by Andrea Stein
She took her coat and said nothing to Heather, who just looked at her, a cross between fear and triumph on her face.
“Enjoy your time here, Heather. It was a pleasure working with you.”
Heather said nothing, but the look on her face changed. She seemed about to burst into tears, but then she recovered, drew herself up and just gave Caitlyn a cold stare.
There was a security guard waiting for her at the elevators.
“I need to escort you out, miss.” He was young, and they had once had a friendly relationship. He didn’t quite take her arm, but he was uncomfortable. He asked for her badge and then for the keys.
“I don’t have the keys.”
He looked at her.
“But how did you get in last night?”
She shrugged and gave him the badge. She walked out the door and to her car, driving first to Noah’s.
Chapter 46
They were facing each other, like tigers ready to strike. He looked at her and hated himself. She was close to tears, he thought, dark color suffusing her face, her lower lip unsteady, her whole body twisted and coiled.
“Are you saying you believe him?”
He looked at her, reaching for her. “No, of course not, I know it’s not true. But there’s something going on.”
She felt a rush of relief. “Well, it’s the right answer, but it took you too long. If you had to think that hard…” Caitlyn picked up her jacket and started to move away from him.
“Don’t go. Listen, I had no idea you would take my keys and do something stupid like break into the office.” Noah ran his hands through his hair. He’d been proceeding carefully, working with his lawyer and a team of investigators. No matter what, his lawyer had said, they didn’t want to spook the perpetrator. They had to catch the crook red-handed.
“Stupid?” Caitlyn shook her head.
“Listen,” Noah said. “It’s true. There are some problems with your accounts. I’ve had a team looking into it.”
“My accounts. Do you think I would steal?” Caitlyn was angry, her body tight and coiled again.
Noah wanted to reach out and grab her, pull her close to him, but he knew she wouldn’t let him.
“No, I don’t, but someone is.”
She seemed to relax a bit after that. “So, you know about it?”
“Not that much yet. And I don’t know who. I haven’t even told Sam Harris what’s going on. No one can know, yet. We don’t want to tip our hand.”
“What made you think…?”
Noah sighed and told her about his meeting with Michael. “Hopefully he’s well on his way to London. But it got me thinking, about what you told me… Tony Biddle’s account. That friend of Adriana’s.”
“But you don’t know everything yet?” she asked.
He shook his head. “But I need to ask you for your patience, let this all play out. If the person who’s doing this knows we think it’s you…”
“He, or she, will do something stupid.”
Noah nodded. He could tell she was still mad. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. These things are delicate.” He wanted to pull her to him, tell her it would be all right, that he would make it right for her. He took a step towards her, but she moved back.
“Don’t touch me.” She laughed bitterly. “I know how these things go. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s not my first time being accused of being a crook.”
“Caitlyn, don’t,” he said. He pulled her close, and she let him. He touched his lips to her hair, put his arms around her back and pulled her in.
Finally, she pushed away, gently, then harder.
“No, Noah. No. I thought… I thought I could get away from it, thought I could leave it behind. But I can’t. Our choices stick with us. There are always consequences. I wanted to get away from here so much, I went too far away. Now I am not sure I can ever come back.” “Caitlyn, where are you going?” She had picked up her coat.
She shook her head. “There will be a lot of evidence against me. There will be those stories, which everyone hears, but no one knows where they came from. It will be very difficult to believe that I haven’t done anything. I will look very bad. And I get it. Noah Randall, CEO, philanthropist, investor, big man around town can’t be associated with any of that.”
“Caitlyn.” He felt panic rushing over him. He couldn’t let her go. This wasn’t what he had meant to happen.
“Noah, don’t put yourself in for this. Let Sam Harris do what he needs to do. Let your investigators do what they need to do. I need to do something for myself. I would like to ask you to trust me, to believe in me, but I supposed if I have to ask, well, then it’s already too late.”
“No, Caitlyn, I do. I do.” She was already walking, and she quickened her pace.
He moved to go after her, but she turned around, just inside the door.
“Noah, if you trust me, let me go.”
She let herself out, and he stood there, alone and miserable, not sure what to do. Let me go, she had said. It was what she had said to him years ago, after her grandfather’s funeral. He had gone to her, to tell her that he would stay with her, be with her as long as she needed him to. And he had been told to let go, to let her go, to leave for his own life. He had left her then, let her go. And now. He sat down on the step of the stairs, looking around him at this big, empty house that wasn’t his.
Believe in me, but let me go. The hell with that, he thought as he heard her car pull away. Caitlyn Montgomery was not getting away from him. Not this time, not ever again.
Chapter 47
He went to Adriana’s. She was waiting for him, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought to talk to her sooner.
“She stole my keys.” Noah looked at Adriana. She had made him drink tea.
“Yes. That was probably not very wise of her. What did you tell Sam when he asked?”
“That I still had mine.”
Adriana nodded. “Good, that makes her look worse.”
“Good?”
“Well, Caitlyn said she wasn’t sure who it was, who was framing her. Or stealing money.”
“She knows?” Noah looked at the old woman. She was dressed in black pants and a red silk top decorated with a vaguely Asian motif. She looked sane. Old, but sane.
“I am not sure I understand.”
Adriana put her cup down. “You shouldn’t just yet. There are things you probably don’t know. But first, I need to know something.”
“What?”
“Do you think there is any way Caitlyn could steal money?”
Noah shook his head. “Of course not. I told her that. But I think someone is. My team is working on it. We just need some more time to flush out the crook. Caitlyn went ahead and made herself look guilty as hell. I couldn’t very well stop Sam from firing her, or I would have tipped my hand.”
“Of course. And I am sure Caitlyn will agree with your logic completely once she calms down.”
Noah looked at her.
“Do you love her, Noah?”
“Excuse me?”
“I loved someone very much once, but we couldn’t be together. For various reasons. Then he died. All of the reasons didn’t seem so important then, but of course, it was too late. You know who I’m talking about?”
Noah nodded. He wasn’t supposed to know. Caitlyn had told him, a long time ago, about her grandfather’s affair with Adriana. He had figured some of the rest out on his own. He swore to keep the secret.
“I know from experience the reasons we can invent to keep ourselves apart from the ones we love. And there are no good reasons, only excuses. So I ask you, do you love her?”
Noah swallowed. “Yes. I love her. I’ve loved her since she was seventeen, before that, before I knew it. I love her now, but she doesn’t seem to care, or doesn’t seem to value it
. There is so much, so many things she hasn’t told me.”
“Stop.” Adriana looked at him. “She loves you as well. I can’t quite claim to understand what happened between the two of you, or that I understand what she is thinking right now. She’s told me; she’s asked for my help. She knows I owe it to her.”
“Why do you owe her?”
Adriana told him the story of Peter Flynn.
“So, she thinks she knows what’s going on, where the money is going?”
Adriana nodded. “She didn’t tell me the details, but I have a feeling her early morning trip to the office might have enlightened her.”
“But Flynn is dead?” Noah stood up, fear taking hold like a vise around his heart. “And my father’s dead. This is dangerous. Where is she?”
Adriana shook her head. “Believe me, I would tell you if I knew, but I don’t.”
Noah reached for his phone. “I have to find her.”
“Just wait a moment. Take a look at these.”
Adriana took out the papers Caitlyn had left with her – Mrs. Smith-Sullivan’s account statements and Adriana’s own.
Noah looked at them and shrugged.
“They look fine to me.”
“Yes, they do, just fine enough so you wouldn’t think about them. But, here, look at this.”
Adriana pointed to the top corner, where the Randall Company logo was. Then she held up the paper to the light.
“They’re printed on different types of paper.”
Adriana nodded. “But they are from the same time period. Apparently, the ones for Mrs. Smith-Sullivan’s are on a slightly older letterhead. Mine are on the new letterhead.”
“So?”
“Suspicious, Caitlyn said they should all be on the same. And technically, Mrs. Smith-Sullivan’s numbers don’t accurately reflect what was going on in her account. Caitlyn had trouble pulling the records, but she was able to find that the statements were being mailed to a different post office box. In other words, the real statements were being mailed to one post office box, and Mrs. Smith-Sullivan was getting a very good fake.”
“Why?”
“Because her real statements might have caused her some alarm. It was only because she asked for an unusual request that she had any trouble at all. That was quickly fixed, but she was suspicious. She is naturally suspicious, but in this case, there was some truth. Together, we came up with a list of names, most elderly women, not computer savvy, who were still getting paper statements. Caitlyn went in last night and looked them up and found that the post office boxes for their statement delivery have all been changed to the same one.”
“So, someone is diverting those real statements and sending out the fake ones,” Noah said.
“Right, and then the money in their Randall Group accounts is pretty much gone. Of course, if they need any money, it looks like someone had made it right.”
“The question is who… and what is he doing with it?” Noah said, looking at the papers in front of him.
“Do you think your little team of investigators might be interested in these?” Adriana smiled at him.
Noah smiled back. “Quite.” He took out his phone and started making calls.
Chapter 48
It hadn’t taken too much. His investigators had been thorough. They didn’t know who could be doing it, but they started with the obvious – someone who was living above their means. A quick check of financial records had them honing in quickly.
Noah looked at the lawyer seated across from him. Ted had taken the red eye, connected with his New York office and brought in a local team. Now here he was, looking not the slightest bit worse for wear, reporting on his findings.
“It looks like he’s been skimming for a while now. The red flags are there if you look closely enough. Everything’s just a tad too nice. And he and his wife pay for a lot of it in cash. Questions to a few of the local and not-so-local merchants turned that up.”
“So, how does it work?”
“Well, we’re not entirely sure, since you said you wanted to keep this matter discreet, but just as your associate showed you, it looks like real statements were being diverted to a post office box, then doctored statements were being sent out instead. The doctored statements showed healthy accounts with modest growth, while, in reality, the balances have been drawn down quite a while.”
The lawyer tapped a list of names. “Targets fit the profile, generally senior women, for whom the Randall Group does not present the bulk of their assets. For the most part, they don’t take money from the account. If they needed money, your guy just moved it around, so that no one person ever got suspicious.”
Noah shook his head, feeling sick. “Do you know where the money’s gone?”
“Like I said, some of it was just spent as cash on day-to-day stuff. But we’re pretty sure it’s been stashed somewhere. Doesn’t mean we won’t find it, just might take awhile.”
“How much?” Noah asked.
“Well, it’s been going on for a while,” the lawyer said.
“What, like a couple of months?” Noah said.
The lawyer looked at him and laughed. “More like a couple of years. Try almost a decade.”
“What?” Noah’s voice went up, and he felt his stomach twist.
“Oh, yeah. For quite awhile.”
“But, he’s only worked here for what, a year?”
“He had a partner,” his lawyer said, and Noah pushed back in the chair as the full implication of this hit him.
Oblivious, the lawyer went on, “Obviously, the authorities will have to be called in, but you can keep this quiet if you’re willing to personally guarantee the money…”
Noah waved his hand in consent. The money meant nothing to him, now that he knew the truth. Was this what Caitlyn had been trying to protect him from?
Chapter 49
“You know, I didn’t mean to do it.” Tommy Anderson stood up as Noah entered his office, flanked by a lawyer and two plain clothes detectives.
“Maxwell, he was an accident, Noah. But he was in on it. You should know that now.”
Noah had just enough time to throw one punch before a police officer intervened. It landed square on Tommy’s jaw with a sickening crunch. Tommy was hustled away, and Noah watched just enough of his interview to know that Tommy was willing to cut a deal. He’d tell them where the rest of the money was – where he and Maxwell had hid it, in return for no charges relating to Maxwell’s death, which he claimed was just an accident. They hadn’t gotten around to asking him about Peter Flynn yet.
Noah had left after that, not sure where to go, and suddenly he found himself standing in the doorway of her office. Everything was still here, as she had left it. She had spoken to Sam Harris this morning and then left. She hadn’t picked up her phone when he called, so he hadn’t been able to tell her what had happened. He’d called Adriana, but she’d said she hadn’t heard from her either.
There was a movement, and he turned and saw her assistant Heather behind him. She looked so upset that he was prompted to ask if everything was okay.
She looked at him and just shook her head. Her face turned bright red and then dissolved in tears. Noah looked around in surprise. The floor was quiet; there was no one else around.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” He moved closer. He didn’t like women who cried. Caitlyn wasn’t a crier, and Heather’s full-on bawling left him bewildered.
“Why don’t we go outside and get a cup of coffee?” he suggested. “And then we can talk. I want to help her, too,” he said, almost as an afterthought. It was the right thing to say, because the sobbing stopped and she appeared to gain some greater measure of control.
They didn’t get coffee, but went to The Dory, which was closer. There were already a few people there, some Noah recognized from long ago. The bartender looked at them with
slight disinterest and brought them their drinks without saying much. The jukebox was playing an old Springsteen song, and Noah looked around.
“I haven’t been here in ages.”
“Did you used to come here?”
“Sort of. A little bit. Not until I was older, of course. Most of the time we drank in parking lots or at the beach or something. When I was in college, we would come here sometimes.”
“You and Caitlyn?”
He looked at her, but she dropped her eyes and sipped her drink.
“No. Not with her.”
“But you used to date right?”
Noah wondered just how he had gotten into a conversation like this with a girl he barely knew.
“Sort of. Dating is probably the wrong word.” How could he explain that the word dating was totally inadequate to describe how he felt?
“But you grew up together?”
“Sort of. I went away to school, but she stayed, went to school here, in town.”
Heather nodded, playing with her red swizzle stick. She put it between her teeth and chewed on it, considering. She looked at him and then dropped her eyes, her fingers tracing the scarred surface of the bar.
“You were pretty upset back there. Anything you want to talk about?”
“Do you still care for her?”
“For Caitlyn?”
“Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about, right?”
“Of course I care about her. I’ve known her all of my life.”
“Your families were close. I heard the story about her grandfather.”
“Yes,” Noah said. He was uncomfortable with the story, now that he knew the truth.
“It’s a bad story.”
“Yes,” Noah agreed.
“Do you think something like that changes you?”
He was about to answer when she broke in, “Yes, of course, it would. I mean, Caitlyn seems so normal. So nice.”
