Chapter 3: More Sabotage, Retribution, Party on Cape Cod

More sabotage, retribution, party on Cape Cod

Our dating ramped up. Paul asked me to hold Friday night’s and all weekend free for him, unless he told me otherwise. I agreed, and so we started to spend nearly every minute of that time together.

Occasionally, I had to work on the weekends. I knew far enough ahead of time so that Paul could plan something work related. I definitely had the feeling that he was working around me, instead of me working around him. One weekend when I had to work, Paul had flown to Viet Nam to do something about the operations there. I didn’t think anything of the trip until I had a small note stuck under my front door.

‘So Paul’s away. Who’s with him?’

I guessed the note came from Leslie. The handwriting was feminine.

I saw Paul the following Friday night. He’d brought me back a beautiful ceremonial silk robe.

I showed Paul the note, and he rolled his eyes.

Paul said, “I’ll tell you who was on the trip. Jess, who you already met, and Ray Wilson. I did not do handy-pank with Jess, although I must confess the thought crossed my mind, and I’m sure it crossed her mind too. When we were going out – years ago, we’d been quite compatible in many ways, including in the sack. We did talk about you over drinks one evening in the hotel bar – all good, I assure you; but that’s as far as anything went. I’m about to promote her to the chief operating officer of the business too, so she’ll continue to be in my life a lot but not in any romantic way.

I expected nothing less, but he remained livid for another hour, bubbling around the house about his sister and her nefarious ways.

Finally, he said, “I want to do something to end all this shit with my sister. I am not going to date any of her recommendations, let alone marry them. She heard about my trip to Asia and tried to get me to stop off and see Alice on my way through. Ughhh.”

“Paul, it’s not going to end just yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“All the effort that I can see has been about discrediting you in my eyes so that I leave you alone. I think the next steps will be to ruin my reputation in your eyes so that you dump me ... or that Mike dumps Sheila, if they reach that far.”

My forecast proved to be too accurate for words.

Paul and Mike unexpectedly showed up on my doorstep on a Thursday night about two weeks later. They were sullen, but obviously not at anything that Sheila or I had done.

Paul said, “You were right. The counter campaign has started. Let me show you something.” He had a laptop computer, and he flipped open the top to display his email program.

He clicked on a link in an anonymous email message, and a browser window opened and filled the screen. The screen filled with a scene that was obviously a porn website. He had my attention.

Up on the screen came a series of nude photographs of Sheila and me doing things together. In the first, we were standing side-by-side with our arms around each other. We were obviously in someone’s living room that I didn’t recognize.

Gradually, we lost our clothes as we stripped each other. We fingered each other, sixty-nined with each other, fucked each other with dildos, and then Sheila fucked me with a strap-on dildo.

Paul said, “The anonymous email I got suggested I see what my girlfriend was doing when I wasn’t around.”

I looked over the top of my reading glasses at him.

Paul said, “I know that’s not you. Let me show you something.”

He popped open a high-resolution photo he’d downloaded of me on top of Sheila when we were eating each other. He blew up my ass and pointed at a small area that had obviously been erased. He then moved to another area where I apparently had a small mole. Since I didn’t look at my butt too often, I wasn’t sure whether that was the case or not.

Paul said, “Yank your pants down and bend over.”

I did amid some laughter about the guys just wanting to see my pussy.

Paul patted my ass in front of Mike and Sheila, even running his finger along my slit so that I jumped. Sheila giggled.

He said, “You’ll notice the absence of the mole, and there is no area on her ass that looks erased.”

Mike said, “Photoshopped?”

Paul said, “Oh, wait.” He scrolled to another photo where my face was clearly visible. He took a screen shot, and went through another couple of dozen photos to another lewd scene where I was apparently eating Sheila. He took a shot of that, and that opened the two side-by-side.

Paul pointed, “The faces in these photos are the same. Notice the eyes and the angle of the eyebrows, plus how the nose is slightly crinkled.”

“Where did the photos of me come from?”

“Ah ha!” Paul declared with delight. “The crucial question has been asked.”

Paul flipped around and opened my Facebook page. We’d been friends almost since we started dating. He went into my photos, and instantly scrolled down to a photo of me standing with a group of my co-workers at the 9-1-1 center. He blew up that photo, and it had the same face.

Mike whistled, “Someone lifted your picture off Facebook and made you a porn queen – and Sheila too.”

I laughed. “Not that I mind all that much. I assume there are others.”

Paul nodded, “Near as I can tell, and one of my I.T. guys I swore to secrecy to scrutinize the situation, whoever did this picked a dozen photos off of Facebook and some other photo site you use, and used PhotoShop to make you a star. The same photos were used multiple times. There are about fifty photos on this site, but only about twelve pictures were used that are really you. In some, you can’t see faces, but the message gets across.”

Sheila asked, “Did they do the same with my Facebook photos?”

“Yes. You don’t appear as much, but you’re a star too. I hope your school district doesn’t get wind of these; otherwise you’re out of a job. Call me if that happens and I’ll testify on your behalf. This is worse than revenge porn.”

Sheila sounded worried, “So, we’re porn queens, what now?”

“Oh, Mike and I are supposed to dump you as whores, sluts, and women of ill-repute. After all, a CEO and major venture capitalist can’t be seen consorting with your lot.”

Sheila’s mouth dropped open, “But...”

I interrupted, “Who opened the website?”

“Why you of course,” Paul said. “You paid in advance for a year from your PayPal account.”

I stiffened, “But I don’t have a PayPal account.”

“You do now.”

I turned the computer to me and went to paypal.com. I opened the login screen and typed my name. I was asked for a password, but had no idea what to do next. I looked at Paul.

He grinned widely. “Type in ‘secretlover1234.‘“

“That’s the name of the porn website – Secret Lover.“

“It is, but look at your balance and eligible withdrawal funds.”

I hit a few obvious buttons, and was routed to My Account. I apparently had enabled unlimited funds withdrawal from my bank account – a Wells Fargo account. The available amount was vacant, since that could only be retrieved from the bank itself.

Paul said in a sarcastic tone, “You have a lot of money, but it doesn’t show there. I think you should go on a little shopping spree, don’t you? After all, it’ll cost a lot to close your porn site and recover your reputation, and you need to recoup some of those loses somehow.”

“You know more than you’re telling me.”

“I do,” Paul chuckled, obviously not intending to give up any information just yet. He was having fun at someone’s expense.

Paul left that browser window open, and scrolled into the jewelry department on Amazon.com. He said, “I was thinking of getting you a ring – an expensive ring that ... well maybe it’s too early in our relationship to get engaged, but it’s not too early for a serious friendship ring – perhaps matching rings.”

Paul leaned in and kissed me. He took over the mouse for a moment and hit a few buttons, routing us into yellow diamonds – his and her sets. He scrolled down the page.

“Do you like that ring – and the companion male ring?”

“I love it. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, let’s splurge and buy it from your PayPal account.”

Paul whipped in a few terms and passwords, and soon we got a screen that indicated that the transaction had been completed and that the rings would be delivered by Express Shipment the next morning before ten a.m.

“OK,” I asked, “Who’s going to have the shock of their life to see that $52,000 has been withdrawn from their accounts.” I had a feeling I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear him say it.

Paul could barely contain his glee over what was about to happen. He turned and pointed through the wall of the townhouse towards his sister’s unit.

“Leslie and Doug?” Sheila asked.

“You bet your bippy,” Paul said with indignation.

“How do you know that?”

“My sister has never been creative when it comes to passwords. She uses the name of the company and ‘1234’ as the password. As for the login name, she often just uses the name of the company or her own name for that too. She’s easy to hack if you know that information.”

Mike said, “So, how much does she have in her Wells Fargo accounts, or is the amount going to start bouncing tomorrow?”

Paul chuckled, “She has one dollar less than $52,000. That means the bank will be slow in notifying her, since only a dollar is at issue even though the transaction is a large one. They’ll send out a snail mail notice in a day or so that won’t reach her until Monday or mid-week next at the earliest. The overdraw fee is $35. Of course, by then she’ll have written some other checks, and done some other transactions, so the shit will start to hit the fan early next week or so. Let’s watch and see what happens.”

Sheila smiled, “And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime,” Paul said in a lecherous tone, “I think that Mike and I should take you and Jane up to your bedroom and engage in wild sex with the sexiest, horniest, prettiest, and most desirable porn queens in Dillon Run – hell, in the world.”

Sheila clapped her hands together and did her dumb blond imitation she was so good at, “Oh goody. I just love to fuck, fuck, fuck. Maybe we can get more photographs for our website.”

We put the rest of the evening to good use, but no photos for public display were taken.

The rings arrived in a heavily insured FedEx package the next morning. I stayed home to be sure I was there to sign for them. In signing, I disguised my handwriting and wrote ‘Leslie Rollins.’ I had my own little grudge to extract.

I took the friendship rings down to King Enterprises, and Paul and I had a short ceremony in his office exchanging rings, and then we kissed, and I left for work.

Tuesday, as I was driving home form the 9-1-1 center, I got a call from Sheila on my cellphone.

“Jane, you should know that David and Leslie are on our doorstep, well actually they’re pacing back and forth in the driveway and the road in front of our door. Occasionally, David will yell at her. They’re not happy people, and must think it has something to do with us.” She giggled.

“Where are you?”

“I’m driving by Dillon Run again, and I can see them. I almost went in, but when I saw the two of them I kept going. I don’t think they know my car because they didn’t react to my slowing down.”

“I’ll call you back. Call Mike and tell him. Tell him not to come home. Let’s the four of us meet up someplace for dinner and talk again about how to deal with the Rollins.”

After ending the call with Sheila, I called Paul. I got his secretary, and she said he was in a meeting. I said to her, “Tell him this is a 9-1-1 situation. I need his ear for sixty seconds.”

Paul came on the line a couple of minutes later. “Hi, beautiful.”

“I think David and Leslie figured out what’s going on. Sheila called me, and they’re on my doorstep waiting for my arrival home. Sheila’s contacting Mike. I wanted to suggest dinner together.”

“Beautiful. Let’s do Legal Seafood in Burlington at seven-thirty, although I may be a few minutes late.”

“See you then. I love you.”

The four of us arrived for dinner, and had a fun discussion, mostly focused on how to handle Leslie and David. We decided that denial was a pretty good strategy for starters, and one that each of us could keep up indefinitely.

Paul also let me know that he had closed down the website by cancelling the financial transaction that paid for the site. He said, “That put $180 back into the PayPal account. I actually had Jess call and pretend she was you to close it. She’s very on our side. I told her the whole story, since she’d been one of the early victims of the smear campaign, she was only too happy to help out.”

As we left the restaurant it was about nine-thirty. Mike looked around and saw the marquee for a movie theater. “Say, have you guys seen the new Matt Damon movie. I hear it’s really good ... Oh, and we wouldn’t want to get home too early would we?”

“Oh, not at all, and I’d love to go to the movies,” I replied.

We didn’t get out of the theater until twelve-thirty, and didn’t pull our cars into Dillon Run Townhouse Complex until one in the morning. The temperatures were still below freezing at night, and no one was around. By agreement we’d killed our headlights as we pulled in, went into our garages, and immediately shut our doors.

Sheila and I tiptoed around in the dark and went to bed.

At two o’clock in the morning, there was a pounding on our front door. I peeked out through the upstairs’ blinds and saw Leslie banging on the door. She was alone.

I turned to Sheila, who’d also gotten up. She had wrapped a towel around her nude body. “Sheila, do you have sleeping pills?”

“Yeah, why?”

“If anyone asks you took one. Now come with me. I want to see and appreciate what’s under that towel.”

Sheila grinned and opened the towel. The only lights that illuminated her nude body came from outside and a dim nightlight in the hallway.

She said breathlessly, “I can’t wait.”

The pounding on the door continued, and inside in the warmth of my bedroom at the rear of my unit where the noise didn’t carry too well with the door shut, Sheila and I brought each other some beautiful orgasms before we tried to go to sleep. The banging eventually stopped.

In the morning, Sheila and I got ready to spring from our townhouse unit like jackrabbits. The garage doors went up, our engines were already running by the time they were fully opened, we were on the street in tandem as the doors rolled shut, and out the entrance to the complex.

In my rearview mirror I could see Leslie running down the street after us. We were gone.

Paul called me at the 9-1-1 center in mid-morning. He was laughing. “My sister accosted me when I left for work this morning. Apparently, Sheila and you left early in a dash – good for both of you, by the way.”

He went on, “Anyway, someone apparently shipped some expensive jewelry to your address, but the person that signed for the package ... and I love your touch on this ... was her – Leslie Rollins. I can’t imagine what was happening. The store, which sells through Amazon, said all parts of the transaction were on the up-and-up; they’ve been paid, and have a full trace on the overnight delivery and a clear audit trail on the ring.”

He was laughing too hard, but finally came under control, “Can you imagine that?”

“Well, that sounds really strange. You know many of the people I work with have noticed a little ring that I got from my bestest ever boyfriend yesterday. I am feeling very engaged since the rock on the ring is about the size of my car. It’s impressive.”