Chapter 2
The nerve of those two! Always undermining whatever Mac says if he isn’t there to enforce it himself!
Dorothy Davis stamped her booted foot in indignation. Luckily, the corridor was empty and neither Barnes nor Foster, the other personal secretaries, were snooping around.
Mac, her employer and her godfather, had left strict instructions for her. Dorothy had a mission, and she meant to carry it out successfully. But it was a constant uphill battle to get anything done with the other two secretaries constantly getting in her way.
But they were quite absent now … Perhaps this was the perfect time.
The door across the way opened and Foster, a little weed of a man, stepped into the corridor.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Just leaving,” she said primly. “What are you doing?”
“I have a message,” he said, crossing to the door she’d just come through.
Dorothy stepped to the side to let him in.
Foster went in and closed the door behind him.
She knew he wouldn’t be coming out any time soon.
He and Mr. Harding’s secretary, Trevor Barnes, would have their ears pressed firmly to the inner doors, attempting to listen to any morsels of information they could.
She had caught them eavesdropping too many times to count.
Not that it mattered. With Mac not in the office most of the time now, there was no one to report them to anyway. Harding and Devlin seemed to encourage such behavior.
With all four of them engaged, this absolutely was the perfect time.
Dorothy pursed her lips in thought. If she was caught, it could be disastrous. But there was every possibility that she wouldn’t be. Her nemeses were busy, and no one else would care if she borrowed a ledger or two for Mac. He owned a third of the company, after all.
It’s now or never, she decided, and headed for the accounting department on the fifth floor.
The rickety elevator always gave Dorothy the heebie-jeebies, so she took the stairs, going down them at a brisk pace.
She passed a few other workers on the way.
They were some of the men from the marketing division who seemed to spend a lot of time moving around the building and not doing much else.
They were respectful, at least to her face, and greeted her warmly.
“Off for that coffee break?” one, possibly called Mitchell, asked.
“Of course,” Dorothy said with a bright smile. “When the cat’s away …”
“The mouse drinks a lot of coffee?” he asked and laughed at his joke.
She didn’t confirm or deny it but left it hanging for him to do with as he pleased. It pleased him to walk on, chuckling, with his friends.
When she reached the fifth floor, her heart was beating faster as the possibility of being found out came to the fore of her mind.
If she was caught with some of the documents she meant to steal, even Mac wouldn’t be able to save her job.
It was a risk she was willing to take. Mac had to see what was going on here. He had to step in. And soon!
She moved quickly along the main corridor. The whole floor was a warren of little offices connected by passageways that circled around the large filing room, into which all the accounts information was funneled.
Dorothy knew that the first part of her plan wouldn’t present a problem.
These ledgers were easy to get, and Mac had asked for them repeatedly.
There might be some resistance to her taking them off company premises, but how else was she supposed to get them to him? She would just have to find a way.
The second part of her plan would be more difficult. It should have been done the other day already, but she’d been caught and had to leave in a hurry.
Outside the filing room was a long wooden counter. The accounts department didn’t like other people fiddling in their filing, so they had someone stationed at the counter all the time. Today that person was Pearson.
Large-boned and beefy, he didn’t fit the typical mold of someone who enjoyed working in an office all day.
With his build, it seemed more likely that he would be happy outside constructing the tall buildings that were going up around them constantly.
But you couldn’t judge a book by its cover, and Pearson was proof as he appeared perfectly happy in his chosen profession.
“Hi, Pearson,” Dorothy said, smiling warmly. “Do you think you could help me with something?”
Pearson looked up from his work and frowned. “What with?”
“I need to pull Mr. McGregor’s favorite files again, please,” she said. “He wants me to bring the copies to him in Pine Hill. That won’t be a problem, will it?”
Pearson looked nervously down the corridor, probably in case someone was on their way to complain about it. “Did Harding and Devlin clear it? Taking the files out of the building, I mean?”
Dorothy cocked her head to one side. “Since when do they need to sign off on anything for Mac?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. Things are odd around here now. I don’t want to get the boot, you know? I need this job.”
“Don’t we all?” Dorothy asked. She leaned on the counter. “Look, Pearson, you know that Mac is a good man. He’s got your back, and you should have his. Anyway, he’s not asking for anything he hasn’t asked for a thousand times, right?”
Pearson thought about it and then nodded. “You’re right, this is nothing new. Okay. I’ll go get them for you.”
“Thanks, you’re the best,” Dorothy said, giving him her most charming smile.
Pearson lumbered through the door to the filing room behind him. Dorothy waited until he was gone from sight.
Now for part two of her plan. Her pulse instantly began to race. This was where everything could go wrong.
She would have to move quickly. Slipping through the door in the counter, she went to Pearson’s workstation. The key she needed was hanging on a nail hammered into the side of the desk. She took it, palming it so one would see.
Back through the door and into the corridor. Dorothy passed three accountants on the way down the corridor and smiled at them. They hardly looked at her, being deep in conversation about some account or other.
Good.
Dorothy had found out about this filing room quite by accident.
Well, it wasn’t really a filing room; it was more a holding room where paperwork sat before it was destroyed.
This was where the rough paper the accountants used was discarded, paperwork that mistakes were found on, and other bits and bobs that had no place in the smooth running of things.
All such documents could contain sensitive information and therefore had to be destroyed.
This room just held them until someone got around to doing that.
Dorothy had found, quite by accident, that some of the pages were very interesting.
They were especially so when compared with the sheets put into the actual filing.
The discrepancy between the two couldn’t be explained.
Heaven knows she’d tried. She desperately wanted Mac to see these, but she didn’t want anyone to know that she was taking them.
She had a feeling that she and Mac weren’t supposed to know about this.
It was a secret for some reason, and it seemed like a serious one.
She turned down the right corridor and stopped. No one was behind her. All around her she could hear the soft noises of papers moving, adding machines clacking, and pens scribbling.
Moving to the door, she fitted the key in the lock. It turned without a sound. She slipped inside quickly and then rested her back against the door for a moment. Her hands were shaking so much that she needed a moment to compose herself.
After taking a deep breath, she looked around. The room had shelves and boxes, all of them full of paper. She knew immediately that more had been added since she was there last.
Drat! Now what? Someone has moved everything.
She was running out of time. Pearson was slow, but not that slow. She had expected to come in, grab her folder of papers, and leave.
This isn’t happening!
Dorothy’s nerves were twanging. This might be it.
They might catch her, and then poor Mac would be all alone with no one to help him.
Well, standing there dumbly wasn’t going to find her anything.
She quickly began to search the shelves.
She had left her folder high on the top shelf several days ago, pushing it up there before hurrying from the room when she was interrupted.
It should still be there … Where is it …
Then she spotted the folder, stashed pretty much where she’d left it, out of the line of sight, under other papers. With a sigh of relief, she shifted a heavy box that was on the floor into place to use as a step. Without it, she would never reach the top shelf.
Balancing on the box, Dorothy stretched up and her fingers touched the file.
She could just grab it with the tips and pull.
She had a precarious grip on the file when, with a crack and a ripping noise, the box broke under her, and her foot slid into it up to the ankle.
Dorothy suddenly went down, and the file and a lot of other pages came with her.
A paper rain fell around her, pages of numbers fluttering to the floor.
This was dreadful. She didn’t have time for this! Her heart beat so hard she thought she might have a heart attack.
“Darn!” she swore. There was no time!
Her foot came free of the box. Dorothy bent and began to gather the papers.
From outside in the corridor, she could hear voices.
She froze. Would they hear her gathering papers? No, surely not. She started picking them up and sliding them back into the folder, regardless of whether they were the ones she had selected for Mac to see. There was no time to sort them now.
The voices came closer and closer and sounded like they stopped right outside the door. Dorothy’s mind went into a spin. How could she explain being there? What could she say? She didn’t know who was allowed in there. Was it just a select handful of people?
She scooped the last of the papers up, shoved them in the folder, secreted it in her jacket, and got to her feet. Moving to stand with her back to the wall, she hoped that if someone opened the door, she would be hidden by it, at least for a while.
“You’re saying there’s a chance then?” one voice said.
“There’s always a chance; that’s what business is all about,” another voice said.
“That and lining our pockets,” the first voice said.
There was laughter.
“See you later,” the second voice said.
Dorothy cursed them silently. Can you please hurry? I’m sure I’m out of time!
She’d have to think of a story to get Pearson to leave his desk again so that she could put the key back. Listening at the door once more, she noticed the voices had gone.
Opening the door, she peered out through a crack and saw that the corridor was clear. She let out a sigh of relief. Okay, maybe she could still complete her mission.
She stepped out of the room, closed the door behind her, and locked it. With the key back in her palm, she hurried down the corridor to Pearson’s counter.
Luck was smiling on her so far, it seemed. He wasn’t back, and no one else was there. Moving quickly, Dorothy stepped behind the counter, put the key in its spot, and hurried to the other side of the counter.
Balancing ledgers in his arms, Pearson came back just as she closed the door in the counter. Dorothy tried to look nonchalant and make up some story as to why she had her hand on the low door. Pearson didn’t seem to notice.
“There you go,” he said, dumping the books on the counter for her.
Dorothy smiled. “Thank you. But aren’t these the originals?”
He nodded. “The copies are only in a binder. They’ll get lost. This is better. And with the copies here, it’s fine for you to take these. As you said, they’re for Mac, and he owns the company.” He smiled.
She barely held back a sigh of relief.
“Well, thanks,” Dorothy said and picked up the pile. Her heart was still pounding in her chest, but she felt a good deal better. With a smile and a promise to have the ledgers back the moment Mac was done with them, she made her way up the stairs and back to the seventh floor.
She didn’t stop walking fast until she finally reached the doors to Mac’s office.
Once inside, with them firmly closed behind her, she let out the breath she’d been holding.
She had everything she needed now. All the documents that Mac would have to go through to find out what was going on.
Now she just had to get them out of the office without Harding and Devlin finding out what she’d done.
Hurrying behind her desk, she put the ledgers on the polished surface.
Then she picked up her carpetbag. She’d brought it to work that day, telling everyone that she was leaving straight after work to go to Pine Hill.
That was true, but all her clothes were actually packed in a different bag that her aunt Sadie would bring to the station later.
Dorothy hastily shoved the ledgers and the file into the bag. She had just closed the clasp when there was a knock on the door.