“What about Tess?” I said, irritated.
“Are you two done after that article she wrote?”
“She insists that she didn’t,” I said.
Cressida pursed her mouth. “Of course she did! It was her handwriting.”
“Who knows,” I said, just needing to move Cressida out. “It doesn’t matter. She’s furious I don’t believe her, so it’s over. Now please pack up your things.” I handed her a nondisclosure agreement. “And sign this if you want your settlement.”
She scrawled her signature with a flourish then gave me a triumphant look. “It’s been a pleasure.”
“So I takeit we need to start looking for a new human resources director?” Owen asked when I entered his office. I couldn’t stay in mine a minute longer. There were too many memories, bad and good.
“Yeah,” I said.
Owen swiveled in his chair toward me. “I was looking into the article that was posted.”
“My family has lawyers working on having it taken down,” I assured him.
“I wanted to find out who sent it,” Owen continued.
“It was probably Tess,” I said, resigned. She had been so adamant, though. But who else could it be?
“The time stamp on the email the tabloid received was after Tess was fired.”
“So?”
“It also came from this building’s Wi-Fi.”
“I think she was here,” I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose.
“I looked at the metadata on the file,” Owen continued. “It was sent from someone’s phone—someone’s iPhone.”
I shrugged.
“So Tess has an Android. It wasn’t her,” Owen stated, tossing the paperwork at me.
“Are you sure?” I picked up the printouts. “What about her handwriting?”
“You remember that face and object tracing algorithm I was working on?”
“The one that keeps flagging trash cans as penguins?”
“Well I fixed that, mostly. But it did pick up something interesting when I searched for napkins and Tess.” Owen showed me the video on his screen. There was Tess, writing what looked to be a note.
“Looks incriminating.”
“Just wait.”
Then there was Cressida. And she grabbed a handful of napkins off the table.
“Shit.” I leaned forward and replayed the video. “Where were you yesterday when Tess was chewing me out on the phone?”
“You can’t rush the algorithm,” my friend said sagely.
“I need to apologize,” I said, in shock.
“I think you need to grovel,” Owen corrected.
