Biloxi Blue (The Biloxi Series Book 2)

by Jerri Ledford

  “And he isn’t doing anything about it?” Caleb couldn’t take his eyes off the road. The exit for Highway 49 passed in a flash to his right. Where was she going? His instinct told him they weren’t headed in the direction of Brandon Causey’s residence.

  “He. Well. No. I guess not. He’s never done anything about it.” Kate’s focus was unwavering.

  “Do you plan on telling him about this?” Caleb couldn’t let this go. He needed to understand the dynamic of what was happening here.

  “There’s… A lot going on in his world right now. This is something I need to deal with. I have dealt with already. I don’t need Jack to fight my battles for me.” Kate’s words were sharp, like she was done with the conversation.

  Caleb wasn’t done. He pushed for more. “Kate, tell me what’s going on. I can help you fix this. We can go to the chief together if you want. He might be able to help.”

  Kate barked a harsh laugh. “No Caleb. There’s nothing Jack can do about this. You’ve been here for two minutes. Don’t act like you can just jump right in and fix everything.”

  Instinct kept Caleb quiet. He wanted to badger her until she spoke. He wanted to hear what she wasn’t saying.

  She remained quiet as she guided the Charger down an exit ramp and to a stop in the parking lot of an abandoned gas station. She shut off the engine and then risked a glance at him. Caleb wasn’t surprised to see moisture glistening in her eyes. Tough as nails Kate was still a woman and women cry. He’d never met one that didn’t.

  “Jack and I were partners. We’re engaged. We practically live together. He knows how I’m treated. He knows why. And he’ll be the first to tell you that I have to deal with it myself.” She drew her shoulders up, took in a deep breath, and Caleb could see her struggle to maintain the tough façade she projected. To her credit, she pulled it together faster than he would have expected her to.

  As they sat there in silence, Caleb felt a fundamental shift in their relationship. Kate gave in and told him what he wanted to know. She didn’t need to know that he already knew about her relationship with Jack. He kept that to himself. She couldn’t know that he and Jack discussed this already. He needed to keep his real purpose here to himself for a while. Kate would figure it out soon enough, he was certain, but the longer that took the better it would be.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” His voice was quiet, and he remained focused on her even though she wouldn’t look at him.

  When she started talking her voice was laced with anguish. She told him about her previous partner. The words were halting at first and then came in a rush, but there were no more tears. Only pain, anger, and frustration in the specific words she chose to explain the situation.

  Caleb listened without interrupting her as she moved from what happened with her previous partner to how she ended up on medical leave.

  Then silence filled the car. Caleb let it settle over them like fog on the bayou. It was comfortable. They now shared a bond he hadn’t expected would form between them for weeks. This was moving along much better than he expected.

  “I didn’t want to come back to work,” Kate whispered into the silence. “I’m not even sure that I still want to be a cop. This job corrupts everyone.”

  That surprised Caleb and he wasn’t sure how to respond. Who was everyone? And what kind of corruption was she talking about? He wondered what she knew. What was she referring to exactly?

  There was more, but Caleb wouldn’t push any more today. He didn’t want to make her suspicious. Besides, he had time, and he counted today a much greater success than he’d anticipated.

  She surprised him when she continued talking. “Even Jack.” The words were so soft Caleb wasn’t even sure he’d heard them.

  “Jack?” He kept his tone neutral.

  She nodded. “The last case we worked together he wasn’t interested in finding the person who shot the victim. He said the victim deserved it and whoever killed him did the world a favor.”

  Caleb sat in silence. Maybe Jack Roe wasn’t as squeaky clean and by the book as he seemed. That was something Caleb could work with.

  TEN

  “Graaahh!” Jenna swept both hands across her desk, pushing the wireless keyboard, a handful of pens, and several stacks of papers to the floor.

  “What did you do with those files?” She screamed, but there was no one around to hear. Her husband, Michael, was out playing golf. She suggested it. She needed time to figure out what that nosy snoop had found.

  Beth found something. That was obvious from her reaction the night Jennifer found her in the office. What wasn’t obvious was how much Beth uncovered and what she had done with whatever she learned. Jenna spent hours scouring the corporate servers looking for some sign, a breadcrumb, that would help her find Beth’s storage repository. She found nothing. There wasn’t even a trace of activity pointing to the fact that Beth had been on the servers, even though Jenna knew she had. Beth erased her tracks completely.

  Who knew the unremarkable accounting clerk harbored such remarkable computer skills?

  Jenna stood and contemplated the mess she faced.

  Control yourself. You know full well that losing control ends badly.

  It did. Jenna was nothing if not a student of her own past mistakes, of which there were quite a few. She had been fortunate so far, though. None of those mistakes connected back to her.

  You’re better than this. You’re better than Beth.

  “I am.” Jenna began cleaning up the mess she’d made.

  The frantic search without understanding Beth and knowing the extent of what she found wasn’t working. Jenna lined one last pen perfectly above the pad on the desk and then paced through the house on bare feet. From the office, she walked to the top of the stairs and looked down at the great room. Mahogany wood, white fabrics with gold accents. The decorating cost a fortune. As did the custom designed, built to specifications house. All paid for with the “bonuses” she procured from Ingram Logistics.

  She called them bonuses because Michael had no idea where the money really came from. Not that anyone at Ingram would notice it missing. Jenna covered her tracks well and the company had such poor accounting practices that millions were misplaced each year. It was that very fact that made it possible for Jenna to take the bonuses that she did.

  Jenna thought she covered her tracks perfectly until the alarms she’d put in place went off.

  Until Beth started sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.

  Thinking of Beth rekindled her anger. Jenna stomped down the hardwood stairs, and across the matching floors of the great room. She trudged into the kitchen, the marble tiles cooling her feet. She would've enjoyed the sensation more if her mind weren’t so cluttered with questions about what Beth discovered and how.

  Where was the data stored? Did she send it to someone? There was no record of Beth’s movements on the server. No incoming or outgoing communications. No uploads.

  Jenna knew computers. She’d learned on her own, discovering the more she knew, the easier it was to increase her own bonuses and other benefits. There were other benefits, too. Like generous expense accounts, and having enough information about everyone at the company that she knew how to play them all. It was a powerful feeling.

  There were people out there – hackers – that knew more than she did about the inner workings of a computer, but she was smarter than most of them. Those fools hacked into computers for petty, selfish and self-aggrandizing reasons. Jenna had a plan. Her hacking abilities were a means to an end, not just some publicity stunt. She needed a defined amount of money and she and Michael could live in Italy or France, or one of a dozen other countries. Or they could stay right here. It didn’t really matter to her; Michael was the one that hated Mississippi.

  Jenna would figure this out. She just needed to clear her head so she could think clearly.

  She stalked through the dining room, passed the theater room, stopping in the indoor gym. That was what she ne
eded. Exercise would clear her mind.

  She went back the route she had come then turned into the master bedroom where she dropped her clothes into a heap on the floor, and slipped through the double French doors onto the patio. Below, an Olympic sized pool glistened in the sun.

  It took the entire first lap to warm up. April on the Gulf Coast was comfortable, but the water in the pool hadn't had time to warm as much as the atmosphere around it. At first, the bite of the cold water felt good against Jenna’s skin. She hated the heat, and was always grateful for any cooling sensation.

  By the third lap, Jenna could no longer feel the cool water and the clamor of questions in her brain continued to increase in intensity.

  This isn't working.

  Frustration built to the point of madness. She pushed out of the pool, ignoring the towel resting on the end of a chaise lounge.

  The puddles of water trailing her through the house, into the bathroom, would ordinarily make her crazy. Today, Jenna didn't notice. Even if she had, she wouldn’t care. All that mattered in this moment was figuring out what Beth knew, and what she did with that knowledge.

  Back to the closet that was larger than some people’s entire bedroom.

  Jogging. That would do the trick.

  Less than five minutes later, Jenna was loping down the long drive, through the wrought iron gates imported from Germany and onto the main thoroughfare.

  Within a few hundred yards, Jenna felt her body relax into her jogging stride. The thud, thud, thud of her footfalls on concrete and the whoosh – whoosh of warm, salt-tinged, humid air filling and emptying from her lungs were sounds of comfort. Sounds that did more for her state of mind than any of the drugs the numerous doctors in her life prescribed.

  She allowed the sounds to push all other thoughts from her mind and concentrated only on her footfalls, breathing, and the slow burn working its way up from her calf muscles.

  This was her drug. She didn’t abuse substances. She learned early on that pills would make her feel like a zombie; like she had no control. Being out of control was not an option. Ever. Like a drug addict, she could get so lost in the sensations and sounds of running that the world melted away. She ran more than five miles before she allowed any thoughts back into her mind. Then, she started at the beginning.

  Beth triggered the alarm. One that was set up to notify Jenna if anyone found specific files. Then she tripped the same alarm again followed by several others in a path of forward progression as each file led her to another.

  That was the beginning of the trail. Where did she go from there? Jenna thought about what she would do.

  Gather more information, of course.

  And then?

  Use all the bits and pieces to create a coherent picture.

  What bits and pieces?

  That stopped Jenna mid-stride. Her forward momentum nearly sent her face first onto the asphalt, but she managed to maintain her balance.

  Of course.

  Start with the bits and pieces. Follow the exact same path that Beth had. It was almost too obvious. No wonder she didn't see it before.

  Jenna sprinted all the way home, but her mind was no longer on the run.

  At home, she raced back to the office, taking the stairs two and three at a time. She didn’t stop to change or even dry the sweat from her skin. She went straight to her office and dumped the messenger bag she'd taken from Beth's lifeless body onto the desktop. She knew Beth had been printing from her computer, and that she shoved a stack of papers and files into that bag just before Jenna confronted her. Until now, Jenna hadn’t taken the time to go through it. Whatever Beth found and printed, whatever was in this bag, should be traceable on the company's network, and it could even give Jenna the full picture of what Beth knew.

  Jenna pulled the stack of papers and folders to the edge of the desk. The back few pages were gummy and stiff in spots. Blood. Ugh.

  She wiped her fingers on the workout pants that fit her like a second skin. She didn’t even realize there was blood on the bag when she grabbed it. It was mostly dry.

  I’ll need to check the car. The blood could be on the seat where I threw the bag.

  Before the thought even solidified in her mind, Jenna pushed the bag out of the way and began to separate the pages into stacks. At the top of the pile was work that needed to be completed. She separated these into companies.

  Nothing matched any of the companies Jenna used, so she re-stacked the pages and prepared to go through them one at a time. Through the first third of the pages she found nothing of importance. It looked like take-home work. Things that Beth didn’t finish while she was in the office, so she planned to complete them at home. That was against company policy, but Jenna knew the accounting teams did it all the time. They had timelines to adhere to, and the company wouldn’t pay overtime.

  As she stacked the first set of pages together and sat them off to the side, an envelope fluttered to the floor. Jenna picked it up and flipped it over. It was addressed to her and she recognized it immediately. She didn’t even need to open it to know that inside there would be a check for $100,000, made payable to her from Stone Mountain.

  Jenna’s ears started ringing. Was this what cause Beth to look more closely at her accounts? Irritation crawled across Jenna’s skin and she scratched furiously at the inside of her left elbow. That check wasn’t supposed to arrive until after she got back from Aruba. She’d talked to that dull-sounding woman, Tiffany, at Stone Mountain and explained that she’d be out on vacation. Jenna asked Tiffany to hold all payments for the week. Tiffany agreed.

  That was your first mistake. Believing anything that someone as droll as Tiffany said. You knew she was incompetent.

  Not only did Jenna know it, she counted on it. This time, that reliance backfired.

  Stupid.

  Jenna set the envelope with the check still inside on one corner of the desk. She would handle that later in the week.

  She began flipping through pages again. The rest of the pages and files in the bag were unorganized and mostly unrelated. Jenna went through them a few pages at a time, but there was nothing that seemed to point to her own activities at Ingram Logistics. Regret creeped up Jenna’s spine. She shouldn’t have been so hasty in slitting Beth’s throat. She let emotion take over and now she was paying for it.

  “That’s what happens when you don’t remain in control.” The voice in Jenna’s head was calm, almost soothing, but it sent shivers skittering across her body. That voice. Those words. They never came without pain.

  The voice belonged to her mother. It was her favorite phrase to use right before her hand snaked out so fast Jenna never saw it coming. Even when she expected it, Jenna was surprised by a slap that rocked her head to the side so hard she would later think that one of these days, Mother was going to break her neck.

  The slap was always the beginning, and it was always followed with more severe punishment. Sometimes a belt. Sometimes a shoe, or a brush, or a wire hanger. Jenna had scars, but she had learned. Control was the key to everything.

  She shook her head, clearing away memories she would rather forget. She took two deep breaths and went back to the papers before her.

  A dozen pages of shipping manifests. Various shipments from several places, through two shipping companies.

  That made no sense. Why did Beth have shipping manifests mixed in with the accounting files? Jenna stared at them trying to connect the dots. She couldn’t. She flipped back through the first few pages. Nothing matched up. Maybe Beth picked the shipping manifests up from the printer accidently?

  Jenna separated the pages and set them on the blotter. Something wasn’t making sense. Jenna just wasn’t sure what it was.

  She continued looking at the stack of papers. The next page was a single page of numbers, dates, and dollar amounts. None of the lines had company names next to them, but Jenna recognized some of the monetary figures. She still couldn’t make sense of everything on the page. There were no acc
ount numbers or dates that she recognized, but instinct told her this was the key to what Beth knew, and it might help her to figure out what the woman had done with the data she collected.

  Jenna logged back onto the corporate server through the back door she spent several months creating. It was a stroke of genius. She couldn't help but admire her own handiwork.

  The secret entrance into the server was undetectable. Well, virtually undetectable. A professional hacker might be able to find it, but the average idiot in the company tech department wouldn't have a clue, even if they did stumble onto it. Except Jenna was beginning to think Beth might not have been the average idiot. No, she was much smarter than that. Just not as smart as Jenna. She would figure this out.

  Once into the server files, Jenna traced a route to Beth’s computer logs. She examined the logs, looking for one of the dollar amounts. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest when she found an invoice that matched. None of the other numbers on the invoice corresponded with anything on the page, but instinct told her she was on the right path.

  Digging into the server logs, Jenna found that Beth had indeed accessed Stone Mountain’s accounting files and she opened the invoice that Jenna now looked at. Stone Mountain was an office furniture vendor; one of their biggest clients, and also the company from which Jenna had embezzled the most money. They didn’t know it, but Stone Mountain paid for her house. All of it. There was no mortgage, and Jenna occasionally jokingly called it Stone Manor. Michael thought she was referring to the extensive stonework Jenna selected during the design phase, but even that was a nod to the company that made the luxurious home possible.

  Beth accessed the company files. Now, what did she do with them?

  Jenna scanned through the logs looking for any indication of data transfers or even just print commands. Nothing. No transfer protocol. No trail to follow at all. It was as if Beth looked at the file, and then closed it. It was normal-looking behavior, but Jenna knew that couldn't be the case. This was an account that Beth had specifically been told not to work on. She had no reason to have any activity associated with Stone Mountain.