who’s a good friend of mine.
She answered on the fourth ring, breathless. “It doesn’t matter what else you forgot, Pink. I don’t have time to get it. They’re boarding the plane.”
“Just answer me a question. Yesterday, when you went over to my apartment to get my wool coat, remember the package you found on the doorstep that had an antique Chinese spider cage inside?”
“If you want me to go get it—”
“No. I just wondered if you remember where it came from.”
“I thought you decided it was a gift from Santorelli.”
“He told me this morning that it wasn’t, so I assumed it was just a mistake. Now I’m pretty sure it’s not a mistake. But I have to know who shipped it.”
Mom was quiet for a moment and I could hear the airport lady on the loudspeaker, calling the remaining passengers. “The company was in San Francisco, and the name was something Russian, like Vladivostok. ”
“Was it Valikov?”
“Yes, that’s it. What’s this about, Pink?”
Her Mom radar was kicking into gear, and I didn’t want to alarm her, so I said easily, “I was telling someone about it and they were curious who sells antique Chinese spider cages.”
“I’m about to miss the plane for this? Seriously?”
“Okay, so I have a reason. I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.”
“No way. I’ll call you from my layover in Dallas.”
She ended the call and I slowly replaced the receiver, my gaze frozen on those withdrawals. More than three hundred grand had been transferred out of an account with my name on it to the account of Valikov Interiors. And I’d received a package from Valikov.
I’m pretty much a linear thinker. Point A goes to Point B, to Point C, and so forth. Somebody set up an account in Kansas with my name and social security number. That person somehow got their hands on the China Pearl checks and deposited them into the Kansas account. They transferred money out of the Kansas account and into Valikov Interiors’ account. They sent a package to me from Valikov so it would appear I bought something from them. Whoever was behind it was very clever, except for one thing. Who the hell would believe I’d pay over three hundred Gs for a Chinese spider cage? Even an antique one.
To say I was pissed off would be like saying there’s a little bit of wheat in Kansas. I was so mad, my teeth hurt.
Gathering up the copies, I left my office and went down the hall toward the executive director’s. I rapped on his door frame to get his attention. He looked up from some papers on his desk and grinned at me, but as I walked in his office, his grin faded.
“Pink? What’s wrong?”
Parker Davis could easily be in the movies, he’s that good-looking. He’d always get the part of the backup guy for Gene Hackman, the faithful, handsome, blond, blue-eyed assistant who blindly trusts Hackman’s sneaky, evil character. Maybe I think so because Parker is married to a senator, and he’s totally devoted to her. Not that Madeline Davis is anything like a Gene Hackman character. But Parker’s unfailing support and willingness to take a backseat to his wife’s career always make me think of those trusting souls in political thrillers.
“I just found out that I’m an embezzler.” I tossed the papers onto his desk and briefly explained.
Looking like a diver whose equipment just failed, Parker leaned back in his chair and read through the papers. His face paled in spite of his golfer’s tan. While he fiddled with his watch, a nervous habit I’d seen a hundred times, he mumbled “Oh, my God” over and over.
“We have to get to the bottom of this, immediately,” I said. “Not only because CERF is getting ripped off, but because I don’t wanna spend my childbearing years locked up with hundreds of other ovaries for something I didn’t do.”
He picked up the phone and punched in three numbers. “Taylor, I need to see you, right away.”
Oh, man. Things were about to get infinitely more complicated. And aggravating.
Within a minute, Taylor Bunch sailed into Parker’s office on a wave of too-strong perfume and in a lime green suit. I noted that she’d put her pale blond hair up in a snazzy little twist. Maybe I would have liked her, if I hadn’t disliked her so much. I just don’t feel the love for people who are mean, nasty and sneaky. If they made a movie about Taylor, they’d make her a man and get Gene Hackman to play the part.
In my other life, which ended last summer, I was a senior manager at a Big Important worldwide CPA firm in Dallas. That career, and that life, were over after I blew the whistle on one of our largest clients. Turned out the partners at my firm were all in on the cover-up to hoodwink investors—and that was the end of Big Important.
Taylor Bunch was promoted to my job the day I got fired for blowing the whistle. Regrettably for Taylor, she only got to crow about it for a few short weeks. After that, she was beating the streets for a job, and just like me and all the other CPAs who’d been in management at Big Important, she couldn’t find anyone who trusted her enough to hire her. I ended up moving back to my hometown of Midland, Texas, and taking a mercy job as a forensic accountant at my mom’s CPA firm. I’d gotten my watchdog stint at CERF through a contract with Mom’s firm.
As for Taylor, she eventually found a job in the Texas state welfare system, churning out financial data for bureaucrats. That was how she met Parker Davis. He was the director of a children’s advocacy group and came to speak at one of those lunch things that no one would go to except for the free lunch and an extra hour off work. When Parker was tapped to head up the relief fund after the China earthquake, he called Taylor and asked her to step in as treasurer. Soon after, Parker hired me to keep an eye on things, unaware of the animosity between Taylor and me.
I can only describe the expression on Taylor’s semipretty face as joyful as she looked over the copies I’d brought to Parker. She couldn’t have seemed more happy if she’d won the lottery, had a proposal from Brad Pitt and earned the Nobel Prize, all in one day. Yeah, I hated her guts.
She looked at me and raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Why should we believe you didn’t do this?”
I ignored her and said to Parker, “I want your authorization to investigate and find out who’s behind this.”
Taylor stepped into my line of vision and said smugly, “Parker didn’t get where he’s at by being stupid. Why would he allow you to look into it when your name’s on the account?”
Looking genuinely confused and freaked out, twisting his watch round and round, Parker glanced from me to Taylor and back to me. “She’s got a point. I’m sure you’re not behind this, Pink, but whatever comes to light, it will look mighty weird if you’re the one who finds it.”
Still ignoring Taylor, I stepped away from her. “Maybe so, but if you put Taylor in charge of investigating, they’ll lock me up and throw away the key. She hates the ground I walk on.” It was the first time I’d openly acknowledged the bad blood between me and Taylor. If only I hadn’t squealed, she figured, she’d still be in a peachy position at Big Important. She never quite got that if I hadn’t blown the whistle, I wouldn’t have been
