Lisa Jackson's the Abandoned Box Set

by Lisa Jackson

  “Bull!” Helen cut in, and Roberta rolled expressive green eyes. “The man’s a dimwit, and you know it, Roberta Kendrick!”

  Somehow Marnie managed to channel the conversation and turn it to a less disastrous course. She listened for a few minutes while Roberta caught her up on the details of her trip to Hawaii the previous February. Finally Marnie escaped.

  She spent the next couple of hours with Todd, who assured her that Rose Trullinger’s request to change the brochure was out of the question. “You could double-check with your dad on that one,” he said, polishing his glasses with a handkerchief as he stood over her desk, eyeballing the pictures in question, “but I’ve never seen your father change something like this unless there was a good reason.”

  “I agree. Besides, I think I’m supposed to make that kind of final decision,” Marnie replied.

  Todd pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. “Right you are. Besides, you can’t believe everything Rose tells you these days.”

  “No?”

  Todd shook his head. “She’s going through some pretty heavy stuff right now. Her husband isn’t getting any better. One of Rose’s daughters dropped out of school to help her take care of him, but it looks like he might have to go in for open-heart surgery, and there’s some hassle about insurance benefits. So Rose is real tense these days, and everyone around here is trying to cut her a little slack while being as supportive as possible.”

  “I wish I’d known this earlier,” Marnie said, trying to remember her conversation with the slender woman.

  “Don’t worry about it. She’s probably already forgotten the entire issue. My guess is that within a week or two she won’t know this shot—” he thumped a finger on the picture “—from the one she says she wanted.” He glanced at his watch and scowled. “Are we done for the day? I gotta run.”

  “Sure. I’ll see you Monday.”

  Todd left, shutting the door behind him. Marnie leaned back in her chair, swiveling to stare through the bank of windows to the Seattle skyline. Skyscrapers loomed upward, seeming to slash through a summer-blue sky. Only a few clouds hung on a lazy, summer breeze. At the sound, boats chugged across the gray blue waters, leaving foaming wakes and reflecting a few of the sun’s afternoon rays.

  Everyone working for Montgomery Inns seemed to have more than his or her share of problems. Kate Delany and Rose Trullinger were just a few.

  And what about you? What about your relationship with Adam? Talk about going nowhere!

  “Oh, stop it,” she said, mentally chewing herself out and refusing, absolutely refusing, to be depressed. Deciding to call it a day herself, she stuffed some work into her briefcase, grabbed her jacket and swung open the door. One of the elevators was out of order, and a crowd of employees milled around the remaining operable lifts.

  Marnie took the stairs, concluding that a little exercise wouldn’t hurt her. Her heels rang on the metal steps as she descended, passing each floor quickly. She didn’t see the girl huddled on the landing of the eighth floor until she almost tripped over her.

  Marnie froze. The girl was a woman. Dolores Tate—and she was sobbing loudly. Her curly brown hair was wilder than ever, her eyes red. A handkerchief was wadded in her fist, and her skin was flushed from crying. She gasped as she recognized Marnie and looked as if she wanted to disappear as quickly as possible.

  A tense silence stretched between them before Marnie managed to ask, “Are you okay?”

  Dolores sniffed and cleared her throat. “Do I look okay?” Her voice dripped sarcasm.

  Disregarding Dolores’s unconcealed contempt, Marnie asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “You?” Dolores responded, blinking hard. “You want to know what’s wrong with me? God, that’s choice!” Her purse, lying open, was shoved into a corner. Dolores pawed through the oversize leather bag. “I need a cigarette.” She found a new pack and worked with the cellophane while her hands trembled. Finally she lit up. “You want to know what’s wrong with me? Why don’t you take a wild guess?”

  Marnie knew the woman was baiting her, but she couldn’t resist. “This probably has something to do with Kent.”

  “Bingo!” Dolores threw back her head and shot a plume of smoke toward the ceiling many stories above. “But I don’t suppose I have to tell you about Kent. He did a number on you, too.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Not to you, maybe.” Tears trickled from the corners of Dolores’s eyes. She swiped at the telltale drops with her fingers. “But I actually loved the bum.” Laughing bitterly, Dolores found her handkerchief again and wiped her nose. “How’s that for stupid?”

  “We all make mistakes,” Marnie replied, wishing she didn’t sound so clichéd.

  “Yeah, well, I made my share.” Suddenly her gaze was fixed on Marnie’s. “And, well, for what it’s worth—I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just in love with the wrong man. But apparently—” her voice cracked, and she drew up her knees, bowing her head and holding her cigarette out in front of her as the smoke curled lazily into the air “—apparently, Mr. Simms doesn’t feel the same about me.” She blinked rapidly. “In fact, that bastard told me he never even cared about me! I guess I was only good for one thing. He broke it off with me, you know. A couple of weeks ago, but I thought I could change his mind. Obviously I was wrong about that, too.”

  Marnie was aware of footsteps ringing on the steps a few stories up. “Look, you want to go somewhere and talk about it?” she said, feeling suddenly sorry for a woman who had so many hopes wrapped up in a man like Kent.

  “With you? Are you out of your mind? That’s why he broke up with me, you know. He blamed me for him losing you. Can you believe it? Like it was my fault!” She finally seemed to hear the clattering ring of footsteps closing in on them and she struggled to her feet, crushing out her cigarette with the toe of a tiny shoe.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Marnie offered, “I think you did me a big favor.”

  “Why?” Dolores asked, attempting to compose herself as a few men from the personnel department edged passed them and continued down the stairs. Marnie waited until the noise faded and, from far below, a door slammed, echoing up the staircase before silence surrounded them again. “Oh, I get it,” Dolores said, her eyes turning bright. “This is all because of Adam Drake, right?” She smiled a little. “That really burned Kent, you know. That you would be interested in Drake.”

  “Because he was supposed to have embezzled from my father?” Marnie countered, and Dolores sucked in a sharp breath. Her throat worked, before she tried to pull herself together.

  “You know something about it?” Marnie asked, reading Dolores’s abrupt change of attitude. No longer the scorned, broken woman, Dolores was now looking guilty as sin. All the subterfuge came together in Marnie’s mind.

  Dolores must be the very woman they were looking for—the woman Kent was talking to when Gerald Henderson overheard the conversation in the accounting department. “You know that Fred Ainger was involved, and Kent?” she asked as Dolores, one hand on her purse, the other hanging desperately onto the rail, began to back down the stairs.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Dolores responded, denial and guilt flaring in her eyes.

  “Oh, come on, Dolores! It’s written all over your face! And Gerald Henderson overheard you and Kent in the accounting office.”

  “Not me!” Dolores shook her head. “I was never near the accounting department with Kent!”

  “Then who was?” Marnie asked, following Kent’s lover down the stairs and feeling a little like a predator. Dolores was obviously terrified that she’d said too much.

  “I—I don’t know,” she squeaked.

  Marnie clasped Dolores’s wrist, stopping the other woman cold. “What are you afraid of?” When Dolores didn’t immediately respond, Marnie said, “You must be involved.”

  “No!”

  For a minute she stared at her, and slowly Marnie believed her. Stark terror streaked
through Dolores’s red-rimmed eyes. Yet there was something she was holding back, something important. Marnie gambled. “I have to go to my father with this.”

  “Oh, God, no,” Dolores pleaded. “Really, I don’t know anything.”

  Marnie’s conscience nagged her, but she pressed on. This was, after all, her one chance to absolve Adam of a crime he didn’t commit and prove his innocence. “Then you won’t mind telling that to my father or the board or the police?”

  Dolores nearly fainted. Her entire body was shaking, and for a terrifying instant Marnie was afraid the girl might lose her footing and fall down the stairs.

  “Listen, Dolores, why don’t you just tell me everything you know about the theft? Then I’ll decide if my father has to know about your part in it.”

  “I wasn’t part of it!” she cried.

  “Then who’re you protecting? Kent?” Marnie scoffed. “After what he did to you? Believe me, Dolores, he’s not worth it.”

  Dolores wavered. Chewing on her lip, she said, “If I help you…?”

  “I’ll talk to my father, explain that you were basically an innocent bystander—a victim. But you have to tell me the truth—all of it—and I can’t promise that you won’t be prosecuted if it turns out that you’re involved more than you say you are.”

  Dolores gulped, but her eyes held Marnie’s, and for the first time since they’d met, Marnie felt as if a glimmer of understanding passed between them. “You have to believe me, I didn’t do anything and I never got a cent,” she whispered, licking her lips nervously.

  “But you did know what was going on?”

  “I—uh—I found out when I caught Kent fiddling with the books.” Dolores sank to the step and dropped her head into her hands. “It’s all such a mess and I loved Kent so much that…that I didn’t…couldn’t blow the whistle on him.”

  “Was Fred involved?” Marnie asked softly.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Dolores shook her head slowly. “I think there was someone else, but I really don’t know who. Kent kept me in the dark as much as possible. That’s the way he was.” Her pouty lips compressed, and anger caused her pointed chin to quiver. “And he never cared about me. Not at all.” Her hands curled into tiny fists of outrage.

  “Would you be willing to testify against him?”

  Dolores stared at Marnie a long time. “I can do better than that,” she said at last, finally throwing in her lot with Marnie. “I can tell you where the records are—the books that show how the money was skimmed off the project funds.”

  Marnie was floored. “Where?”

  Dolores smiled through her tears. “In the boat.”

  “The boat?”

  “The damned boat. Your boat. The Marnie Lee. Everything you need to prove that Kent’s the thief is in the safe in your boat!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE PHONE RANG in Marnie’s apartment, but Adam let the answering machine take the call. He made it a practice not to answer her phone or do anything that might suggest that they were a couple. He respected Marnie’s privacy, true, but there was another reason. He couldn’t get too tied into this woman, much as he cared for her. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them. Until he could prove his innocence, he had nothing to offer her.

  On the fourth ring, the answering machine picked up, playing Marnie’s tape recording. A few seconds later, Marnie’s voice, breathless, rang from the box. “Adam? Are you there?” Marnie asked, her voice ringing with excitement on the telephone recorder. “If you are, pick up. Please! This is important!”

  Just the sound of her voice brought a grin to his face. He picked up and drawled, “Gee, lady, sounds like you’re in desperate need of a man. What can I do for you?”

  “Thank God you’re there!” she whispered, relief and delight mingled in her words.

  “You know me, just hanging around your place, a kept man,” he returned. Her good mood was infectious, and he imagined how she must look, cheeks flushed pink, her flaxen hair tousled, her blue eyes clear and bright.

  “Meet me at the Marnie Lee! I’ll be there in half an hour!”

  “Whoa. Slow down a second. Why?”

  “I don’t have time to tell you now,” she said, nearly laughing, her voice bubbling with enthusiasm. “Just meet me there!” With a profound click, she hung up, and Adam slowly replaced the phone. Whatever she was up to, it couldn’t wait.

  He glanced at the table, where pencils, pens, a calculator and two half-empty cups were scattered over the reports from Montgomery Inns. After hours of poring over the personnel and accounting records, Adam had come up with nothing that even remotely hinted at who was behind the embezzlement and consequent frame-up. He was tired, his back and neck ached and his mouth tasted stale from cup after cup of coffee. He was getting nowhere fast.

  A boat ride with Marnie sounded like just the ticket to get his mind off this mess.

  Scooping up his keys from the table, he stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans and saw Simms’s name on a personnel report. “You son of a bitch,” Adam muttered. “I’ll get you yet.” But he wasn’t as convinced as he once had been. Though Henderson’s hearsay tied Kent to the crime, it was just Henderson’s word against Simms’s. No, he needed more proof: cold, hard facts. Adam had foolishly underestimated Simms and whoever the hell his accomplice was. They were professionals when it came to sliding dollars out of the company accounts. If Kate Delany hadn’t noticed the discrepancies, they could have embezzled millions.

  He was reaching for his jacket on the curved arm of the hall tree when he stopped short at a sudden thought. Kate Delany. Of course! He didn’t need Victor’s help; if he could convince Kate to talk to him, to explain how she’d been tipped off, then he might find the answer to how the money was shuffled, to where, and more importantly, to whom.

  Feeling that he was suddenly on the verge of a breakthrough, he shoved his arms through the sleeves of his jacket and projected ahead to an evening of sailing, a dinner with candlelight and wine and a night of lovemaking, with Marnie lying beside him, her pale hair, touched by the moonglow, looking as if it were a silvery fire.

  First a night with Marnie, then tomorrow he’d tackle Ms. Delany. If the woman would see him. She’d made it all too clear that she thought he was no better than a weasel.

  Well, dammit, she’d just have to deal with him.

  The doorbell chimed softly through Marnie’s apartment. “Marnie? You ready?” Victor’s voice boomed through the panels as Adam pulled open the door.

  They stood face-to-face, inches apart, the threshold of Marnie’s front door a symbol of the rift between them. Adam on one side, Victor on the other, a year of bitterness, lies and mistrust separating them as surely as the threshold itself.

  One side of Adam’s mouth lifted into a mocking grin. “Well, Victor,” he drawled, as the older man’s shock turned to simmering rage. “It’s been a long time. I’d invite you in, but I’m just on my way out.”

  Victor tilted his aristocratic head, and the nostrils of his patrician nose flared slightly. “Where’s Marnie?”

  “I’m going to meet her.”

  “She’s having dinner with me.”

  “That’s not the way I understand it,” Adam replied, then added, “excuse my manners.” He glanced pointedly at his watch. “I guess I’ve got a few minutes. Would you like to come in for a drink?”

  Victor snorted. “What the hell do you think you’re doing hanging around my daughter? I warned you—”

  “I figure Marnie’s old enough to make her own decisions.”

  “Or mistakes,” Victor declared, gazing past Adam to the interior of the apartment, as if he expected Marnie to walk out of the kitchen, fling herself into his arms and complain that Adam had been holding her hostage against her will. It amused Adam that Victor really expected him to lie at every turn.

  “Well, if you’re not interested in coming in and shooting the breeze, then I guess I’d better be off. She’s waiting for me at th
e boat. So if you’ll excuse me…”

  But Victor stood as if rooted to the porch, his gaze narrowing to some spot beyond Adam, his old eyes fixed on the inside of the apartment. “Oh, my God,” he whispered, and his throat worked slightly. His face turned bloodless, as if he’d seen a ghost. “What the devil have you been doing, Drake?” he asked in a voice so low it was nearly lost in the rumble of traffic from the street.

  “What do you mean? I told you she’s not here…”

  Ignoring Adam, Victor pushed past him, strode down the hallway to the table where Adam had been seated, where stacks of computer printouts lay sprawled over the white tabletop. Each heading, in bold inch-high letters, announced that the pages were property of Montgomery Inns.

  Adam’s stomach tightened. In his fantasies about being alone with Marnie and his exuberance of thinking they were about to solve the mystery with Kate Delany’s help, he’d forgotten about the sheaves of paper, damning and incriminating printouts, strewn all over the kitchen.

  Victor picked up the first few pages, scanned the print and nearly staggered as he slumped into a chair, dropping his head into his hands, one page of a printout still wadded in his fingers. Hearing Adam approach, he looked up, his eyes suddenly old and tired. “You did it, didn’t you? You managed to turn my own daughter against me.”

  “No, I—”

  “Damn it, Drake, I’m sick of lies! Sick!” With a renewed rush of energy, Victor struck one stack of printouts, and it skidded off the table to pour onto the floor, sheet after perforated sheet, rolling and folding onto the tile, condemning Marnie in her father’s eyes. “She got them from corporate headquarters, didn’t she? Hell, yes, she did. She still has access to the files. And then she brought them back to you, like a dog bringing slippers to his master for a pat on the head. God, you’re incredible. My own daughter!” His voice trembled perilously, but he didn’t break down.

  “Marnie was just trying to help me.”

  “Or ruin Montgomery Inns!” Victor’s face had flushed, and his lips shivered in rage.

  “She wouldn’t—”