Chapter 104

Saturday night found Phil and Hailey sitting alongside their friends at the summer opening of the Civic Light Orchestra – with Molly Kelly as third-chair cellist.

Tiffany, of course, was there to support her girlfriend with Scott and Lisa Finley, Katelyn and Bob and Terrence Williams in attendance. Outside of Katelyn, none were knowledgeable about what the orchestra performed but they dutifully sat in the audience anyway.

Just as Molly was the youngest member of the orchestra by a decade and a half, Phil was almost positive his group was the youngest attendees by twice that amount. He hadn’t seen a single person without gray hair since they’d entered the place. When intermission mercifully arrived, the group wandered out to the lobby of the city’s Civic Auditorium to stretch their legs (a polite euphemism for “waking back up”).

Susan and Sean O’Malley paid a quick visit before heading outside to call their babysitter. Liam (Scott and Lisa’s son) was staying with Scott’s father so no phone call was necessary there.

“I’m glad they only have two or three concerts each year,” Phil muttered as he loosened his tie. Hailey rolled her eyes and shook her head but he caught Bob, Terrence and Scott nodding at his comment.

“It was interesting,” Katelyn asserted. “That was a new arrangement for Schubert’s Fourth Symphony.”

“Or they screwed it up,” Phil posed. This earned a solid slap on his arm from Hailey.

“You know what would be cool?” Bob opined with a laugh. “I’d like to see one of the violins hop up and play it like a fiddle. Molly could play her cello like an upright bass. That would get the place hopping a little.”

“Hey, that would be cool,” Scott said. “You just need someone to play the jug.”

“Maybe one of the fluters,” Phil offered with a wink.

“It’s a flautist,” a voice intoned from behind him.

He turned to see someone he didn’t know standing with someone he knew casually.

“A person who plays the flute is a called a flautist,” the young woman said when she saw the looks on the group’s faces. The look wasn’t because they didn’t know the term. They did but Phil was offering an inside joke to his friend, Scott, who in English class in 10^th grade had mentioned that a flautist sounded more like someone who had gas than someone who played a woodwind instrument. The look was because they couldn’t figure out why someone would walk up to group of people she obviously didn’t know and correct someone’s word choice.

“He knows the word,” Lisa cut in. “It’s a joke between he and my husband. It isn’t funny but he still goes there as often as he can.”

The young woman frowned her disbelief but didn’t speak. She left that to her older companion.

“Philip, I’d like to introduce you to my niece, Alexa,” Deirdre Coleman-Jennings offered.

“Alexa, this is Philip Warner and Hailey Warren,” Deirdre continued. “I know this young lady is Katelyn and that is Tiffany but I don’t recall their last names.”

It was obvious that Tiffany and Katelyn’s last names were inconsequential to Alexa Coleman. She gave a casual glance toward the two women and then turned her attention back to Philip.

“Your aunt is a very fine attorney,” Philip offered.

“She is Ivy League trained,” Alexa noted – as if that was the end-all, be-all to success.

“So was Ted Kaczynski,” Terrence’s deep voice boomed out. He was unhappy that this arrogant harpy had interrupted their jovial conversation – and in the process had sought to belittle Phil.

All eyes turned to the massive man who stood with his arms crossed and glared at the interloper.

“The Unabomber,” he clarified. “He graduated from Harvard and became a serial killer. I guess that Ivy League education didn’t work so well for him, did it?”

Phil couldn’t stifle the laugh that escaped his lips. Alexa Coleman’s face had turned red at the rebuke. When the others joined in laughing at her expense, her face went from red to purple. Her aunt saw the signs of a tantrum coming on and sought to de-escalate it.

“Well, I’m sure many people would prefer to spend time with a serial killer than with a lawyer,” Deirdre joked. “I was a little surprised to see you here, Philip.”

“One of our best friends is a member,” Hailey answered for him. “She is a cellist, third chair this year. I’ve heard she would have been second if it weren’t for internal politics. She is really very talented.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Deirdre said. She tried her best to be convincing but failed miserably. “I’ll have to watch for her to rise in the ranks. Well, I will see you at the office Monday. Come on, Alexa, let’s get back to our seats. I just wanted to say hello to Philip and Hailey – and of course, Tiffany and Katelyn, too.”

“Of course,” Katelyn said in a sickly sweet voice that spoke to her relegation to the status of “others.”

“What a prig,” Terrence remarked as the duo made their way away from the group.

Once again, Phil laughed aloud.

“Tee, you are a professional athlete,” he said. “I expect you to start behaving like one. You need to stammer and stutter some more. Maybe mix in some ‘you knows’ and ‘uhs’ when you get the chance and remember to ‘axe’ me a question. You certainly should never use the word ‘prig’ or let someone know you know who Ted Kaczynski is.”

“Is he really from Harvard?” Lisa wondered. “I mean, I’d heard of The Unabomber but I didn’t know his real name.”

“He’s from Harvard,” Terrence confirmed. “I did a report on him for my abnormal psychology class last year. He’s a very educated, very disturbed man. While I was writing the paper, he updated his registration with the Harvard Alumni Association with his address at a federal prison in Colorado.”

“Creepy,” Hailey volunteered. The conversation continued until it was time to re-enter the auditorium. No one noticed the look of disdain that crossed a particular female patron’s face as the group wended its way past her to their seats in the center front.

By Monday afternoon, Beth was making arrangements to head to California to deal with the mess at Travel Corp. David was trying to convince her that it would be better to continue their vacation as they had planned.

Beth put off the decision until mid-afternoon when she could talk to Philip. It took Bonnie a few minutes to track down Beth’s son – who was down in accounting.

“I’m thinking about coming home tomorrow,” Beth informed him when he answered.

“I thought you were staying until Thursday?” Phil wondered.

“I need to get a handle on this thing in California,” she answered.

“I’ve got it under control,” Phil replied. Beth was silent for a moment before speaking.

“We’re talking about a lot of money, Philip,” she said when she spoke.

“Really?” Phil asked sarcastically. “I wonder if that’s why I’ve spent every waking hour since last week working on this.”

“What have you managed to do?” Beth asked, pulling out her tablet and logging onto the hotel’s Internet connection.

“I’ve had Waterford put together a new security measure for all companies,” Phil explained. “I also had Rob add a little something to Travel Corp.’s computers. Anytime someone accesses that account, the computer’s webcam comes on and takes a picture of the user. We already found out that each time money was appropriated it came from the same terminal and with the same password. It belonged to Horatio Alvarez.”

“That was quick,” Beth noted. “Nice job, Philip. Have you informed the Travel Corp. CEO of the problem?”

“No,” Phil told her. “Alvarez is a low-level guy in the accounting department. We checked his timecard and he wasn’t anywhere near the building when the funds were stolen. You can’t get into or out of the building without running a security badge through a terminal. Rob’s program paid off this weekend. The account was accessed Friday night and again Saturday afternoon – by two different people. We’ve identified one of the people as Julie Marshall. She’s the CFO out there. We had a photo of her in our personnel files. The other was a young guy, maybe 24 or 25. We have no idea who he is but we’ve narrowed it down to any one of 22 males in the building at the time. I called in Inter-Agency Investigations. They’re following Ms. Marshall and I sent a picture of the unknown male to them. We’ll have answers in a few days.”

Beth was silent for a moment.

“It’s a bigger problem than even you know, Mother,” Phil explained. “Hailey pulled the records from Travel Corp. since we acquired them. We’ve lost about $250,000 out of that account in the past couple of years. We expanded corporate wide at the end of the week. We’re not that far along. We’ve identified almost $3 million out of that account from all of our assets. Some are minimal. Eisler has spent less than $2,500 and we have invoices for everything but $11.48 from them. Others have hundreds of thousands of dollars out of that account and we can’t locate a single invoice for a couple of companies – including Travel Corp.