A Charitable Scandal

The Empty Office

Saturday morning rolled around and as per our plans, I met Emily for an early lunch at a little cafe in the heart of downtown. We kept conversation light as we enjoyed the pleasant autumn air that hadn't yet reached the uncomfortable chill of an impending winter. Once we cleared our food away, we both ordered a couple hot drinks to finish off our meal and to warm us up for the task at hand.

"Well," said Emily after taking a deep swig of her pumpkin spice latte, "I don't know about you, but Carmen down in Accounting came through for me. Though, I'm supposed to tell you we owe her lunch for it."

"It would be nice to see her again," I said as I blew the steam away from my tea. "I haven't really kept up with her since our initial orientation back when we all started at Quinto. You could have invited her to join us today."

"Oh no, she's talking some place that at least serves wine. She plans to get her full use out of our IOU."

"Okay, well, I guess we'll have to arrange that at some point."

"To be fair," said Emi, her tone dropping with the weight of worry that also furrowed her brow, "she didn't ask this out of desire to drain our purses. It was more like she needed a good drink."

"Why?" I asked, placing my cup down and bracing my elbows against the table as I leaned in.

"She first accepted my request without hesitation, thinking she would be able to get back to me before lunch yesterday. But, I didn't hear from her again until this morning. I thought I was going to have to come to you with nothing."

"How long did she spend on it? Did she just get busy at work?"

"That's the thing," said Emily, leaning in as if we were sharing some sort of conspiratorial secret, "she said she hit a wall right away. No one knew anything and she couldn't find any hint of financial support from Quinto for the charity. She thought she was just missing something and so she kept at it. By lunch time she said she found it to be an affront to her skills that she hadn't tracked anything down yet. To make matters worse, she found one of her coworkers was starting to get a little nosy, asking about what she was doing and, after that, she suddenly felt like she shouldn't be poking around so much."

"Clearly that didn't stop her if you have information now."

"No, if anything it just made her dig harder." Emily flashed a proud smile in honor of her friend.

"That was brave. I hope she didn't get into trouble over this."

"She did eventually find a record of the company's financial support of the charity tucked away. It was poorly named so she thinks that had something to do with her trouble. Anyway, she found that we're footing the first few months rent for the charity. She was able to get the address of the charity's base of operations. That's unfortunately all she could dig up."

"Well considering how much work she put into it, I'm grateful for every bit of it. Plus it is way more than what I found."

"Did you get a chance to talk to Mr. Radcliffe about it?"

"I mentioned Mariska's questions to him on Thursday, but he didn't have much to offer, though admittedly, we got a bit side tracked and I didn't get to really question him on it."

I had planned to be more direct about addressing the charity with Alec the next day by having him look over some questions I expected Mariska to ask, particularly ones specifically about the charity. However, after I brought up Tamara, Alec became distant. I wasn't able to secure his undivided attention at all on Friday and the few times I was with him in the company of my team, I couldn't even manage solid eye contact. It's not like I picked up any sort of animosity or hostility in his distance, but there was a cold tension there that I simply couldn't decipher.