No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7

by Barton, Sara M.

  We wandered the aisles, picking up bread, A-1 steak sauce, strawberries, a small Sara Lee pound cake, and a quart of vanilla ice cream, before we used the self-serve checkout counter. I bagged while Bosco scanned. As we walked to the car, my cell phone rang. It was Ralph.

  “Hey, Dori,” he said, somewhat breathlessly, “do you have a minute? I was wondering if there is a way to help you out of your situation. How about I buy out your shares of Dynamic Productions? I’ll buy Bosco’s, too. That will give you guys some cash to tide you over while the mess with the house gets sorted out. What do you say? Are you interested? ”

  “I don’t know, Ralph. I’ll have to sit down with Bosco and talk about it.”

  “Sure, kid. No rush. I just want to help you two out of the mess you’re in.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I told him.

  “I’ll pay you $100 a share. That gives you $75,000. I can give you a bank check. I just need a day to get it processed.” An alarm went off in my head. Something wasn’t right. Ralph had just invested heavily in Dynamic Productions’ new facility. Bosco and I had put up some of the money, accepting shares in return. How could he suddenly be so able to pay us back? If he was so flush with capital, why did he need us to invest? Why not just get a secured loan from the bank?

  “Well, I’ll let Bosco know.”

  “It’s a really good deal, Dori. I hope you guys take me up on it.”

  “We’ll think about it, Ralph. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.” I could hear him talking even as I disconnected. Bosco glanced over at me.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Ralph wants to buy us out of Dynamic Productions. He’s offered us $100 a share.”

  “That’s stupid,” Bosco decided. “He owes us more than that, especially with the money we just put in.”

  “He seems to think we’re in need of money,” I pointed out.

  “So?” Bosco turned right on Waltham Drive. “What’s the problem with that?”

  “How does he know what our financial situation is?”

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  “I did not.” I sat there, thinking. Maybe it wasn’t my imagination about that letter from Wink-Wink Productions. But how could George and Ralph be involved in any way? I never told my colleagues about him. After all, it had only been two months since he moved in, and we were still getting to know each other. Bosco only met him because we had to file some financial paperwork for the court on the third Sunday we spent together. “I saw something disturbing today, but it didn’t make a lot of sense until just now.”

  By the time I got done sharing the photos of the Wink-Wink letter, Bosco had already turned the car around and we were headed back to Caulkings Corner.

  “We can’t just open that letter,” I insisted. “It’s a federal offense.”

  “Listen to me,” Bosco growled. “You just got robbed of how much money? You’re worried about Ralph? The guy just offered to buy your shares of stock for a hell of a lot less than they’re worth. We need to know if he’s a part of this conspiracy while there’s still a chance to nail the bastards!”

  “We still shouldn’t open his mail! For all we know, George is trying to rip him off, too. Maybe George thinks he can fleece Ralph the way he fleeced me. Come on, Bosco. Can you really be sure?”

  “I just want to have a closer look at that envelope. Maybe we can read it if we hold it up to the light. You should have told me about it when I picked you up.” He glared at me as he pulled up to the stoplight. “You’re always giving people the benefit of the doubt when you should be worried that they’re out to screw with you.”

  “Is it wrong to want to live in a nice world?” I shot back. “Did it ever occur to you that it’s not necessary to be so damned cynical?”

  “Did it ever occur to you that you invite trouble by being so naive? What kind of woman has her boyfriend move in that soon after meeting him? You spent how much actual time together before he arrived with his suitcases?”

  “That’s mean!”

  “It may be mean, but it’s true!” Bosco insisted. “We went together for how long before we had sex? And you jumped into bed with this guy after how many dates?”

  “That’s none of your damned business!”

  “And yet, I’m the guy who’s supposed to have your back! Now your buddy Ralph wants to buy us out, and we’ll lose money on the deal, so it’s affecting my life, too!”

  “Fine,” I snapped. “I’ll take the money and move on, and you won’t have to worry about me messing up your life any more!”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, Dori. I’m saying people aren’t necessarily as nice as you think they are. If Ralph is offering to buy us out, he’s not doing it because he’s a nice guy. He’s doing it because it benefits him and screws us!”

  Those words stung. I was too angry and hurt to respond. We drove the last two miles in tense silence. I knew that Bosco was going to be Bosco, whether I liked it or not. He was looking to assign blame, because that’s his nature, because he’s used to hunting down bad guys. And as much as I hated to admit it, there was some truth to the fact that I leaped into my relationship with George without looking. There was also a part of me that suddenly distrusted Ralph, even before Bosco said a word. But as I sat there, going over things in my mind, I realized something that was stunning.

  “You’re mad because your theory fell through. You thought this was about you, about Feed the World. Instead, I got ripped off because I screwed up,” I told him, knowing full well he was going to explode. I waited for the missile to leave the silo, but Bosco remained silent. He pulled into the parking lot, steering the car into a spot well away from the Dynamic Productions entry. His hands gripped the wheel long after he turned off the engine. I started to get nervous. This was not the reaction I was expecting. When he did speak, they were not the words I expected to hear.

  “No, that’s not why I’m mad.”

  I waited for him to go on. It took him a minute to continue.

  “I’m mad because I let you get away the first time,” he told me. “I promised myself that if I ever got another chance, I wasn’t going to blow it. I wanted it to be because of me, not because I’m a self-important jerk, but because I would have a legitimate reason for helping you.”

  “What are you saying? You can’t help me unless it’s your fault?”

  “No, I’m saying I would have a built-in excuse for hanging around if my investigation of Feed the World caused you to lose your savings, and I’d have a chance to redeem myself by fixing the mess.” Bosco’s brown eyes were on me, and there was no doubt of how deeply his pain went. “All I’ve wanted for the last three years has been the opportunity to convince you that I’m still worthy of your love.”

  Chapter Seven —

  “You still love me?”

  “Of course I do, Dori.”

  “Even though I screwed up with George?”

  “Babe, that’s water under the bridge. If I hadn’t let you down, you wouldn’t have been looking for George or any other guy.”

  “So,” I sighed, “it wasn’t my screw-up?” I was confused. What did Bosco really think? “It was all your fault?”

  “Hell, no!” he shook his head. “You’re no saint. You’re far too naive and you always trust people, even when you shouldn’t. I’m saying that I should have spoken up a long time ago. I should have told you how I really felt. But most of all, I should never have signed those divorce papers. I should have begged you to work it out with me. Instead, I let you walk away, straight into the arms of the first guy who made a big play for you, who just happened to be a con man. I know your heart was hurting and you weren’t thinking clearly. I blame myself for shoving you in George’s direction. Maybe if I had been more forthcoming about my objections to staying in the house, we could have worked something out. I never stopped loving you, Dori. I just stopped loving the house after Kevin died. I needed a fresh start.”

  I sat there a mo
ment, remembering the numbness I embraced through the empty hours. I had wanted to feel good things again, to be free of all that ache. George set my head spinning with all his attention. It was, for me, a fresh start. Maybe it wasn’t George that was so attractive, but the promise of a new life, any life, far enough away from the sadness I still held inside, the tears that remained in the middle of the night, when I was so alone and so vulnerable.

  “Maybe I needed a fresh start, too,” I admitted, “in a different way. I didn’t want to give up my memories of Kevin to get it.”

  “Kevin is always going to be a part of us, Dori. That’s never going to change.”

  “I know.” I stopped myself from saying more, knowing I was on the brink of tears. Bosco seemed to notice that.

  “Come on. Let’s go look at that envelope. And maybe the books, as well.” He took a small flashlight from the glove compartment. I used my key and unlocked the door, pushing open the door. My hand went to the light switch on the wall, but Boscon stopped me.

  “We don’t want to turn on the lights while we’re snooping.”

  Once inside Ralph’s office, I followed the bright gleam of light to his desk. The pile of mail was no longer where Gloria had left it. Apparently, Ralph had returned from his photo shoot and gone through it. The envelope was gone.

  “Damn!” I muttered.

  “Maybe he tucked it in a drawer,” Bosco suggested. He began pulling out drawers.

  “We shouldn’t be snooping through his private papers,” I warned him.

  “His private papers are our business, Dori. We own forty two percent of this company. You forget I saw his prospectus before we gave him the last round of funding. I want to know if he’s been cooking the books. He has some reason for wanting our shares, and it’s not because he’s a swell guy!” he hissed through the darkness. “Do you know his password?”

  “For what? Now you’re going to check his computer?” I was aghast.

  “Our money helped to pay for that computer, babe,” Bosco pointed out. “Without our money, there would not be a Dynamic Productions. Every time you took stock instead of salary, you were solidifying your ownership of this company. Ralph still acts like you’re the young ingenue he took under his wing. I want to know what he’s hiding.”

  Bosco sat at Ralph’s desk, trying possible passwords to no avail. We went through his family, even trying his dog’s name as a possible password. Nothing worked. “It has to be something easy for him to remember, a favorite expression or saying. Think, Dori.”

  I did as he asked, going through the many phrases I had heard from Ralph throughout the years. As I did, an image stayed with me. It was the way Ralph looked at his assistant.

  “Try ‘Gloria’s too much’,” I suggested. Bosco typed it into the password slot. “He’s always talking about how wonderful she is.”

  “That’s too long,” he decided. “And I can’t use the apostrophe. But I could substitute the number two for the word too. And what do you know? We’re in.”

  Ralph’s computer screen sprang to life as the password unlocked its secrets. Bosco got to work.

  “Where do you start?” I wondered aloud.

  “Wink-Wink Productions,” he responded. His fingers flew across the keyboard and suddenly we were looking at the website for Wink-Wink. ”Ralph has it on his favorites bar.”

  “Let’s check out ‘About Us”,” he suggested. The web page downloaded and I gasped.

  “George.” Bosco rubbed the back of his head in wonder, looking at the man identified as Gregory Wink. “That son of a bitch!”

  “No,” I cried. “Her!”

  He followed my finger to the photo of Tatiana S. Wink, co-founder of Wink-Wink Productions. There she was, in all her glory, grinning up as the social media and Internet marketing maven.

  “George has a wife,” scoffed Bosco. “What a low-down, dirty, rat-faced bastard!”

  “She’s the woman who pushed me into his arms at the resort! She claimed she and George had only been dating a short while!”

  “Made for each other,” Bosco decided. “They’ve been partners for ten years, according to their website. Interesting. We can look at this crap when we get home, though. Let’s focus on Ralph’s communications with George and Tatiana.”

  He opened Ralph’s emails, searching for something, anything suspicious. There was nothing from Wink-Wink.

  “Try Tatiana Stevanovich,” I suggested.

  “Why?” Bosco wanted to know.

  “If George…Gregory seduced me, maybe Tatiana seduced Ralph.”

  “There’s a thought.” Sure enough, there were several emails back and forth around the time that I met the fake George. “They met at Foxwoods.”

  “The casino? What was Ralph doing down there?”

  “More importantly, what was Tatiana doing down there?” he responded.

  “Romance?” I leaned over Bosco’s shoulder, reading.

  “It doesn’t look like it. It looks more like a money thing.”

  “She roped him in?”

  “It looks like Gregory and Tatiana Wink are frequent visitors at the casino, too. Ralph seems to have talked to them about some kind of deal. Tatiana tells him in the email they can work something out.”

  “What does that mean? He’s been embezzling from Dynamic Productions?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What’s in it for them?” I wondered. “Why wouldn’t they want to be involved with Ralph, with the business?”

  Bosco sat back in Ralph’s desk chair. I could see him in the narrow beam of the flashlight. He was thinking hard.

  “Maybe this is a money-laundering scheme,” he said.

  “Oh, come on,” I sighed. “Why are you so determined to prove some criminal connection? Why can’t George and Tati just be mean people who like to rip off idiots like me and Ralph?”

  “Because that’s not how the world of finance works, babe. Any couple going to this much trouble to gain the upper hand of Dynamic Productions has bigger goals in sight. If this was just about money, they’d take it and scram. Instead, they want to hold onto the company. They need the company for some kind of business.”

  As much as I wanted to dismiss his theory, I had to admit there might be some basis for it.

  “But, Bosco, why steal my money at the same time they were going after Ralph?”

  “They need you gone, Dori. You’re the problem. Ralph must have told them you and I own stock. And they had to have known you work for Ralph. With you out of the picture, Ralph owns the company free and clear. He can turn it over to them without losing face. They’ll probably hook up with a criminal organization and launder profits through Dynamic.”

  “Why steal my money? Why blow up the house? Why ruin me?”

  “To make you vulnerable to the offer. Ralph probably knows they took it all. He probably also knows it’s part of the plan. If you’re broke, you’re more likely to sell those shares at a loss.”

  “Bosco,” I said softly,” that means that they’ve been plotting a long, long time. If I met George half a year ago, they set it up earlier than that.”

  “Certainly they did. Here it is,” he said, pointing to the screen. “Ralph met Tatiana in Atlantic City early last summer, at a poker table.”

  “Oh,” I said, leaning against the back of Bosco’s chair, my hands on his shoulders. “How would they use Dynamic Productions to launder their money?”

  “Simple. Ralph would get paid for commercials he never makes. Then he’d pay for services and products he doesn’t get from other companies involved in the scheme. Basically, he’d be a transfer station for the money, giving it an air of respectability.”

  “What else do we need?” I sat on the corner of Ralph’s desk. “And how do we stop them?”

  “We need to go home, cook up those steaks, and have some dinner. Come on,” he directed me, taking my hand.

  “Does this mean you have a game plan?”

  “This means I need some time
to think. Don’t worry. It will come to me. It always does.”

  Half an hour later, the grill was almost ready for the steak. I microwaved a couple of baked potatoes and put them in the oven to finish baking. Then I set about to make a salad and a vinaigrette. I heard music coming from the living room. Bosco joined me in the tiny kitchen.

  “What’s your pleasure?” He pulled down a couple of glasses from his cabinet. “Whiskey sour?”

  “Mmm….” I popped a tiny tomato in my mouth. I felt Bosco’s hot lips nibbling my neck, making me warm and tingly all over.

  “You hungry?” he asked huskily, his deep voice caught in the grip of desire.

  “Sure. Aren’t you?” Bosco turned me around, his arms around my waist and moving down my hips.

  “Let me try again,” he said, an impish smile on his face. “Is there any reason why we can’t postpone dinner for twenty minutes?”

  “Oh,” I exclaimed with a laugh. “I guess I won’t starve to death in the next half hour.”

  “Good,” Bosco decided. He took my hand and led me into the living room. I heard the subtle rhythm of “The Girl from Ipanema” rise up as Astrud Gilberto whispered the lyrics breathlessly. We moved across the living room floor, our arms around each other. I got lost in his eyes, feeling like I was back where I belonged. We were one once again. The song ended and sadly, reluctantly, I started to step back,

  “Oh, no. Not yet,” Bosco told me. I heard the sultry sounds of “Desafinado”, the Stan Getz hit floating in the air. We started to samba, moving with the beat. Bosco moved us towards the bedroom. As we hit the bed, I heard Eydie Gormé crooning “Blame It on the Bossa Nova” and it made me giggle.

  “I see you’re still a fan of the Brazilian sound,” I smiled up at him as he began to remove my clothes.

  “Oh, yes,” he agreed. “It’s the language of love. How can one not feel romantic under such a magic spell?”

  Chapter Eight —

  “Where do we go from here?” I asked, as I lay with my head on his naked chest, listening to the rhythm of his heart beating.

  “Into the kitchen. We have dinner to make.”