Peggy Holmes? I just don’t see it. Of course, she does enjoy helping others and being of service. She lives to please Mr. Vargov. So maybe if someone approached her, made it sound like she’d be doing a great service …”
“What about Mr. Vargov? As the bank president, he’d be in a position of authority and power. You haven’t said much about him. He has relatives in former Soviet republics—”
She shook her head. “It couldn’t be him. I was able to eliminate him as a suspect first thing. He was in a meeting during every single transaction.”
“Every single one?”
“Well, the first few that I looked at. I stopped checking after I was able to eliminate him.” When Bryan still looked skeptical, she added, “Mr. Vargov does attend a lot of meetings.”
“Just for fun, let’s see where he was during all of the transactions.”
“All of them? There are dozens.”
“All of them.”
Three hours later Bryan had the answer he was looking for. Mr. Vargov had been in some type of meeting on the bank premises during every single illicit transaction. During the two weeks he was on vacation, not a single withdrawal took place.
“But he wasn’t even logged onto the computer during most of the transactions,” Lucy objected. “He couldn’t have performed those withdrawals without logging in and using a password.”
“And how hard do you think it would be to figure out his trusty secretary’s password? She probably has it written down someplace.”
“But how could he have—”
“On his PDA. Your conference room has wireless capability. He could carry on a conversation, casually tapping on his Palm Pilot as if recording lunch plans, log on to the bank’s system using Peggy’s password, and move money around. Easy as pie.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it. It’s so obvious! Oh, but Mr. Vargov is so nice. He’s like a father to me. He’s always been kind, gave me a job when he didn’t know me at all, paid me more than I was worth, gave me a really nice office.”
“Think about it. If you were going to raid pension funds, who would you want doing the audits?”
Now Lucy got it. “Someone inexperienced. Under-qualified. Stupid.”
“You would want to pay that person handsomely, keep them happy. A happy employee is much less likely to rock the boat than a dissatisfied one. But you were too smart for him. And too conscientious to forget what you saw just to hold on to your cushy job.”
“It all makes sense now.” She swiveled in her chair to face Bryan, who’d been sitting behind her looking over her shoulder. “That has to be the answer.”
“We are a good team, you and I,” Bryan said with a broad grin. “I never could have figured this out without you.” He pulled her into his lap and nuzzled her neck. “What do you say we celebrate?”
She kissed him hungrily. After her long day at the computer, and all her worrying about Bryan, she craved release—and she knew just how to get it.
“You’ll never guess who I met today,” Lucy said later as they lay in bed. “Redd, the supermodel.”
“She comes in a lot. She likes the wasabi pate.”
“Don’t you love owning a restaurant? I think it would be so fun, like entertaining every day. Making up special dishes for special customers, recommending wine—Well, okay, I’d have to learn about wine. But you must enjoy it.”
“I do. I wish I could devote more time to it.”
Lucy hesitated, then decided she owed it to Bryan to be honest with him about what she’d heard from his relatives. “Your whole family is worried about you, you know. They’ve noticed your long absences—and your injuries at your brother’s wedding. What was that all about?”
“Car accident.”
“That’s what your father said, but he didn’t believe it.” Bryan sighed. “It was actually a car bomb. In France. I realized something was wrong and got out just before the explosion. No one was seriously hurt, thank God.”
Lucy was horrified. The car bomb in Paris? “I read about that in the news. It was blamed on terrorists.”
“I was with Stungun, investigating the charity, the one our embezzler is sending his funds to. I must have gotten close to them—but not close enough.”
“You’re not ever allowed to go back to France, do you understand?” Lucy said fiercely. “My God, someone there tried to kill you!”
He shrugged. “It happens a lot.”
“Don’t tell me any more. I can’t stand it.”
“I won’t. But you have to reassure my family that everything’s fine. Can you do that?”
“No, Bryan, I can’t. I can’t tell them not to worry when you could get blown up at any time.”
“I’m not going to get blown up.”
“Someday, some bad guy is going to catch up with you,” she said in a small voice.
He kissed her cheek in an achingly tender gesture. “I’m not going anywhere. I promised I wouldn’t leave you, didn’t I?”
“You’ll be gone again tomorrow.”
“For a few hours only. I’ll be back. We’re having a big party at the restaurant. The half-year profit margins have been calculated at EPH, and the company has broken all previous records. Apparently Granddad’s little game has produced the desired results.”
“Which magazine is winning?”
“Charisma. No one’s too surprised, the way Aunt Fin’s been working her tail off. But there are still six months to go.”
“Have you talked to your dad?”
“He doesn’t seem to care that Snap is in last place. I think he’s a little more broken up about his divorce than anyone suspected.”
“Well, the breakup of any marriage is traumatic, even a bad marriage,” Lucy said pragmatically. “He’s got another six months to pull things together. Do you want him to get the CEO spot?”
Bryan shrugged. “I just want him to be happy. He hasn’t been happy in a long time.”
Lucy was bored out of her mind. Bryan had been gone longer than the “few hours” he’d promised, but she didn’t hold it against him. He was working hard to catch the embezzler, which was his job.
But she missed him, and she had no more computer puzzles to distract her. She’d gone about as far as she could with the data she’d downloaded from Alliance Trust. Now it was up to Bryan to confirm the theory they’d come up with.
He
