Digging around the office and elsewhere

You arrive at work to an entirely empty office. Since you've arrived at 6:00 a.m. due to acquiescing to Ted's demands, all you can hear the is the soft hum of the air conditioning system. You sigh in frustration, but sit down and start the arduous task of catching up on your expanded workload.

The next couple of hours are actually productive for you. Barring the brief moment at 7 a.m. when Ted walked by your cramped cubicle and gave you an irritated scowl, you worked in relative peace until the rest of the regular daily employees showed up.

Mary comes in at her typical start time of about 8:00 a.m., and you nod in greeting as she enters. She's looking as delectable as ever with a professional black skirt that goes nearly to her knees, and a crisp white blouse that hugs her torso nicely. The outfit is capped by a pair of pantyhose and sensible work heels, and she looks strictly professional. You think about mentioning the ride home yesterday, but it seems like she doesn't want to talk about it so you refrain from bringing it up.

You keep your head down for most of the morning, thinking of a good opportunity to look more into Ted. It turns out you don't need to find an excuse to talk to Ted, because just before lunch he calls you into his office.

"Ted. Hey. How's life treating you these days?" You ask, trying to be diplomatic and probe for any information you can.

"John, don't try to suck up to me in an effort to get out of doing Karen's work. You don't nearly have as much of a silver tongue as you think you do." Well, it seems like Ted's onto you, but for the wrong reasons. While he thinks you just want to get out of doing work, you're really looking into avenue to **** him.

"Well, I guess you got me. What do you need from me, boss?"

"I'm heading out for an early weekend in about an hour," he says, glancing at his watch. "Don't you dare leave early today while I'm gone. Keep in mind that I can always look up what times that your keycard swipes in and out of here. Oh, and also don't email me. I won't have the time to respond to you, so if you run into a problem, figure it out yourself."

The audacity of Ted to leave early while piling more work on all of his subordinates is astounding. An unfortunate side effect of that is you won't be able to pump him for any information over the course of the day. But you might be able to look through his desk while he's gone. Since Carrie is gone for the weekend, you figure that you can stay late at work today and maybe look through the files on his desk. If no one else is at the office, there should be no risk involved with it.

"Sounds good Ted." you finally reply. "Where are you headed off to?"

"It's none of your business." Ted says, but he seems to realize that he has the opportunity to rub his vacation in your face , so he continues, "but I'm headed away for a romantic weekend getaway with my sexy wife. We're headed to my beach house on the ocean. I know you haven't seen it, but it is enormous."

"Well, I hope you have a good time." It seems like Ted is still trying to make it work with Helen, and their marriage hasn't hit the rocks yet. Hopefully that means that you'll be the first man to sleep with Helen since she and Ted got hitched. It was certainly a tempting thought to consider.

You depart, and as you leave to start thinking. Did Ted really get paid enough to own a beach house? In this part of the country, they were certainly expensive and required either family money or a mortgage up to your eyeballs. You wonder if that's worth investigating further.

Sitting down in your chair, you ponder what Ted just told you. Was it possible that Ted was siphoning money from the company? But you couldn't determine if it was even feasible. You might have to ask one of the accountants here at Simmons and see if they knew about any irregularities.

You spend the rest of the day working hard, intent on not seeming suspicious to Ted. True to his word, he leaves promptly at noon, while all of your coworkers stare daggers at him. Before you know it, it's almost 5:00 p.m., and Mary is packing up, getting ready to leave. She hasn't really spoken much to you today, and what she has said has been strictly about work.

"Got anything fun with Carrie planned for this weekend?" She asks out of nowhere. She's still refusing to meet your eyes, appearing to think that her leather purse to be more vital than making eye contact.

"Not really." You reply. "Carrie is visiting her parents this weekend, so it'll just be me. I might head over to a buddy's house to watch the game tomorrow, but besides that I'll probably just be relaxing."

There's a pause in conversation, and you look over to Mary to see what's happening. She's fiddling with her hair as if trying to decide something. You patiently wait, wondering what possible she's having trouble saying.

"I guess then...James and I are hosting a brunch Sunday at 11. You're certainly welcome to come on over if you'd like."

"I'd love to. I'll certainly be there." Mary gives a nervous smile, grabs her things, and leaves. If you weren't mistaken, Mary was acting very strange. You wondered why.

But alas, you have to keep working. You've been stuck for the past hour on a problem. You were having troubling deciphering what exacting Karen was attempting to do. Your worry is that you'll be spending the rest of the day doing trial and error, when the clearest solution was to just ask Ted. But since Ted specifically told you not to contact him and since you're already on his shit list, you don't want to bother his romantic getaway with his wife. Though you didn't mind throwing a wrench and hurting their relationship, your worry is that Ted would blame you and Helen might begin to dislike you.

So calling or emailing Ted was out. The only other option was to ask Karen. While you didn't want to disrupt someone on maternity leave, she was working earlier this week so she should still be able to help out. You look into your companies phone directory to call her, but her number is already gone. The only way you can get this information is to actually go to Karen's house. You've been there before to drop things off, and you think you remember how to get there.

You take a deep sigh, and start packing up what you need for a quick trip to Karen's. While you're worried about Ted finding out that you left the office, you'll come back after stopping at Karen's, so he'll see that you returned. You lock your computer, and head with some other people who have finished working around this time.

The drive to Karen's is short, only about ten minutes. You're surprised that you remember exactly where she is, but in no time, you're carrying your briefcase to the door and knocking on it. Karen herself answers , her usual bright smile no longer present.

"John? What are you doing here?"

"Well, I've been given your duties while you're on maternity leave, and I had some questions that Ted wasn't able to answer."

"What are you talking about? I'm not on maternity leave. Ted fired me two days ago."