Monday, July 22, 2024

Deadly Drafts - CH 11

BARBIE AND KEN


Kavi breezed through the library doors, absurdly large coffee in hand and smile plastered on her face. The panic which had squeezed her body like a lemon finally released its grip. If each variety of sex was its own mouth-watering dessert—evening quickie, post-date delicto—then angry sex was a gooey, atomic hot ginger cake. It left Kavi's mouth watering, her body buzzing, a soft sheen of sweat across her forehead.

The dense gravity of their desire had melted space-time. Without work, with the kids at school, Kavi and James romped back into their carefree 20's, sweating through a pentathlon of marital acrobatics that would have impressed even seasoned professionals.

Not even the dark cloud of jail time hovering over Kavi's head could wipe the smile from her face as she strolled into the library.

Cathedral ceilings stretched above her, collecting the fizz and pop of ambient noise. Shafts of midday sun slanted across the fiction shelves. The art-deco clock hanging behind the Circulation desk read 12:13 p.m. Kavi's stomach lurched. Shit. She'd lingered in the afterglow a little too long. Barbara Ann could return from lunch at any minute.

"You look pretty smug for an accused thief." Claire, Circulation's twenty-something eye-candy, leaned elbows to the checkout counter. "No offense, but the idea of you dressing as a monkey and robbing a jewelry store is laughable." A serial flirter and absolute man-eater, Claire cultivated a well-earned reputation as an assassin of disgruntled patrons. She could neuter the railing, the red-faced, the slobbering mad with little more than a smile.

"I may need you to say that under oath," Kavi said. "You don't happen to know—is Miss Leslie in?"

Claire swiveled to her computer terminal. "Calendar says she's still out to lunch. Are you supposed to be here? I heard you're on administrative leave."

Kavi only shrugged. "Miss Leslie hasn't come back early?"

"Does she ever?"

Kavi tapped the counter and circled around to the employee area. "Thanks, Claire."

The double doors marked "Employees Only" behind Circulation opened to a maze of cubicles and movable shelves. Every inhale carried the tang of bindery glue and toner. Clacking keyboards and squeaky book carts kept time. Claire was right: Kavi was most definitely on administrative leave. At least for the next few weeks, Kavi stood among the pocket pool players and book thieves as library persona non grata.

Cooler than James Bond drinking an iced martini, Kavi darted into the first row of shelves. She snaked through the back alleys between cubicles. She imagined herself a cougar in deep autumnal brush, a predator invisible to her prey.

"Hello? Somebody there?"

Kavi ducked into an empty cubicle just as Bernice the circulation drone turned the corner. Bernice's hawk nose could sniff out office dirt from a half mile away. She'd announced Claire's first pregnancy before Claire even knew. Kavi held her breath as Bernice's shuffled slowly past pushing an empty book cart. Everyone else in the back office called this move—piloting an empty book cart to appear busy—"the Bernice." She sniffed the air as she passed, desperate for the sweet smell of other people's business. A ringing telephone, though, and its promise of eavesdropped gossip, pulled Bernice elsewhere. Her orthopedic shoes shuffled quickly on. Kavi wasted no time shooting toward Barbara Ann's office.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Adnan-Byrne."

Kavi's stomach fell somewhere below Earth's crust. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Kavi's superspy fantasies had overlooked Angela, Miss Leslie's guard dog. The girl had all the mass of a fencepost but teeth (both literal and conversational) like you wouldn't believe. Bless anyone who dared enter without an appointment. Tears weren't uncommon among unexpected visitors. Kavi pulled the phone from her jeans and pivoted.

"Hello Angela." Kavi smiled. "That's a lovely shirt. Nice floral pattern, eh? Uh…you didn't take a lunch today?"

Angela lifted a tiny paper bag from her tiny desk. "Brown bagging it. Is there…something I can do for you?"

Kavi smiled, hoped she was exuding an aura of cool and relaxation while furiously tapping her phone. "Oh… I thought, you know… Ah—what was I saying? Hm. Lost my train of thought."

Angela cast a questioning eye. "Aren't you supposed to be on administrative—"

Kavi's phone gave her the go-ahead. "I have an appointment with Miss Leslie," she blurted.

"She's at lunch."

Kavi smiled. Easy as pie. "We found a critical flaw in our network tree which could compromise the catalog. Miss Leslie thought it best that I come in and patch the flaw immediately. She told me to wait in her office and that she'd marked her calendar."

"I don't remember there being any meeting." Angela looked between Kavi and her computer. Kavi and the computer. Her nose wrinkled as if she'd smelled something foul, but the computer was never wrong. "Huh. Ok, go in."

"Thanks, Angie." Kavi practically ran into Barbara Ann Leslie's office and closed the door behind her.

At twenty by twenty-four feet, Miss Leslie's office dwarfed the Assistant Director's double-wide cubicle. A massive window dominated the wall opposite the door, framing a Kincaid-gasm of streams and shrubs and trees across the street. Diplomas and gilt-framed civic awards hung in groups of three on the walls. A pair of ferns flanked the door.

Kavi slid into Barbara Ann's leather throne. The computer slept, its monitor traveling a warp-speed star field. Kavi took the mouse and began.

    Username: B.Leslie
    Password:

Kavi took her phone and tapped a file marked "Bakersville Strategic Plan." A spreadsheet blossomed with library usernames and passwords. Heavy is the head which wears the IT crown. Kavi scrolled through the data and smiled. "Leslie, Barbara Ann—Username: B.Leslie—WinLogonPass:LibraryDirector1." Kavi chuckled as she keyed Miss Leslie's password, made a mental note to urge her boss to please choose something more secure.

Barbara Ann's desktop displayed an exterior shot of the library, taken in gold and greens of summer. Cathedral ceilings, a bell tower, leaded windows—all the Bakersville Public Library needed was coffee and donuts every third Sunday and it'd be a church.

Kavi cracked her knuckles and keyed the shortcut for the library's HR client. The computer screen swiped to a stark white database. From the nav-panel on the left side, Kavi keyed "Leslie, Barbara Ann and searched

The CPU skidded like a hot rod burning rubber. Kavi jolted. She expected a feminine voice to initiate the self-destruct sequence. She was starting to wonder if she had enough strength to shatter the office window and how high would the fall be when the computer coughed up a photocopy of a form. Severe, slanting cursive filled a patchwork of boxes.

"Miss Leslie's job application..." Kavi's eyes scanned line to line, hungry. She shivered, felt as if her body tottered near the edge of some great cliff, a hair's width from falling. She found her haystacked needle near the bottom of the form. Kavi exhaled two days' worth of life-shortening stress and flopped back in Miss Leslie's throne.

The final question on the application, "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" carried an inksplatter x in the box beside "yes." The box marked, "If yes, then why?" sat empty, however. Kavi shook her head; explanations sounded like a future Kavi problem. She clicked over, dropped a duplicate of the file into her cloud.

High on victory, Kavi stretched her neck and moved on to Leslie's e-mail client.

The clusterfuck of Miss Leslie's inbox physically assaulted Kavi's eyes. She recoiled. Not a single folder, sticky note, or category imposed order. Just message after message after message. And this woman ran the whole library system? Kavi clicked the search box and typed her name. The query returned a parade of inane memos: "be sure the green light is on before you try to print," "Please, no bologna in the CD-ROM drives," and "I assure you; optical mice do not need trackballs."

Kavi next tried 'Gonya Jewelers,' but the search reurned null. A dollar sign upchucked e-mails from Arnie, the Library Business Manager. Miss Leslie's e-mails smelled clean as the summer rain, without the slightest funk of foul play.

Kavi drummed her fingers on the desk. The computer clock read 12:23. Leslie would be back any minute. Kavi's pulse throbbed as she scrolled through purchase orders, book club notices, magazine weeding schedules. She searched Arthur Kite—nothing. She searched Harris Kagan—nothing. She searched 'Bakersville Irregulars' and slapped her forehead. "You idiot, Kavi."

One email and one reply popped up, dated Tuesday at 7:06 PM:

    From: B.Leslie@bakersville.lib
    To: BigDaddyC@webmail.com
    Subject: (none)

    The Bakersville Irregulars are about to be arrested.
    –Barbie.

The reply came literally moments later:

    From: BigDaddyC@webmail.com
    To: B.Leslie@bakersville.lib
    Subject: RE:(none)

    You're a doll.
    –Ken.


Kavi moused to the 'forward' button but paused. Forwarding a message from Leslie's account would leave a neon trail. Instead, Kavi screenshotted the email chain, and, after a glacial load time, CTRL+V pasted the convo to her cloud.

Kavi clicked back to Barbara Ann's email and searched 'BigDaddyC.' She clapped and spun in Miss Leslie's chair as the screen flashed another conversation, this one less than two hours old:

    From: BigDaddyC@webmail.com
    To: B.Leslie@bakersville.lib
    Subject: (none)

    Barbie,
    Tonight at the Moonside?
    –Ken.

And again, the reply came in hot and fast:

    From: B.Leslie@bakersville.lib
    To: BigDaddyC@webmail.com
    Subject: RE:(none)

    With bells on ;-)
    –Barbie.

Kavi chuckled—her boss still used emoticons. She again snipped the message.

"You're on administrative leave, Kavia. I can have Chief Hardcastle here in a matter of minutes."

Kavi's blood ran cold. She hadn't heard footsteps, voices, hadn’t even heard the door open. Maybe Harris was onto something, calling Miss Leslie a Dementor. Kavi clicked back to her cloud client. Miss Leslie had changed out of the houndstooth she'd worn in court, and now wore retina-burning pink and white.

"What's your problem with me?" The words, meant only to echo inside Kavi's head, accidentally tumbled from her mouth.

"You mean aside from your breaking into my office?"

"You've always been cold to me, Barbara Ann." Now she'd started, Kavi found she couldn't stop. Words came out one after another, rapidfire like rounds from a machine gun. Just paste this image and get out! Yet Kavi kept talking. "From my very first interview. Do brown people make you uncomfortable?"

Miss Leslie crossed her arms and glowered. "How dare you."

"How dare you?" Kavi shot back. "You were witness against my character this morning."

"I called you peerless! Said you wouldn't hurt a fly! But now that I see you in my office unannounced, I'm wondering if I shouldn't call Police Chief Hardcastle to revise my testimony."

Kavi, her ammo can empty, exhaled. "LibriDynix put out a memo about a security flaw in our database." It sounded true enough. Looking first to check Barbara Ann's advance, Kavi CTRL+V'ed the second email conversation into her cloud. "I came here to double check the patch."

Processing…

Miss Leslie leaned palms to the desktop. Kavi's thumb and middle finger trembled atop ALT and F4, ready to kill the file transfer if 'Barbie' leaned even an inch closer.

"I've heard nothing about this." She squinted.

Processing…

"You wouldn't have. I applied the software patch remotely, but had to come in to check it."

"Why not use a public computer?"

Processing…

"The flaw is in admin terminals. Yours was the closest."

With a harsh tsk, Miss Leslie shot upright and turned the corner. "Get up." She waved her hand at Kavi. "I've got work to do."

Upload Complete.

ALT+F4! ALT+F4! ALT+F4! Kavi shot from the chair and swiveled it to Barbara Ann.

"Of course, Miss Leslie. The patch looks A-OK, so I'll just…" Kavi made a bee-line for the exit, wondering if this is what Jason Bourne felt after punching out bad guys.

"I'm on to you, Kavia."

The blood drained from Kavi's face. The door handle mocked her, just beyond her outstretched fingertips

"Excuse me?" Kavi turned back. The floor turned to magnets, her shoes pure metal. Her stomach tumbled.

Barbara Ann adjusted the plumb of her ridiculously large 'Library Director' name badge and folded her hands atop her desk.

"You are indeed peerless. You are indeed kind. But I stand by what I said."

Kavi's mouth fell open. "What?"

"I sent my request for Meeting Room A at exactly midnight last night." Miss Leslie's jaw quivered. "My request came back denied. It said the Bakersville Irregulars had booked the room all next quarter. It's interesting, considering you were all in jail at the time."

"Ahh." Kavi bit her tongue.

Barbara Ann pointed a bony finger, gaudy sapphire ring glinting. "I'll get that meeting room."

Kavi took a step backwards toward the door. Its handle cooled her burning palm. "I'll see you later, Miss Leslie."


No comments:

Post a Comment