"The only thing I'm left wondering about is Mike's tone during your conversation."

We should be careful how we interpret "tones" of conversations. I spoke with management on a number of occasions and to be honest I could give you a spectrum of tones from one conversation. These guys are very good at waht they do, so trying to pull out hidden meanings (that's basically what it means) is not useful; unless you are Dr. Phil (but I heard he is really not a real DR either; hmm).