Once Upon Stilettos

I wasn’t too far off the mark. Combining phone messages and e-mails, I had seven hundred seventy-five messages. How many employees were there? Somebody had to have left multiple messages.



I went through the voice mail first so I could clear out the mailbox for future calls. Most of the so-called tips were useless, just repeating information I already knew. I didn’t need a tipster to tell me to check out the people who worked inside R&D, for example.



“You should look into Melisande Rogers from Corporate Sales,” said a typical message. “She’s been taking a lot of business lunches that no one else in the department knows about.” The tip was anonymous, but it came from an extension registered to Outside Sales.



The next message said, “Dagmar Holloway in Outside Sales has been acting suspicious lately. I hear her sales numbers are dropping, too.” The tipster had called from a Corporate Sales extension. This was starting to sound like the girls’ bathroom at lunchtime in a junior high school.



The e-mails were even worse:



Hi, i’m writing this from my home account because i don’t want you to no who i am but your should chek on kim in verification she’s always taking notes and that makes me suspishus. She’s also a stuck-up bitch and you can tell her i said so. She’s also been staying late at teh office and i think she’s up to something.



And that was one of the more literate ones. I felt like I had to read each one all the way through in case there really was worthwhile information buried in all the venom. While some of the intrigue was fascinating, in many cases I’d read economics textbooks that were more gripping. I didn’t need a log of anyone’s daily activities, including bathroom visits.



And the work kept piling up. While I listened to a message, at least one more came in. I had to turn my computer’s sound off so the constant ding of incoming e-mail notifications didn’t drive me bonkers. As I finished charting the tip from an e-mail, my phone would ring. Finally, I got caught up, but I didn’t feel like I’d made any real progress on the investigation.



With a groan, I got up and staggered to the outer office. “Trix, coffee, please!” I begged. “This company may be too much for even Dr. Phil to help. We might want to go straight to beating each other over the head with chairs like on Jerry Springer.” Then I noticed the person standing at Trix’s desk. It was my date from Saturday night, the date I hadn’t heard from since then, come to think of it.



“Hi, Katie,” Ethan said. “Rough day?”



“You have no idea.” I turned to Trix. “Coffee?” I whimpered. A steaming cup soon appeared in my hand. I was glad I didn’t have to actually make pots of coffee. This way, I didn’t know how many cups I was drinking, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.



“I hear you’ve got some excitement going on around here,” Ethan said, leaning casually against Trix’s desk. “I tried to drop in on Owen, but Security wouldn’t let me past the door. Then I thought I’d come up here and say hi and see what was going on.”



I ignored the implication that visiting me was an afterthought to dropping in on his buddy. “We’ve apparently got a spy/saboteur/double agent, something like that. The boss put me in charge of collecting tips, and my phone is about to melt.” I turned to Trix. “Doesn’t anyone in this company like anyone else in this company? This is insane.”



“I don’t know,” Ethan said with a shrug and a raised eyebrow. “It’s no worse than some law firms I’ve worked with. Someone would drop the slightest hint of innuendo and it was like throwing a hunk of raw meat into a shark tank. It was sometimes kind of funny.”



I faced him with a glare. “If you did this on purpose to see what would happen, now would be the time to confess. I might even let you live.”



“I agree with Katie,” Trix said. “I’ve been getting the overflow, and it’s brutal.”



“This seems to be the chance to settle all your old scores,” I said. “Maybe we should just throw everyone into the conference room with some of those foam bat things and let them all get it out of their systems.”



“You don’t think they’d stick to foam, do you?” Trix asked.



“You’re right. We’d be busy for months disenchanting the entire staff after they all turned each other into cockroaches and dung beetles.”



Ethan stood up straighter and said to me, “Do you have time to talk? I know you’re busy. This’ll only take a minute.”



He sounded serious, so I was instantly concerned. “Of course. Come on into my office.” As I left I said over my shoulder, “Thanks for the coffee, Trix.”