Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Cindi Myers

Her eyes blurred as she scanned the following lines of legal jargon. She set the letter aside, took a deep breath, then picked up the phone.

  “Ms. Arnotte is unavailable at the moment,” the woman who answered the phone at the attorney’s office said. “May I take a message?”

  “This is Audra Trask. I just received a certified letter informing me that the school district is canceling the agreement for me to manage the day care and preschool at their new Canyon Creek Elementary campus. I need to know if they can do that, and what we can do to fight it.”

  “I’ll give her the message.”

  Audra ended the call. The initial numbness upon reading the letter was fading, replaced by a growing rage. She punched another number into the phone.

  “Superintendent’s office. This is Maeve.”

  “Maeve, this is Audra Trask. I need to speak to Superintendent Wells.”

  “Superintendent Wells is not in. But I was told if you called to tell you that the decision is final and there’s nothing we can do to help you.” And then she hung up before Audra could say another word.

  Audra was still staring at the phone in her hand when it rang. “Hello?”

  “Audra, this is Cheryl Arnotte. What’s going on?”

  “I received a certified letter from the school district. Let me read it to you.” She read the letter. For a long moment, Cheryl didn’t say anything. “How can they do this?” Audra asked. “We have a contract. That’s legally binding, isn’t it?”

  “They’re invoking the morals clause. They have the right to cancel the contract if they feel your behavior jeopardizes the reputation of the school district.”

  “I haven’t done anything. Certainly nothing that would violate a morals clause.”

  Another long pause.

  “What is it?” Audra asked. “Do you think I’ve done something immoral?”

  “Not necessarily immoral,” Cheryl said. “But your name has been linked with a murder, and my girls tell me there have been law enforcement officers at the school several times recently. That concerns me as a parent, so I can understand how it would concern the school district, too.”

  “I’m not a suspect in any crime,” Audra said. “The police have questioned me, but only as a possible witness.”

  “A school’s first mission has to be to protect the children in its care,” Cheryl said. “I think most courts would consider them justified in exercising an abundance of caution.”

  “Are you saying you agree with what they’ve done?”

  “I’m saying I understand what they’ve done. I can file an appeal if you want me to, but I would caution against it. I don’t think you’ll win, and it could be very expensive.”

  “Do you plan to withdraw your children from Canyon Critters?” Audra asked.

  “Certainly not right away. But when the new school opens, it will be so convenient for me to drop off all the children at a single location. I’m sorry, but I’m just being honest with you.”

  Audra didn’t answer. What did you say to a remark like that—thanks for nothing?

  “I understand this must be extremely upsetting for you,” Cheryl said. “Don’t rush to do anything right now. Wait a few days and consider your options. Then get back to me.”

  What options would those be? Audra wondered after she ended the call. She had put everything—all her savings, all her credit, all her experience and training—into Canyon Critters. Once the new school opened, she doubted many parents would opt to stay with her. The new location was much nearer TDC Enterprises, where many of them worked. Those with older children, like Cheryl, liked the convenience of having all their children on one campus. Others simply wouldn’t want to be associated with someone as notorious as Audra Trask.

  She couldn’t have said later how she made it through the rest of that day. She closed her office door and pretended to work on her computer, but she lost long minutes staring vacantly into space. She wanted to call Hud, but he was working. And she didn’t want to be that needy girlfriend who was always calling to cry on a man’s shoulder. She kept telling herself this wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to her. She wasn’t dying of cancer. No one she loved had died. So many people had dealt with true tragedies. She was only in danger of losing a business she had poured her life into.

  Okay, so maybe that wasn’t cheering her up. But she wasn’t aiming for cheerful. She just had to find a way to keep going. To stay standing until she could figure out a better way forward.

  After work, she got behind the wheel of the car, intending to drive home, cry her way through a long, hot shower, then put on her pajamas and eat her feelings with a pint of ice cream. Or a bottle of wine. Or both.

  Instead, she found herself driving to what would have been the future home of Canyon Critters Daycare and Preschool. Late-afternoon light bathed the construction site in a soft golden glow, warming the red stone of the emerging buildings to the same shade as the surrounding rock. The construction crews had left for the day, and she parked and walked across the gravel that would one day be a paved parking lot.

  She had stood in almost this same place the day of the groundbreaking. She and her staff had brought all the children to watch the ceremony, the little ones excited at the prospect of a field trip and by the sight of all the construction machinery ringing the area. Audra had stood with the other people involved as the ribbon was cut and the first shovel of dirt removed. Then a backhoe had moved in to start digging the foundation. She could still see the children, wide-eyed and thrilled to watch the big machines. Some of them had drawn pictures and waved them like little banners.

  “Oh!” The cry escaped her involuntarily as another memory surfaced, clear as if she had just witnessed it. Mason stood behind the ropes that separated the children from the construction zone, a crayon drawing in hand. The wind had caught the drawing, whipping it from his hand and into the path of the backhoe. He had cried and had to be restrained from running after it, but had soon been distracted, watching the backhoe bite into the earth, imitating the movement with several other boys, roaring like a monster.

  The paper with his drawing had fluttered away, soon buried in a shower of construction debris from one of the backhoes.

  * * *

  HUD WAS WALKING out of Ranger Brigade headquarters when Audra’s RAV4 pulled into the lot. He jogged over to the vehicle as she turned into a parking space. “What is it?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “I just remembered something,” she said. “Something important.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s about that drawing—the one Mason did. I know how it ended up in that dump site.”

  “Come on.” He took her arm. “Let’s go inside so the whole team can hear.”

  Beck, Dance, Reynolds and Redhorse, as well as the commander, were still at headquarters when Hud returned with Audra. “Audra has some new evidence for us,” Hud said, and led the way to the conference room.

  He set up the recording equipment as the others piled in, then sat across from Audra at the table. “Tell us what you know,” he said.

  “The day of the groundbreaking for the new elementary school, we took the Canyon Critters students to see the ceremony,” she said. “The kids were really excited about seeing all the heavy equipment. Some of them were carrying drawings they had made that morning. I remember Mason dropped his drawing. The wind picked it up and carried it into the path of a backhoe, which dumped some rocks and concrete and stuff on it.”

  “You’re sure about this?” The commander leaned toward her.

  “Absolutely sure,” she said. “I was at the construction site this afternoon and the memory came back to me, clear as if it had just happened.”

  “What were you doing at the construction site this afternoon?” Redhorse asked.

  Her expression grew more troubled. “I received a letter f
rom the school district this afternoon informing me they were canceling my contract for the new day care and preschool on the elementary school campus. I was upset and wanted to see the place one more time.”

  “Can they just cancel a contract like that?” Hud asked.

  “They invoked a morals clause. Apparently, they think my involvement in this case could be damaging to their reputation.”

  He wanted to vent his own rage at this turn of events, but had to maintain his composure for the tape and in front of his coworkers. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “I imagine that was upsetting.”

  “I’m not so upset now,” she said. “That drawing proves TDC dumped that construction debris illegally on public land.”

  “I interviewed the construction supervisor for the elementary school,” Jason Beck said. “He showed me receipts for dumping all the construction debris and talked about how committed TDC is to green practices.”

  “People lie and receipts can be faked,” Reynolds said.

  “This ties TDC to the dump site,” Sanderlin said. “But it doesn’t prove they actually dumped that debris. A contractor could have dumped it illegally.”

  “It’s not enough to get a warrant to inspect their accounts,” Dance said.

  “Even if we got a warrant, they’ve probably covered themselves,” Hud said.

  “How much money do you reckon they pocketed by charging for waste disposal and dumping it on public land instead?” Beck asked.

  “It could be as much as $250,000,” Dance said. “Construction debris costs about $500 a ton to dispose of, and the national forest techs estimated that dump site has five hundred tons or more.”

  “They gave the school district a big discount on the construction of the school. This was a way to get a little back.”

  “It’s pocket change for someone like TDC,” Audra said. “They lost more paying those fines to the EPA.”

  “They’re contesting those fines,” Sanderlin said. “They say Dane Trask faked the reports to get them into trouble.”

  “My father wouldn’t do something like that,” Audra said.

  “Then maybe Trask caught them lying and threatened to blow the whistle,” Hud said. “They threatened him or his family and he decided to run away and hide out instead.”

  “Then why not go to the press or someone at the EPA to begin with?” Redhorse asked. “Why disappear and leave a lot of cryptic reports for other people to figure out?”

  “Because that was too dangerous,” Audra said. “I know my father. It would have to be something really risky to keep him away this long.”

  “It would help if we had someone inside TDC,” Beck said.

  “Dane Trask was on the inside, and it didn’t help him,” Hud pointed out.

  “Can we put more pressure on Mitch Ruffino?” Dance asked.

  “We can question him,” Sanderlin said. “But that doesn’t mean he’ll tell us anything. And I imagine he has plenty of lawyers to make sure he doesn’t say anything to incriminate himself or the company.”

  “Let’s try,” Dance said.

  “I’ll see if I can reach him at his office,” Hud said. “We can go over there now.”

  He expected an assistant to put him off, but when he identified himself and asked to speak to the TDC vice president, he was put right through. “I was just about to call you people,” Ruffino said, without any preamble.

  “Oh? What can we do for you?” Hud asked. He looked up and found everyone else in the room leaning forward in their chairs, listening intently. Now he wished he’d thought to put the call on speaker.

  “We’ve had a break-in at TDC headquarters,” Ruffino said.

  “When did this happen?” Hud asked.

  “Very early this morning. And I’m sure the culprit is Dane Trask.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mitch Ruffino met Hud and Commander Sanderlin in his office on the sixth floor of the TDC office building, four miles outside the national park boundary. TDC’s vice president had a fringe of snow-white hair around a bald spot and an expression that hinted at chronic indigestion or a dissatisfaction with life in general. “I don’t know why it is taking you people so long to stop this man,” Ruffino began as soon as they were admitted to his office. He stood behind a massive desk, arms crossed, radiating belligerence. “You’re supposed to be an expert group, but this one man is making you look like clowns.”

  “You’re working late this evening,” Sanderlin said, ignoring the outburst.

  “It’s not unusual for me to work late,” Ruffino said. “It’s a requirement for the job, but one I don’t mind. I do some of my best work after most people have left the office.”

  “Tell us about this break-in,” Sanderlin said. “You said it took place early this morning?”

  “At 3:52 a.m., according to the time stamp on the security footage,” Ruffino said.

  “Did you call the sheriff’s department to report the break-in?” Sanderlin asked.

  “No. I was going to call you people, but you contacted me first.” He frowned. “Why was that?”

  “We wanted to ask you some questions,” Hud said.

  “Those will have to wait until after you deal with this break-in.”

  The commander moved in closer to Ruffino, his lean figure towering over the VP. “Why did you wait so long to report the crime?”

  Ruffino looked away. “We needed time to review the security footage, and we wanted to determine what might have been taken.”

  “And in the meantime, you were conducting business as usual,” Sanderlin said.

  “Of course. We are a multinational company with many projects to oversee.”

  Sanderlin didn’t hide his annoyance. “Which means any evidence we might have gathered if you had reported the break-in immediately has been compromised.”

  “That’s your problem, not mine.”

  “What was taken?” Hud asked.

  “Thankfully, nothing. But the footage shows he was clearly looking for something.”

  “We’d better have a look at the footage,” Sanderlin said.

  Ruffino picked up his phone. “Send Larry in with the video footage,” he said.

  Seconds later, as if he had been waiting right outside the door, a middle-aged man with thinning blond hair and wide blue eyes entered, a compact disc in hand. “I have the footage right here, Mr. Ruffino,” he said.

  “This is Larry Keplar,” Ruffino said. “He’s head of our IT department.”

  “You’re working late today, too,” Hud said. “Is that usual?”

  “Mr. Ruffino asked me to stay, to talk to you,” Keplar said.

  “Any relation to Jana?” Hud asked as Keplar fed the disc into a computer drive.

  Keplar looked up, clearly startled. “Jana’s my wife,” he said. “How do you know her?”

  “She works at Canyon Critters Daycare,” Hud said.

  “Yeah, she does.” He turned his attention back to the computer. “Okay, it’s going to play right now.”

  Hud and Sanderson leaned in closer as a grainy black-and-gray image appeared on the screen. A time stamp in the corner clearly showed 3:52 and that day’s date. The figure—little more than a shadow at times—moved around a room, opening and closing file drawers, then riffling through a desk. At its clearest, the image appeared to be a slender man, over six feet tall, dressed in dark clothing. The search took about ten minutes, then the room was empty again.

  “Is this the only footage?” Hud asked. “Do you have any of the man entering the building or searching anywhere else?”

  “No, we don’t,” Ruffino said. “But how much more do you need? He’s clearly not supposed to be snooping around like that at almost four in the morning.”

  “How did he get in?” Hud asked.

  “Obviously, he used a key card,
” Ruffino said. “Anything else would have set off an alarm.”

  “You didn’t deactivate his card after he left?” Sanderlin asked.

  “Of course we did. But he must have gotten hold of another one.”

  “Run it again, please,” Hud said. He watched the figure carefully, but could find no identifying marks. The man kept his head down, obscuring his features.

  “What makes you think this is Dane Trask?” Sanderlin asked when they had reviewed the footage a second time.

  “Who else would it be?” Ruffino asked.

  “It could be almost anyone,” Hud said. “The image quality on this footage is so poor we can’t make out his features—not to mention, he’s avoiding looking toward the camera. It’s like he knows it’s there.”

  “Exactly!” Ruffino said. “Dane Trask knows our security system and he knows how to avoid it. It’s why we don’t have footage from anywhere else in the building.”

  “Where is this footage from?” Hud asked.

  “It’s from the file room on this floor,” Ruffino said.

  “He avoided all those other cameras, but didn’t avoid this one?” Sanderlin asked.

  “He was too focused on looking for whatever it is he wanted,” Ruffino said.

  “Do you have any idea what he was looking for?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe confidential documents or proprietary information he thought he could use against the company. He’s made it clear he wants to destroy us.”

  Hud thought it was clearer that TDC wanted to get rid of Dane Trask, but he remained silent, watching the video repeat. He turned to Keplar. “What about motion sensors? Don’t you have those?”

  “We do, but—” Keplar looked to Ruffino.

  “They were shut off,” Ruffino said. “Which is another reason it had to be Trask. He knew how to bypass our system.”

  “Didn’t Trask work as an engineer?” Hud asked. “How would he have known how to bypass your security system?” He looked at Larry again. “I would imagine it’s a pretty sophisticated system.”

  “Well, yes,” Keplar said. “I don’t really know how he could have bypassed it.”