The Aspen Account (8 page)

Just as he reached her apartment door, it opened. Her emerald eyes sparkled in the dim doorway, yet she seemed hesitant to invite him in. It was not the greeting he had expected. He could tell something was wrong by the way she took slow, gingerly steps backward into her apartment without ever taking her eyes off him.

Inside, the floor was strewn with pages of notes and news clippings, scattered books, and open three-ring binders. Maybe she was busy researching another story for the
Post.

“You worked with my brother,” she said.

“Yes, I did.”

“And you were also his friend.”

“I was,” he confirmed. “He spoke of you often . . . Sarah, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

She nodded, but he could tell she didn’t want to talk with a stranger about her brother’s death. Yet she must have had a reason for asking to meet. He reminded himself to be careful what he said—after all, she was a journalist.

“You’re his replacement on the X-Tronic audit.”

“How do you know that?” he asked. He could feel it—something was very wrong.

“You’ve been looking at the audit documentation he was working on before he died?”

“Yes.”

“The firm gave you access to his computer files related to X-Tronic?”

“Yes. Why are asking me this?”

“Have you noticed anything unusual or suspicious?”

“Sarah, what is this? What you are doing?”

She seemed distracted by something scribbled on a whiteboard against the far wall—a list, perhaps, though he couldn’t make it out in the low light. “You know, he used to hardly ever talk to me about his work,” she said, looking toward the wall. “But a few weeks ago he started talking about it a little bit, telling me exactly how his job worked, how he would audit the details of various accounting activities that all rolled up into the hundred-plus pages of financial information issued to Wall Street. I thought he was just trying to tell me how important his job was—we’ve always been competitive. Then, over a week ago, he told me he might have a story for me to report on.”

“What story?” Michael said, his eyes locked on hers with a sudden intensity.

“How much do you know about revenue accounting?” she asked.

“A lot.”

“How much do you know about financial statement frauds?”

“Sarah, stop playing games. What’s this about?”

“Kurt found something he shouldn’t have—something illegal about X-Tronic.” She looked up at him, pleading for him to understand. “Something that got him killed.”

He couldn’t believe his ears. She had gone nuts, locked up in her apartment researching God knew what. “What are you talking about? Nobody killed Kurt. He died skiing.”

“He was an expert skier. He could never have died that way.”

“Come on, Sarah. You and I both know he was a daredevil. Even expert skiers have bad accidents in the mountains. Anything can happen up there.”

“Yeah, anything . . . even murder.”

“Sarah, listen to yourself. Do you know how
crazy
that sounds? Kurt’s gone. Don’t torture yourself.”

“He never skied in the trees.” She blinked, and the tears spilled down her cheeks.

“What?”

“He fell in the trees when he was ten years old—lost control and fell sideways against a tree. It broke his leg.” She seemed to be pleading for him to understand her. “He was just a little boy. It was my first time skiing on the big slopes, and he tried to impress me. I waited with him for twenty minutes while our dad went for help. A ski patroller finally came with a toboggan to take him down the mountain. It was the only time in my life I ever saw my brother cry. After that day, he never skied in the trees again.”

Torn between Sarah’s suffering and the confusing new details surrounding Kurt’s death, Michael couldn’t speak. 

“Something led him into the trees,” she said. “Kurt was terrified—phobic—about skiing in the trees. He wouldn’t have gone in unless he had a good reason. Are you even
listening
to me? Someone was with my brother when he died!”

“All right, look. I’m sorry about what happened to Kurt, but let’s just settle down for a second and think about this. What makes you think he found something illegal at X-Tronic?”

Sarah gestured at all the books and documents spread over the floor of her apartment. “I found these things hidden in Kurt’s house. He thought he had found something, but I’m not sure he had time to work it all out. Something about revenue, maybe. I’m not an accountant. You were his friend, and now you’re his replacement at X-Tronic. Maybe you can figure out what he was doing.”

Michael looked at Sarah in disbelief before moving his gaze across the items on the floor. He couldn’t even process the possibility that Kurt had been murdered, but he definitely wanted to look through anything Kurt had left behind regarding suspicions about X-Tronic. He agreed to help Sarah understand the documents, and for the next three hours she walked him through all the items she had flagged that she thought Kurt seemed most concerned about. When they were finished, there was no question in Michael’s mind: Kurt had believed there was fraud in the revenue accounting at X-Tronic. But there was no proof. 

After reviewing everything with Sarah, Michael told her it looked as though Kurt was preparing to examine the revenue contracts at X-Tronic even though this was an area that the partner, John Falcon, had insisted on examining himself. Michael wasn’t even sure where the contracts were kept at X-Tronic, but he promised Sarah he would find them tomorrow.

14

WHEN MICHAEL ARRIVED in the audit room the next morning, he figured he had perhaps an hour before Andrea and Dustin showed up—enough time to track down the revenue contracts. He grabbed his leather portfolio, left the room, and went to Diamond’s office. “Jerry,” he said, peeking in the open doorway, “quick question. I’m trying to locate the revenue contracts so they’re ready for Falcon when he comes out next week. Can you help me track them down?”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Diamond said, eyeing him coldly. “Falcon has insisted we keep them filed away so as not to clutter up your work room. He said he’d be testing them himself, so he’d rather I just let Mr. Laidlaw maintain them until he comes out.” Then, looking suddenly worried, he said, “Oh, I do hope that’s all right, Michael. Maybe you should give Falcon a ring to discuss it.”

Michael held back a grimace. Falcon had been adamant about his leaving the contracts alone. “No, that’s fine. I . . . didn’t realize you had spoken with him.”

“Oh, no worries—anything else, then?”

“No, I guess that’s it. Thanks.”

Heading back to the audit room, Michael couldn’t shake the feeling that both Falcon and Diamond were trying hard to keep him in the dark about something with the contracts. At the end of the hallway, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder, then glanced at his watch—seven thirty, and no one was around. He still had some time before most of the employees started filtering back in to work. 

Leaning into the staircase door, he pushed it open and pelted down the steps two at a time, two flights to the eighteenth floor. All the lights were still off, and as the sensor picked up his motion in the doorway, they flickered on. He must be the only one on the floor. He still had time, but early birds could start showing up for work at any moment.

He jogged along the outer wall of the office, reading all the names until he found a Russell F. Laidlaw. He turned the handle; it was unlocked. But instead of going right in, he took a step back. The next step, once taken, was irreversible. His stomach felt tight, and he could feel his heart quicken. Looking both directions down the corridor, he stepped into the office.

Russell Laidlaw pulled his powder blue Acura into the sublevel of X-Tronic’s west parking garage. Following the painted traffic lanes, he turned into his spot, got out, and headed toward the orange elevator doors surrounded by gray concrete. The elevator started up and, a few seconds later, deposited him on the first floor of the campus complex, where he switched to the central elevator bank to get to the upper floors of X-Tronic’s main building. As he stepped out onto the first floor, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Morning, Jerry,” he said.

“Russell, I need to see you first thing this morning. Are you in the office yet?”

He wondered at the urgent tone of the CFO’s voice. “I just got here,” he replied.

“Good. Please come to my office as soon as you can. And bring the documents we discussed yesterday.”

“I’m on my way—just need to grab them from my office.”

The call ended, and he headed down the long hallway through the main complex of corporate headquarters. In the lobby, he saw his energetic young assistant, Danny Rossingh, approaching from the opposite direction. 

“I think we’re going to have another busy one today, Danny,” Laidlaw remarked as they entered the elevator.

“Why’s that?” the young man asked.

“I’ve already gotten a call from Diamond. I need to grab something from my office, and then I’m to head straight up to see him. Christ, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these guys stayed here
all night.
I think something’s going on with the acquisition bid—something they’re not telling us.”

The elevator doors closed, and they started upward.

Michael went straight to the four stainless steel file cabinets against the far wall of Laidlaw’s office. Starting on the nearest cabinet, he pulled the top drawer open and started flipping through the labeled files. His eyes glided across the various contract names. The documents were organized by client type, some of them going back several years. No good—what he needed was current.

A sudden change in his peripheral vision made him jump, banging his elbow on the edge of the open file drawer. The lights he had activated by walking down the hallway were now turning off.  He watched as the darkness rushed toward him in twenty-foot jumps, until all the lights were out and he found himself standing exposed in the only lit office in the department. Then he realized with horror that if the revenue manager arrived to find his lights on, he would know at once that someone had been in his office. And since all rooms and offices had motion sensor lights, there was no way for Michael to turn them off from inside. Only time could cover his tracks, and time was in short supply.

He flipped frantically to the end of the alphabet, to a customer’s name he recognized from the new-contracts schedule he had seen last week. So the new contracts were here, he thought to himself—stored out of reach, waiting for Falcon to do his worst with them. But as Michael returned the contract to the folder, his forearm brushed it, smearing a thin streak of blood along the right margin—the file drawer edge had cut him just below the elbow. Knowing he could do nothing about it, he pushed the paper back into the folder and closed the cabinet. But just as the latch snapped shut on the shiny metallic doors, he saw a glimmer of light reflected in the metal. The light grew brighter, and he turned around to see a wall of illumination approaching steadily down the hallway, just as the wave of darkness had done a few minutes earlier. Someone was coming to work.

Shutting the drawer, he left the office and closed the door behind him. The corridor lights were still moving toward him in the distance, but no one was visible yet above the cubicle walls. His own motion triggered the lights above him as he hurried toward a cubicle across the hallway and grabbed an interoffice envelope from the side of the person’s desk. Making sure it was empty, he snatched a pen and scribbled “Russell Laidlaw” on it before darting back to the revenue manager’s office and shoving it under the doorway. Then he turned, tucked his hands in his pockets, and, with his head discreetly lowered, walked away from the two approaching men who were now visible in the distance.

As Michael moved down the far end of the corridor, Laidlaw and Danny, his assistant, rounded the corner and went to Laidlaw’s office. In the assistant’s hand were the revenue carve-out schedules they had taken from the assistant’s desk on the way. Both men stopped as they reached the window to the office.

“Why are your lights on?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know,” Laidlaw confessed.

But the answer became clear when they opened the door and saw, in the center of the room, an interoffice envelope addressed to Mr. Laidlaw. Clearly an overzealous employee from the mailroom had shoved it under the door just minutes ago, so quickly that it had triggered the motion sensors in the ceiling. But curiously, the envelope was empty, and Laidlaw shook his head at the mailroom personnel’s sloppy performance of late. Then, remembering the urgency in Diamond’s voice, he rushed to the filing cabinet and grabbed the documents needed for the meeting. Closing his office door, they moved back down the hallway at a brisk walk to the elevator. 

As they waited to be taken to the twentieth floor, he noticed a strange red smear on the edge of the last file.

*     *     *

At eight o’clock that night, Michael told Andrea and Dustin they could go home. He was comfortable with the progress they had made, but the real reason he was excusing them was so he could get back to the revenue contracts.

“How late are you staying?” Andrea asked him.

“Oh, just a bit longer. I want to wrap up this testing memo before I go home.”

“Well, don’t stay too late.”

They packed up their computers and left the room, and he waited fifteen minutes before walking around the floor. Everyone had gone home; entire sections of the building were now dark. The only trace of life was from the distant sound of vacuum cleaners as a cleaning crew moved slowly through the other half of the floor. Looking across to the corridor leading to the executive wing, he was relieved to see it also in darkness—the twins were gone, along with Mr. Seaton, too, and all the other executives. Michael would have all the freedom and privacy he needed to move throughout the building undisturbed and undiscovered.