Hank promised frequent updates, leaving Tam to pull her wits together. Hank hadn’t said it, but if that bad press unloaded on her, every time her name was mentioned the word lesbian would be appended in some way, milking homophobia until a full scale witch hunt was underway. She had no desire to be known as the Swinging Sapphic CEO.
She triaged the work she and Mercedes had to get through tonight, or people would notice. It didn’t feel as if she could hold things together much longer. Hank’s unequivocal support was a welcome balm to her spirit. Her people trusted her, and would stand by her. But if she was going down anyway, she didn’t want to pull them under with her.
The best solution was not to sink.
Mercedes knocked and bustled in with a white sack that oozed out delectable aromas. “Soul food, that’s what you need.”
“You got Dave’s.”
She grinned. “I got Dave’s.” She slid the covered plates out of the bag and handed the top one to Tam. “Eat a bit, and then we’ll get to work again.”
By the middle of the wedge of corn bread Tam thought she might survive. She flashed on last night’s dinner. It had been so relaxed, so easy.
“So who is she?”
Mercedes’ question caught Tam by surprise. She lifted an eyebrow.
“A little bird told me you were necking with some girl in the elevator on Sunday. ’Course most people don’t know the next day you had a black eye. And now you’re smiling like you’ve just seen a rainbow.” She forked up some link sausage, but her gaze remained on Tam’s face.
She shouldn’t have underestimated Mercedes’ intelligence-gathering network. “Let’s put the reports aside for a bit. Can you stay a little late?”
“Sure. My mom will get the kids to bed. What do you need?”
“I need a report of the client cases in prosecution phase where someone on our staff would testify in the next… Let’s say the next two to six weeks. Start there.”
“That shouldn’t be hard. Ray is—”
“You can’t ask Ray or anyone else. Has to be you.”
“Okay. Do I get to know what’s up yet? Hank is your best friend lately.”
Tam savored a mouthful of smoky ham, feeling an inordinate amount of gratitude for smoke, ham and Mercedes. She wanted to share this meal with Kip while they were out on the lake some sunny summer afternoon. She didn’t want to be here, dealing with this.
She hoped Mercedes would understand. “What you don’t know you won’t have to deny knowing.”
“But something’s up. Hank and Diane know. Ted?”
She shook her head. “Flu. Just as well.”
“Cary?”
She shook her head again. “Not her bailiwick.” She thought wryly that her head of finance was just about the only accounting-related person who hadn’t been in the file room in the last two months, which was as it should be.
“You want me to put that list together for you first? It’ll take me some time. I don’t know my way around the tracking system like I should.”
“I know. I would normally expect you to delegate this so you can bring me my lunch.” She found a grin. “Dinner in this case.”
“You spoiled Yankee,” Mercedes said. She mopped up the last of her baked beans with her biscuit. “Let me get going.”
As soon as Mercedes left the room, Tam reached for her phone. When Kip didn’t answer her mobile, she tried her desk extension. She listened to it ring, two, three times, then Kip answered.
“I have more—”
“Hi, Carol,” Kip interrupted. “This isn’t a good time. Can I get back to you?”
She could hear a hubbub near Kip—sounded like someone’s birthday. “Yes. A call here isn’t wise. Why don’t I call you on your mobile later tonight?”
“Yes, that will be fine.”
A raucous chorus of Happy Birthday—the Beatles’ version—started up before the line went dead.
She turned her attention to reports, but could not recall the last time she’d celebrated her birthday with a party. Probably because she wasn’t exactly sure when her birthday was.
Chapter Nine
When Tam pushed the last report away with her final notes she realized how late it was. Nearly eight o’clock. Mercedes had been gone for an hour, finally leaving what met Mercedes’ standards as an acceptable report on their cases currently being prosecuted.
She checked her voice mail, but there was no message from Kip, not that she expected one. She slipped Mercedes’ report into her briefcase and went all the way to her car before calling Kip. She answered on the second ring.
“I’m sorry to be so late.”
“No, not at all.” Kip sounded weary.
“I have additional information for you. You need to hear it.”
“I’m ready.”
“It’s…” Tam knew she could tell Kip over the phone, except she wanted to see Kip’s face when she explained there was a rumor that Tam was living the high life with other women. After the kiss that should have never happened, and the awareness that Kip still thought she might be a suspect, she wanted to plead her innocence in person. She craved Kip’s trust. And she shouldn’t, she knew that, but telling herself so wasn’t making a bit of difference.
“Do you need to tell me in person?” Kip’s voice softened. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“It’s essential.” Was that the truth? Tam wasn’t sure.
There was a long pause, then Kip said finally, “Then I suppose you had better come by.”
“I’ll be about twenty minutes,” she said.
She stared into the dark for a few minutes, knowing what she ought to do, which was call Kip back and tell her the information over the phone, then go home to a tall whiskey and her cold bed.
* * *
Kip stared at the phone for several minutes. She didn’t want to see Tamara and yet parts of her were scrambling around in what-should-I-wear mode. Right—what did those parts know that she didn’t?
She needed time to think. It had annoyed Meena that Kip so often would pull back from a decision and work through permutations. She’d complained, “It feels like you weigh everything on those scales of justice in your head—and I’m never on the winning side.”
Maybe it was a personality flaw. Looking at the world from arm’s length made her critical of her best friend’s mostly unemployed boyfriend and her shiftless father because she never got close enough to see any positive traits they might have. But it was a strength, too. With distance she could dispassionately examine complicated scenarios and find the black-and-white realities amidst the shades of gray. No amount of closeness would change the fact that her father was an unrepentant alcoholic whose promises were as sturdy as pie crust.
She had amazing focus, and she used it. So why in this case was it so hard?
She knew she shouldn’t, but she unwrapped and took several bites of the slice of birthday cake everyone had insisted she bring home. How screwed was that? She’d forgotten it was her own birthday. If not for her cubicle neighbors she might not have remembered until Saturday, when her calendar would remind her that she was due at Jen’s for dinner. Hello thirty-four.
Tamara would be here soon and she probably ought to stop eating just the frosting. A sugar buzz wasn’t helping. Her cell phone rang, which at least stopped her from the face-plant in the cake. She hoped that thinking of her father hadn’t caused him to call. It was always about money.
It wasn’t her father, but definitely a pest.
“Barrett, you owe me. You really do. I went the extra mile for you.”
“What is it now, Buck?”
“I had put a query into a couple of State Department databases—”
“I’m not sure I wanted to know that.”
“It’s public stuff. What do you take me for?”
She didn’t answer.
“Anyway, they lag bad on keeping up to date, and today some new listings of American nationals applying for waivers to open forei
gn corporations were posted. Your girl’s been busy.”
“Could you be a little more detailed?”
“I’m gonna get paid, right?”
He was as annoying as her father about money, but he at least was working for it. “Yes.”
“She and Wren Cantu—some crack thin supermodel—opened a corporation in the Bahamas six weeks ago.”
Kip was speechless. Her mouth tasted of acid.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes. Can you get copies?”
“Sure—public record for SFI of the Bahamas. You could have it in the morning.”
“I want a workup on Cantu, like the others.”
“Okay.” Buck sounded positively gleeful. “I did good?”
“Yeah.” Kip felt dead inside. “You did great. I appreciate it.”
Tamara was on her way. A confrontation seemed inevitable because Kip knew she would be unable to pretend everything was fine.
She willed her heart to start beating and her hands to stop shaking.
An offshore corporation in a country where hiding money was the only goal, where bank transfers in and out were some of the easiest in the world? Even if in the remote chance there was a legitimate reason for it to exist, Tamara should have told her about it.
Wren Cantu? Kip had seen her in a commercial for a fashion design reality TV show. A fitting companion, together they would make a striking couple.
Her lips burned at the memory of that kiss on the gangplank.
* * *
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been drumming her fingers on the table, but when the buzz came from downstairs she nearly jumped out of her skin. A deep breath was not the least bit calming.
Tamara looked tired. Exhausted even—it wasn’t just the poor light in the entryway. There were large circles under her eyes and deep lines grooved around her mouth. Stress obviously, but from guilt or innocence?
Kip was glad her tone was perfectly normal as she offered coffee, but Tam shook her head. “Let me hang up your coat at least,” she offered.
“Oh, thanks,” Tamara said absently, shrugging out of the thick Burberry tweed.
She felt surreptitiously in the pockets as she carefully hung it on the coat rack just inside her front door. No gun. No large packets of money. No spy style portable keyboard or any other hacker gadgets—what had she expected? A card printed with, “I did it”?
Tamara glanced into the kitchen. “Cake? I heard the singing, earlier, over the phone. Whose birthday was it?”
“Mine,” Kip said. “I had forgotten. I guess that explains why I’m single.” She led Tamara to the living room and took a seat in one of the two side chairs.
Tamara settled on the sofa opposite her, coiled tightly with her elbows on her knees. “So where are you?”
“You first,” Kip said. “What new information do you have?”
“The rumors have gotten worse and they’re specifically aimed at me.”
“What’s changed?”
“To be specific, all the senior managers are on the verge of leaving because I’m a tyrant and I’m stealing from the company.”
Kip sat like a stone. Was this disclosure just inoculating Kip in case she stumbled across those rumors? “Why would you do that?”
“To support a lifestyle that includes designer drugs and designer women.”
And there it was. Kip didn’t believe Tamara was a drug user. She had none of the signs. That part of the rumor was laughable. If that part was untrue, then maybe it was all a lie. But there was that small matter of a corporation in the Bahamas and Wren Cantu certainly seemed the epitome of a “designer” woman. If Buck hadn’t called she’d be ready to declare Tamara a non-suspect. But now… It was a good strategy: invent a big lie so nobody notices the part that’s the truth in plain sight. “And what do you say to that?”
Tamara’s face froze. Kip wished they were seated closer together, but knew she would still not be certain Tamara’s eyes were telling her any kind of truth.
Finally, Tamara said, “It’s a lie. I don’t have the time that kind of lifestyle takes. I hardly have time for work, let alone play. I don’t even have the time it takes to find the person who’s stealing from me.” Her voice rose. “Don’t you see, Kip? This highly personal rumor would take me out of a witness box. This entire scheme is about neutralizing me.”
She nodded. There were too many unwise words crowding in her mouth to speak.
“I have a list of the cases. The next three where I was going to give expert testimony are where we should focus. I would have started there anyway, but now we don’t have to waste time with anyone else’s cases.”
Kip rose long enough to take the sheaf of papers. Three were circled. Her numb brain read the lines without taking in more than the case names. She read them aloud. “Markoff, Sheames, Riley. I did a little work on Riley—some of the transfer traces. I wouldn’t have said he had connections like this.”
Tam nodded. “Of those three, Vernon Markoff’s the one with the shady associates. And still deep pockets because only his U.S. assets were frozen. We know he had Swiss funds, but those were gone before we got cooperation from Swiss authorities.”
“So he’s bought off an employee to do the inside doctoring—but that couldn’t be just anybody. Those were good fake jobs on the statements. Careful attention to detail.”
“An accountant or investigator seems likely. A cursory search could turn up large cash deposits in their account, or relatives with shiny new cars, mothers with debts paid, that sort of thing. And if that someone is one of the fifty people who shouldn’t have been in the accounting file room and was, then we’re getting to some solid ground, finally.”
Kip nodded.
“This means we’re close to finding the accomplice and the person who paid for it to be done. But not the money.” Tamara leaned forward. “Kip?”
“If I were reporting to my client,” she said slowly, “I would present this as a viable theory of the crime, yes.”
“But?” Tamara’s expression was openly puzzled.
Her tone was like lead. Tamara had said nothing about the corporation in the Bahamas. “I haven’t cleared you of suspicion.”
She gave absolutely no reaction for several moments, as if she hadn’t heard what Kip had said. Then she got up and went to the door.
Kip followed her, hurrying a little. “Tam? Did you hear me?”
She swung back abruptly. “Yes. Yes, I heard you. I heard everything you didn’t say, too.” She grabbed the papers from Kip’s hand. “You’re thinking this could all be an elaborate fake.”
Her voice rising, Kip protested, “It’s what I do. It’s what you pay me for.”
“Yes.” Tamara’s voice was thick with disappointment. “It’s what I pay you for.”
“You can’t… It’s not fair for you to imply that I’m in the wrong for doing exactly what you require of your employees. You can’t blame me for not forgetting that’s what I am.”
“You’re right. I was hoping for faith and that’s not part of the equation with you.”
Kip failed to keep her voice from trembling. “Faith isn’t part of this job. That’s why we’re who we are. That’s why our reputation is spotless. Facts.” She gestured at the papers in Tamara’s hand. “A chain of evidence. Those papers are not useful to me right now. They’re tainted because they’re provided by a suspect and I have to vet them. I don’t have the means to vet them, so they’re just confusing everything.”
“They cleared things up for me, because I know I’m innocent,” Tam retorted.
“Well it doesn’t for me.” Why did Tam have to be so tall? It was a disadvantage, having to tip her head back so far, but Kip stood her ground. She had never envisioned that she would be arguing about ethics in her own entryway with Tamara Sterling.
“I guess that means I’ll just keep gathering information for my own use, and fix this myself.” She snatched her coat off the rack.
“Don’t you dare
!” Kip swelled with anger. “You’ll make it impossible to prosecute the real thief!”
“So you do think it’s someone else—not me.”
Caught by her hasty words, Kip said, “And you make it impossible for me to prove it’s you, how convenient.”
“If that’s what I’m doing then why am I here? I could have covered my own tracks a dozen ways by now. Why bother trying to trick you?”
“For fun, maybe.”
“Kip.” The fight left Tamara’s eyes. “You’re not just… It’s not…”
“Who is Wren Cantu to you?” She hoped she didn’t sound as hurt as she felt.
Tamara’s jaw dropped. “Is that what this is about? That stupid gossip program?”
“Gossip program?”
“It was some minor story on SLY, I guess. She was at a fundraiser we arranged in New York. I’ve never met the woman.”
“I’m not talking about gossip.” Kip was lightheaded.
“Then what? She’s nothing to me. I don’t know her. I didn’t fly to New York just to have breakfast with her, either.”
“I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking about the corporation in the Bahamas you two opened six weeks ago.”
Kip may have felt faint, but now Tamara looked it. She put her coat back on the rack and leaned heavily on it.
“Run that by me again?”
Kip knew she was looking at someone shocked to the core—but was it in overwhelmed innocence or the guilt of discovery? I can’t afford to trust her. But how could she be so drawn to someone she couldn’t trust? Someone who wasn’t who she said she was, who offered nothing as proof of her innocence but tainted sources?
“You, or whoever Tamara Sterling is,” she added bitterly, “and someone named Wren Cantu, opened an offshore corporation in the Bahamas six weeks ago. That’s according to the Department of State. I’ll have copies of the documents in the morning, and from an independent source.”
“I did no such thing,” Tamara said. “The Bahamas? Really, they’re banking is digital live now to law enforcement. Anyone wanting to hide their business would go to a dozen other jurisdictions.” She took a furious breath. “And I am Tamara Sterling.”
Above Temptation Page 12