“Tallie, you can’t be serious. That’s crazy. This is about our career, not our love life.”
“That’s right,” she said coldly, “and both are over. I don’t work with cheaters and liars.” She sounded bitter, but she was tired after a long day, and still hurting over what he’d done. She knew she would hurt for a long time over this one. The agony had only just begun. She’d been there with her second husband ten years before.
“Do you realize what you’re going to cost us both? And Mr. Nakamura will pull out of the picture without you. I just spoke to his attorney.”
“That’s too bad, Hunt. Maybe you should have thought of that before you slept with my assistant for three years and the girl in your office for the last one. You didn’t really expect me to work with you again, did you?”
“Can’t we separate the two parts of our lives? We do such great work together. You can’t just wipe that out.”
“No, you did. Let’s be very clear about this. I won’t work with you again. I’m done.”
“Can we talk about it sometime?”
“No.”
“What am I supposed to tell Mr. Nakamura?” He sounded nervous when he asked.
“Tell him you screwed my assistant and some girl in your office and you lost your partner. I’m sure he’ll understand.” She was getting angry at him now, and it felt better than being sad.
“Look, I’m sorry, I know it was terrible. I was wrong. You didn’t deserve that, Tallie. But do we have to fuck over our careers to prove a point?”
“I’m not proving a point, Hunt. I’m not going to work with you again. I don’t want to. I’ll finish this picture and that’s it.” He suddenly panicked that she might walk out on that, but he knew that she was too professional to do that, but he also knew how principled she was, and how fair. And how stubborn if she thought she’d been wronged. And he knew she had been. There was no moving her off her position now, although he hoped she might reconsider it later, but he doubted she would. And then he thought of something else.
“Did you fire Brigitte?”
“No,” she said flatly.
“Why not?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Why? You can forgive her, but not me? That’s ridiculous.”
“I didn’t say I forgave her,” she said quietly. She couldn’t tell him that she had kept her because the FBI had told her to. And he was under investigation too, so she couldn’t say anything to him. “That’s my business, Hunt, not yours. I gave you the option to stick around. You said you wouldn’t stop seeing Angela, it was your choice. My choice was not to live with a man who wants to sleep with two women, and lie to one, or both.”
“I still love you, Tallie, even if I screwed up.”
“So do I, Hunt. That’s unfortunate for both of us. We’ll get over it. But I won’t work with you again. That’s all I have to say about it. And one other thing. Please don’t say anything to Max about us. She’ll be very upset, and I want to tell her myself, in person, not on the phone. I’ll go there when I can. Thanks for your call. Take care.” And with that, the phone went dead in his hand. They were supposed to sign the contracts with Nakamura in the next few days, and now he had to tell him this. He knew it was the price to pay for what he’d done. And he knew he’d been rotten with her, and dishonest. He didn’t blame her, but he wished she’d at least work with him. They were going to lose the biggest investor they’d ever had, and without Tallie directing he had much less to sell. He needed her. But he needed Angela too, and he didn’t want to give her up. And he couldn’t leave her pregnant with his baby and go back to Tallie now. His whole life was falling apart, and he thought it was all Brigitte’s fault for telling Tallie and causing her to investigate further. He hated Brigitte for what she’d done. But even more than Brigitte, he hated himself for what he’d done to Tallie. He couldn’t hide from that.
Tallie called her father on the way home from Palm Springs that night, to tell him about her notifying Hunt that she wouldn’t work on his next film with him.
“How did he take it?”
“He tried to talk me into doing it so he doesn’t lose his big investor.”
“And?”
“I told him to take a flying leap.” She laughed.
“That’s my girl. I have to say one thing, you’ve got guts.”
“Thank you, Dad. I couldn’t imagine working with him again after this.”
“How do you feel?”
“Lousy. Like I’m crawling out of my skin. Between him and Brigitte, I wish I were a million miles from here. We’ll be through on location next week, I think. We get a break before we start shooting again in L.A. I think I’m going to spend a few days with Max in New York.”
“It’ll do you good to get away. I wish I could go with you,” he said sadly. He hadn’t been able to travel in the last ten years, and he missed it.
“I wish you could too,” Tallie answered. They talked for a few more minutes, and then they hung up, and Tallie drove the rest of the way in silence, thinking about everything that had happened, and how badly she’d been betrayed by Brigitte and Hunt. Brigitte called her just before she got home, and she didn’t take the call. Gone were the days when she wanted to talk and laugh with her best friend. Brigitte was no longer her friend, never had been, and never would be again. She knew that now. It was a double loss for her.
The house was dark and silent when she got home. There was no one waiting for her at home. No lights. No romantic meal set out on the table with her favorite wine. Hunt was doing that for Angela now. The thought of it hit her like a bomb. She walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and decided there was nothing she wanted to eat. She went upstairs, and took a bath, and Jim Kingston called when she was getting out of the tub.
“I just wanted to check in,” he said in a friendly tone when she sounded surprised to hear him. “How did it go with Brigitte? Did she say anything? Did you?”
“Yeah, I told her that Hunt moved out this weekend. She asked if it was because of the information she gave me about the girl in his office, and I said yes. I didn’t tell her that I had found out about Hunt and her. Then she asked if he admitted to taking the money, and I said no, he hadn’t, he lied, but I knew he did. She seemed perfectly comfortable with that, and I think she relaxed when I told her I wasn’t going to investigate it or pursue it any further. She thinks we’re best friends again, and I told her I wasn’t mad. My nose grew about four feet when I said it, and you can call me Pinocchio from now on,” she said, and he laughed. She sounded better to him than she had on Sunday. She still had a sense of humor despite what she’d discovered about both her boyfriend and her best friend. He wasn’t sure he could have handled it as well, and doubted he could. “Anything new at your end?”
“I filed an initial report and opened the case today. I have to get approval from one of the deputy U.S. attorneys here to proceed with it, but that’s more of a formality. If I tell them that I think it’s a good case, they’ll let me go forward with it to check it out. All I have to do now is get enough evidence so they feel they can prosecute it. And hopefully I will. We’re just starting, but I think it’s a valid case.” He sounded optimistic about it.
“How long do these things usually take to get to court?” Tallie asked him, and there was a short pause at the other end.
“You won’t like my answer,” he warned her. “Nine months to a year. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but we get there in the end.”
“At what point would you arrest her, if you get the evidence?” She had become convinced that Brigitte was stealing from her, and no one else. Even if she didn’t need the money, she had the access and the opportunity, and she had proven herself to be a liar, so maybe she was a thief too. And Jim Kingston agreed with her. His gut told him it was Brigitte too. All he had to do now was prove it, and he hoped he could, for Tallie’s sake.
“We arrest her when the prosecutor thinks we have enough evidence for an airti
ght case, beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s the clincher for us. We don’t try them if we think we could lose. Most of our cases don’t go to trial. We get so much solid evidence that suspects usually plead guilty instead, which saves us all a lot of trouble.”
“That sounds like a tall order,” Tallie said, sounding discouraged.
“Trust me. That’s my job. If the evidence is there, we’ll find it.” He didn’t tell her he was meeting with Victor Carson the next day. He had called him that morning. Jim was moving fast. If nothing else, he wanted to rule Carson out. And he had already lined up a forensic accountant to check his books. Jim had asked Tallie’s permission to use him, since she had to pay for it, and she said of course it was fine. And he was hoping to meet with Hunter Lloyd later that week. Jim was curious to meet him now, after what he’d heard from Meg and Tallie. He didn’t sound like a great guy to him. “I’ll call you later this week,” Jim told her, “if I have questions about some of the interviews I have. Will you be available?”
“I’ll arrange to be, and I’m coming back to the city every night.” She thought it would be too depressing now to stay in a hotel room in Palm Springs. Even if it was dark and empty, she wanted to crawl home to her own nest, and sleep in her own bed. She felt too miserable and sad to be far from home, and he could hear it in her voice.
“I’ll call you if I get anything, Tallie. Try not to get too worked up about it. To be honest, it’s always a long haul. Just leave the worrying to me.” He made it sound so simple, but it wasn’t. All she could think about was what Brigitte and Hunt had done, how trusting she had been, how she had believed them, and how they had betrayed her. But the wounds were still fresh and raw. In time, it would settle down, and all she’d have left were the scars. She couldn’t imagine it yet. She felt as though she were bleeding from every pore. “I’ll be in touch,” he promised. He had wanted to give her a ray of hope. He just hoped he could get the evidence they needed about the money, but he had to figure out who the suspect was first.
Tallie lay in her bed, thinking about it again that night. She was sure now that it had been Brigitte who’d been stealing the money from her. After everything else she’d done, that was the icing on the cake. And as she had for the past three days, Tallie lay awake, thinking about all of it, for the rest of the night. It was dawn before she fell asleep, and her alarm went off minutes after she closed her eyes.
Chapter 11
JIM KINGSTON WAS LED into Victor Carson’s private office by his secretary. She was young, wore a short skirt, and had masses of blond hair piled up on her head. And Jim couldn’t help noticing that her sweater was too tight. He was wondering if Carson was sleeping with her, when Victor walked into the room. He was wearing a white shirt, a dark gray suit, and an expensive tie. He looked like a banker or a lawyer. Jim knew the firm had many important clients, and they sometimes took a percentage of their clients’ revenues, but in Tallie’s case she paid a retainer and hourly fees. Her income was too big for her to agree to a percentage, and Victor had told him on the phone that Tallie was one of his biggest clients. He had been shocked to get a call from the FBI, and Jim had confirmed that it was about her missing cash.
“I had no idea that Ms. Jones had reported it to the FBI,” Victor commented, looking nervous. He appeared uncomfortable as Jim looked around his office, and as though he might have something to hide. But he had been quick to invite Jim and the forensic accountant to look over his books and Tallie’s. Jim wanted to see both, and to see what kind of financial shape Victor and his firm were in.
Jim spent a few minutes looking over Tallie’s spreadsheet again, the same one that had been given to their Japanese investors, and that Tallie had given him on Sunday morning at her house. Victor showed Jim her electronic general ledger then, from which most of the information on the spreadsheet had been taken, and then Jim told Victor that he wanted to look at his books too.
“What does that have to do with Ms. Jones’s accounts?” Victor asked with a protective look.
“We like to look at everything,” Jim said quietly. “How long have you known Ms. Jones’s assistant, Brigitte Parker, by the way?”
“For as long as we’ve done Ms. Jones’s accounting, for the past fifteen years.”
“Would you say she’s usually accurate in the information she reports to you?”
“I’ve always thought so,” Victor said thoughtfully. “She’s very efficient. Or at least she seemed to be, until I noticed the cash that was unaccounted for in the audit. I thought maybe they were paying some of Ms. Jones’s bills in cash, and I didn’t want to lose the deductions, so I mentioned it. And Ms. Jones informed me that they don’t pay any of the bills in cash.”
“Did you ask Ms. Parker about it?”
“Only superficially. She said they spend that amount in cash every month and Ms. Jones spends more than she thinks.”
“Or Ms. Parker spends more than Ms. Jones thinks,” Jim Kingston said cryptically. “Where do you think the cash is going, Mr. Carson?” Jim asked him with a pointed look.
“I have no idea. Restaurants, clothes, gifts. It’s hard to guess what people spend it on. Ms. Jones doesn’t spend a lot of money on frivolous things, although she lives well. And it was hard figuring out who was paying for what while Mr. Lloyd was living there. He spends quite a lot of money too.”
“And you do his books as well?” Jim noticed that Victor was perspiring increasingly, as Jim asked him the questions. He looked like a very nervous man.
“Yes, I do. And I prepare Ms. Parker’s taxes, I have for several years.”
“So you work for all three of them?” Victor nodded. “And how would you say your firm is doing? Has it been a good year?”
“Not as good as some earlier years,” he admitted. “Things are tight for everyone right now. Even in my business.”
“And would you say that you spend a lot of money, personally?” Victor hadn’t expected the question and started sweating profusely when Jim asked. He had no idea why he would want to know that, and Victor hesitated before he answered.
“Yes, I have considerable expenses…” He glanced around nervously and then back at Jim. “I have a very young wife. She expects a lot, and things aren’t quite as… as flush as they were when I married her three years ago. She wanted to be an actress, and it hasn’t worked out as well as she’d hoped.” He was babbling, and Jim said nothing as he watched. “She’s been… she’s been… she’s been negotiating a postnuptial agreement with me.”
“Really?” Jim looked fascinated as Victor burbled on. “And how much does she want?”
“Five million. I told her that’s impossible. Then she asked for three, but that’s impossible too. I gave her seven hundred thousand three years ago when we got married, but I couldn’t do that again either right now. I thought that initial gift would keep her happy, but now she wants more.” He looked panicked as he explained it to Jim.
“And if you won’t pay her what she wants now?”
“She says she’ll divorce me.” He looked as though he was near tears. “She’s a beautiful girl. And she’s twenty-nine years old. It’s hard for a man my age to satisfy someone with ambitions like that. I’ve been divorced twice before, and paid alimony and settlements. I have children… she doesn’t understand. And she’s had quite a lot of plastic surgery, for her movie career, and that’s expensive too. She doesn’t realize what it takes to amass a fortune in today’s world. I have a sizable income, but not enough to be giving away several million dollars in a lump sum. I’m not sure I could afford a divorce either right now, or the kind of alimony she wants.” He sounded like a desperate man, but it was all out front, he was waving his problems at Jim like a red flag at a bull. There was nothing hidden about him, and Jim had already figured that he was married to a young gold digger who was taking him for a ride, and twenty-five thousand in cash was probably nothing to her. A girl like that wanted more, and he didn’t think Victor Carson was dumb enough to be stealing sma
ll amounts from his clients to satisfy a greedy young wife. He may have been foolish and gullible, but Jim sensed that he was ethical too. They would take a serious look at his books, and he was sure that he would find in Victor’s own balance sheet a man mortgaged to the hilt, trying to squeeze out every penny he could of his own money, so his wife didn’t divorce him. He was willing to ruin himself for her, but probably not steal from his clients and go to prison. He might end up in the poorhouse, thanks to her, but not behind bars. Carson struck Jim as the kind of man who was scrupulously honest, paid all his taxes, and did everything by the book, for both himself and his clients. He was too nervous not to, and his obvious desperation made him an unlikely suspect.
The person who was stealing from Tallie was more likely to be far more hidden, more clandestine, and much smoother. Victor looked so guilty, he probably wasn’t, and Jim felt sorry for him as he listened to another hour of his woes. He wanted to tell him to divorce his wife before she destroyed him, but he didn’t say anything, he just listened. If he had to guess, Jim would have said that he wasn’t the culprit. He was just a sad old man being used by a young woman who had seen him as an easy mark and was going to get everything out of it she could before she dumped him. And it sounded like it was going to be soon.
“Why don’t we have a look at your books, then?” Jim suggested, and they went into the conference room where the forensic accountant was working, and Jim’s partner Jack sat quietly by. The accountant had several ledgers spread out in front of him, and a computer with Tallie’s general ledger on the screen, and everything seemed to be in order, to the extent that it was on the spreadsheet Jim had already seen. There was twenty-five thousand taken out in cash every month, but other than that, it was all accounted for.
And that afternoon they looked at the ledgers of the firm itself, and Victor’s own spreadsheet. By five o’clock Jim said they were through for now, would let him know if they had further questions and thanked Victor for his cooperation. Victor was mopping his brow with a white handkerchief when they left, and he looked exhausted. For a moment, he had thought they were going to arrest him and accuse him of stealing Tallie’s cash. Jim wished it could have been that simple, but there was no question in his mind, Victor Carson wasn’t it. Far from it. And he felt genuinely sorry for him.
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