Swindled

by Mayes, June

  The relief was palatable. It felt like a weight was being lifted from their shoulders. There was nothing left but to steer clear of Brian’s affairs and spend time together. To celebrate the seven of them raided the kitchen and ate lunch on the terrace overlooking the muddy patches. One day soon those muddy patches would be filled with every flower imaginable, knowing Vickie. Actually Beth mused to herself as they ate, at the moment it looked a bit like someone had been out back burying bodies. She shook her head. What was she thinking? Dead bodies??

  Chapter 42

  By early afternoon the friends had departed and Vickie had retired to the sitting room. David and Brian were in the back digging up more holes while trying to figure out the plan that Vickie had drawn for them. Beth didn’t think the garden was going to survive the invasion.

  She was putting the last of the clean dishes away when the doorbell rang again. Putting down the dish towel she answered it and was surprised to find Brian’s ultra efficient secretary.

  “Anne! Come in please,” Beth beckoned her in and opened the door wider. They walked toward the living room, she noticed that Anne looked almost… well haggard. Vickie waved as they entered the living room and met Beth’s eyes. She wasn’t the only one to notice that the impenetrable Anne was looking far from her usual efficient self.

  Leaving the two to exchange greetings, Beth made a pot of tea and told the hardworking men that they were welcome to take a break and say hello to Anne. They declined, determined it seemed to sort out the mess of a garden. By the time she went back into the living room Vickie was sunk into one of the couches with her eyes closed and Anne was sitting silently staring off into space. Vickie opened her eyes as Beth placed the tray down and the two of them looked at the pale vacant Anne.

  Vickie leaned forward and asked gently, “Anne, are you okay?” Beth figured that Anne had come by because she missed Brian. The last few days had obviously been too much for her. Being close to Brian’s sisters was probably the only way she could get a bit of closure on the murder. It might be the only way Anne felt she could get closer to Brian now that he was gone.

  Anne shook her head and visibly looked like she was bringing herself back to the surroundings. “Oh. Yes. Yes I am. Things have just got a bit … confusing these last few days.” She said as she took her cup of tea from Beth.

  “I can imagine you’re trying to sort out things after Brian's death. It must be very hard,” Beth said softly. She really didn’t know how to make Anne feel better. “How are things at the office? “

  Anne looked at Beth and then at Vickie. She pulled herself up, straightening her back and put her tea cup down on the table between them. She took a deep breath and said, “Yes that’s what I wanted to talk to the two of you about. The business is not going at all well. With Brian gone and the funds all frozen by the government we are in dire straights. It looks like the business is going to fold.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Beth. The sisters already knew all this of course, but it seemed like the news had finally been shared with Brian’s colleagues.

  “Is there anything we can do for you? It must be very hard,” Vickie asked

  “No – and we were so close to making it.” Anne said as she clenched the handbag that sat in her lap.

  “Why couldn’t you just leave it?” She asked suddenly looking at the two sisters.

  “All you had to do was use the Trust money to pay off your creditors. Why did you have to go through that paperwork? Why didn’t you just transfer enough money back into your business accounts and leave well enough alone? All we needed was a week and it would have all been cleared up.”

  “What?” Beth said leaning away from Anne. “What are you talking about?” What was going on here? Anne didn’t look like the lost soul from mere minutes ago. She looked angry. In fact, she looked deranged.

  “No I guess you couldn’t leave it could you?” Anne asked glaring at Beth. “You wanted it all didn’t you? You knew that if you handed over that account information earlier that they would freeze the funds of Brian’s business before we could fix it. You knew that if you just sat back that his business would fold. It couldn’t have been easier for you to ruin Brian’s business could it?” Anne was getting irate. She rose from the couch and was walking around in choppy motions. She waved the handbag she had clutched toward them every now and then to extenuate a point.

  Beth stood up and moved closer to Anne. “I’m sorry I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” She said. In the back of her mind she knew that there was something wrong with Anne. She just couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was that was so worrying. Vickie was sitting on the couch watching Anne as if she were insane. Obviously Beth wasn’t the only one worried.

  “Anne why don’t you sit down and we can talk through this?” She asked.

  “No,” Anne stopped pacing and turned to face Beth. “I’ve sat still enough. Don’t you understand? I had it all planned. With Brian gone, I could fix the company. I knew that once he was out of the picture the other partners would be able to salvage the mess he had made of things. We would be able to run the business properly. Successfully,” she said. “Brian was ruining things. Every time we had everything running smoothly, every time we had money coming in, he would invest in some crackpot scheme or be making a divorce settlement. He kept taking the money. The business was going under. He was destroying the business.” The last comment was made in a screech.

  Beth felt her stomach sink lower and lower as Anne raved on. She had a sick feeling. She had an idea where this was heading and didn’t think that she or Vickie wanted to be there when Anne reached the end of her tether.

  Scott was in the back garden with David. They would make Anne leave or at least keep her busy until help arrived. She could make an excuse and fetch them. She stepped toward the door, torn. Vickie was too big to move and Beth was determined to make sure Anne was kept away from her. Tucked into the corner of the couch Vickie was at least out of focus.

  “Where are you going?” Anne suddenly asked focusing on Beth. “Where are you going?”

  “I thought I would just pop to the kitchen to refresh the tea,” Beth replied thinking quickly. “I won’t be more then a minute.” Surely Anne, the calm efficient Anne would be content to rave on until Beth managed to alert the men.

  “No.” Anne said fiddling with her bag. “No, you stay here until we sort this out.” Anne fumbled and suddenly pulled a gun from her handbag. It was tiny but solid. It was pointing at Beth.

  Beth always thought seeing a real gun would be more dramatic somehow. On television guns are always larger then life and when they appear on the screen. The appearance of a gun was usually preempted by ominous music. Nothing in the seconds it had taken Anne to pull out the gun had prepared Beth. It was hard to believe that such a tiny metal thing could end her life. The pounding of her heart in her ears, however, was warning that her body believed this was a life threatening situation. Anne did not look stable or lucid. Her stance was strong though and the gun didn’t quiver in her grip. This woman was serious and had a gun trained on Beth.

  As long as the gun stayed on Beth and didn’t turn toward Vickie, Beth felt okay. Deep down, she really wanted to run screaming from the room. She wanted to pull the gun out of Anne’s hands and throw it out the window. But mostly Beth wanted to run in front of her sister. Her sister, who couldn’t move quickly, couldn’t shift out of the couch without help. Her sister who was incredibly pale and panting as she watched the gun.

  Beth said quietly, “Anne please calm down. I don’t know what you are talking about but I am sure that we can sort it out. If there is a way to save Brian’s business with money then maybe we can do that. Just calm down and we can talk about this.”

  “No,” Anne said. “No. I thought about it and this is the only way. Without the two of you there isn’t anyone to inherit the trust and they will then turn it over to the company. There will be more then enough money to put back in the business. All of
the money, not just some little hand out and … and from there the business will be fine.” Anne was trembling although the gun stayed steady. It seemed like she was talking to herself more then to Beth.

  “Everything will be fine – I just need the two of you gone and it will all be fine.” Anne took a deep breath and her whole body stilled. She stared into Beth’s eyes. Beth could hear the blood pounding in her ears and everything else in the room blurred as she focused on the gun and Anne. She could see the pitch black hole at the centre of the gun barrel, the grey circle that surrounded it and the minuet detail of Anne’s finger as it started to tighten on the trigger.

  There was an explosion of noise and Beth felt a huge impact as her body flew back and crashed onto the floor. She felt incredibly heavy and struggled desperately to draw in a breath. The room had darkened and she couldn’t get her gaze to focus. Her hearing went fuzzy and she couldn’t get a grip on what was happening around her. Had she been hit? Was it not hurting because she was fatally injured? Had the bullet just gone through some fat and she was oblivious?

  Just as Beth was getting ready to slip into full on panic, the heavy weight on her shifted and air flooded her longs as she gasped. The world came back in a scattering of voices shouting with the sound of struggle. Her ears ringing Beth lifted her head. Staring back at her was David. He was half sprawled over her, his hair tussled and face lined with worry.

  “Are you okay?” He asked cupping her face with his hand. Beth could feel his body shaking slightly from the shock and pulled him closer. She closed her eyes as she hugged him to her. She couldn’t believe she was still alive.

  “I’m okay,” she said softly to him. “I’m great,” she amended.

  “Good,” he replied. “Because it would just be wrong to be this hard if you were hurt.” He moved his hips a fraction to illustrate his point then dropped his head into her shoulder. “Shock reaction,” he explained and they lay there laughing in one another’s arms.

  Above them they could hear Scott speaking over the voices of the detectives.

  “You don’t need to hyperventilate, love, they're fine. No, I’m not just saying that. They wouldn’t be laughing if everything weren’t fine.” There was a pause. Even the detectives grew quiet and then Scott’s voice said “Vickie, what’s wrong? The baby? NOW?” he ended in a note of panic as the ambulance crew on the scene moved forward to assist with the onset of labour. Beth and David looked at one another and kept laughing. Safe.

  Chapter 43

  Two days later everyone was all gathered in the family room of the house to welcome home the new arrival. Vickie and Scott had had a baby girl with big red curls and huge blue eyes. They had named Mary after her maternal grandmother. The parents glowed with pride as everyone cooed over the beautiful baby.

  Just as Vickie had managed to get the baby back to sleep, Karin showed up to the ‘welcome home party’ with a sheepish Joseph in her wake. Karin was grinning widely and had no qualms about dragging Beth’s once nemesis back into the foray.

  “And so?” Vickie asked raising an eyebrow as everyone nagged at Joseph to tell them what had happened. Looking around the room at the eager and curious faces around him, Joseph caved.

  “Anne had virtually lived for her work,” he explained with a shrug. “With all the partners pulling their weight, the business should have been taking off and the reliance on the money laundering would have fallen away. Anne couldn’t understand what was happening. They were winning new business but money just wasn’t staying in the accounts. And not just the money that was being moved in and out to legitimise it. All the money. What Anne didn’t realised initially was that as fast as the business was filling the accounts, Brian was emptying them. He would duplicate transactions that already existed with slight variations. To anyone who looked it would seem like the money was being legitimately used.”

  “It was the same thing he did to us,” Beth agreed nodding her head and waiting for Joseph to continue. It was all starting to make more sense she thought.

  “When Anne found out that Brian was responsible for taking funds from his own business, she just snapped. She decided it was up to her to fix things. That fateful evening, she went to Brian’s home to confront him. Somehow when they were talking, Anne decided that Brian wasn’t going to stop so she spiked his drink and stabbed him in the back while he was copping a feel,” Joseph leaned against the fireplace as he took them through the story.

  “Do you really think that it was spur of the moment?” Scott asked sounding curious. It did seem a little too straightforward.

  “I’m sketchy whether Anne had ever seriously tried to talk Brian around,” Joseph agreed nodding. ‘She says that’s what happened but I think it might be more likely that such an incredibly capable woman would have had it all planned. Why else bring the sedatives with her?” Joseph lifted a shoulder and let it drop again. “It just seems too coincidental that she planned the confrontation on the one night that Brian at his own home rather then out at his girlfriends. Taking both drinking glasses with her when she left is just icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned,” he admitted. “The only evidence she had left behind was Brian’s little black book which had been shoved into his mouth. Anne must have considered herself free and clear when she left.

  What she couldn’t have known though was that her boss was home because he was cheating on his girlfriend. He was home that night but not alone,” the detective paused letting the significance of what he was saying seep in. The baby gave a little cooing noise drawing attention back to her but as she sighed herself back to sleep everyone turned with bated breath back to the tale at hand.

  “Tina had been hiding in the closet. From what we can tell, Tina and Brian were having an affair for weeks and when Brian heard Anne calling him from the front hall, he panicked. He must have convinced Tina that it would be easier for him to get rid of Anne on his own. She was hidden from sight. If I were to speculate, I would say that Brian had probably wanted to keep Tina a secret knowing that Anne highly disapproved of her flighty and somewhat incompetent colleague. Brian had to know that Anne was the only reason the company was still afloat. Keeping Anne happy had to be his priority. Consequently when she came into the bedroom to find him, Brian had seemed completely alone. When she stabbed Brian in his bedroom, Tina had witnessed the whole thing.”

  “So why didn’t she tell anyone?” Beth asked frustrated. If Tina had only told someone like the police Beth wouldn’t have had to deal with everything over the past week. All those questions, all that worry, all of that could have been avoided if Tina, normally big mouthed, had only just told someone what she had seen.

  “Instead of telling the police, Tina decided to make a little money out of the situation and tried to blackmail Anne,” Joseph explained smiling in sympathy. He of everyone there knew how close they had come to dragging Beth into the middle of everything. “From what we can piece together, Anne arranged a rendezvous with the blackmailer in the office having agreed to pay and hid herself to catch Tina red-handed. At the time Anne wouldn’t have known who would have witnessed her attack. Still there must have been sufficient evidence in what the blackmailer had conveyed for Anne to take it seriously. When she saw who it was that was collecting the money, she had bludgeoned Tina over head with a paperweight while Tina had literally been counting the cash. Tina had not been smart enough to just take the money and run.” All of them looked faintly confused. How stupid could you be to count money at the scene of that crime Beth thought? Surely even Tina would have known better

  “So why would Anne have hid our family papers in Brian’s room?” Beth asked dragging Joseph back to one of the things that had puzzled the twins from the start.

  “She knew that the two of you were aware that money was missing from your company. You were bound to look in detail at your records to try and figure out what happened. Once you figured out Brian’s scam, it would only be a matter of time before someone thought to look at Brian’s business accou
nts. Anne was determined not to let that happen. She was going to make the business succeed come hell or high water. They had two big deals in the pipeline for the next week. She figured if she could delay the accounts getting into your hands, then they could pay the money back into your accounts sighting a clerical error. You wouldn’t then care how the money originally left your account and they could use future business to settle the rest of Brian’s business debt.”

  Beth and Vickie had been right. The missing piece had been simple. The box of paperwork had been the key. Not because the sisters couldn’t find the paperwork but because Anne didn’t want them to find it. All she had wanted was to delay their discovery of the paperwork. Long enough to get funds back into their account and long enough for the sisters not to care that the money was gone because it was back again. If Anne had left it in her office where it was originally stored, the twins would never have found it and never would have linked everything together.

  “So how did you figure out it was Anne?” Karin asked lounging back on the couch. “And how did you know that she would be at the house?” The others nodded in agreement.

  David explained that Joseph had showed up at the back gate to the garden about five minutes after Beth told them she and Vickie were taking a break.

  “We didn’t think it was Anne at the time,” Joseph admitted. “I was looking for Frank, one of the junior partners in Brian’s firm. He was the one who took the box of paperwork from the flat. We had been following him and one minute he was there and the next he was gone. His car had been parked in a side street near the house but when we couldn’t find him it felt to suspicious. He hadn’t left our sight all week and then gone.”

  “We told Joe that Anne was in the house having tea with Beth and Vickie and that she was alone,” Scott said. “To be honest we weren’t worried at that point,” he looked over at David who nodded.