Working Romance. Susan Kohler

was wearing navy polyester stretch pants and a long flowing white blouse. Her cubicle was filled with potted plants and pictures of children. She told Kate they were all her grandchildren.

      Mary and Jennifer, who shared an extra-large cubicle, did the billing. Mary was small, a Latino spitfire in tight blue jeans with long black hair. Jennifer was a young, pretty blond in a short red dress. Their cubicle had several pictures of Mary’s little girl and one of Jennifer’s boyfriend, and a Firefighting Hunks calendar.

      Diana, tall and shapely with short brown hair and an engaging smile, did the bank reconciliations and would work with Kate on accounts payable until it was caught up. She looked neat and professional in a blue print dress. Her cubicle had several hand-drawn cartoons and pictures of her horse on the walls.

      There were two other women who worked in the vault room down the hall, Sherry and Tonya. They handled the cash receipts from the eight retail stores in the district. Laura knocked at their door and identified herself, and one of them opened the door from the inside and let her in. She introduced Kate to them. Their office was stark, with only a framed picture of Tonya’s kids for decoration, but they had a stereo that was turned up loud, on a classic rock station.

      Finally, Kate was shown to her cubicle. It would have been extra large, but she had one whole wall taken up with filing cabinets. Aside from a computer and a calculator, she had a long flexible sorter on her desk. It was filled to the bursting point with alphabetized invoices. There was also a bin on her desk overflowing with already filed purchase orders, packing slips and any other correspondence related to an invoice, also in alphabetical order.

      Kate settled in and spent a fairly quiet morning matching the invoices to the packing slips and correspondence, then inputting the information from the ones that formed completed sets into her computer. While she worked, she was also keeping her eyes and ears open.

      All she learned that first day was that her co-workers seemed to be good hard workers who enjoyed their jobs. Everyone seemed congenial; no one seemed to be hiding anything. They were all very helpful and pleasant to her. Shortly before noon Laura came over to ask her out to lunch.

      “Won’t the, um, suspects think it’s strange? I mean supposedly we just met and you’re my supervisor,” Kate reminded her. “After all I’m supposed to be undercover.”

      “No, it shouldn’t seem suspicious. I almost always take the new girls out to lunch,” Laura explained. “Just to welcome them to the company.”

      “Even the temps?” Kate asked skeptically.

      “Well, not the temps, but I don’t think it’ll give us away,” Laura replied. “Besides, I’m the boss, what can they say?”

      “In that case, great. I’d love lunch.” The pair left quickly.

      Kate almost had to run to keep up with Laura as she hurried over to her car. “Hey! What’s the rush?” she complained, as she stumbled in the high heels she hadn’t worn in almost five years.

      “I’m trying to avoid any tag-a-longs, so we can talk.” They got into Laura’s car and she practically peeled out of the parking lot before continuing, “You are doing some investigating for us, remember?”

      “James Bond never had to run to lunch,” Kate pointed out, still panting a little.

      “James Bond was only trying to catch Russian spies, not avoid office gossips,” Laura laughed, “and spies are a lot easier to fool.”

      “So? Are you buying?” Kate added, “After that fiasco on the beach yesterday morning, you owe me.”

      “By my account, after taking the kids out for ice cream yesterday afternoon, you owe me lunch. I must be one helluva great matchmaker.” Laura looked over at her friend and noted her quick flush. “Aren’t I?”

      “So what? You think I owe you lunch just because you introduce me to a nice man? I mean, sure, he’s very nice, and great looking, and single, has a good job, and kis. . .” Kate stopped quickly, blushing. “What I’m saying is, he’s not too bad.”

      “So he did kiss you?” Laura was surprised. “Yesterday? I knew it! That’s fantastic! I thought so, I hoped so, but I wasn’t sure.”

      “What’s so fantastic?” Kate was suspicious. “We were having a good time together and he kissed me. It was a great kiss, but what’s got you so excited? Men and women kiss all the time, you know. They’ve been doing it for centuries.”

      “But not you, and not Bob. You see, well, Bob’s a bit of a flirt away from work, and he’s got a great sense of humor, but he’s always treated the women around the office very respectfully. He’s always been friendly, but very professional,” Laura stated. “I’ve never heard any gossip or rumors about him being involved with anybody at work, and with his looks and his personality, you know there must have been several women along the way who have tried to snare him. I know of at least three.”

      “Sure. But did any of those women get naked and blush a lot?” Kate asked her. “That’s what got him interested in me. It can be a very effective way to get a man’s interest.”

      “If I were still single, I’d keep it in mind.”

      “Worked like a charm for me.” Kate was smiling. “And I wasn’t even trying.”

      Laura parked the car and they went into an Italian restaurant.

      As soon as they were seated, Laura asked, “Did it go farther yesterday than just kissing?” Laura studied Kate’s face, and noted another sudden flush. “It did! Good girl. I knew you had it in you.”

      “It didn’t go that far.” Kate watched Laura’s eyes widen at the double entendre before she put an end to the discussion of her love life. “Now. About work, who’s a suspect?”

      There was a pause as they studied their menus briefly. A waitress walked over and they both ordered chef salads and iced tea.

      “Everyone,” Laura continued as if there had not been a pause. “They’ve all been here when money was missing. It’s hard to see how any of them could have done it. The shortages don’t have anything to do with payroll, and of course, the bank reconciliations and accounts receivable books always balance out. The only two areas where there have been unusual discrepancies are in accounts payable and cash receipts. The shortages usually seem to appear when a new girl has been on the job for about a week and a half.”

      The waitress brought their food and left. Laura continued talking as she squeezed lemon and stirred some sugar into her iced tea. “I have a feeling this time it’s going to be sooner though, because we took so long bringing you on board. I think whoever is stealing the money must need it pretty badly by now.”

      “Have you tried marked bills? Hidden cameras? Or drug testing?” Kate suggested. “This could very well be drug related.”

      “I don’t know about marked bills, we can ask the Loss Prevention people about that idea, and I think it would be hard to install hidden cameras without alerting the guilty party. I’ll ask about that, too. Remember, all the employees passed a drug screening test when they were first hired, and we haven’t seen any behavior from anyone suggesting that we need to retest one of them.” Laura put butter on a roll and ate a bite before she went on. “We’d hate to put everyone through another drug test if we don’t have to. Besides if we do that, we’ll definitely warn the thief that we’re looking.”

      “But it’s gone on so long,” Kate protested, “surely the guilty person must know you’re onto the thefts.”

      “Well, the first time it happened, Bob and I thought it was the new girl we had just hired. Luckily, she was not a very good worker so we just let her go while she was still on probation. The next time it happened, we were sure it wasn’t the new girl. So when her husband was offered a new job in Houston, we transferred her to our Houston office. There hasn’t been any sign of embezzlement in Texas.” Laura paused. “The people in our local office were told she’d been