A Flair for Trouble

The only other interesting character was an old assistant plant manager named Abercrombie who wore a badge with Employee No. 3 on his old torn and greasy coveralls. He looked to be in his mid-70's and was accounted by all to be a "delightful old coot". He had been Avery's aircraft maintenance sergeant during the war and was one of the original founding members of the company. He was 'semi-retired' but still seemed to be around at least forty hours every week. His wife had already passed on, and his work was his 'home'. It was no secret at all that "management had wanted him gone for years", but when you are one of the founders of a company you can often stick your tongue out at the young whippersnappers who now want to run things their way. And Abercrombie did, often. He couldn't be fired - he had a signed contract from A.J. guaranteeing "lifetime employment" and he was darned determined to take it literally and "die in the saddle". This was the real man who knew where all of the bodies were buried; but he wasn't ever going to ever talk around me. I heard a hundred delightful stories of the "old days", but anytime I asked anything about recent events he would get sly and evade my every question.

No other sources stepped forward and 'volunteered' anything to me. After the end of the workday on Friday I started to sum up some of my early conclusions about the company, and at the very top of my list for item #1 I wrote "Us vs. Them".

The new management seemed to have nothing but contempt for the rank and file workers, many of them with over 20 years of company service. The employees in return hated every single member of their management and 'didn't trust any of them with so much as a burned out match". There was no communication, and every instruction or notification of a problem took at least 5 steps to move up and down the chain of command, usually taking days. A.F. had run the company personally for decades and knew every single employee and their spouses by their first name (and probably all of their children's names as well). He spent far more time with his workers than he ever did behind his big desk. Since his death, management remained 'isolated in their ivory tower' and didn't seem to care particularly what their employees were doing.

As a result, there was no 'loyalty' whatsoever between workers and management. Unannounced layoffs had been common, with long time workers never hearing that they had been let go until they showed up for work the next day.

Technically, I was viewed as part of the new management and most lips were tightly sealed around me no matter how hard I tried to play "the outsider". I definitely got the impression that A.F.'s daughter Melissa still held much of the old-timers loyalty, even though she was very much out of the management picture. I got the impression that while she controlled a considerable amount of the company stock, she had lost out on a proxy fight to gain control of her father's company after the death of her husband. The shareholders preferring to keep the more 'experienced' management team intact despite several years of poor financial performance. I did overhear an unguarded comment that suggested that Melissa and Rachel were long-time close friends, but when I casually asked Rachel if she "knew Flair's daughter well, and what was she like" she froze right up and would only state that they "didn't talk much these days".

No one came creeping up to me offering to share any of their pearls of wisdom or seemed likely to do so. That's ok; Tim was hinting that he had a lot of good news to offer at our next big conference call with him on Saturday. Some of my other hooks in the water were also starting to catch fish, some of them nice big ones.

********

Actually the fun began late Friday evening when my cell phone went off during dinner. It was Tim reporting that a "mysterious virus" was suddenly hitting most of the computers and servers in the company. An especially nasty one that usually permanently wiped out most hard drive data, even when cleaned by an IT professional. Our hidden cameras in a few strategic places also revealed that it was Bob Baker, Natalie Thomas and their useful idiot Jasper, hand installing this virus on every management computer in the building from floppy disks. Bob could also be clearly seen with a big magnet degaussing most of the old server backup tapes so that they would have errors when used to 'restore' the lost company data. Sorry Bob... just a bit too late for that. Hehe.

This had been an event that we had planned for (and often seemed to happen at suspect companies just before the expected arrival of auditors), and frankly it didn't hurt any of our activities in the slightest. We had all of the "Before" information that we needed and a weeks worth of the "After" changes and deletions that probably covered 99% of all of the sensitive documents that we had been tracking.

Friday night had one other event worthy of note. Rachel had stopped by to visit me at the B&B "spiffed up" for the night, and like her slutty niece was showing off to me a fair amount of interesting cleavage and nice creamy soft thighs. Sitting at a small little local bar down the street we hoisted a few and each of us began in increasingly unsubtle manner to pump the other one for information.

"She was a smart girl", she said, "and knew that I did not fit in with either the corporate management, or the current court ordered bankruptcy management. I was 'something else', but what?" I played it as vague as I could, and said I could indeed prove that Steve Kreifelt was my boss and signed my paycheck, but this didn't fool her a bit, and she soon itemized all of the real likely suspects.

Out with it, who do you REALLY work for? The Bankruptcy Court, the County DA's office, the Attorney General's office, the Feds or the Fraud squad?" The fact that I couldn't come up with any convincing alternatives pretty much sealed it in her mind for "all of the above". She made a fairly clumsy seduction attempt to get me into bed and hopefully get more answers during 'pillow talk', but fortunately she was indeed quite out of practice with the whole modern dating game and I begged off with a "real bad headache from all of Steve's screaming today" and made my escape before I could talk myself into getting a better look at her nipples, which from the pokes in the front of her dress must have been magnificent.

Several things about my various conversations with Rachel were beginning to bother me, and I made a last minute phone call that night about arranging another conventional wiretap or two to our existing list and getting an immediate copy of her cell phone records. She was definitely suspicious and fishing for information, but I didn't think it was for just herself. I wanted to find out fast who really had her loyalties and who she was trying to protect.

Saturday we had our long awaited major conference call with all of my teammates huddled together. It had been a very productive week for everyone, and it was obvious that 98% of our work was already done, and that the State, Local and even Federal attorneys would soon be very busy and for a good long while. It would be impossible to give proper coverage to the wild events of our 4-1/2 hour long meeting as each player laid their cards out on the table, but I could quickly summarize most of the gory details in just a few bullet points.

The CEO Thomas Watson was a clueless idiot, and while he had not actively participated in any of the schemes to defraud the company, he had signed his name onto an awful lot of fraudulent financial documents. He lived within the means of his salary, but would probably lose most of his assets when sued for "Corporate Mismanagement" of a clear and blatant kind. He wouldn't go to jail probably, but the bankruptcy estate could easily recoup several million dollars here with civil lawsuits.

Robert Baker and Natalie Thomas, along with their flunky Jasper, had been involved in actively defrauding Flair even before Avery Flair's death. I had true financial records now that I could compare with their fabricated ones. The extent of the theft was mind-boggling, over $40 million in the 1990's alone. We had the name and accounts from the caches of their web browsers to their hidden bank accounts, and this provided ample proof of numerous fraudulent interstate and international financial transfers. These folks weren't going to get a slap on the hand and 'Club Fed', at least two of them seemed heading for some major penitentiary time, not to mention the financial recovery of the stolen assets. My every day and evening would be busy for the next month precisely documenting where every cent was stolen from and how it was done. A piece of cake, but it would be a lot of paperwork.

With the current decline of the company and imminent bankruptcy, there was much less to siphon off these days, but our fraudsters found new ways of generating revenue for themselves. In particular, they had friendly 'hand-shake deals' with at least two of Flair's primary civilian and military project competitors to keep Flair products out of certain competitive bids for lucrative government and military contracts during the last five years. In addition, there was a lovely email paper trail of documented payments from both competitors totaling $5 million cash to Robert as a reward for steering Flair into Chapter 7 Bankruptcy with a promise of another $10 million each, once the official and final court ordered closure was announced. This nice little piece of blatant interstate fraud greatly interested our Fed players, and promised huge possible civil settlements to Flair as a result. The murder investigations were not quite as cut and dried. All of the early evidence pointed to Robert and Natalie as the culprits for Avery Flair's death, but there was no smoking gun. We now had expert independent crash investigators with full aviation forensic teams on the site of both crashes, but we couldn't expect a miracle or a "smoking gun" at this very late stage.

A successful prosecution seemed doubtful unless we could get either Robert or Natalie to confess or rat out each other in return for reduced charges. Possible, but not 100% guaranteed.

Donald's murder still seemed a complete mystery. He was a willing participant in the frauds, thus giving Robert and Natalie motive to remove one of their partners and thusly gain a much bigger share of the loot, but it didn't quite fit snugly. Their emails from this period suggested that they privately thought to each other it was "probably just an accident" and just blessed their good fortune.

Rachel did not seem to be involved in any way with any of the fraudulent activities, but we now discovered her secret mistress that she was doing her own private snooping for - Melissa Flair. They were phoning each other and having long conversations nightly it seems. Melissa herself seemed to be 100% in the clear, but she was now being examined under the Fed and State legal microscope just on principle. Despite owning about 40% of the company shares she had absolutely nothing to do with its management and had apparently been working behind the scenes to organize a share holder's revolt to throw out the corrupt mismanagement the company had suffered under since her father's death.

She was still considered a 'very possible suspect' for the crash that killed her husband, as it was common knowledge that the two of them did not get along well. Donald was a noted philanderer and before his death there were strong rumors that divorce would soon be in the works and she wasted little time afterward in retaking her maiden name. Together we compiled some length lists of former long-time employees that had been 'encouraged to leave' in the last few years, but several of the key ones we most especially wanted to speak with had seemingly disappeared off of the face of the earth and it would take time to locate and question them. We were certain that these witnesses could help fill in any holes in our investigation.

That summed up the entire meeting pretty nicely. The Fed and State folks had plenty now to start their own grinding investigations and I had given Judge Carlson enough info to allow him to move the bankruptcy into "reorganization" rather than just strictly asset liquidation, if he was so inclined. It was decided to keep the operation going for at least another week, and maybe two just to glean a bit more information and maybe hopefully gain more incriminating information against our suspects. They were all going to be watched with a close eye and flags kept on their financial accounts. Even if they decided to run, they wouldn't have a cent of their ill-gotten funds to do it with.

Feeling quite virtuous, and not ready for a long night of analyzing and contrasting the true and fraudulent financial statements yet, I headed downstairs to see if there was any chance of a late dinner. There wasn't, but I was referred to a nice local diner down the street that stayed open late on Saturday nights where I found both a great meal and discovered that someone had followed me there from the B&B.

I leisurely finished my dinner and lingered long over dessert and coffee and my watcher seemed to do the same. To remove any doubt of coincidence, I then went to a local watering hole and watched the last few innings of the UNH Wildcats baseball game while nursing a beer or two, and sure enough my follower soon joined me.

As stalkers go, she wasn't at all bad looking. She seem to be a very decorative gal in her early 30's who hadn't skimped one little bit of her regularly scheduled maintenance at every 10,000 miles or so. She had long gorgeous chestnut hair that she was now making sure was kept quite away from the front of her cleavage displaying dress and she seemed to be nursing a few drinks of her own while debating over something in her mind. She appeared to be a stranger but was definitely not cruising for action because she tersely declined every male that approached to offer and buy her a drink. She was waiting on someone or something, and I guessed it was "me". I gathered my own nerves together, thought out a quick game plan and abandoned the Wildcats to their inevitable losing fate, and walked over next to her.

I ordered another beer from the bartender, but this was just to give her the opportunity to speak to me first, since I was standing right next to her. It worked, because she took a deep breath herself and introduced herself as "Alice", and that she could use a rum and coke refill if I was inclined to buy a lady a drink, and she would be more than happy to repay this generous gesture with some conversation. I cheerfully accepted her offer and we moved to the farther corner from the television set to talk. I knew exactly who she was, I had seen a photo of her earlier, but I was going to let her play out her game for now.

We made a lot of small talk, and I kept to my cover story about "just being here locally very temporarily to help with some financials over at Flair". She mentioned that she lived mostly out of town now, but was back visiting a friend or two in the area and she mentioned that she used to have several family friends who worked at Flair. "Really?" I said, and she off-handedly mentioned a few names; one of them was William Tucker, the former Director of Plant Operations before Natalie. We very much wanted to talk to him badly, and I hinted as boldly as I dared that I'd heard a great number of interesting stories about him and I'd love to take him to dinner or out for a drink sometime. Alice shied away a bit at this, but vaguely hinted she could look at some old Christmas Cards to see if she had an address.

The next two hours were spent in casual but increasing engaging conversation. She was a delight to converse with, and had the rare art of being able to freely speak exactly what was on her mind, mincing no words but still being humorous, polite and always lady-like. I enjoyed ever minute I spent with her and when I mentioned at last that I thought I needed to get back to the B&B for the night, she dithered but for just a moment and then looking me right in the eyes, asked if "I was in the mood for some company tonight and maybe a bit more conversation in the morning." I smiled and gave her a gentle kiss on the lips which she did not shy from in the slightest and asked her to wait for me just a moment while I visited the men's room. The beers were feeling a need to be recycled, but I had time for a quick cell phone call at the same time.

"Judge, I hope I woke you up for a change, this is Harlan." Hurray, I had woken him up in the middle of the night for once! "I'm in Berlin still of course, but I am less than five minutes away from fucking Melissa Anne Flair's brains out in bed tonight unless you can give me a very, very good reason not to."

He stammered and hmmm'd a bit for a few moments and decided that no legal 'conflict of interest' would probably occur. I was hired to obtain Flair financials, not to most 'thoroughly investigate' the former Mrs. Wright.

"No problem and give her a good bang for me also!" He decided and bid me a good night, chuckling as he hung up the phone. The lovely Melissa Anne Flair was waiting for me eagerly at the bar and we did a great many pleasant and delightful things to each other that night and well into the late hours of the morning.

************

Around Noontime the next morning we were still snuggled happily in bed with each other. Melissa had my cock in her mouth again and was happily demonstrating that she greatly enjoyed the taste of my cock and its cum, and was quite willing now (and at any future opportunity) to sample it again at the drop of a hat. I was still lying in quite a bit of a wet spot from our frenzied activities of much earlier in the morning. I had eaten her twice and we had a conventional but very satisfying fuck and then a very long 69. When she managed to extract at length this final third load of my love juice (making quite sure I was watching her swallow every drop it), she snuggled up to my chest and I dropped my bombshell.

"Melissa, I have enjoyed every minute of our time together, but isn't it about time you started to play straight with me? I have absolutely no intentions of kicking you out of this bed, and as far as I'm concerned we can stay right here the rest of this weekend, but after you tell me what you really want from me."

She didn't seem so surprised at all and rubbed her chin a bit more against my chest and hugged me a bit closer before she said, "Rachel said you were a very smart cookie, much too smart to be hanging around anyone at Flair for any reason other than your own. When did you realize who I was?"

"Nearly immediately when you were watching me at Josie's Diner, and I knew for a fact the moment you walked into the bar. It's ok. Judge Carlson says we're 'perfect for each other'", I told her with a laugh that she returned, and we shared a kiss and started to collectively spill our guts out to each other.

I gave her most of my true job description that I was there on behalf of several different agencies to investigate the current management for fraud, and I felt that the odds were excellent for conviction of those (unnamed) perpetrators. She in turn mentioned that while she did have an old address for Bill Tucker (Employee #2 and co-founder of Flair) she didn't think it was current, but knew who did have it. She reached for her purse from the bedside stand and taking out her cell phone dialed a number from its memory and she held the speaker near my ear so I could hear everything that was said.

"Abercrombie? Hi, this is Melissa. Ollie, this is extremely important that you do what I say and do this one last favor for me and for dad. You've met Harlan, the new guy over at corporate? He is with me, and you can trust him completely. He needs to know exactly where Bill Tucker is now, I think he's somewhere in Texas but I'm not sure where. It's important. Very important that Harlan gets to talk to Bill; can you do that for me? Great, I love and miss you too and we'll hopefully meet for lunch again soon." With that she hung up.