side of the investigation. Just the books.

She’d applied for this new job a week ago. She thought they would at least have her go through a gamut of interviewers for a position like this before making a decision. It was high profile and the circumstances seemed a bit cryptic from what she got from the first interview. Inventory was missing here and there, but more than just pens and paper. And vendors getting either double paid or not paid on time.

A come down from her normal fare? Nah, she was grateful for something not so stressful in her life right now. So what was her job title to be?

Chief Auditor of Operations; their highest-level position in their financial department and it required a lot of experience. She had fourteen years of it. She honesty thought she was over qualified.

There were several applicants vying for the job. Most of them were in-house. But Friday, they called her and asked if she could start first thing Monday. Actually, they begged her. Apparently they needed more help than they previously thought and they wanted someone from the outside.

But someone or something in the company was pilfering
a lot
of office supplies, petty cash and other internal items of financial importance. Purchase orders were filled incorrectly or ‘misplaced’ and some workers were not getting the supplies they needed or got them late. But the final straw was this past Christmas party.

When the Assistant to the V.P. went to check the petty cash in their account that was set aside to pay for the party, which entailed, renting the hall, catering and music, they were over nine hundred dollars short.

The situation got bumped to critical. They called the police and the bank to do a trace for the cash and neither one of them found anything, no paper trail or bank computer read out, nothing! It just added to the other strange pilfering going on.

But they seemed confident Jeanette would find the culprit or at least get to the bottom of what was going on. It could have been a problem in communications, or paperwork not going through the proper channels. Interesting.

She walked into the lobby and approached the front desk. A young girl, smacking on her gum looked up from her magazine and smiled at her. “Good morning. May I help you?”

“Yes, I’m Jeanette Foster the new Chief Auditor. I’m here to see Samantha King.”

“Oh yeah, you’re the trouble shooter. I’ll page Sam for you. Have a seat. Want some coffee or anything?”

“No thanks.” Jeanette took a seat and mentally shook her head. The receptionist was just too casual for her taste.

Maybe she could contribute it to getting old and not ‘with it’. After all, she just had her forty-fifth birthday two weeks ago. But she knew professionalism didn’t go out of style.

She grabbed a magazine off the table next to her seat as she waited.

“Hello again Jeanette.”

She looked up and saw the petite blond that interviewed her only a week ago. “Hello Samantha. Nice to see you again. How was your weekend?”

She looked a bit pensive, but smiled. “Great. Especially knowing that you’re starting today.”

“Gee, no pressure huh?” She stood up and shook Samantha’s hand.

“I’m sorry, but you don’t realize what it’s been like.”

“I know, you told me—”

“You don’t understand. Right after I called you Friday to offer you the position, ten of our servers that we ordered for the different offices, turned up missing.” Samantha wrung her hands. “We got another order in but we can’t find the original one. The vendor said they got paid for both. It’s crazy.”

“What?”
Okaaay
. The Bermuda Triangle came to mind. How can ten servers turn up missing just like that? This wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. She had her work cut out for her.

“Yeah, I got the call from the head of IT, who was looking for them,” the receptionist piped in.

“Oh, how rude of me. Jeanette, this is Paula,” Samantha said, turning to the petite brunette.

“Hello Paula.” She shook the spunky brunette’s hand.

“Hey.”

Samantha tapped Jeanette on the shoulder. “Come back to my office. I’ll explain your duties and what you can expect, then I’ll take you to your office. One thing I will tell you now, you have complete access to all our confidential files if you need them. We have to get to the bottom of this.”

“I am at your disposal.”

They went to Samantha’s office and she shut the door behind them. Jeanette took a seat in front of Samantha’s desk.

“Okay, first thing we have to do is get you set up with your laptop and familiar with the new software. It’s something our head of IT invented to help track all the in-coming purchase orders.”

“This didn’t catch the missing servers?” Jeanette asked.

“No, and it wouldn’t have. You see, we have over three million dollars of stuff in backorder, so to speak. From now on moving forward, this software will catch stuff, but not for things ordered before last week.” Samantha went into her desk draw and pulled out a file. “Let me tell you in detail the ordering process here. It’ very efficient, it mixes old and new technology. But it needed to be implemented after what happened to the law firm on the thirtieth floor.”

Jeanette cocked her head. “Oh, what happened?”

“They were ordering supplies and various other things, plus keeping their cases on some fancy software program. They only relied on technology. Wifi, GPS and that fun geeky stuff. They completely dismissed the use of paper. Their system was hacked then crashed. They had an audit and had to postpone the case for months.”

“Wow. Don’t they know that computers replacing paperwork is a myth! Especially with stuff like money going in and out. And I see court cases on television where they have huge binders that hold depositions.” Jeanette shook her head. She couldn’t believe a huge firm would rely on technology alone—with no hardcopy backup!

“Exactly. But here we are, with backup and we’re still missing things,” Samantha said, looking over her file. Lots of techie stuff too, which is disturbing.”

“I see.” Jeanette thought a moment. Suppose IT knew of this oversight. Not unusual for IT guys to order a little something extra for themselves and cover it up. And if the guys are real smart, they can cover something as hard to hide as servers. Hell, she’s seen yachts hidden from the Feds.

“Okay this is how we order supplies. It’s lengthy and redundant at times, but it worked for a good while.” Samantha smiled a nervous looking smile.

“Okay, shoot.”

“An employee calls the purchasing department. From any office. Ours is the main one but they can call Dallas, New York where ever. Sometimes it depends on what they need and how fast they can get the items too.”

Jeanette nodded and took out her iPad. But reminded herself that she would write this down on paper too.

“Once they call in, the order desk writes it down on a physical purchase order form, or p.o., the office manager signs off on it. For this office, that’s me. Then the requesting employee emails the request. The order desk enters the order in a very sophisticated software system that goes straight to the appropriate vendors.”

“Wow, you double and triple check. You weren’t kidding.” Jeanette mused.

“Yep, but somehow, someone managed to bypass that even.”

“Well, that’s why you hired me. I need to look at your books to see just how much you lost of course.”

Samantha sighed. “Not looking forward to that. Come on, let me introduce you to the team. This is really a great company. We’re like family here.”

They walked out of the office and down the hall.

“Um, I’ve been meaning to ask, and this is a delicate question,” Jeanette said, as they headed towards what looked like the IT room.

“Yes, what is it?” Samantha gently tapped Jeanette on the shoulder and pointed to a group of people. “Hey, you guys, I want you to meet our new Chief Auditor of Operations. This is Jeanette Foster.”

“Hello, glad to meet you,” came the chorus of voices.

Jeanette bent down and whispered in Samantha’s ear. “I’ll ask you later.” Samantha nodded, still smiling.

“Where’s Adam?” Samantha asked, looking around.

“Went to get breakfast,” said one of the guys.

Typical computer geeks, Jeanette mused. They all either looked like young Einsteins or Bill Gates. She had to laugh to herself.

She and Samantha went to another work area. “These are the order desks. This is where all the requests from all our offices come in. If you need a pencil or a company car, you have to call here first, like I mentioned earlier.”

“I see. Do the orders go anywhere else?” Jeanette already saw a problem. This company had over twelve offices with one overseas, with no less than two hundred employees at each one. That’s a bit overwhelming for one center to handle. Things where bound to get lost or pushed aside.

“Sometimes to our Paris office, and that’s because of the time difference.” She smiled widely again. “Hello everyone. This is Jeanette Foster, the woman I told you about. She will be working closely with you and looking over your procedures. So make sure you have everything in order when she comes to you.”

They nodded, but looked a bit anxious, Jeanette thought. They probably knew someone’s ass was on the line.

After all the introductions were made and all the departments visited, which included the art department, copy room and script area, they made their way to her new office.

“This is your office. Nice huh?” Samantha opened the blinds some more. “Huge corner office with a view,” she chuckled. “This use to be one of the CEO’s offices, but he wanted to work in the New York office. But you’re still special,” she chuckled again.

“It is. Thanks Samantha, for having this much faith in me.” Jeanette found out through her own research, that Samantha was also the Assistant to the VP of the Los Angeles office, besides the office manager. To her credit, she wasn’t snobby or standoffish. She made her feel right at home. She looked over the office. It
was
huge. The floor was hardwood and she had two desks. One at the very back of the office, looked like something only an executive would have. It was solid oak and the high back chair gave it the appearance of complete authority.

The second desk was a workstation. Fit for computer and any other equipment she needed. Samantha explained to her that they didn’t have time to get things set up before her arrival since they been so busy with this fiasco.

“Trust me, we do,” Samantha said, as she came to her. “By the way, call me Sam. Now what was it that you wanted to ask me earlier?”

“Oh, yes.” Jeanette put her purse down on the desk and closed the door. Sam took a seat. “I was wondering if there’s anyone in the company that you might suspect.”

Jeanette watched Sam as she thought a moment.

“To be honest, no one comes to mind. Well, maybe IT. I know that’s crazy, but they have access to
everything
. That’s what’s troubling about this,” Sam said, throwing up her hands.

“Hmm. Well, I’m sure between you and me, we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I sure hope so. No, I’m going to be positive. We will get to the bottom of this.” Sam stood up to leave. “I’ll have IT set you up right away. And welcome aboard.”

Jeanette gave her a salute as she left her office. Very interesting.

***

Adam Strathmore got off the elevator to his floor. He took a sip of coffee and walked down the hall to his office. It was going to be another crazy day. The new software he invented still had some bugs, but that was to be expected. But overall, it was a damn good program and system. No one should be able to get orders through without leaving some sort of paper trail; and those couldn’t be erased.

He always thought paper or ‘hard copy’, was over rated. Hard drives were the thing. You get something on a hard drive, and no matter how hard you try to delete it, it could always be retrieved. But they soon found out from a law office right above them, that when their system crashed they had nothing to go back to. They brought in a forensic computer guy, spent lots of money, but in the meantime, people sat twiddling their thumbs and the cases were postponed because no one had hard files.

So  Lambert decided to go old school
and
high tech. Triple check and quadruple check everything. Have at least two hard copies of orders. File them away to an offsite warehouse every three months. But have backup!