The Promise (The 'Burg #5)(143)

Oh my God.

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “And I didn’t give it to him. I told him to talk to Lloyd if he had questions about your schedule. He got kind of dicky, as is his way, and Heath saw it happening. He came out and intervened. Mr. Bierman backed down and took off, but Heath told me I should report it to Lloyd and went with me when I did. When I told him, Lloyd looked really pissed off. He promised me he’d take care of it. Then he and Heath were in his office forever and it didn’t look like the conversation was happy. Later, Sandy told me when Heath was in San Francisco last week, Mr. Bierman asked for the same kind of information about him.”

Sandy was Heath’s assistant and Sandy was like Tandy in the sweet, smart, on the ball, and very pretty department.

I also had a feeling Heath was nailing Sandy, which wouldn’t be good, dipping your toe in the company pool with someone who worked under you. But if he was, she wasn’t talking and, obviously, Heath wasn’t. If she was talking, Tandy would tell me.

That said, they had a lot of closed-door meetings where you could see through the windows that they were smiling at each other and laughing a lot. In these times, Heath was not looking at her like he thought she arranged his flights to Seattle so well, it was worthy of a belly laugh but, instead, like he enjoyed having her in his office the same way that he would enjoy sharing a glass of wine with her later and getting a blowjob from her after that.

However, at that moment, I couldn’t think about Heath and Sandy.

I could only think that I was getting pissed at Randy Bierman, resident dick.

“For freak’s sake, why?” I snapped.

Tandy rubbed her lips together uncomfortably, then leaned further toward me and said, “Through the grapevine, he thinks you’re both underperforming.”

“We’re both exceeding our numbers,” I pointed out.

“I know that. Lloyd knows that. Mr. Berger knows that. But the girls have been talking and we actually think it’s not about you and Heath. It’s about Lloyd. He’s targeting you guys to undercut Lloyd.”

I felt my eyes get wide.

“What? Why? Lloyd is awesome.”

This time, she scooted forward on her chair so she was leaning into my desk when she whispered to me, “A while back, after Dr. Gartner was murdered, Lloyd asked for some details about Tenrix that he couldn’t find on the servers, the usual stuff that he as a director should have access to. Important stuff, I guess, though I don’t know what it is. But it wasn’t there. He needs it, seeing as he has to guide you and Heath in guiding your reps to sell the product so he should have access to it. Mr. Bierman told him he’d find it and give it to Lloyd. He didn’t. Lloyd’s asked, like, a million times. Before Miranda took off to production, she told Jennie who told me that she heard Mr. Bierman and Lloyd arguing in one of the back conference rooms, Lloyd telling Mr. Bierman if he didn’t provide that information in twenty-four hours, he was going to Mr. Berger.”

“Did he provide it?”

She nodded. “Yes, but this is where the weird comes in.”

Oh shit.

More weird.

“What weird?” I asked.

“Kathleen said that the dates on the computer files were that day.”

Kathleen was Lloyd’s secretary, but even so, Lloyd got his email directly and confidential documents would not go through her.

“How did she know that?”

Tandy started looking uncomfortable. “She, uh…kinda looked over his shoulder and saw it.”

I let that go and pushed, “This means…?”

“Frankie, those files should have been saved by Dr. Gartner, like, months ago. Some of them years. They were all saved on the same day and that day was that day.”

Oh no.

I had a feeling I knew what that meant and there was no way it was good.

“Someone amended them?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It didn’t escape Lloyd’s attention and Kathleen told me he went to Mr. Bierman about it. Mr. Bierman explained it, but, Frankie, it’s fishy. Everyone thinks so.”

I did too.

What I also thought was that perhaps the assistants were sticking their noses a bit too far into something that might not be real healthy.

So I advised, “You need to be careful, honey.”

She looked to her knees.

“Tandy,” I called and she looked back to me. “You need to be careful. I get he’s a dick, he’s being more than his usual dick, office politics are getting nasty, he’s acting weird, and you guys are curious. But I’m not thinking any of this is good, so whatever you do, you gotta do in a way I can protect you. Lloyd or Bierman or anyone finds out you guys are nosing around this, bottom line, it isn’t any of your business and this information is probably confidential. Because of that, what you’re doing will be hard to explain and might be grounds for, at best, a written warning, at worst, dismissal. It also means, if you’re found out, those are serious transgressions and I can’t protect you.”

What I didn’t tell her was that Dr. Gartner, whose files had been amended, was dead, something she knew, but she might not know what that could mean.

And what it meant was that if one had to do with the other, I really couldn’t protect her.