“Olivia Ann, where did you just go?” Joshua asked.
“Hmmm? What did you say?” Olivia asked, realizing she had missed a question that had been directed at her.
“I asked you what you were concentrating on so hard. We seemed to have lost you for a while,” Joshua answered. Ian twirled a strand of her blonde hair around his finger, tugging her face to look at him.
“Are you okay, Livvy? I know you were hurting with the migraine, and then we were kind of spirited in the bedroom,” he said cautiously, watching her carefully.
“No headache and I’m hoping we can go back and be spirited again,” she said, with a cheeky grin.
“You want to tell us what you were thinking about?” Joshua persisted.
“I was just thinking that I couldn’t wait to go home, and then I realized that technically, this condominium is my home…” Her voice trailed off.
Cartons of food and chopsticks were immediately put down onto the coffee table, and just as quickly, Olivia was firmly draped across two very determined men. She couldn’t have gotten away even if she had wanted to, but she didn’t want to.
“Olivia Ann,” Joshua said as he tipped up her chin, so that she was gazing directly into his stormy gray eyes. “Your home is with us. If it needs to be in this condominium here in Boston, then that is where it will be, but it is with us.”
Then Olivia felt both of her feet being squeezed lovingly by two extraordinarily large hands, and she shifted her gaze down to Ian’s brown and green eyes. “But we would really love to make a life, a permanent life, with you in Fate Harbor. It doesn’t have to be in my house, or Joshua’s house. We can look for a new one or have one built. We know you have a life here in Boston. But, there are a lot of people besides us in Fate Harbor who love you and want you there, and we think you would be happier there. However, I’m with Joshua on this, I will be wherever you are, because my life doesn’t make sense without you in it.”
Olivia couldn’t believe that she was being handed everything she wanted. She had come a long way from the little girl who had no place to live and had been given away to strangers. She slowly extricated herself from their embrace, and wiggled around so that her butt was firmly wedged between the two of them. When she was seated between them, she brought up both hands, and placing one behind each man’s nape, brought down their heads until each of their three foreheads rested against each other’s. That way, she could see and touch them both at the same time.
“Decision made. I want us to live together, forever, in Fate Harbor. I don’t care what house we live in, just so long as we live in it together. But”—she stopped them before they could react—”I want something more. I want to have children with you both, and we haven’t discussed this. I don’t even know if I will be able to have them. The doctor said it will be difficult, but I still want to try. If you don’t want to try with me, I’ll understand…” For the second time her voice trailed off.
“Olivia Ann, I would love to have children with you, and raise them with you and Ian,” Joshua assured her.
“And Livvy, you’ve known from that very first day how I felt, children with you would be a blessing,” Ian said in a hushed tone. He smiled as he saw the two happy tears that she shed, knowing deep in his soul that this woman would be blessed with children. It didn’t happen often, but occasionally he was blessed with the second sight of his Scottish ancestors and had a deep abiding knowing, the same as his father, and his father before him. In all cases, these feelings had always been right, and one thing he knew was this woman would give birth to a son, who would also occasionally have the ability to know things.
Nobody put the food away. Instead, they left it on the table as they all trailed after one another back into the bedroom. Olivia knew that she wouldn’t be taking anymore birth control pills, and that thought made her very happy.
* * * *
The ringing of Joshua’s phone woke them up that afternoon. It was Chance, so Joshua put it on speaker.
“Okay, I figured out what Linus wanted to tell you, Olivia,” Chance started. “But it wasn’t any large conspiracy between Richard and InfoDyne, like we suspected. It was basically the fact that our taxes have been fucked up for the last three years.”
“What!” Olivia screeched. Joshua and Ian looked at Olivia in surprise. “What the fuck do you mean, our taxes have been fucked up?” Olivia practically screamed into the phone.
“Jesus, Olivia, keep it down! I think I just lost the hearing in my right ear,” Chance complained.
“Chance, this is huge! Our charity could go under if we have a problem with the IRS,” she said in a frantic voice.
“Calm down, Olivia. I started this all wrong. Barry didn’t screw up our taxes with the IRS. He screwed them up on the annual report.”
“Wait a minute! I thought, as a charity, you don’t have to pay taxes,” Joshua said in confusion.
“I’m sorry, you’re right, we don’t pay taxes per se. I just call it that, because it is reporting we have to provide to the IRS, so we have a Tax Attorney. I’m just using the wrong terminology because I’m lazy. We have to give a full and detailed report on our expenditures. We have to report on our donations. The IRS requires this information from charities to prove we continue to qualify for our non-exempt charity status. So, if Barry were to fuck up our reporting to the IRS, it would indeed be a huge deal,” Olivia explained in a slightly calmer tone.
“So, how have we been misrepresenting ourselves on our annual report?” Olivia asked Chance in a biting tone.
“He’s been showing that we have had almost thirty percent higher charitable expenditures each year than we actually spent. So now, over three years’ time, our records show that we spent twice as much in charitable expenditures as we reported to the IRS.”
“Goddamn it, how could he have made such a stupid error?” Olivia demanded. “Barry’s been in this business for thirty years, and he’s been working with charities for most of those years.”
“I don’t know, sis,” Chance said.
“Was there anything else on Linus’s computer? There had to be something threatening enough to get him killed,” Joshua insisted.
“There wasn’t anything,” Chance assured him.
“Well, maybe there didn’t have to be anything. Maybe Richard or Frank just thought Linus knew something about their dealings with InfoDyne and the budgets on previous projects. They found out he was trying to set up a meeting with Olivia because they had her e-mail hacked and decided to silence him,” Ian surmised.
“What do you think, Olivia?” Joshua asked.
“You guys think it through.” She started pulling on some clothes. “Chance,” she called into the phone. “I’ve got to think about how these screwed-up annual reports are going to hose us over. Then I’ve got to start getting ready for the board meeting.” She left the bedroom.
“Chance, we’re going to hang up now and call the detectives over at Boston PD to see if they caught up with the guy who owned that car. We’ll give you a call back,” Ian assured him.
Ian and Joshua got up and got dressed, and found Olivia in her home office on the phone with Adam. “Barry is for sure going to be at the board meeting, right?” she was asking into the speaker phone.
“Yeah, everyone you asked to be at the meeting has confirmed that they will be in attendance. Do you need me to pick you and Joshua up from the airport?” Adam asked.
“No, we’ve got our ride covered. Thanks though.”
“Call me anytime, Olivia, if there’s anything I can do,” Adam said sincerely.
“I will, Adam.” Olivia ended the call to look up at Joshua and Ian.
“Olivia, don’t you also show your level of monies in reserve on your report? Why do you suppose no has inquired as to why your reserves are so high, when your internal records show that you’ve given away so much?” Joshua asked.
“Well, no one asks about it because we invest the money that we have in reserve. The assumption is t
hat we have made good investments, or maybe they think we’ve gotten some windfalls due to donations, and they just haven’t really compared reserves to the donations and done the math. Maybe they just trusted us to know what the hell we were doing! This is one big clusterfuck, and I want to send out a revised report within the next six weeks.”
“Can’t you just wait until the next one is due and make the corrections then?” Ian asked.
“We could, but I’d rather take it on the chin now. Especially with the Atlanta project coming up. I don’t want everyone to think this project will end up costing us more overall than it really does because it’s combined with three years of misreporting. Besides, I always promised myself that we would be a transparent organization, no matter what happened. Good, bad, ugly, or fugly, I would let people know the truth. I can’t break that promise to myself.”
Ian and Joshua smiled at one another, admiring their woman’s ideals.
“Let us know if you need our help. We’ll be making some calls to BPD in the other room.”
As soon as they got to the living room, Joshua insisted that Ian sit down.
“Look, you might not want to admit it, but you’re a little shaky, so sit your ass down. Do you need a pain pill?” Joshua asked.
“I’ll just take some aspirin.” When Joshua came back with the medication and a glass of water, he found Ian eating some of the room-temperature noodles that had been left on the coffee table.
“You’re a cretin,” Joshua said as he handed him the pills and water.
“You shouldn’t take aspirin on an empty stomach,” Ian explained, swallowing the food, pills, and water.
Joshua was able to get in touch with Detective Rantel, who apologized for not calling back sooner. Joshua clicked the speaker button so Ian could hear what the detective had to say.
“We got the guy who owns the car, and he’s in interview right now. He’s already rolled over on the other two guys who were with him. He swears he was only driving, not shooting. He’s not a bright one. He thinks his lack of involvement in the gunplay is going to make a difference for himself. This yahoo was hired by one of the shooters, so he doesn’t know anything to help us out with understanding the scope of the plan. But he swears that Burt, the guy who was in the passenger seat, is the boss of the operation, and he’s been taking orders from a big-time suit from downtown Boston. Burt Fine isn’t usually a shooter, he’s usually known for computer crime. But, he just got out of a five-year stint at Bay State, so might be he was more willing to take a risk for a bigger score and to get back on top.”
“What kind of computer crime?” Ian asked.
“He was convicted for a lot of hacking, a lot of identity theft. According to his jacket, he was really good up until he was caught. He was only caught because his old lady rolled over on him,” Detective Rantel explained.
“Do me a favor, Detective. Can you pull the video surveillance shots from the Olivia Prescott case and see if they match the ones on file for the two guys that your driver just named?” They waited while the detective rifled through some papers.
“Facial recognition software is still so new, I can see why they didn’t come up as a match, but they look like the same guys to me,” Rantel said.
“Let us know when you get them into custody. They can probably tell us who killed Linus and who has tried to kill Olivia twice.”
“I’ll call you the minute they’re in custody,” the detective promised.
“It’s Brotze,” Ian said. “He’s such a slimy bastard.”
“Nope, it’s Richard Phillips,” Joshua disagreed. “He’s hurting for cash, and he’s not used to it. He’s desperate. He couldn’t handle the fact that Olivia wasn’t going to use InfoDyne, and he wasn’t going to get his normal kickback.”
“Brotze knows how to find people like Burt Fine. Phillips wouldn’t have a clue where to start looking.”
“We should know by the end of the day,” Joshua said, the relief evident in his voice. He started to pick up the remains of their late lunch and take them into the kitchen as he eyed his friend. He was happy to see that the aspirin seemed to have provided him with some relief.
It was 10:00 p.m. when Caleb and Leif returned. Joshua, Ian, and Olivia all gathered in the living room to hear how their trip to Stamford went. Leif did all the talking, explaining that the meeting had taken place at a hotel lobby bar. He and Caleb had been able to easily listen in with some audio-surveillance-amplification equipment they concealed in their clothes, as they pretended to enjoy happy hour. Phillips was demanding more money for the Stamford AHC project that InfoDyne completed last year, stating that he was actually owed seven percent, not five percent. Brotze was saying that percentage had been contingent upon him bringing in the next project to InfoDyne.
Brotze told Phillips that he had knowledge from a reliable inside source at AHC that the next scheduled project was Atlanta, and that Olivia Prescott was planning on using volunteers rather than InfoDyne to build the infrastructure. Phillips assured him that he was misinformed, that the Atlanta project was going to be scrapped, and another Northeast project would be selected, ensuring InfoDyne would get the infrastructure job. Brotze apparently asked how Phillips could guarantee that Prescott wouldn’t try to use volunteers again in the future, and Phillips said to trust him, she would be taken care of. That was when the meeting ended.
“It sure sounds like Richard pretty much said he was going to have Olivia killed,” Joshua said.
“That’s how we took it,” Leif agreed.
“Yeah, but it also finally confirms that Frank Brotze does know about the Atlanta project, and that he knows he wasn’t going to get any of the work, giving him a motive. I knew, he knew,” Ian gloated.
“But he didn’t say that ‘Olivia would be taken care of,’” Joshua pointed out again.
“Did you get this on tape?” Ian asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Caleb assured them.
“I’m going to give Detective Rantel a call. I know he said he’d call me first thing when he got the shooters in custody. But he said the same thing about the driver, and he didn’t call then. So I want to check in with him.” Joshua took out his phone and dialed. “Damn, he’s gone home for the night.”
“It’s almost 11:00 p.m. on a Sunday night. Let’s cut him a break, shall we?” Olivia said soothingly to Joshua. She was surprised when all four men glowered at her.
“I vote for ordering in. Are you guys up for that?” She got nods all around. She went to her kitchen and got a huge stack of paper menus. They opted for pizza, since that was the only restaurant that would still deliver that late on a Sunday night.
Chapter 20
On Monday morning, Joshua gave the recording of Richard Phillips and Frank Brotze to Detective Rantel. It was enough to bring them both in for questioning. Also, Detective Rantel had not been able to track down either Burt Fine or Shelton Edwards. Neither of them had gone home or returned to their last known whereabouts. The Boston Police Department had APBs out on both men, and Detective Rantel felt sure they would find them that same day.
Joshua asked to watch the interviews of Richard and Frank, but since he was no longer in law enforcement, working only as a firefighter, his request was denied. Joshua waited at the Detective’s desk until the interviews were over so that he could immediately hear how they had gone.
“Frank Brotze went first,” Rantel said when he got back to his desk. “He said that a little money passed under the table to the decision makers was the cost of doing business. He maintained that losing AHC’s business represented less than a one percent loss to InfoDyne, and wouldn’t be a blip on his radar. The only reason he was meeting with Phillips is that the man had become a thorn in his side.”
“What did he mean by that?” Joshua asked.
“Phillips kept coming back to Brotze for more money, promising him more work in the future, with his hand out for more money today,” Rantel explained. “Brotze said he regretted ever doing business wit
h the guy. It was obvious Phillips had problems, and he was going to start blackmailing Brotze. That’s the reason Brotze kept meeting with him. The way Brotze tells it, he was hoping there wasn’t any future work so he could stop having to deal with Phillips.”
“I’m going to have Ian and Chance check out this less than one percent of his business bullshit. If it pans out, then Brotze’s probably off the table as a suspect. What about Phillips?” Joshua asked. “How did he explain the threat to Olivia?”
“He said it was a threat to have her removed as head of the charity. He said he knew some things about her personal life, about you and another guy that would get her kicked off the board.” Rantel ran his fingers through his hair and had trouble meeting Joshua’s eyes.
“Since this is Olivia’s charity, and she wasn’t somebody who was voted in to run it, she can’t be voted off as head. This guy is a loose cannon,” Joshua said. “Are you sure you believe him, and he really wasn’t talking about having her killed?”
“I could be wrong, but my gut says he doesn’t have it in him. He’s just too weak,” Rantel said.
“I don’t know, after everything Brotze said, he sounds pretty desperate. If all he had to do was make phone calls, he doesn’t have to be very strong. And maybe that’s what he needed the money for, to pay off Burt and Sherman,” Joshua guessed.
“Could very well be,” Rantel agreed. “I’m going to go out and see what we can rustle up on those two. They are the key.”
“Thanks, Detective.” Joshua shook his hand and left. On his way out of the precinct, he made a call to Ian, explaining everything that Rantel had told him. He asked if he and Chance could quickly find out how much of InfoDyne’s business AHC’s account represented. He also asked Ian to check with Chance and ensure that Olivia couldn’t be voted out as head of AHC on any kind of morals clause.
Protecting Olivia [Fate Harbor 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 27
