The Last Groom on Earth (12 page)

He sighed and leaned back, gazing up at the ceiling. He decided he would wait until she returned, and then—He paused, frowning.
Where had she gone, anyway?
He hadn’t heard her knock on the condo next door, so she hadn’t gone there to unload her troubles on her friends. Perhaps she had gone for a walk to cool off. Or maybe a ride—he thought he had heard a car start a few moments after she left.

Suddenly Bryce sat bolt upright on the couch as a new thought seized him. He knew where she had gone. She would have wanted to tell Kelly what he had said; she would be sure, so blastedly, trustingly
sure
that Kelly would be able to prove she had not done it. A chill ran through Bryce. White-collar criminals were rarely dangerous, but one never knew what any person might do if she felt cornered and scared. If Kelly realized that Angela was on to her, it was possible that she would try to shut her up, keep her from going to the police. She might in a moment of anger or fear lash out at Angela, especially if the reason for her theft was, as Bryce had surmised, years of built-up envy and resentment.

He jumped to his feet and started toward the front door, then remembered belatedly that he had no idea where Kelly lived. He could go down to the office and find the address, of course, but that would eat up more valuable time—and Angela already had quite a head start on him.

Bryce hurried to the telephone. There was a button on the memory phone with the word “Tim” beside it, and he punched it. A child’s voice answered, then left to find its father, and Bryce waited, his fingers drumming against the wall impatiently. When Tim’s good-humored voice came on the line, Bryce launched into
a quick summary of what he had found out, ending with a demand for Kelly’s address.

There was a long moment of stunned silence on the other end of the line. Finally Tim said, “What? I can’t believe it.”

“That doesn’t matter right now. Just give me Kelly’s address. Angela’s gone over there, I’m sure, and I don’t know what might happen.”

“Yeah. Sure.” His voice still dazed with shock, Tim gave him the address of Kelly’s home and directions on how to get there.

Bryce slammed down the phone and hurried out the front door.

A
ngela pulled into the single driveway of Kelly’s house and jumped out, not bothering to lock the car. Kelly’s house was a quaint little cottage in an older neighborhood, which she had bought three years ago and spent all her spare time renovating. It was shaded by huge trees, from one of which an old-fashioned swing hung. Angela had sat there with Kelly many times on a spring or summer evening.

She pelted up the stairs to rap furiously at Kelly’s door.

“Okay, okay,” she heard Kelly’s voice on the other side of the door, and an instant later, it swung open. Kelly’s eyebrows went up. “What in the world are you pounding like that for?” She peered at Angela more closely, and her blue eyes registered alarm. “Angela? What’s the matter?”

“Bryce thinks you did it.” Angela swept past Kelly into the small living room and began to pace across its pine-floored length.

“Bryce thinks I did what?” Kelly asked in confusion, following her.

“He thinks you’ve been embezzling from us. He thinks that’s why our profits are down.”

Kelly stared at her. “Embezzling?” she repeated blankly.

“Yes, embezzling,” Angela repeated impatiently. “We have to figure out how to prove that you didn’t do it. He’s going to put the police on it, and they’ll probably jump to the obvious conclusion like Bryce did. Since you’re the one who’s in charge of the books, you must be the one who did it.”

“Wait. Stop. You left me way behind. Sit down, and tell me what you’re talking about.”

Angela drew a calming breath and did as Kelly suggested. As quickly and coherently as she could, she outlined what Bryce had told her about the payments made to apparently fictitious companies over the course of the year.

“No wonder Bryce was bustling around so today. I thought something must be going on. But the way he kept phoning his office, I figured it was something there, something they were working on.”

“Kelly!” Angela snapped. “Would you concentrate on how to prove you didn’t do it? You could be in real trouble here.”

Kelly nodded and knotted her brow in a frown. “Brachen? F & F? I don’t remember anything about them. What was the other one?”

“I’m not sure. Something in California. Oh, uh, ALM. ALF, something like that.”

“Angie, none of this is ringing a bell with me.”

“Of course not. Why would you notice a few payments to two or three companies? They weren’t regular things. Although they were large—$20,000, $10,000.”

“Actually, I don’t usually do the books. Connie runs the spreadsheets.”

“Could she have been doing it?”

“Embezzling? Oh, no! That is, well, I don’t think so. I can’t imagine it. I mean, I guess she could have forged our signatures, but—no, I just can’t see it. Somebody must have put in requisition slips for them.” She paused, frowning with thought. “Wait a minute, I do have a vague memory of one of them. That Brachen thing. I’m sure I would have checked it against the requisition slips.”

“That’s one of the problems. Bryce said he checked in the office, and there were no requisition slips for any of them.”

“He must have looked in the wrong place,” Kelly insisted. She jumped to her feet. “Come on. Let’s go down to the office. I’m sure I’ll be able to find them.”

Bryce couldn’t be right, Angela thought, as she followed Kelly out to the car. Kelly did not look in the slightest guilty. She had obviously been as stunned and surprised as Angela had been when Bryce told her. Kelly simply could not be that good an actress. Hope began to rise in Angela as she slid in behind the steering wheel and turned on the engine.
When they got to the office, Kelly would be able to find the requisition slips, and somehow from that they would be able to find out who the real embezzler was.

When they reached the office, Angela pulled into the empty graveled area behind the house and parked.
The house was dark; all the other employees had obviously left. Angela and Kelly went in the back door, entering through the kitchen of the old house, and walked through the wide corridor to the door of the accounting department.

Kelly opened it with a key and, flipping on a switch, walked straight across the room to a filing cabinet. She opened it with another, smaller, key and pulled out the middle drawer. She took out a thick folder of computer paper and laid it on a table, then began to search through it.

“Okay, here’s one. F & F, May 16. The requisition slips are filed by date.” She went over to a counter, where a small file sat and pulled out its drawer, then began to flip through its contents until she found the tab she wanted. She riffled through it quickly, then stopped.

“That’s weird. There’s nothing here for it.” She pulled a wad of pink slips out and laid them down on the counter and went through them again, more slowly. Finally she sighed and looked up worriedly at Angela. “It’s not here.”

“Try another one.”

“Okay.” She returned to the large folder and began to search again. After a while she found another date and returned to the requisition file. She sorted through it, then turned to Angela, lines deepening in her forehead. “It’s not here, either.”

“Oh, God.” Angela plopped down despondently in one of the desk chairs. “What are we going to do? Is there anyplace else they could be?”

“Just those particular requisition slips? Not likely.” Kelly chewed her lower lip.

“Well, look, is there another copy of the payment orders?”

Kelly brightened. “Sure! Why didn’t I think of that? It’s a carbon form. One copy of it goes to accounting, and the other goes into a file that the person who orders it keeps!” Her eyes widened. “That would pretty much tell us who it was, wouldn’t it? The person who put in the request for the payment.”

“Yeah. The only problem is we have to know who did it before we can find the other copy.”

Kelly nodded. “Yes. And he isn’t likely to have kept them, either. That must be why these are missing—they’ve removed them so the payment can’t be traced back to them.”

“You’re right.” Angela rested her elbow on the desk in front of her and propped her chin on her hand, thinking.

“Well, look,” Kelly began, trying to be cheerful. “The police won’t be able to prove I did it. All they’ll have is suspicion. I mean, they won’t find any extravagant spending on my part or any deposits in my bank account or anything.”

Angela’s hopes rose, but then she shook her head firmly, rising from her chair. “No. We have to find out who it is. Otherwise, this suspicion will hang over you all your life, even if the police can’t prove that you did it. You sit here and think about those accounts. Try to remember if anyone ever mentioned them to you. I’ll go make us some tea. Then we’ll search the payment order files in everyone’s office, if we have to.”

“Okay.” Kelly walked over to one of the computer terminals and sat down, beginning to boot up the machine. “Let me look at the company’s files. Maybe
that will jog my memory. What were their names, besides Brachen?”

“ALM and F & F Graphics.”

“You know, that ALM one sounds vaguely familiar.” Her voice drifted off as she began to type.

Angela left Kelly in front of the computer screen and walked back through the hall into the kitchen. She filled two cups with water and put them into the microwave, then pulled out two bags of herbal tea and stood waiting for the microwave to beep.

A loud click out in the hall startled Angela from her reverie. It was followed by the sound of the front door opening and closing. Curious, Angela walked to the doorway to look out in the hall.

“Tim!”

Her partner was standing at the foot of the stairs, two empty boxes in his hands. He jumped at the sound of her voice and whirled around.

“Angela!” He looked surprised. “I didn’t see your car out front.”

“We parked in the back. This is great. I’m glad you’re here. You can help us.” She glanced down at the boxes in his hands. “What are you doing?”

“What? Oh.” Tim looked down blankly at the boxes in his hands. “I was…I came up here to get some things out of my office. Some plants. They’re dying, and I figured Melanie might be able to revive them. How about you? What are you doing up here?”

“Kelly and I are looking for some payment orders.”

“Payment orders?”

“Yeah. Oh, Tim, it’s such a mess. Bryce thinks Kelly has been stealing from us, and we can’t find the payment orders for the checks that accounting wrote.
But you can help us. You can probably figure out a way from the computer to find out who put in the orders.”

“I don’t know. I’ll try. Let me go up and take those things out to my car, and I’ll take a look, okay?”

“Okay.”

He started toward the stairs, and Angela turned to go back into the kitchen, when there came a shout from the accounting office, “Angela!”

Kelly came hurrying down the stairs, looking over the railing at Angela. Her face glowed with excitement. “I remembered! I could remember making a note about it sometime ago, so I went up to my office and looked back through my calendar. And there it was. ALM—Tim. I talked to Tim about it.”

She stopped abruptly, and all the color drained from her face. “Oh, my God.”

“What? Kelly!” Angela took an anxious step toward her, but a strangled noise from the bottom of the stairs stopped her.

Kelly turned her head and looked at the foot of the stairs. For the first time she saw Tim and, if possible, she turned even paler. “Oh, Tim…no!”

Angela froze, staring at Tim. He stood stock-still, the cardboard boxes dangling foolishly from his hands. His face was pale, and sweat dotted his forehead and upper lip. His brown eyes were wide and frightened and filled with guilt.

“Tim?” Angela squeaked. She felt suddenly sick to her stomach, and tears flooded her eyes.

Kelly said tonelessly, “I remember I called him and asked him what it was, who it had come from because it was his name on the authorization,
but there was no name on the top line—who was requesting the payment, you know. He said he was the one who had requested it, that ALM was a company that was working on some kind of new chip that would really speed up our games. And I just filled in his name on the line and forgot about it. It didn’t seem very important at the time.”

With a curse, Tim turned away, flinging the cardboard boxes against the door. He turned toward Angela and Kelly, frustration and despair in every line of his face. For the first time since she had known him, Angela felt a tiny thrill of fear run down her spine. She thought suddenly about the fact that she and Kelly were alone with Tim in the office—and that he would be ruined when they told what they knew.

She must have taken an involuntary step backward, because Tim’s eyes widened and hurt swept over his features. “Do you think I’m going to hurt you? Angela! I would never do anything like that. You know me.”

“I don’t know,” she replied tearfully. “All of a sudden, I don’t know you at all anymore.”

He spread out his hands in a supplicating gesture. “I’m sorry. I never meant for anyone to get hurt by this. I thought I could do it and no one would ever notice. I sure never dreamed it would set the IRS on us or bring that damn bloodhound Richards down here. I didn’t mean to make it look like Kelly had done it. Please, you have to believe me. I would never intentionally hurt you or Kelly.”

“But why, Tim? Why would you do it?” Kelly asked. “You own half the company. You get half the profits.”

“A lot of that we put back into the company. More than that, taxes wipe out a big chunk of it. This was
income that wasn’t reported to the IRS. I didn’t have to pay any taxes on it.” He gave them a wry grin. “You think H & A Enterprises was in trouble with the IRS, wait until you see what they do to
me
now.”

He groaned and sank onto the bottom step, bracing his head on his hands. “I lost a lot of money in real estate investments a few years ago. I was paying heavy interest on the pieces of land, and I couldn’t sell them. I was in a mess. It was eating up all our savings and our other investments. But I couldn’t declare bankruptcy. And I couldn’t watch Melanie and the kids having to do without the things they were accustomed to. I managed to sell some of the property and stay afloat, but about two years ago, I was at the end of my rope. Then I came up with this idea. I’d borrow it from the company. I always meant to return it! But once I’d started…I don’t know, it was too handy. And I loved giving Melanie and the kids things. You know how I am with money—it just melts away. I couldn’t—oh, hell, I couldn’t admit to anybody what a failure I’d been, how stupidly I’d acted. I kept thinking, well, the market’s coming back now. In a year or two, I’ll be able to get all these things off my hands, and I’ll pay the company back then.”

“How? How could you possibly stick back in several hundred thousand dollars without anybody noticing?”

“I figured I’d come up with something. After all, I had managed to get it out.” Tim grinned at Angela sheepishly. “You know how I am.”

Angela groaned. “Oh, Tim…” She had always known of his ostrich tendencies, his way of hoping that things would go away or work themselves out if he simply ignored them. Usually it was a fairly harmless
personality quirk. This time it had led him into severe trouble.

“Maybe…maybe we could still think of some way to work it out,” Tim began, brightening a little. “If I sold some stuff and replaced the money…”

“That’s a good place to start,” said a male voice behind them, and they all started in surprise and turned to look back at the kitchen door. Bryce stood in the doorway, arms folded, leaning against the doorjamb.

“Bryce! What are you doing here?”

“I got worried about you after you left. I figured you went to tell Kelly about what I’d told you, and I was afraid of what might happen to you. I followed you over there, and when you two weren’t there, I figured you would be at the office, so I drove here. Unfortunately I had fingered the wrong villain.” Bryce looked at Angela, and a faint smile touched his lips. “I was too involved with my client. I didn’t look as objectively as I should have into the case. I started with the given that the owners weren’t guilty of fraud because I was in love with one of them.”