“Believe me, this isn’t the first time he’s helped me out on stuff like this,” she intimated with a wink. “He just asks for a small gift and that I give up or destroy anything that could lead back to him.”
“And that’s why he wants the keys back?”
“Yep,” Mr. Cass interrupted as he stuck his head out of the room. “Don’t want anything tempting her with bigger trouble than she gives herself already. Besides, some of those managers lose their keys enough I’d like to have an extra set to hand ‘em when they come crying to me.” He ducked back in and closed the door.
Sam picked her jaw up off the floor and glanced at Slinky. “How did he hear that?”
“He’s just that good,” she replied with a shrug.
They only had to wait a few minutes before he was finished with his work. They thanked him profusely and Slinky grinned at her new set of keys as they marched back up the stairs.
“I wonder what else I can open with these things…” she mused.
“Probably a can of trouble, like Ed was saying,” Sam scolded. She glanced at her watch. They’d been gone for a while, and it was nearly time for them to leave for the day. She hoped their absence hadn’t been noticed, or at least presumed had left early without permission.
“You worry too much,” her friend countered as she plopped the new set into her pocket. She still held the old copies in her hand. “Just gotta return these things and we’ll just get back to work.”
They were met with an unwelcome visitor when they reached their cubicles. Mrs. Winkle stood tapping her foot and with her arms tightly crossed over her chest. To their surprise she was glaring harder at Sam than at Slinky.
“Miss Olsen, do you mean to shirk the few duties you have?”
“No, Mrs. Winkle.” She wasn’t sure what her supervisor was alluding to as Slinky slipped into her cubicle. Her friend wanted to hide the new pair of keys off of her person as fast as she could.
“Why then did you do it?” With that question Sam could then see part of this interrogation was to make her look like a fool. She was leading her on to increase her show of ignorance and then would make a grand revealing which would embarrass her. She wasn’t going to have any of that from this woman whom she didn’t respect.
“I didn’t mean to, it just slipped my mind.” She had a tough time trying not to smirk when her supervisor scowled.
“So you mean to tell me you finished unloading half of our supplies and merely forgot what you were doing?” Sam inwardly winced when she recalled the new shipment she had left half finished on the table in the supply room.
“No, Mrs. Winkle, it’s just…I…um-”
“She was going to ask me for help, and that’s when it slipped her mind,” Slinky interrupted to save the day once more. She stood up and put her hands on her hip. Sam couldn’t help but imagine a cap billowing out behind her and the letter S on her shirt. “We’ve been so busy helping the board members and running errands we’ve hardly had time to breath.” Her eyes lit up and she snapped her fingers. She reached into her pocket and produced Mrs. Winkle’s keys. “See? I’ve even forgot to give you back these from my dad. He says he’s done with them.”
Without so much as a thank you Winkle angrily snatched the chain from Slinky’s hand. The action was so quick one of the keys sliced a neat line down Slinky’s index finger and another caught her on the thumb. “Damn it!” she exclaimed as she clutched at her injured hand. She scowled at her supervisor, who showed no remorse for what she’d done. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“It wasn’t intentional,” her supervisor shot back. She looked irritated that the other woman would be mad at her for an accident. “There’s very little harm done, anyway.”
“There wouldn’t have been any if you’d been more careful,” Slinky countered.
“Perhaps if you would perform your duties in a more professional manner.” By this time both their voices had raised so that they had the attention of the entire floor. People peeked above their cubicles and out of the break room to see what was going on. “Now get back to work before I call one of the board to deal with this.”
“You seem to need one of us already,” quipped a voice in one of the nearby cubicles. Mr. Slink stepped out and the employee he was instructing peeked their head out. He glanced between the three as he assessed their faces. “If you’d all like to follow me to my office, there’s a few questions I’d like to ask all of you.”
“Very well, Mr. Slink,” Mrs. Winkle respectfully replied with a short bow of her head.
The other two nodded and they all followed him into his office. He didn’t instruct any of them to sit, so they all remained standing as he took his place behind his desk. “I am very well aware of the animosity between yourself and my daughter, Mrs. Winkle,” he first made clear. No one was surprised by his announcement except the lady herself. Perhaps she assumed she had hidden her disgust. “But I must ask why Ms. Olsen here, very new to our part of the company, would be so disagreeable to yourself.”
“May I speak plainly without repercussions, sir?” Mrs. Winkle requested.
“You may.”
“I think it highly irregular how she obtained her current position.” She glanced at the said woman with more than a hint of suspicion. “She has had no training nor even a hint of experience with the tasks she’s given. She neglects her duties, is frequently nearly late for work, and I believe takes liberties with her breaks.”
“Is that all?” Mr. Slink asked.
“I believe that’s enough to make her unfit for her position.”
“I would say something in Miss Olsen’s defense, but I’m afraid I haven’t been watching her too closely,” he bluntly admitted. “But I have it on good authority that she was chosen expressly by Mr. Davies.”
If a leprechaun had dropped through the ceiling with his pot of gold, Mrs. Winkle could not have been more surprised. Sam and Slinky, for their part, were nearly equally stunned by the news. “I-I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Mr. Davis expressly wished for her to obtain the position.” He smiled kindly at the young woman in question. “I believe he means to make her his personal secretary before long. You know Mr. Smith doesn’t intend to stay with him forever.”
“But he knows nothing about this…this girl!” she objected, but Mr. Slink held up his hand for silence.
“If you wish to discuss Mr. Davies’ decision, you’ll have to go to to him,” he protested. He stared directly at each of them. “As for the argument I just witnessed out there in the hall, I’ll have to ask you all to be more professional in future conversations.”
Winkle straightened, but everyone could see her shoulders shook with anger. “Will that be all, sir?” Mrs. Winkle asked.
“All that I can think of for the moment. You may go back to work, except Miss Olsen. I’d like you to stay for a moment.”
“Yes, sir.” Slinky gave her an encouraging smile while her nemesis scowled as they both left the room. As soon as the door shut behind them, she couldn’t contain her curiosity. “What was it you wanted, Mr. Slink?”
“I may as well warn you that Mrs. Winkle isn’t going to be happy with this new piece of information. Thinking about it, I probably would have done well to not bring it up.”
“I don’t understand. Didn’t she know who got me hired for the position?”
“Usually she would, but this time a special case was made.” He stood up and moved over to glance out the large windows behind his chair. “Mrs. Winkle had a falling out with the last girl in your position, so the board decided to leave her out of the hiring process this time. She wasn’t too pleased.”
“But why would she care that Mr. Davies hired me?” She wanted to ask why he had hired her at all, but as Mrs. Winkle had found out Mr. Slink didn’t or couldn’t tell her the answer. There was a cough from him and he straightened up.
“I’m afraid Mrs. Winkle has certain, well, ideas about Mr. Davies.” He looked over his shoulder and gave her a wink. “If you know what I mean.” She knew his meaning. However, she was still dumbfounded by Mr. Slink’s pronouncement of her alleged future position as personal secretary to Davies.
“But I don’t see Mr. Davies very often. How am I supposed to become his new secretary?” It was a partial lie. She didn’t see him very often, but she did see him.
“The position you now possess is generally regarded as one step away from becoming the vice president’s personal secretary.”
“And the next step?”
“That would be Mrs. Winkle’s position, so you see you’re her closest competition. She probably feels pretty threatened by you, especially with how you were picked for the job.”
“This is really confusing to me,” Sam admitted as she shook her head. “So Mr. Davies hired me for a position that’s just one step beneath Mrs Winkle, who wants to become his private secretary?”