Chapter 486 It’s Not a Coincidence
Before reporting it to the police, Courtney first sent the surveillance video to Oliver along with the information gathered from the previous incident with Natasha.
She had a vague, uneasy feeling that the recent events were too strange and frequent for her to call it all a coincidence.
There was that strange woman who pushed Natasha down the stairs, and now, there was an unknown man who unplugged Scott’s oxygen tube.
There was also what happened at Citron Apparel that day. Although she didn’t mention the details to anyone, she felt that those fierce women that day were going after her, and it seemed as though they couldn’t wait to kill her themselves.
As she thought about this, she felt something throbbing inside her head; it seemed as though something was about to happen.
At that moment, Angie came out of the pantry and placed a bowl of instant noodles on her desk.
“You can’t sleep at the office every day just because you can’t finish your work. There’s still a lot going on at the hospital, which means that you have to work the night shifts sometimes. Your body won’t be able to handle it.”
Courtney opened the lid of the instant noodles, and a rich aroma immediately filled the air. She couldn’t help but eat a large mouthful of the noodles while looking through the documents.
When she saw that Courtney wasn’t moved by her words, Angie furrowed her brows again with a face full of sorrow.
“Why don’t you quit your hospital—”
“Never.”
Courtney instantly rejected the idea because she had sacrificed too much to gain this internship. At this point, the price of giving up was too great. Besides, she felt that the situation wasn’t that severe yet.
“I have another idea.”
“What is it?”
Angie sat across from her with her arms supporting her chin, looking sleepy. After eating her last bite of noodles, Courtney suddenly approached her and said, “You can come and help me at Citron Apparel.”
“What?”
The sleepy Angie was awake all of a sudden.
——
A few days later, Angie brought a pile of documents to Courtney at the Duncans’ ancestral home.
“These are the onboarding details of the dozen employees who have been fired. I got Ruby to obtain these documents, so you can take a look.”
As she listened to her, Courtney lifted her head from the computer screen. After she read the documents one by one, her face suddenly darkened. “Most of them are foreigners, and they only entered the company a month ago.”
She soon realized that problem as Angie nodded her head in agreement and added, “Most of the employees in the clothing production workshop should be local people because there are more women in the nearby counties; they probably go back to take care of their families during their weekly shifts. I also checked the records of employees recruited by Citron Apparel in the past, and the total number of foreigners over the years is not as many as the number recruited just this month.”
Courtney’s eyes grew darker. “Who is responsible for recruitment?”
“Walter Church. He is an old employee of the company. Natasha told me that you agreed to recruit him from the start. When he was just laid off at that time, he had a sick mother to take care of, so you decided to keep him after seeing how hardworking and honest he was.”
Courtney seemed to have remembered it as she didn’t have much memory of what happened in the past, but since he was an old employee, she had a bad feeling inside her heart.
“Where is he now?”
Angie pouted her lips and answered, “He left. The day after the incident, he left without saying anything, but he did inform the director of the HR department. However, since he has a grudge against the director, the director allowed him to leave without saying a word.”
All of Angie’s answers were within Courtney’s expectations. As she furrowed her brows, her messy thoughts turned her already chaotic brain into mush.
“Tell the HR department director to meet me in my office at 12.30PM tomorrow.”
“Alright, Courtney.”
Angie closed all the documents while her face looked a little gloomy; the more she looked into the matter, the more worried she became. At the same time, Courtney could see the worries on her face, so she put on a proud smile and patted her shoulders.
“Even though you are just coming of age, I’m pleasantly surprised by how sharp and level-headed you are. With you around, I instantly feel a whole lot more relaxed.”
As she listened to her, Angie shrugged her shoulders and replied resignedly, “Don’t think you can get away with this easily by praising me. If you weren’t so busy as of late, I wouldn’t have agreed to help you. In short, you owe me a huge favor.”
——
The next day at 12.30PM, the director of the HR department, Alan Fraser, knocked on the door of Courtney’s office. Alan was a middle-aged man in his thirties who spotted a pair of black-framed glasses. He also had a tall body and a slightly hunched back, giving him a nerdy look.
Then, Courtney slammed Walter’s personal file in front of him and said, “Why didn’t you report to us about Walter’s resignation? You are in charge of the company’s personnel, so you should be alert to the unusual loss of employees.”
Alan pushed back his black-framed glasses, looking very helpless. Whenever he thought about Walter’s resignation, he felt there was something fishy about it. In fact, it seemed like he had bumped into a ghost.
“I was also confused when he called and told me that he won’t be coming to the company anymore. Then, I requested him to follow the company’s procedures for his resignation to take effect, but I was surprised to find out afterward that he had submitted his resignation a month ago. Later on, I checked my mailbox and found that he had indeed applied to leave long ago…” With that, he murmured, “I never saw his resignation letter before, though. Just as I was about to ask him again, he ended the call immediately, and I was unable to reach him afterward.”
At this point, Courtney was even more certain that Walter knew exactly what was going on.
She calmed herself down and softened her tone.
“I heard that you have a grudge with Walter. What’s the reason?”
When he heard her question, Alan quickly pushed back his black-framed glasses again. After observing her expression, he simply decided to tell her everything in the end. “Walter used to be an old employee of the company, and he always said that he was handpicked by you to be the recruitment director of the workshop back then. Since I only joined the company two years ago and was able to command a higher position than him, he wasn’t convinced and tried to make my job hard. Because of that, I didn’t get along with him very well.”
“How did he make your job hard?”
“Originally, I was only responsible for the internal staff of the company, so the staff at the workshop didn’t fall under my control. However, Walter recruited a lot of his relatives into the workshop over the years. Those people didn’t know much, but they were able to enjoy all sorts of benefits. Because of this, I had to deal with a lot of staff complaints.”
At this point, Courtney suddenly had a vague impression of Walter. Back when she was eating in a restaurant, she saw a married couple sitting next to her arguing because they had been laid off. She didn’t care about them initially, but when she lost her wallet after exiting the restaurant, it was the man sitting next to her who returned her wallet to her.
That man was Walter. At that time, she gave him her name card, saying that he could come to Citron Apparel and give it a shot if he couldn’t find a job elsewhere.
Upon thinking about it, she couldn’t help but reveal a chilling smile. Back then, Walter was slightly chubby and had a weathered look from his harsh life, but he still returned the wallet filled with cash to her.
Her impression of that honest man was much different from the person described by Alan.
Just as she thought about it, the office door was suddenly pushed open as Ruby came rushing in anxiously. She stuttered for a while, but Courtney understood what must have happened again.
“Where is it?”
She got up instantly and walked out of the office with Ruby’s hasty footsteps following behind her.
“They are downstairs…”
