“He said top drawer on the left. Look for the Phillies schedule.”
“On it.” Mary beelined for the drawers, which hung open, their contents having been dumped in a large messy pile on the dark rug. There was nothing left in the top drawer, so she crouched down and started sifting through the pile, and Bennie crouched down opposite her. They searched through packs of new checks, bills, pens and pencils, stale gum, gas receipts, and random business cards.
“I hope the cops didn’t find the passwords.” Bennie kept looking, and so did Mary, rooting through the paper, one bill after the next. If the police had dumped the drawers out in order, the contents of the first one would be on the bottom of the pile.
“They would have to be incredibly lucky to have found it. Who looks inside a Phillies schedule?”
“Phillies fans?” Bennie moved some papers aside, suddenly exposing a trifold Phillies schedule with slick graphics. “Go, Phils!”
“You got it! I hope the passwords are inside!” Mary scrambled over as Bennie opened the schedule, and they both cheered. Inside was a narrow piece of paper on which Simon had written twenty-five passwords in his characteristically neat printing. The passwords were incomprehensible and listed beside their respective websites. Mary skimmed the list quickly until she got to the tenth password, 8sj2s77Tuyx1, for PensieraNet.
“Bingo!” Bennie said excitedly.
“Let’s get busy.” Mary reached into her messenger bag, pulled out her laptop, and powered it on and sat cross-legged on the floor with it, firing it up. Her heart began to beat faster.
“Now we’re cooking with gas.” Bennie sat beside her, and Mary logged into settings, joined PensieraNet, and after a process of trial and error, used the password to open Simon’s emails.
“Wow.” Mary watched as thousands of emails piled onto the screen, organized by year. She narrowed the search to the current year, filtered them using the name Ray Matewicz, and still came up with a screenfull. “I guess there were more than Simon remembered.”
“But I’m sure a lot of them won’t be relevant.”
“Right.” Mary scanned the first one, which was about scheduling a meeting. “And it looks like some have Ray as a copy, which isn’t all that helpful. I would refine the search further but I don’t want to miss anything.”
“Understood.” Bennie read over Mary’s shoulder. “We should divide the labor. I’ll take the first six months and you take the last six months.”
“Okay.” Mary highlighted the first six months of the emails as Bennie reached into her messenger bag, pulled out her laptop, and powered it on. Mary forwarded Bennie the emails in sections since it was so large, but in time, they both had their six-month segments and were reading away.
Mary read through email after email, taking notes in her Word file, but even an hour later, she wasn’t having any luck. Simon’s emails to Ray were only technical in nature, confirming details of POs, product specifications, or changes in a line’s production schedule, which affected delivery dates to Simon’s clients. Mary scrutinized this last category for signs of anger against Simon on Ray’s part, but there was nothing to support her theory and she was starting to worry that it was a dry hole. The only back-and-forth between Ray and Simon that was remotely fussy was over delays in deliveries.
Darkness fell outside the window, and Bennie turned on a chrome Luxor lamp on the worktable, which cast a conical pool of light on the two lawyers, their laptops, and the disarray of papers on the floor.
“You having any luck?” Bennie asked, before she resettled.
“Not yet.” Mary glanced at the time on her computer screen, which read 9:15. “I worry about time.”
“Me too. Keep going.”
“There’s no other choice, is there?” Mary opened the next email, heartened because its subject line was Quality Issues. She read:
Ray, I emailed Todd about this but he hasn’t gotten back to me and I need an answer for Susan at The Jarrat Organization, a call center for software support for their accounting program. She is unhappy with the lighting in her top-of-the-line units and she says it flickers. I’ve noticed this in another account and already brought it up with Todd because it’s provoking migraines in employees. This could be a liability issue for the company and Todd said he would do something about it, but this is the second customer of mine who’s complained. Susan is one of my biggest accounts and I would like not to lose another account over quality issues that don’t get the attention they deserve. Please advise ASAP. Thanks. Simon
“Hey, look at this,” Mary said, heartened, but not exactly sure why. “Here’s something about a quality issue, concerning the wiring.”
Bennie leaned over and skimmed the email. “What’s interesting about it?”
“I don’t remember seeing an email from Simon about quality issues at this account before. This suggests he’s written to Todd about The Jarrat Organization, but I don’t remember seeing any email about that.”
“Maybe you forgot.”
“Hold on, let me check.” Mary went into the file of her notes from the previously sent emails, and her document index was organizing them in several different ways, one of which was by Simon’s accounts. She scrolled the list of accounts, reading them aloud to Bennie. “Look, I don’t see any mention of The Jarrat Organization.”
“Maybe you didn’t get that far. You hadn’t read through all the emails yet, had you?”
“No, but this is referring to an email last month. I had gotten that far.”
“What did Ray write back?”
“Let me see.” Mary started scrolling through the emails, and the response appeared a week later, which was terse:
Simon, will do. Ray
“Keep going and see what else you can find.” Bennie returned to her laptop, and Mary did the same, feeling a tingle of excitement. She didn’t know if it meant anything but it did seem strange, and it gnawed at the back of her mind as she read through one email after the next, each one confirming technicalities of specifications, meetings, or purchase orders, most of which showed Ray as a copy but not a direct recipient. But only a month later she came upon another email about quality control, and her heart started to pound.
“Bennie, look at this.” Mary skimmed the email, which was decidedly testier in tone:
Ray, I wrote you about these wiring issues before and I haven’t heard anything from you or Todd. We tried to fix the flickering in the lighting on-site but it didn’t repair the problem. You should know that some of the employees at Jarrat have physical handicaps like visual impairments and migraines. This is going to result in liability for the company or me losing a client if it doesn’t get fixed by the end of this week. I assume the wiring is manufactured by PowerPlus and you should talk to Joe or somebody else over there in operations but this has to be dealt with. Susan is fit to be tied because one of her employees is talking about filing a complaint with the state human relations commission. This is a legal issue that needs to be attended to right away. Please get back to me by the end of the week.
“Interesting.” Bennie shifted over. “See what Ray replied.”
“Right.” Mary was already scrolling through the emails, past one week, the next, then the week after that, but there was no response from Ray. “Ray didn’t answer. Ray wouldn’t ignore that, would he?”
“Possible, since you heard what Simon said, they roll their eyes at him. He’s like the boy who cried wolf.”
“I know but Simon wouldn’t let them forget it.”
“Maybe they talked about it but there was no email.”
Mary didn’t think so. “Simon told us he rarely talks to Ray. And you would think he would’ve remembered that, because it’s what we were just asking him about, conversations with Ray over quality problems.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“I’m not understanding why I didn’t see any mention of Jarrat before.” Mary searched her document index again, but there was no mention. “It’s not ther
e. This is a significant quality issue, clearly discussed with Todd and Ray, but it wasn’t included in any of the email that the company sent us. So there’s one obvious conclusion.”
Bennie lifted an eyebrow. “You think it was intentionally omitted?”
“Honestly, yes.” Mary felt her heartbeat quicken again. “Think about it. They kitchen-sinked us with emails. They expect us to get snowed under reading them, but they don’t realize that we have a way of checking if there’s any missing. They don’t know that Simon archives his email. It’s only because I read the email they produced and compared it with Simon’s email archive that we know that these were omitted from the production.”
Bennie nodded, perking up. “So the question isn’t what emails did they produce. The question is, what emails didn’t they produce?”
“Exactly!” Mary almost cheered. They were finally getting to the bottom of something, but of what, she didn’t know.
“So why did they leave them out?”
“To hide them. So the question is, what are they hiding?”
“And why?” Bennie asked, her blue eyes glittering.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Bennie kept reading the emails, but they were repetitive and technical, and a hunch was forming in the back of her mind. She turned to Mary. “I think there’s something going on with quality control, so why don’t we refine the search to only quality control.”
“You feel confident enough to narrow it? What if we miss something?”
“Take a chance. We don’t have a lot of time.” Bennie set down her laptop and shifted over. “I don’t think the answer is in my emails. I think it’s in the recent stuff.”
“Okay, I’m filtering the leftover emails now.” Mary typed away, and in the next moment, the screen turned white except for a single email with the subject line Quality Control. “Whoa.”
“Let me see.” Bennie leaned over and read the email:
Ray, Did you talk to anybody at PowerPlus about the wiring yet? Susan at Jarrat keeps asking and I want to give her an answer. I know you’re busy lately but can you please get back to me on this? Flickering in the wiring can be a real problem, not just for people with migraines. What if it sparked or started a fire? You can’t negate those possibilities, and Susan is already voicing concerns about that. So please get back to me.
Mary frowned. “I never saw this email before, either. This should have been included in the production. Todd is copied on it.”
“So it was also intentionally omitted. They hid it from us. They never knew we’d compare.” Bennie sensed that her hunch was correct. “And we know there was no response because it would’ve been filtered in.”
“Right, but why?” Mary looked over. “So where are you going with this?”
“Fire, like Simon said.” Bennie was thinking out loud. “Let’s think about it logically. They took out the emails concerning wiring issues and Jarrat. The fact that it’s about Jarrat doesn’t matter, but what matters is the issue. The big problem with bad wiring isn’t that it causes migraines. That would be a problem peculiar to Jarrat. The real problem with faulty wiring is that it causes fires.”
“Right,” Mary said slowly.
“So we know that they hid these emails from us. Simon was telling Todd and Ray that there were wiring issues in the cubicles. He put them on notice that something bad could happen and the most likely thing that would happen is a fire.”
“Oh my God, you’re right.” Mary’s eyes flared open. “So maybe Jarrat had a fire?”
“Not Jarrat because Simon would’ve known that. We would’ve heard about that. But another account. All of the cubicles at OpenSpace contain wiring manufactured by PowerPlus. Any one of the accounts could have had a fire and if any of those accounts had a fire, OpenSpace was put on notice by Simon.”
“I get it!” Mary said excitedly. “He’s a whistle-blower, but he doesn’t know it.”
“Right, because he doesn’t know about the fire. So there must’ve been a fire. Or at least it’s a working theory.”
Mary turned to her laptop, her fingers poised above the keyboard. “So what do we do? How do we find out?”
Bennie’s thoughts raced. “You have a list of the accounts, right?”
“Right.”
“We know it’s not on Simon’s accounts or we would’ve heard it. So start with Todd’s.”
“That would make the most sense!” Mary started typing away. “We should start looking in the file that has Todd’s accounts, which they produced to you.” She looked over with a slight frown. “What if they omit the account we’re looking for from the list? That would be the thing to do if they were going to hide it, wouldn’t they?”
“No, they would have no reason to do that. Remember they don’t know we can compare, and also, at that point, they just wanted to show a complete listing of sales numbers.”
“Here we go.” Mary leaned back as a spreadsheet of Todd’s current accounts filled the laptop screen, with the company names running down the left side. “Larkspur Graphics, LLC. Deal Town Dollar Stores. Bethlehem Bank. ITTemps. Swarthmore Senior Services. Quorum Public Relations…”
“Remember, Todd keeps the accounts that are repeat business or opening branches.”
“Right, good point.”
“So we have to see if there was a fire in any of those accounts. We could Google it or look on the company website.”
“If we Google it, we can plug in ‘fire’ and the company name.”
“But that might not get anything if it wasn’t a fire, or if there was a fire but it didn’t reach the newspapers. I would start with the company websites, see if there’s a mention of any kind of any incident, whether it’s fire or not, involving electrical wiring.”
“Okay. You take the first ten accounts, I’ll take the second ten.”
“Go for it.” Bennie navigated to the website for Larkspur Graphics, then the About Us page, which went on about the graphic design franchise that helped people create their own websites, now opening offices in Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Marlton, New Jersey.
“Nothing so far,” Mary said, typing.
“Same.” Bennie navigated to the next website, Deal Town Dollar Stores, which seemed equally innocuous, a line of dollar stores opening in Delaware and West Virginia. “Todd’s territory extends pretty far.”
“Agree, I’m seeing that too. Tot’s Togs makes kid’s clothes and it’s in northern Virginia.”
“Keep going.” Bennie plugged in Bethlehem Bank, and as soon as the company website popped onto the screen, she sensed they had struck paydirt. “Mary, look at this.”
“You got something?” Mary leaned over, and they read together:
We at Bethlehem Bank are devastated by the fire which took place in our newest branch in Manassas last month. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of our Adele Watson, a bookkeeper who perished in the blaze. We thank God that there was no further loss of life. The cause of the fire is currently under investigation, and the branch will be closed for the near future. We hope to rebuild and reopen again soon, to serve the wonderful community of Manassas, Virginia.
“Oh no,” Mary said, hushed. “It was a fatal fire. Somebody died.”
“I know.” Bennie scrolled down, and at the bottom of the page was a small photo of a sweet-faced older woman with a funereal black frame around the picture, under which it said, ADELE WATSON.
“This is it.” Mary met Bennie’s eyes, her expression turning grave, the shadows harsh from the overhead light. “Let’s spin it out together. Bethlehem Bank buys cubicles from Todd, who has been put on notice only a month before that the electrical wiring is faulty. And Ray is on notice too.”
“So OpenSpace is liable, and not just for the damage to the building.” Bennie felt the weight of her words. “They’re liable for the death of the woman. It would’ve been broad civil and criminal exposure. Remember, Simon had problems with the wiring at Jarrat and also with Crowley Medical.”
; “Right, there’s no telling how many other cubicles were affected. Once they were on notice, they covered it up. They didn’t care if anybody died.”
“At this point, the cause of the fire is unknown, but those investigations take a long time. I bet nobody from OpenSpace is volunteering the information about past problems in the electrical wiring. In fact, they hid it from us.” Bennie felt anger glowing like a flame in her chest. “So they covered it up and the question is, how high up does it go. Does it stop at Ray or does it go to Mike Bashir? And is Mo Nustrall involved, too? He must be. He runs sales at PowerPlus. They play golf together.”
“I agree. I bet Mo is involved, but not Mike because he’s new.”
“Right and it’s not like he came from PowerPlus. So let’s bet they keep it to those three.”
“Ernie the security guy might be involved in the cover-up, too, since he was in the defamation complaint. They never should have done that. They overplayed their hand. But they’re not professionals.”
“I reserve judgment on Ernie.” Bennie’s instincts were telling her otherwise. “Criminal conspiracies are smaller than people think. Ernie doesn’t know production details. He’s a plant security guy and that’s how they view him. Ernie could have lied in the complaint because his job was on the line. I say the bad guys are Todd, Mo, and Ray.”
“But why would they kill Todd?”
“That’s not a hard one. They find out about the fire and it’s under investigation. It’s one of Todd’s clients, and they agree to cover it up in the beginning, but Todd starts to get nervous. Todd knows he can go to jail for this. This is a criminal act, so maybe he wanted to spill the beans.”
“So they kill Todd to silence him. But what about Simon? Maybe that’s why they fired Simon in the first place!” Mary answered her own question, shifting forward excitedly. “He probably doesn’t know anything about the fire in Manassas, because it’s far away and outside of his region. It certainly doesn’t make any Philadelphia papers, and as soon as that happens, Todd keeps it quiet in the company.”
“Right.”