“Well, no, sir. We still haven’t resolved the issue about the ledger—”
A phone that Sam couldn’t find rang, interrupting her as Mr. Getty shushed her. When he lifted the lid of an ornate wooden box sitting on the corner of his desk, Sam saw the telephone receiver and dial pad hidden inside.
“Go for Getty,” he grumbled into the receiver. Sam couldn’t hear the rabble on the other line, but whatever it was seemed to be bad news as concern wrinkled Getty’s brow. “Yes, sir. Understood, sir.” He hung up and closed the lid of the fancy phone box.
“Another new contraption?” Sam wondered how on earth the newspaper budget afforded the growing number of luxuries cluttering her boss’s office.
“Are you admiring my Deco-Tel hidden executive box telephone?”
“Not really, sir.”
“I got it for a steal.”
Unless he actually stole it, Sam was pretty certain that her boss was single-handedly using up Women’s House Magazine entire staff budget on his latest gadgets.
Mr. Getty lifted his chin and yelled to the open door, “Betty, coffee me!”
Sam’s palm itched to slap him for the way he treated his secretary, like a dog fetching his newspaper, but she kept her mouth shut. As Mr. Getty’s “thorn in the side,” she was better off staying as still as possible unless she wanted to be ripped out and tossed.
Rustling into the room came Betty Number Five carrying a fresh cup of Nescafe—definitely not the burnt stuff from the office carafe—along with today’s newspaper. Mr. Getty sloshed the coffee over the desk as he grabbed it and slurped.
“So what do you want me to do about the ledger now?” he said.
“The ledger is stolen property. I simply want to return it to Thomas Cook.”
“No can do, Samantha.”
“But I could go to jail for taking it—which means you could go to jail for forcing me to do it.”
“Forcing you? Did I hold a gun to your head and demand you steal it?”
He might as well have, Sam thought to herself. He did threaten her job, after all. Sam was pretty sure that fit somewhere in the crime of coercion.
“You know what I mean. You were going to fire me if I didn’t.”
“No, what I told you to do was get creative in getting me dirt on Cook Pharmaceuticals.” Mr. Getty crossed his arms. “I have no recall of ever telling you to steal anything. The theft, my dear, is all on you. Besides, it’s too late to do anything about it now. It’s already out of my hands.”
“Out of your hands? What do you mean?”
He handed her today’s copy of the Pittsburgh Post. Splashed across the front page was the headline:
Cook Pharmaceuticals: Safe or Scandalous?
“What is this?” She already had a hunch of what it was. A quick read confirmed Sam’s worst-case scenario: Mr. Getty had exposed the ledger to the world, and now Thomas Cook was going to come after her. As she skimmed the article, her very own name popped out at her. “You credited me personally for exposing the ledger?” she yelped.
“You’re famous now. I thought you’d be happy for the investigative journalism credit,” Mr. Getty scoffed.
“Why would I be happy? I now have a target on my back! And my entrance into journalism will be marred by the fact that I’ll probably end up dead from this! Or at the very least I’ll be writing my column from a jail cell!”
“Unfortunately we have a strict no-convict hiring policy, so you’ll be fired, Samantha. But at least you’ll have free room and board.”
While Mr. Getty seemed to take pleasure in envisioning Sam’s future sentencing, she found nothing entertaining about the prospect.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Too little, too late, I’m afraid. What’s done is done. I suggest you prepare yourself for the slew of reporters that will be contacting you soon…”
Mel took this moment to pop his head in around the doorjamb. “Did I hear something about Samantha being fired?”
“Were you eavesdropping in on our conversation?” Sam asked.
“No. I just happened to be passing by.” But Mel, loitering just outside the office doorway, seemed in no hurry to get to wherever he was going. “So about my previous columnist position…”
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Sam grumbled at Mel, shooing him away. Then a light-bulb moment occurred. “What if we print a retraction, Mr. Getty?”
“It’s too late to retract the article. What’s published is published.”
Except Sam knew as well as he did that it was the entire point of retractions—to take back false information.
“You should have never published that story.”
“Like I said, it’s done. You want my advice?”
Sam had never wanted anything less.