Show Me the Money

by Connie Shelton

  She offered to carry a couple of the trash bags.

  “Is this related to the cash in your suitcase?” Gracie set the flattened boxes near the garage door and stacked the bags on top.

  “I don’t see how it could be. All they’re saying is there was some irregularity in the quarterly audit. I have no idea what that means, but surely even an office this huge doesn’t keep stacks of hundreds in cash. There’s probably a coffee fund or a petty cash box somewhere, but not this kind of cash. Then again, the audit might have nothing to do with money—it could be some other thing. Maybe one of my programming algorithms went wacky.”

  Gracie chuckled. “Is that a computer term—wacky?”

  Finally, a smile from Amber.

  “Anyway, I figure as long as I have my personal phone with me and am willing to answer any work-related questions, how will they know I’m not physically in my home? Talk about solitary confinement. That’s worse than being limited to the county.”

  Almost on cue, her phone rang. It was Pen.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing your work, but I wanted to report my findings on your Cody’s university degrees.”

  “No, this is fine. I’m not at the office.” It hurt, saying those words, and she didn’t go into the whole story.

  “I’ve not had much luck,” Pen said. “If you recall, the website profile we found shows only that Cody obtained certain degrees, but there was no mention of which school supposedly awarded them. So, I looked for alternate ways to find out. I did locate two men named Cody Brennan, each with impressive schooling. One, however, is a medical doctor—I was able to follow through and locate his practice. From his photograph, he is definitely someone else, a bit older, and he’s located in California.”

  Amber was jotting notes of Pen’s findings. “And the other?”

  “He is in the correct age group. Attended City College in New York, but the titles of his degrees don’t match up. So—I shall persevere and will report more as I know it.”

  When Amber thanked her, Pen evidently heard the discouragement in her voice. When she questioned, the story of Amber’s work situation came out.

  “If I may make a suggestion?” Pen said. “It will be helpful for you to stay busy, and I could use some research guidance. Shall we do this together? Come to my place.”

  Amber felt her mood perk up at the suggestion. There was nothing to be gained by moping around. Gracie bowed out of coming along, so Amber headed for Pen’s, stopping by her own condo to pick up her personal laptop on the way.

  An hour later, they were side-by-side at Pen’s table, comparing notes. Mainly, Amber was racking her brain for details, trying to remember if Cody had mentioned his university education while they were in Paris together. Nothing came to mind.

  “You know, maybe we’re spinning our wheels on this whole college degree angle,” Amber said. “Our goal is to find him now and to figure out how to prove he put the money in my case so the law can deal with him.”

  “True. But I’d hoped we might learn his current address through an alumni association or some such.”

  “Actually, that’s brilliant. Why didn’t I think of it? I know his current address. I could take you there, to the apartment in Paris!”

  Pen gave her a considered look. “But will he be there? He knows you were caught with the money. Wouldn’t he pull up stakes and leave any place you could link to him?”

  “Hmm, probably. I wonder how we could find out.”

  “Do you remember the street address of the place?”

  “There were ornate metal numbers on the wall—12. But it was near an intersection that branched in several directions, and I don’t remember the street names of any of them. That’s no help at all, is it?”

  “The neighborhood? Which arrondissement?”

  “If I look at a map, I might be able to pick it out, based on some of the places we went nearby. At home I have a sack of little keepsakes—restaurant menus, cards, flyers. If I look through those I’ll come up with names.”

  Chapter 19

  Back at the condo, Amber set up her computer on the dining table and went into the bedroom for the items she’d mentioned to Pen. Things were still scattered, and it took a couple minutes of digging to separate the small gift shop bag from the rest of her accumulated travel junk.

  “One of these days I need to get a desk and properly set up the spare room as an office for myself,” she announced to the houseplant on the kitchen counter.

  She liked that idea. It would be a project to keep her busy, as long as she was under orders to stay home anyway. She shook off the notion of settling into her little nest and complacently puttering around home all day. She was on a mission to clear her name and get her life back to normal. Still, before she dug into the bag of souvenir brochures and menus, her hand found itself clicking on an office furniture website, where she quickly chose a desk, a chair, and a bookcase. Click, click, click—they were ordered and set up for delivery later in the week.

  “Ha,” she said to the plant. “I can do both, settle in and pursue my case.”

  Exactly when she thought she would manage to arrange furniture and unpack the boxes that had sat in place for more than six months, she wasn’t sure. “Hey, one thing at a time,” she muttered to herself.

  She spread the various flyers across the table. Here was the men’s shop where she’d chosen a tie for Cody. She’d thought the poor man could use some wardrobe help, and the green silk looked stunning with his eyes. She flicked it aside. The shop had been miles from his apartment, a place they’d gone to via the Métro. The address was of no help, and she certainly wouldn’t be shopping there ever again.

  One of the restaurant menus sparked a memory. He had taken her there the first night she was in the city. But was it near his place? She couldn’t say for sure, since she knew nothing of the city at that point. Same with a little café where they had eaten croissants the next morning. As she went through each of the brochures, the street names had a certain familiarity but she couldn’t place them in her mind in relation to all the other sites they had visited.

  “I need to see this laid out,” she murmured.

  She opened a map program on the computer and began entering the addresses, one by one. Little red balloon-shaped buttons appeared, and she started to see a pattern. Aside from the obvious tourist places, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, most of their eating and shopping had taken place within a fairly small section of the city.

  She started plugging in the number 12 with a street name, pulling up photos of buildings. Some didn’t exist at all, and she scratched those off her list. Others were obviously not the building she had visited—the street-level boulangerie might have residences above, but she knew they had not accessed his place that way. She eliminated a couple more.

  The sun was setting, the room growing dim, when she realized she had been at this task for hours. She had two potential addresses. Both residence buildings were in the same neighborhood, both had the address No. 12, both had the familiar light-colored stone and black iron railings. Either could be the one.

  A vague headache was forming behind her left eyebrow and she rubbed the spot.

  “What am I doing, really?” she said to the empty room. “It’s not like I can book a flight and go there and confront him. No passport. And Pen was probably right. He will have cleared out by now.”

  Had she spent the afternoon on a wild goose chase, or merely filled some otherwise empty hours with something that felt useful? The headache intensified.

  “I gotta get moving.”

  The houseplant didn’t respond.

  Amber closed the computer and stood up to stretch. She was still wearing the business clothing she’d put on this morning, and that gave her an idea. Her timing could be perfect.

  Chapter 20

  Cody slouched into the corner of his bus seat. It had been a weird day and he didn’t really want to wrap his head around all that was going on. So, when his phone
erupted with the ringtone for his dad, just as the bus arrived at his stop, he picked it up.

  “Hey, kid. How’s it going?”

  What to say? I love my job, hate the company. I’m thinking about this girl all day, but she’s in so much shit right now I can’t reach out to her?

  “Fine. Just got off work, walking home from the bus stop.”

  “Well, I had a fantastic day at the track. I tell ya, kid, the ponies love me.”

  “Good, Pop. That’s nice.”

  “Hey, you sound kind of down. It’s not that chick still, is it?”

  Cody stopped at a traffic light and pressed the button for the pedestrian crossing light.

  “No. Well, yeah, kinda. Looks like it worked. She’s the one taking all the heat about the missing money.”

  “Well, that’s good. That’s great! You can get on with other things now. Hey, I got this idea that maybe we could run the Russian Prince gig. You’d be so good at that one, and it could bring in a bundle.”

  “Pop, I think I need to keep an eye on this other situation a while longer. I mean, the money’s out there, yeah. But I’ve got it spread in banks in three countries. It’s making me nervous.”

  “You stop that right now, buster. We got no nervous-nellies in this family, you hear? We run the con, the mark takes the hit, we vanish. That’s it.”

  The mark takes the hit. Amber could do prison time for this.

  But he couldn’t say that to his father, who would rant at him for being a wimp. If there was one thing Pop hated, it was a wimp.

  Cody made some pacifying comments, meaningless agreement just to shut his dad up, and then ended the call. He crossed the intersection and strode the half-block to the side street where he’d rented a spare bedroom from some old lady who watched game shows on TV all day.

  Doubts began to creep in. Could he do this to Amber, walk away and let her go to prison for something he’d done? Maybe he should go to the cops.

  No. That meant he’d be the one going to prison. Couldn’t face that, not at all.

  Maybe an anonymous tip, an email sent through a fake email address and routed through a couple of VPNs.

  He let himself into the house and heard the sounds of Wheel of Fortune on the TV in the den. Mrs. Whatshername glanced quickly in his direction, gave a wave of acknowledgement, and turned back to her show. He let himself into his bedroom and closed the door.

  The anonymous tip idea held a certain appeal, but he’d watched lots of cop shows. NCIS had forensic computer people like that Abby, who could backtrack anything. Phoenix was a big city, and they surely had all that stuff too. They’d find out.

  He plopped into the worn armchair in the corner of his room and ran his fingers through his dark hair. His stomach grumbled. Maybe I should have picked up food. I could order a pizza. His stomach rebelled. He was tired of pizza.

  Maybe Pop’s right. I could pull up stakes, get out of here, fly back to England and draw out some more of the cash … But Amber’s face wouldn’t leave him alone. The night they had dined at Restaurant Lasserre, the way her eyes shone in the candlelight, her full lips smiling at him, kissing him …

  He bolted from the chair and went into his bathroom for a cold shower.

  Chapter 21

  Happy hour was in full swing at Buster’s Pub, the spot where some of the B-G employees hung out after work. These were the mid-level and newer staff, definitely not the supervisors, managers, or execs, but those weren’t the ones Amber wanted to run into anyway.

  She’d made friends with several of the girls in customer service, the ones who always felt in the middle—the company making policy and hammering on them to adhere, versus the customers who always wanted their jobs done yesterday and complained about being billed too much for what it took to satisfy their demands. These were the employees who needed a couple hours after work to vent, and by now they’d been at it for at least an hour already.

  She edged into Buster’s and stood against the wall near the door, checking out the room. After an afternoon alone in the quiet of her condo, the noise level in here hammered at her. She’d taken a couple of aspirin before leaving home, but the headache threatened to return. She ignored it and scanned the crowd.

  The bar that ran along the opposite wall was filled, body-to-body. This was the flirting zone, the spot where dates were made, hookups arranged, even though B-G was fairly opposed to in-office romances. She spotted a few familiar faces, but the tables around the rest of the room were where most of her women friends were normally to be found. They had boyfriends or girlfriends already. They weren’t interested in being hit on, only to unwind at the end of a stressful day before they went home to arrange dinner and put the kiddies to bed. Amber spotted Allison Porter with two other CSRs whose names didn’t immediately come to mind.

  She held her head high and walked over to their table.

  “Amber!” The shock of seeing her in their midst was evident on all three faces.

  “Hey, guys. How’s it going?”

  “I—we—wow, we heard …” The news from the tech department had clearly made it to the Customer Service floor.

  “Yeah, I know. Bizarre, huh?” She took the empty chair that put her back to the rest of the room. “I worked from home all afternoon. You know, it wasn’t bad. If I could get that gig all the time, I might even get a cat or something.”

  Her nonchalant attitude threw them, she could tell. No one was sure what to say. She ordered a drink and kept up the pretense that all was normal and she was happy about it. Allison finally relaxed a little. The other two finished their drinks and declared the need to get home.

  Once she had Allison alone, she pounced. “Okay, so everybody knows. What are they saying? What does B-G think they have on me?”

  “Uh, gosh, I don’t think I should say.” Allison stared at her glass, but it was still nearly full.

  “Look, I don’t want to put you on the spot, and I would never say where it came from. But I have to know what I’m up against. I’ve got a lawyer, and she’ll do the digging. Just give me a clue where to start. HR wouldn’t even tell me what’s happened.”

  Allison scanned the room. People were starting to leave and the tables closest to them were empty now. The bar action had cleared by at least half. Conflicting emotions played out across her face before she spoke again.

  “Okay, I can only tell you what they’re saying. It’s not my department, so this is just gossip.”

  “Dish.”

  “There’s money missing. Something was off in the last audit.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know … Okay, I heard something like a half-million dollars.”

  “Holy crap!”

  “Yeah. It’s bad.” Allison fidgeted in her seat, but she couldn’t bolt without literally knocking over another chair or pushing Amber out of the way. “So, there’s a rumor … you were stopped at the airport when you came back and there was a lot of cash …”

  Amber stayed quiet.

  “So, I think a few people are putting it together that somehow that cash came from the company …”

  “How do they think I could have managed to do that?”

  “Okay, I was about to walk in the break room and overheard two of the auditors who thought they were alone. Your name came up, and something about fund transfers to a bank in Santa Fe. That’s where you’re from, right?”

  Amber felt her face go pale. This was bad.

  “What else?”

  “I swear, that’s totally all I know. Like I said, most of that is rumor and speculation anyway.”

  Numb, Amber nodded and thanked her friend.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone we talked about this,” Allison said, draining her glass in one long swig. “And don’t you dare, either. I could be in as much trouble for telling as you are for asking about it.”

  “If anyone comments about seeing me here tonight, it was just the usual. I’m working from home these days, and I just popped i
n for a drink with friends.”

  “Got it.”

  “And, Allison? I didn’t do anything wrong. I had nothing to do with money missing from B-G or the other thing, at the airport. I’m pretty sure I know how that happened, and let’s just say it’ll be a long time before I trust a man again. I was set up.”

  Allison nodded and reached for her purse, pulling out some cash. “I really gotta get home. I’m so sorry this happened to you, but I don’t know how I can help. I feel for you.”

  “I know. Thanks, it means a lot. And you’ve already helped.”

  Chapter 22

  Stomach churning, Amber pulled out the portable hard drive where she’d copied the company information and plugged it into her own laptop. Now that she had a clue what she was looking for she went into the drive’s history.

  She should have eaten something at the bar, or at least picked up food on the way home. One of these trips out, she really should bring in some basic groceries, now that she’d be spending more time here.

  The portable drive opened with a long list of subdirectories and files. She entered a command and then initiated a search. Although the company system had her name, everything began with a login using her employee number, so she searched for that particular string of digits.

  And there she was, in mind-boggling detail. Every day since she had worked for B-G there was a logon and logoff. And she’d entered her passcode multiple times a day, whenever she stepped away from her desk and came back. Every transaction began with codes for what she was doing at the time, and although she could easily read computer code, it was a mind-numbing load of data.

  She stretched and walked into the kitchen, rummaging until she came across a packet of saltine crackers, two Cokes, five ice cubes, and some leftover fried rice. It would have to suffice as dinner. At least the food would help absorb the glass of wine she’d had earlier, enough to help her think clearly.