2 Executive Retention Read online

  Executive Retention

  Spinmeisters Go for Broke

  Maria E. Schneider

  Copyright © June 2010 Maria E. Schneider

  Cover Art: Katerina Vamvasaki

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  A BearMountainBooks.com Production

  Executive Retention Summary

  After solving one case of corporate crime, Sedona expected to get her peaceful life back. Problem: She is still a manager at Strandfrost, and there is still rampant jealousy over her promotion. Is the danger of being railroaded by her not-so-illustrious colleagues worse than taking a new undercover job from Steve Huntington?

  Crooks are coming out of the woodwork and family troubles are stewing. Sedona needs to keep her sanity intact, piece together mismatched clues and dodge more than one stray bullet. If she can manage all of that, maybe she'll have time to figure out whether her love life stands a chance.

  Executive Retention

  Chapter 1

  As a matter of principle, I don't like working late. The truth is, I don't really like working all that much period. I could sit on a beach somewhere for days on end if I didn't have to worry about how to pay for my next meal.

  Burn-out is expected and is almost badge of honor in the computer industry. Then again, perhaps other industries have the same endless meetings where you sit and push around spaghetti. The engineer knows how to make the noodle, but doesn't have any idea why there is a meeting or why he has no say in what kind of noodle they are discussing. Eventually, the engineer realizes that even with his intimate knowledge of noodle creation, no one is listening to him, and he heads for the hills.

  I can unequivocally state that despite my recent promotion into Strandfrost management and the Mercedes Huntington left behind as a gift for my investigative help, I am still tempted to drive off into the sunset. If success is so perfect, why am I stuck in the office at eight o'clock long after others have gone home? Why am I not on a beach in a cute little bikini with a cold iced tea and multiple dating prospects to reflect upon?

  Steve Huntington, quiet infiltrator for companies with internal problems, finished mopping up the mess at Strandfrost, but he neglected to tidy up my life, a mess he helped create. Away he went into the sunset leaving me, Sedona O'Hala, a manager of computer nothingness. Oh sure, I was doing my best, but now that the criminals had been thrown out, I was left trying to help new management understand how business at Strandfrost was done. Out of guilt, I kept trying to piece things together and was therefore stuck at Strandfrost way past closing time.

  Whenever I was in this mood, I should take a vacation until things calmed down. I should not stop on my way out in a dark parking lot and talk to strange men in their cars, even if they are driving a brand new Lexus. If the man was Huntington, I should run screaming.

  "Sedona, do you want your old job back?"

  My heart skipped a beat, and it wasn't his deep baritone that caused it. For a moment I pictured my job in the lab, setting up computers. I could stop attending reams of meetings where everyone used impressive words like "paradigm shift and synergy." I could go back to arguing with my old boss, Turbo, over the best way to prove or disprove a concept and deal only with obedient little machines.

  What were the chances? "I want to move to Hawaii. Denton, Colorado will soon be getting very cold, and snow bunny I am not."

  "How about the coast of California?"

  "Unless the job entails sitting on a beach counting seals, I am not interested," I replied frostily, delivering on my own prediction that Colorado was about to get very chilly.

  He was not deterred by the cold front. "Most of the work would be in Denton, but the main office is in San Jose. There's a state park with elephant seals a few miles from there. I am sure we could work in some time for you to go count them."

  "Elephant seals?" I had been picturing cute harbor seals, the ones with black button noses and adorable faces. "Don't those have rather large, distorted noses?"

  I think he was laughing, but I couldn't recall Huntington actually doing such a normal thing, so I wasn't sure.

  "I'll take you there, I promise. I just want you to consider this job at Acetel Services. It should be a breeze for you. The company opened an office in Denton to support computer customers that bought equipment from various providers."

  Customers always mixed equipment from different manufacturers. When something inevitably went wrong, if the customer didn't have a tidy service contract, the original manufacturers merely pointed to the competitor product as the problem and refused to look at the mess.

  "I'm not interested," I said. Working for a customer that hadn't been able to get support from his original supplier would be nothing short of a nightmare.

  Huntington sighed. "How about I take you out to Anthony's Grill, and we can talk about it? You can't stay at Strandfrost forever, you know."

  I couldn't? "Why not?"

  He purposely misinterpreted my question and assumed I was agreeing to his invitation. Without delay, he hopped out of the pearly white car and went around to the other side to open the door for me.

  I wasn't sure what kind of car Huntington really owned and which ones he kept for his various assignments, but this one was certainly nice. The beautiful cream interior beckoned. Huntington didn't look bad either in his black leather jacket and perfectly-pressed khakis. By any stretch, Huntington wore his clothes well on his six-foot frame. His dark hair made his eyes look bluer and the way he used them was…suggestive.

  White teeth flashed when he smiled, but only momentarily. "I decided a bit more than Chinese takeout was needed to persuade you to give up your latest position. Anthony's should be a good start."

  "The Italian place by Whispering Pines?" Next to Chinese, Italian was my favorite cuisine. Actually, a well-made meal of any kind had a place in my heart, including chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake and anything else well-prepared. I had never been to Anthony's. It was very upscale.

  I looked down at my attire. At least I hadn't yanked my mousy brown hair into a ponytail like I usually did on Fridays. "I probably won't take the job, but it never hurts to eat."

  Huntington knew me pretty well. The best way to reach me was through food. Flowers would have been nice too, but we weren't in that kind of relationship. Since he was pretty casual, I wasn't completely out of place in my light jacket, jeans and sweater. Although my last job for Huntington had provided clothes so that I could look the part of an up and coming executive, it had not occurred to me to buy a leather jacket when he was footing the bill. Darn. I was very certain that a sleek black jacket would go nicely with my gray eyes.

  Huntington held the door and waved me forward. "Come on. It will be fun."

  "I'm still not likely to take the job." I grabbed my wallet from my backpack and tossed the pack into the backseat. I hadn't planned on returning home late and should have brought a heavier coat, but unless Huntington was going to pay me on the side again, the latest job description didn't sound like it would provide a closet full of luxuries.

  I expected a hard push for the job, but he was a good deal smoother than that. "How have you been?" He managed to sound genuinely interested--as if he had thought of little else for the past month.

  "Oh, just fine. You know how it is, managing a group of people, all the various social engagements and the demands." In my case social engagements equaled "none," which was the primary reason I had never been to
Anthony's Grill. The "demands" were work related and felt a lot like being a highly paid short-order cook. When I was lucky enough to grab an order slip, the waitress would immediately change it, leaving me trying to break up a cooked hamburger patty and reassemble it into meatloaf.

  "Things are going good for you then." He hid most of his disappointment.

  "Couldn't be better. Well, unless I retire early." I hedged because I didn't want to get too caught up in my lies.

  "How's Turbo?"

  "Fine." Missing the sort of work that he had done to help Huntington, but I wasn't going to encourage Huntington. By this time we were only a couple of blocks from the restaurant. Denton wasn't that big, but it was a Colorado resort town. Anthony's was in the same neighborhood as the Whispering Pines Resort. The restaurant was a quiet little building surrounded by a garden with little outdoor tables nestled under the trees. In the summer it would be romantic enough to sway any woman.

  In the winter it was just plain cold, but the setting still had an air of promise as we walked through a wrought-iron arch and along the well-lit sidewalk. I shivered a bit and Huntington did that guy thing, putting his warm hand on the small of my back to guide me.

  Where did those goose bumps come from anyway?

  He leaned in close and whispered in my ear, "The food is great here. You'll love it."

  Shivers ran all the way to my toes. I swallowed and tried to ignore my knees. They were probably weak from the wintry air.

  Before Huntington was near enough to even think of grasping the door handle, the heavy wooden entrance swung open, and we were ushered inside.

  The place wasn't so expensive that I couldn't come here occasionally; it was the lack of dates that was the problem. Anthony's was not the kind of place you wasted on a lonely meal.

  Huntington must have called ahead because the waiter immediately led us across the deep burgundy carpet to an intimate booth with a view. The window looked out onto the faded fall garden; an empty water fountain sat outside, decorated with fallen red and gold leaves. When it snowed, the garden would fill with a magical white carpet and the fountain would drip diamond icicles.

  "What?" I asked, having missed the waiter's question, busy with my daydreaming. "Oh, just water for me. No, make it hot tea."

  Fleetfoot nodded and soundlessly melted away. He had left the menu by my lifeless hands.

  Huntington was bemused by my attitude. "You seem a bit distracted."

  "Yeah," I sighed. It had been a long time since I had been treated to dinner and lavished with attention. I narrowed my eyes at the direction of my thoughts. It was necessary to be very careful here. Huntington was way out of my league. If the man thought seduction would get him what he wanted, he wouldn't hesitate, and I really didn't need that type of complication in my life. I didn't enjoy being roadkill, and if my friend Huntington was working a case, I had best be on my toes.

  "How can I talk you into taking another job?" he asked.

  "Why are you even asking me? The last one didn't go all that smoothly. As I recall, you ended up in a hole in the ground."

  He looked solemn and waited with his reply while the waiter presented a boxful of teas. I went with a nice, soothing herbal. We weren't ready to order, so again, Fleetfoot floated away.

  "You did come in handy during the rescue."

  That might have been stretching things a bit. I was almost positive that Huntington's brother, Mark, could have handled the entire rescue without me. Almost.

  "And you did learn some things for me that I couldn't have figured out on my own. That's essentially what I'm after at Acetel Services. There are rampant rumors about mismanagement, but the employees aren't going to tell me what is really going on."

  "Are you on the board again?" Huntington had positioned himself on Strandfrost's board during his last investigation. It gave him the power to move players around and become familiar with the politics, but it left him in the cold when it came to the grapevine.

  He nodded. "They're usually the entity that hires me."

  "Usually?" I wondered who else would bother. And who else could afford to?

  He grinned. "Usually."

  "Why me? Why not hire your brother Mark to go on the inside?"

  "Mark has other skills."

  He didn't say whether or not he would be using them in this case. Mark looked a lot like Huntington, enough that they could be twins, especially if one of them wore colored contacts. Mark's eyes were a deep, solid brown, and he spent more time in the sun. Whatever his skills, they resulted in a slightly more muscular build, not that Huntington was hurting in that area. Mark was also a tad shorter and didn't have the kind of suave demeanor that would win him board seats.

  "Are you still on the board at Strandfrost?" I asked.

  The waiter hovered again. I could have ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, but I wasn't that kind of date. Besides, I loved chicken Marsala, and it was reasonably priced.

  "And would you like soup or salad?" the waiter asked.

  "Caesar salad please." I handed him the tasseled menu.

  Huntington ordered the sirloin Marsala and a salad. When Fleetfoot disappeared, he said, "No, I'm not on the board anymore, why?"

  "Wow, that must be nice for them. You get paid to help for as long as they need you, and then they make you disappear. But I guess now you have another board seat."

  "I haven't been officially elected to this one," he cautioned. "Strandfrost is privately held so getting on their board didn't require a proxy or stockholder vote. Acetel went public during the dot-com days when stocks flew into the market a few years ago. The board would have to get me on a ballot in order to get me a seat."

  The salads arrived, and I dug in. "Why can't you hire someone who is already at Acetel like when you hired me at Strandfrost? Or shoot, just pay an insider to spill the beans on what they think they know."

  Huntington glanced up to make sure I was serious. "It's a thought. But not everyone can…blend as well as you do. You actually know the computer job and can do the work. You have a unique way of interacting with management." He frowned. "I don't know what it is, but they don't seem to notice you. Neither do the criminals." It was a thorny sticking point in our relationship. On the last case he had hired me to be noticed. Huntington had pulled out all the stops to advertise my position to the bad guys, to management, to anyone. I had been completely invisible.

  "You're thinking I can creep into this company in the dead of night and not get noticed, and maybe I can do some noticing on the side?"

  "Something like that. You'll have to blend better than you did the last time."

  "I thought you just said I did a great job of blending?"

  "You were ignored. But I shouldn't have said you blended. You actually stuck out like a sore thumb and weren't that good at getting people to talk to you. You'll have to spend lunches at this place, date some of the guys, play dominoes, whatever it is they do until they talk to you. It won't be as easy as the last time, hanging out with other managers."

  "Hanging out…" I trailed off in disbelief. Apparently Huntington hadn't noticed that the managers, a good ol' boys club, hadn't been the least interested in hanging out with me. And if he thought standing around talking with a bunch of old farts about golf and getting groped was easy…what the hell was he asking for this time?

  He ignored my sputtering, his attention focused behind my head. He stopped chewing suddenly and put down his fork. "Uh, excuse me."

  "What?" I was just getting ready with my scathing reply.

  Huntington got up and walked away.

  I glanced behind me. To my dismay, two large men followed the direction Huntington had taken. Wearing jackets bulky enough to hide an entire armament, they didn't look much like potential customers. The shorter of the two sported jeans with holes in the knees and the other, a large black guy, wore sweatpants.

  The bathrooms were near the front entrance, and that was not where Huntington had gone. Kitchen?


  What was going on? I took another bite of my salad. Should I go after him? Riiight. I was prepared to fight off two men three times my size that were probably armed with Uzis. No problem.

  The bushes outside the window moved. I looked out, but even with the bright garden lighting I couldn't tell if it was the wind or if Huntington was getting strung up in a tree. I couldn't just sit here and let him get gutted, could I?

  Actually…well, no, I couldn't. I sighed, wiped my mouth and got moving. I headed for the door where Huntington and his buddies had disappeared. Fleetfoot was leaning against a counter looking a lot more casual behind the kitchen door than he did when he was serving. I waved at him as I raced by. The cooks were young. They gaped at me. One of them said something in Italian or Spanish.

  Luck was with me. I spotted a large cleaver on the counter and picked it up on my way out the back door. Someone, I think it was the head cook, shouted, "Hey! You can't take that. What are you doing?"

  "Don't worry," I called back. "My date went out this way." And, it occurred to me, had left me with the check. Another good reason to have the cleaver handy.

  Chapter 2

  It was colder out than I remembered, but when we came in I had been glowing from nerves and the prospect of a good meal. Now I was envisioning a hanging corpse and trying to figure out how to throw a cleaver so that I didn't have to get too close to an overzealous boxer type. I moved quickly. If I was going to die, I was in a hurry to get the unpleasantness over with.

  I rounded the corner of the building, cleaver high and found...nothing. No Huntington, no big dudes hanging around. I sped around the next corner and was just in time to see Huntington's Lexus burn rubber on its way out of the parking lot. Another car followed close behind. I thought I had lost the whole lot of them until I realized the two large guys hadn't made it back into the parking lot yet. They were standing near the archway and must have heard my shoes crunching leaves because they both turned around.