Warming the IcePrincess Pt. 04

She quickly updated me on their progress with the Elmwood people, her upbeat assessment was good news indeed. Sensing she was in a receptive mood I explained to her what I had been up to since she left including a detailed account of my encounter with a smitten grunge girl from the day before. Her warm laughter from the far side of the world told me she didn't feel threatened in the least. I don't know why I was so relieved but I had actually been holding my breath waiting for her reaction. She teased me about starting a harem while she was away and told me I would have to share when she got back. That started the both of us giggling and then she surprised me by saying that she approved of Sue as the first of "my" concubines.

"Oh... cut that out, you," I scolded her trying to stop laughing.

I told her what I had in mind for Sue (in the office of course.) How I wanted her to take my place in accounting and offering her a considerably better salary than I was getting down there. While I explained it all and waited for her to tell me I couldn't, I was nervously twisting the phone cord to death.

As usual she astonished me answering me in a way I utterly unprepared for, "Jane honey, one of the prerogatives of the CFO is to put the people under you into positions that you think best suits your needs. You don't have to ask permission doll, just do it."

I was so stupefied by her plainspoken reasoning I couldn't come up with a response.

Claire filled the silence telling me, "You know you don't have to stuff her inside that closet you were in either. Since Adams old office is available again and I think it would only be appropriate for your Lead-Auditor to have that space don't you Jane?"

Busily uncoiling my fingers from the cord trying to get the circulation going again I answered her, "I just hope she wants the damn job. We only chatted about it briefly and, well she didn't seam overly enthused about it."

"Here is what you can do hon," she told me with an air of confidence. "Offer her the job, and make sure she's aware how much more the salary is from when you were doing that job. If she's still riding the fence after that, throw in office as a sweetener, how can she resist, you'll bag her baby."

"Thanks love, you make this all seem so clear and easy I just wasn't sure how far I could go. I've never been a big shot before, it takes a little getting used to," I confessed finally able to relax a bit.

"Its easy babe, just use your best judgment and you'll do fine. If anyone questions you on anything just don't back down. I mean it babe, you're in charge of that division Jane, your word there is law."

That started me laughing again and I told her, "I hadn't thought of it quite that way, but if you say so beautiful that's the way it'll be."

"Just one more thing before I let you go hon," her voice picked up an amused tone, "If you decide to put Miss McKenzie in any other positions beneath you, I want all the sordid details when I get home."

"As if," I barked at her indignantly. "There's no way Claire, I'm strictly a one woman girl now that I found you lady."

I could almost hear her smiling through the phone wires and then she shocked my socks off. "Suit yourself beautiful, but just thinking about you two all naked and sexy is gonna fuel my fantasies all night long, ooo...yeah...wow. I gotta go lover, brains kicking into overdrive now, and the fingers must follow."

"You...you...are absolutely incorrigible woman," I sputtered into the phone. "But, I think that's one of the many things I love so much about you," I giggled listening to her soft laughter coming from so far away.

"Good night my dear Jane, I love you," she said still chuckling when she hung up.

When I returned to the heaps of paper, I decided to abandon the past and decided to take a harder look at our current investment picture. My starting point was a graph that I had Dan plot out for me yesterday. It covered the progress of our investment portfolio for the last five years. It wasn't long before I was groaning aloud because my cursory examination told me almost nothing new. Only one unusual feature on the highly detailed page caught my attention at all. I nearly missed it amid the wash of undulations laid out before me. Our investment income had fallen in three precipitous steps. The first being shortly after the merger and Adams took over as CFO, but the final two were both within the current fiscal year.

"What the...now that's damned strange," I said into the empty room.

"What's so peculiar little one?" I froze behind my computer at the sound of a very familiar voice.

I looked up not quite ready to trust what my ears had heard only to see my former professor smiling at me from just inside the doorway.

I bounded out of my chair running across the room and throwing myself into to her outstretched arms shouting happily, "Oh Liz! Oh god, it's so good to see you!"

I hugged her slim body sensing that she was as strong and vibrant as ever. Her delicate features were only beginning to show the toll the years were having on her. I only hoped I could find a way to look half as good at the start of my sixth decade.

She asked me returning the embrace warmly, "So how's my friend doing these days? I've really missed her since she went off on her own."

Sighing into her shoulder I answered, "Oh I've had better days but now that you're here it'll be all better now won't it?"

Laughing softly at my childlike suggestion she told me, "That's a wish you'll have to see you're fairy godmother about, and I'm not her I'm afraid, sorry little one."

I took a step back looking her over to find that she was every bit as gorgeous and sexy as I remembered. No wonder Bart Stilwell fell so hard for her, hell I still found her incredibly alluring. I couldn't help the smile dancing across my face as I held her hands. For reasons I could never explain I'd always been fascinated with her hands. I found them unbelievably sexy to look at and hold. I fondly recalled our magical afternoon long ago when these same long slender fingers showed such amazing strength when applied to my bare skin. Just gazing at them again caused a warm feeling to well up inside me. That's when I noticed the ring on her left hand and said, "Well you certainly sparkle like my fairy godmother no wonder I was so confused." I turned it into the light to examine the ring more closely.

Somewhat surprised that it was a much smaller stone than the one I saw Bart flashing at the restaurant I asked her, "What happened to the boulder Liz?"

She laughed heartily at my description of the ring Bart offered to her and answered, "As a first request to my new fiancé I asked him for something a wee bit more modest. I picked this one up just this afternoon. Smart fella that he is Bart only borrowed that monstrosity you must have seen. That is, until he heard my answer."

I smiled when she admitted, "I teased him so bad for trying to trick me into marrying him dazzling me with that Son of the hope diamond," She was laughing now too. "I almost had him convinced I was going to throw him out until he could propose to me with a proper engagement ring."

Still examining the exquisite but much smaller engagement set, I got my laughter under control and told her earnestly, "That's sounds like something our boy would do, he is a cagey one."

Her smile told me she understood completely and said, "I really don't need a two-pound block of stone perched on my finger to tell me how he feels about me. I can see it in his eyes every time I look at him."

Hugging her tightly again I said, "Oh Liz don't you just love him, I'm so happy for you!"

She stroked my back and asked me, "I hear you have someone special in your life too little one"

I pulled back looking into her dark penetrating eyes feeling as proud and happy as she was, and answered her, "Yeah, Claire's wonderful you'll like her too Liz. She's smart, talented, and tough as nails, just like her dad."

Liz smiled at my dreamy expression saying, "I've heard she's quite a stunner this Claire of yours."

I knew where she was baiting me with that remark trying to tell if I'd done some growing up over the years since leaving the university. While in college, I had a habit of always becoming infatuated with the prettiest girls on campus. For one reason or another, they all managed to break my heart. When the anguish was too much to bear alone, I would turn to Liz and she dutifully sat and listened to me cry over each and every one of them.

Bristling slightly at this thinly veiled taunt I answered, "I'd love her just the same even if she looked like the flat faced ornery old mutt of yours." My chin jutted out in defiance, but seconds later a smile cracked my hardened features after mentioning her somewhat neurotic pet, "By the way how is Winston doing these days?"

"On his last legs I'm afraid," she answered wistfully, "He'll be coming out to the ranch with me soon to spend the last of his days enjoying the wide open spaces and all the new smells he can stuff his fat little face into."

I was so happy to see her I had almost forgotten what I was doing until she asked me, "Now what's this oddity you discovered before I so rudely interrupted you dear?"

Releasing one of her hands and pulling her along by the other I walked over to my PC saying, "Look at this and tell me what you see, I could really use a fresh pair of eyes looking at some of this crap." I could see her eyes follow the steps clearly depicted on the graph and said quickly, "I'm assuming you've been focusing on the dollars so far, but this tells me you need to look into the dates too."

Exhaling a loud breath I didn't realize I was holding, I smiled nodding to her because I had reached the same conclusion just before she walked in.

She turned toward me and asked with a serious expression, "How did you discover that sneaky shit was stealing all that money in the first place. To hear Bart tell the story it was nothing short of magic."

I chuckled and grabbed a pad and paper scrawling out the sorting algorithm I used and she smiled in recognition, "Ah it's nice to see your head wasn't in the clouds the whole time you were daydreaming in my lecture hall."

Answering her barb with one of my own I said, "Hey, when the professor giving the lecture is such a hot little minx it's awful hard for a girl not to fantasize."

"Thank you dear," she answered with a sly smile tapping the end of my equation and saying, "this part is all new to me, you added it?"

"Yeah," I answered tiredly, "I had almost six million in unaccounted for payments vanishing out of our claims budget. This equation told me that someone was electronically ghosting out identical amounts to specific legitimate claims every time we had a major influx of activity."

"I set it up to shuffle legitimate payments in and out to see if I could match the missing total," I told her elaborating on my methodology.

"How accurate?" she asked pointedly.

With a proud grin, I answered without hesitation, "down to the last penny."

She whistled her surprise admitting, "Yeah that couldn't happen by accident," squeezing my shoulder affectionately she added, "It's a good thing you weren't too distracted by that saucy professor to pay attention in class."

With a grin I sat heavily in my chair and gave her the rest of the details, "He tried to keep anyone here from seeing it by changing the way our system worked. He didn't count on me being such a nosey shit. I was snooping around and found out about it before he or anyone else knew what I was doing. All the clues pointed right at the only person with the knowledge and access necessary to pull it off, our brand new V.P. the more I look into it now it seems like he made almost no effort at all to cover his tracks. He was relying almost completely on his "streamlined auditing system" to keep anyone from noticing."

She leaned away from the screen crossing her arms and said thoughtfully, "He was either seriously over confident or was a remarkably stupid man to try a stunt like that."

She looked again to study the graph on my computer and said, "This feels like something entirely different to me," with one finger tapping the screen.

I watched her toss her luxurious long hair over her shoulder and nodded. I marveled at how pretty she still was even though its raven darkness was now shot through with grey. I remembered the teasing she once gave me for coloring my hair a lighter shade of blonde back in college. She equated coloring my hair to intellectual dishonesty and if I had any intellect, I'd leave my damn hair alone. I smiled knowing Liz would never succumb to such vanity.

I happened to glance at the clock in the lower corner of the screen and I quickly started shutting it down with her still staring at Steve's chart I chirped at her in an accusatory tone. "Gee whiz lady why didn't you tell me it was already after nine, let's get the hell out of here I'm starved."

She chuckled at me and hooking her arm through mine said, "You're a big girl, you would have figured it out on your own... eventually."

We left separately agreeing to meet for dinner. Liz and I had a wonderful meal at a local steakhouse, and spent the evening catching up on old times as and comparing notes on the loves of our lives. By the end of our dinner, I had extracted a promise from her to show up come hell or high water Monday morning to help me exercise the evil spirits from Continental Casualty & Insurance.

On my drive home from the restaurant, that creepy feeling of being followed enveloped me again. I noticed a pair of headlights that seemed to shadow my every turn. The driver was hanging back just enough to keep from being too obvious but he couldn't change the size or the arrangement of the lights on the front of his car. Someone a little less detail oriented may have missed it but I had just spent my whole afternoon searching for things that were out of place. When that exact pair of headlights reappeared behind me after a fourth and fifth turn, my guts told me he wasn't there by accident.

I was instantly furious but forced myself to calm down when I realized there wasn't much I could do about it tonight. When I got home I couldn't help fuming and trying to think of a way to handle with this new irritant (As if I didn't have enough to deal with already.) Weariness finally overcame my anger and I gradually slid to a fitful slumber. My sleep was filled with images of sinister pursuers chasing me through my dreams. The strangest feature of these bizarre scenes parading through my sleep was that everyone who seemed so determined to capture me had a wonderfully naked female body. Though throughout the whole dream, I couldn't identify a single face. (Talk about weird Huh?)

Chapter 16

(Surveillance Shattered)

Sunday

When me morning began, it arrived rather later than I was expecting. Usually by 10:00am, my day would already have worked up a good head of steam. Even on weekends, I rarely luxuriated in bed so late and I was a little disoriented when my eyes first cracked open and located the bedside clock. I exploded out of bed and was running for the bathroom trying to figure out which parts of my already brief morning routine could be skipped in order to get me out the door faster. When it finally penetrated my sleep-addled brain that it was Sunday I laughed aloud still sitting on the throne. I wasn't late for anything but the adrenaline coursing through my veins made calming down a bit tricky and going back to bed was completely out of the question. Since I was already up, I decided it was time to get my narrow arse in gear. I sighed thinking that I should at least try to accomplish something today, though I hadn't devoted any thought to what it was I needed to get done.

Swaddled in Claire's thick terry bathrobe that still smelled of her perfume I headed into the kitchen and my first goal of the day. I decided to start small brewing up a pot of delicious, aromatic, ultra-black coffee. (Hey sometimes it's the littlest things that mean the most.) After a cup or was it two, my memory was fully awake and filled with those headlights in my rearview mirror from last night and I was quickly dialing the phone. Keith Gibbons was driving his family to church when I reached him on his cell. He listened to my story very patiently, no laughter, but he might as well have cackled my ear off. He dismissed my suspicions so peremptorily that I felt as though I'd have gotten farther telling my story to my coffee mug.

He told me flatly that he was absolutely certain that no one from his office had put me under surveillance. Only the U. S. attorney prosecuting the case could authorize the additional expense. They would only do it as a protective measure after a direct threat was made on a witness. Since the local FBI branch didn't have the manpower to do it even if she did authorize it, they would have had to bring in extra help from other field offices to do what I was suggesting. All of those authorizations had to come across his desk and he was positive there were none. Before hanging up He told me that unless I had some bad gambling debts or a jilted lover looking for revenge I shouldn't worry about anyone following me. I stared at the silent phone afterward feeling a little silly but the anger from the previous night was percolating just under the surface.

It bubbled up momentarily and I vented it loudly into the empty room, "Oh bullshit! Special agent dipshit, I know what I saw!"

I think what made me most angry was I didn't have the first damn clue what to do about it. I hated waiting around for something to happen, usually opting for a pro-active approach. The frustration was rapidly souring my mood and I needed to find a way to settle down. Refilling my coffee I looked across the living room at the sunbeams streaming through the glass patio doors. The pleasant memories of an afternoon spent frolicking with Claire bare ass naked on the other side of the glass helped shove some of my irritation aside. A smile curled my lips as my mind filled with images from the afternoon we shared in the late afternoon sun. Putting thought into action, I strode across the room dumping the phone back into its base and stepped outside onto the wide balcony.

The fresh air had a crisp autumn chill raising goose pimples on my exposed skin as I looked out over the multi-hued treetops spread beneath me. It was the kind of day photographers and painters waited for all year. The sky was unusually clear with only a few thin wispy cirrus clouds marring its perfection. The deep azure color above seemed to help all of the colors radiate with an uncommon vibrancy. The leaves were nearing that brief span where their colors were at their most vivid. I wished I could capture the natural beauty to savor the other 364 days of the year. I could hear the creatures in the forest below busily preparing for the brutal cold that would descend upon them in a few short weeks. I both loved and hated this time of year. The next change of season would be heralded by short frosty days and achingly long cold nights. Midwestern winters could be cruel with their biting cold and deep snows, both of which lasted much too long for my liking.

The more immediate concern of an empty coffee cup drove me back indoors. My laptop was slowly struggling to boot up and I found myself day dreaming about vitamin D and its many benefits. I couldn't ever remember being so completely happy. Even with all of the shit going wrong and right, at work. I was just bursting to tell someone how wonderful my life was going but couldn't think of a soul to call. Suddenly I remembered one person that I could talk to and I had some happy news to share with her too. I snatched up the telephone carrying it with me back into the kitchen. I could certainly have waited until I saw her tomorrow in the office but my urge to talk to someone was overpowering. With the long hours we had all put in lately if I could brighten her day with a well-earned reward, I didn't want to wait an extra second. I pulled up her home number from my PDA and dialed my excitement building with each unanswered ring. When she did answer, her voice was a bit gravely as though she might have just woken.