Monday, August 23, 2010

Smelling A Rat!


I was "hired "as the interim Director of Finance and Administration and given a fancy office..Much to the consternation of Mr. Marvin Courtland....The Attorney, who I felt was the ringleader of this conspiracy. He was less than friendly to me and asked me a lot of questions about my background. I mostly ignored him and tried to stay out of his way.

Barbara Carter, a Partner was the exact opposite...Despite my wedding band and hers, she openly flirted with me....She would slip her short and tight dresses up when I was walking by so that I would get a full view of her shapely legs and sometimes I swear she would open her blouse a little too much so that I could get a good look at her voluptuous breasts and her many colored laced bras. I tried to keep it professional.

Her Husband, Brian Carter was another snake....He rarely smiled in my presence and gave me the impression he was looking for a reason to cut my throat....I was very careful around him.

I studied their movemants and their comings and goings carefully...When no one was around , I walked around and got the whole lay of the office.... I got the location of the alarm system and any anti bugging devices around...I also got the location of the security cameras and the security room. I managed to get all three of the phone numbers of these three slimy individuals and pass that information on to Lockpick Johnson and Peeping Tom.

Clerow paid off the Security Guard and The Receptionist and around midnight...Two days after I had been working at Wellness... Lockpick Johnson and Peeping Tom got inside, beat their security system and wired all three of their offices for sound and video... With the phone information I gave him..Peeping Tom was able to clone their phones and thus tap their provider's lines so that any call these three made...We would have a copy of....

Another night , I had Clerow and Sean Jackson following the Carters and my wife, Sepia shadowing Courtland, with the Help of Robert Foxworth and Bonita....While they did that , Lockpick, Peeping Tom, Sean Jackson and myself went through all of the files in all three offices and using a micro-camera, photographed all of them.

Peeping Tom bought in one of his former CIA operatives, who like himself was now retired..He was good at cracking passwords and getting into computers....He got into Courtland's and the Carters computers and copied all of their files and forwarded them to my home computer..Not bad for two weeks worth of work..

During the day, I walked around that office whistling, flirting and laughing without these three aware of anything. My great survielance revealed that the three had been stealing financial records and e-mailing them to certain board members...It revealed that Mrs. Cleveland hadn't been above board with what she had been doing with the company's stock portfolios and it also revealed that these three were working with someone very high on the board who's identity was unknown and indeed planning a hostile takeover!

The phone conversations we gleaned told us nothing....They were too slick to say anything on the company phones and none of them talked business on their personal phones..At least not yet..but I did have proof that they were passing confidential information to somebody...This was enough to conclude that a conspiracy was afoot.

On a humbug, Clerow ,Sean and I drove to the home of Ptomely Jones...The first investigator on this. I called Lockpick Johnson...who got us inside his home... It was a mess...Somebody had turned his house upside down...Looking for something....His bed was upside down, the sheets on the floor, the matress cut....His drawers were open and emptied... and his personal effects were all over the floor.
''What a mess...somebody was certainly trying to find something in here." said Sean Jackson.
"Ya Think?" laughed Clerow sarcastically. Sean had a habit of always stating the obvious. I smiled ruefully at the two of them as I continued to rummage through the house.

The sink was full of dishes and from the looks and smell of the place...Nobody had been in this house for about a month! It looked fishy.

"Why are we here Kev?" asked Lockpick Johnson.

"He was the first investigator on this case......Somebody found out about him and he's gone missing.. Somebody tossed this house...Which means they were looking for something." I said.

"Ya think they found it?" asked Locksmith.

"Nah...If they did....I wouldn't be involved in this." I said.

We all called it a night and we left. The night was still young, so we all went to Mabels Soul Food joint and had some short ribs, greens, sweet potatoes and sweet tea... I paid for everyone's meals. Gotta give em incentive to keep working with me!

I continued to "work" at Wellness and was never seen doing anything out of the ordinary. I didn't have to....I was getting all of the raw data I needed from other sources already set in place.
I don't know what Ptomely Jones had found or what the person or persons that tossed his home was looking for...but the mystery of what happened to him was soon no longer a mystery. Early one morning, about a week after Lockpick,Clerow ,Sean and I had been in his house, the body of a tall, well dressed black man was discovered in a feild near the Airport...He had been killed by about eight or nine blows to his head...probably with a clawhammer...a rope had been tied around his neck so tight that it had crushed his adams apple and he had been discarded in this field...His body was badly decomposed....It had been there for about a month!!! He was discovered by some trash men who had been working in the area...The smell had led them to the body. It was Ptomely Jones!

He was identified by his dental records...The badly beaten body now shed a new light on this case...He had found out something, somebody was willing to kill to keep a secret..This was more than just about some mishandled funds ,more than just about a hostile business takeover....It was time for me to go deeper.

(To Be Continued....)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is intriguing. I'm waiting for the surprise twist.