Chapter 21
“Ay, que bonita.” Papa picked up the plate of carne asada and the plate of chile rellenos and passed them to a server. “Muchas gracias, Tony.” He made it a habit to stand at the food pass through window during peak business and check on the food quality and plate appearance as his cooks completed their dishes.
Since Papa bought El Chaparral, he kept a tight rein on his cooks. When they knew that he was watching their output carefully, the quality made a major improvement.
Friday night business was good. Servers rushed in and out of the service area. The infra-red heat lamps over the pass-through window raised the temperature ten degrees in the small room.
Papa dodged a heavy-set girl loading a basket of tostaditas and grabbing a bowl of salsa for a new table. “Papa,” Hope dashed into the serving area wearing a Mexican peasant blouse and brightly colored skirt. “Mr. Thomas is here again.”
It was supposed to be a secret. The LA Times food critic visited restaurants anonymously, but one of the servers recognized him on his last visit. Now everyone was on the alert. Papa knew that soon, there would be an article about El Chaparral in the newspaper.
“Gracias, mija.” Papa beamed. “All right everyone,” he raised his hands in the air. “Show time.”
“Buenos noches. Party of four?” Papa walked up to the hostess stand and grabbed four menus. The heavy graying man with a pencil-thin moustache looked like a character out of a 1940’s movie, double-breasted suit and all.
“Yes, four,” the food critic replied.
Papa led them to a table near the island of shrubs and flowers that ran through the center of the dining room.
“We have a special, huachinango Veracruzana, tonight. Caught fresh this morning.” Papa handed the menus to his guest and smiled.
****
“Estamos cerrado,, mija.” Papa tossed the keys onto the desk. The restaurant was closed, the kitchen cleaned up, the dining room set for lunch tomorrow.
Hope sat at the desk in the small office, under a statue of the Virgin de Guadalupe, counting the day’s receipts. Papa marveled at how beautiful she looked; her hair so black it almost seemed blue in the artificial light, her eyes dark pools. She looked just like her mama.
“It was a good night, Papa.” Hope bundled the cash together and filled out a deposit slip. “Gina’s going to be happy with us this month.”
Ted’s girlfriend in Seattle set up the bookkeeping system for them. Every month they sent her their records and she prepared operating statements and balance sheets. Her advice had been invaluable in operating El Chaparral more like a business than the feudal kingdom it had been under the previous owner.
For twenty-five years Papa labored in the kitchen. His old patron had no sense of business, no touch with his staff. He treated them all like servants, he yelled at his customers.
When Papa bought the restaurant, the staff had been overjoyed. Now he had to learn to operate a business in the Twenty-First Century if he was to keep them all employed, their families fed.
“It’s a good thing you understand all of this computer stuff.” He pulled up a chair next to Hope’s desk and set down his coffee cup. His eighteen-year-old daughter understood the business better than he did. With the systems that Ted set up, she managed schedules, inventory, and purchases and moved money around like a veteran. Now, if he could only get Ted involved in the business.
It would make Mama so happy if he could get their oldest son to move back home.
****
“Richie, get down here right now.” Richard Freeman Sr. crashed through his front door.
“Richard, what is it?” His meek looking wife, Elaine, dressed in her nightgown, appeared in the kitchen door.
“That little bastard’s really done it this time.” Freeman tossed his coat carelessly onto the sofa.
“Richard, don’t you ever call him that.” Elaine jumped to grab the coat and hang it in the closet. “What’s he done?”
“Yeah, Dad.” Richie looked down from the landing at the top of the stairs. “What did I do this time?”
“Get down here, right now.” Freeman’s face glowed bright red. “I know what you were doing. We tracked you at work.”
Richie’s face went white.
“Richard, what are you talking about?” Elaine stepped between Freeman and their son.
“He knows full well what I’m talking about. We caught him hacking into MS’s systems.”
Richie’s mouth fell open.
“Dad . . .”
“Don’t ‘Dad’ me. I was there when you broke in. We traced your IP address back to this house. My house. My IP address. What were you thinking?”
“It’s not my fault, Dad.”
“Richard.” Elaine broke in. “When did this happen?”
“Tonight. Metcalf was there. I had to lie to him. To tell him that the hacker got away, but I saw the IP address. I know it was Richie.”
“It couldn’t have been. He was here with me all night. We were watching an old movie on the Movie Channel. The popcorn bowl is still on the kitchen counter.”
Freeman stopped and looked from his wife to his son. She wouldn’t lie to him. She wouldn’t lie to save her own life. If Richie wasn’t the hacker, then who was? And how in the hell did they use his IP address? Was anybody really that good?
When Freeman found the hacker, whoever it was, and he would find the hacker, he would come down on him like the wrath of God.
****
“Peaceful Valley traffic, this is Cessna three six niner zero Juliet, turning downwind for runway three four.” Chris released the mike button on the yolk and reached for the twin throttle levers. He pulled back slightly, reduced power and lifted the nose of the twin-engine Cessna 421. As the airspeed bled off, he flipped the landing gear switch. The three lights on the dashboard changed from red to green.
“Three in the green,” he said and looked towards his father in the right seat.
Harry didn’t move a muscle. Chris, although not a licensed pilot, had been flying his father’s airplanes since he was a teenager. Carefully following FAA rules, he had never flown solo, but Harry allowed him to make the flight from Boeing Field in Seattle to the private air strip in Peaceful Valley, Montana without interference.
Chris turned into the base leg of the landing pattern and lowered the flaps forty degrees. He glanced in all directions for any other air traffic.
The possibility of other planes in the landing pattern was remote. His father’s five-hundred-acre cattle ranch had its own landing strip, but not many visitors. Occasionally business meetings were held here, and that could attract a swarm of corporate jets, but not today. This was a family trip.
“Cessna three six niner zero Juliet, on final for runway three four.”
Chris looked over his shoulder at Sarah and Candace. This was the first time the four of them had gone anywhere as a family. They were healing. He could look at Candace without the seething resentment he once felt. Sarah was interacting with people again.
It wasn’t the same as when Mom was alive, but it was something.
They passed over the threshold of the runway. Chris pulled back the throttle levers and let the big twin settle through the ground effect and kiss the runway.
He taxied to a halt next to a dusty Jeep Cherokee. A small, trim man with a Wyatt Earp mustache in a Stetson hat and cowboy boots leaned against the hood.
Harry opened the cabin door and stood aside for Candace and Sarah.
“Mornin’, Ms. Hardwick.” The small cowboy had a lazy drawl. “The Missus is anxious to see ya.” Chad and Dora Easton had been managing the Peaceful Valley Ranch since before Harry bought it. “Ya gonna be stayin’ through after the weekend?”
“Hi, Chad. No, Sarah and I will fly back with Chris and Harry on Sunday.”
Chris popped open the cargo hatch and started passing the bags to Harry and Chad, who jammed them in the back of the Jeep.
The five rode the short distance
over the bumpy dirt road back to the main house.
It might still be fall in Seattle, but in the foot hills of the Rockies, winter had taken hold. Chris could see his breath as he exhaled. The trees had already dropped their leaves and the world looked gray under the sullen skies.
The place hadn’t changed much since Chris’ last visit. It had to be what, two years?
The large white two story ranch house sat in the middle of a complex of barns and out-buildings. An above-ground pool stood just off to the side of the house, a ready source of water in case of fire. The equipment shed next to the barn housed several ATVs in addition to the requisite tractor.
“It’s good to be back.” Harry stepped out of the Jeep and looked around. “When’s the new bull coming in?”
“We’re still scheduled for the 20th, Mr. Hardwick,” Chad said
“Let’s get our stuff unloaded, then go for a ride,” Candace said.
Chris felt a little thrill pass though him.
****
“Ted, you know Leah Sykes don’t you?” Catrina sat behind her flea market desk.
Ted and Jonathon Jefferson took up the two unmatched chairs.
“Not really. I’ve seen her in the office, but we’ve never spoken.” Ted would notice Leah. At six-feet tall, she was a good four inches taller than him. Her kinky hair resembled nothing quite so much as a fiery red Brillo pad.
“Pleased to meet you, Ted.” Leah held out a long, elegant hand. She reminded Ted of some kind of long-legged seabird.
“El gusto es mío.” Ted’s eyes ran up and down the tall, willowy woman. She was about his mother’s age. Her face pleasant enough, she had a dazzling smile and sparkling blue eyes, but somehow all the pieces didn’t add up to beauty. She was the whitest white woman he had ever seen, her skin dotted by the occasional freckle.
She must have gotten a lot of teasing in grade school. Her feet, always clad in flats, were ridiculously long and thin. She stood with the posture of a question mark, trying to conceal her height. He could imagine her as a gangly scarecrow of a girl.
“Leah has been working on Jackson Schmidt’s file. She has some interesting things to tell us.” Catrina brought Ted’s attention back to the issue at hand.
“So, what do you do anyway?” Ted knew that Leah was a forensic accountant that occasionally worked for Catrina, but that’s where his knowledge ended. “Are you like CSI or something”?
Leah smiled. “Most people don’t understand what we do. Yes, forensic accountants are the CSIs of the accounting world. Basically, we follow the money. I crawl through a company’s books looking for irregularities. I do a lot of work for attorneys. Cat hires me to look for hidden assets in divorce cases.”
“So what have you found?” Cat cut off the explanation.
Leah pulled up an extra chair. “Something doesn’t smell right here. I’ve been going over the MS’ books and I see some irregularities.”
“What kind?” Jeff asked.
“Ted already put us onto some expenses that Schmidt billed to the company that may be suspicious. Travel, personal services. Things like that can be hidden in a huge corporate general ledger. But here’s what has me worried.” Leah passed copies of a spread sheet out to her audience.
“There’s enough smoke here to make me think that there may be a fire. You’ll notice that there are a series of postings to the retained earnings account. That’s suspicious. Normally, you don’t post anything to RE, that account flows from the GL. Look here.” She pointed a long finger with clear nail polish to a line on the spread sheet. “Here’s a posting to Opening Balance Equity. That account usually is set up when a company is formed. It never gets postings.”
“Is this enough to prove malfeasance?” Catrina asked.
“No, this is just the smoking gun. There’s more though. The audit trail report has been turned off. Whoever has been doing this doesn’t want anyone to follow their trail. With the data Ted got from MS, I was able to examine their GL system and determine who was making the entries. It wasn’t Schmidt. By the way, do I want to know how he got all this information?”
Jeff ignored her question. “So who was it?”
“A staff accountant. All of these entries are made by the same person. A Gina Lombardi.”
Ted froze. How much could he tell them? He told Gina that he would keep her out of the investigation, but here she was, smack dab in the middle of it.
“I don’t get it.” Ted needed time to think. “If this Gina Lombardi made all of those entries, how can we pin it on Schmidt?”
“That’s a tough question. Most of the suspicious entries I found benefit Jackson Schmidt in one way or another, but I can’t prove he made them. It could be that this Lombardi woman is smart enough to push this stuff through incriminating him, then drain off the money for herself.”
Shit. He was going to have to explain to them how he found out about the book-cooking in the first place.
“I also found some interesting expenses.” Leah handed them another spread sheet. “This is from the Delphi Project. It’s a billion-dollar spit in the ocean. They’ve spent over a billion dollars on this one project. They’ve basically bet the company on it. If Delphi, whatever it is, fails, then MS goes down.”
This wasn’t new news to Ted. That’s why Alison Clarke had hired them in the first place. He waited for Catrina to take the lead. How much could they tell Jeff and Leah about Delphi?
“We’ve seen Delphi.” Catrina put on her poker face. “It’s impressive.”
“There are recurring expenditures for a consulting company, here.” Leah leafed through her papers. “Webber, Inc. I found a steady stream of invoices for them, but no record of anyone actually working on the project. I think it needs more investigation. I Googled them, but didn’t find a Website. What kind of computer consulting firm doesn’t have a Website?”
“Jeff, I think you should take that one.” Catrina nodded her head.
****
Chris knew his dad’s routines. Harry was a creature of habit. As expected, Harry sat in front of the crackling fire, staring into its depths. It was late, the big house silent. The only sounds, the snapping of the fire and the rain pattering on the roof.
“Dad, can we talk.” This was what the trip was all about for Chris. He needed to get his father alone.
“Chris?” Harry turned towards him. “What are you doing awake so late?”
“I have something I need to talk to you about. Something that’s really bothering me and you’re the only one who can tell me what to do.”
“Whoa. This is a twist.” Harry sat his glass of Scotch on the table next to his overstuffed chair. “I can’t remember the last time you came to me for advice.”
“This is about work, Dad. But it’s really more about ethics.”
“Okay, spill it. What’s up?”
Chris paused and thought. How could he put this so that his dad understood the problem?
“What if you have a client, he’s given you all sorts of documentation for his case, and you discover something? Something that doesn’t have anything to do with the case, but might be evidence of another crime?”
Chris saw his father transform from dad-mode to lawyer-mode in a heartbeat.
“You’re right about ethics. We have a responsibility to our clients. We are covered by attorney-client privilege. It’s a principle as old as the Magna Charta. Our first duty is to our client.”
That wasn’t the answer Chris wanted. “But, Dad, what if you think your client has done something really bad? What if you’re afraid he might do it again?”
“What are we really talking about here, Chris? What do you know about whom?”
Now Chris was conflicted. He knew he had a responsibility to their client to keep his secrets, but would it hurt to tell Dad? After all, Dad was really his attorney too. Chris and Kathy were just Dad’s employees, his agents. The primary responsibility for the client was Dad’s.
“Terry Metcalf. . . I found a file
in his stuff. It probably shouldn’t have been there.” Chris hesitated, waited for a signal from his father that it was alright to go on.
“Metcalf?” Harry picked up his glass again. “What kind of file?”
“It was surveillance. Apparently, he had someone, maybe MS security, keeping tabs on a cleaning woman. The weird part is, I recognized the cleaning woman. She was Donna Harrison, the president of DigiGuard Security.”
A silence hung in the air for a moment as Harry digested the information.
“The Donna Harrison who was found floating in Elliot Bay?”
“Yeah. Metcalf had a complete dossier on her, including security tapes of her dressed up as a cleaning lady.”
“Why would the president of a high-tech company be moonlighting as a cleaning lady?”
“That’s my question. And why did she end up in Elliot Bay? Do you think Metcalf had anything to do with it?”
“Jesus, Chris, you never did bring me the easy problems.”
The stillness of the night settled into the big living room. Chris’ front side, facing the fire was warm, his backside cold. He couldn’t sit. He got up and paced back and forth while his father thought.
“We can’t do anything with this information.” Harry swallowed his last drop of Scotch. “We can’t take it to the police, we can’t confront our client.”
“But, Dad, what if Metcalf’s involved in her murder? What if he did it, or knows who did? We’re, that is you are, an officer of the court. Don’t you have a responsibility to give that information to the police?”
“Our first responsibility is to our client. Then to the firm. If we give that information to the police, Metcalf would sue us until we bled. Not to mention the State Bar. At the minimum, Kathy would be censured. You’d never make it through law school. I’d probably be disbarred. It would be the end of HB&J.”
“But what if Metcalf was involved in Mrs. Harrison’s murder? What if he’s going to do it again?”
“The law is quite clear on that point. If the crime has already occurred, we’re bound to maintain our client’s confidentiality. The fuzzy part comes when there is a degree of certainty that the client is going to commit a crime that would involve someone’s death or serious bodily injury. In that case, we are allowed to divulge the information to the authorities. In real life, I’ve never heard of that exception being used. You have to be one-hundred percent sure that a crime’s going to take place. What evidence do you have that Metcalf may do this again?”
Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2) Page 19