Hard to Trust

by Wendy Byrne

  "Oh, right. Where are my manners? Congratulations," I said. "I hope you two will be very happy together."

  In hell.

  He nodded and studied me as if he were going to take a test later. His scrutiny made me hyper-conscious of my jeans, T-shirt and flour-dusted apron. My face was no doubt shiny from the heat in the kitchen. I had been working for five hours without much of a break and hadn't bothered with make-up. I wasn't entirely sure I'd brushed my hair before I had pulled it up into a messy knot.

  "I've missed you," Dylan said, moving around the center island. His hand reached up, and he touched my cheek. "You really are beautiful, Miranda. You look amazing."

  The touch sparked something, but it was a memory, not an emotion. His gaze moved over me from my feet to my face and reflected the approval I no longer sought. The ten pounds I constantly battled and stressed over when I was with Dylan had melted away after I was arrested, along with another ten that I didn't need to lose. The unjustly-accused diet was good for unnatural and unhealthy weight loss.

  "You should go. Your fiancée is waiting."

  His hand dropped. "Sorry," he said, giving me a smile. "You're right. Is there anything—can I—do you need anything?"

  Dylan's stammered offer threw me off balance. He was always so poised and polite. He truly seemed at a loss about what to do with me.

  "Yes," I said, before I could change my mind and talk myself out of it. "I need a job. I can't even get a call back."

  "Where have you applied?"

  I listed several banks and investment houses, and Dylan nodded. "I'll see what I can find. I'll make some calls."

  He walked to the kitchen door and paused. "Take care," he said. "I'll call you soon and let you know if I hear of any openings."

  "Thanks, Dylan."

  He disappeared behind the door, and the breath left my body. I hadn't realized how tense it was being around him until he was out of sight.

  Marie burst through the door and stood, her hands on her hips.

  "What did that little bastard want?"

  I didn't know how to answer that. It was difficult to believe that he had an attack of conscience for how he treated me, since he rebounded so quickly. It was the first time I'd seen him in more than a year. In that time, I had only spoken to him once, and that was to arrange to pick up my things from his house. He'd already packed them and made arrangements to have them delivered to me, so even that was a quick phone call.

  Why had he bothered to apologize for Katrina? Was it an inherent need to avoid ugly unpleasantness, drilled into him by his mother? Not that I cared, if he could help me get back to a real job and start earning the money I needed to repay Aunt Marie for my legal bills.

  "He's going to help me find a job."

  CHAPTER THREE

  The courtyard at Robert Fogg's office was quiet except for the crunch of leaves under my boots. The red leaves from the Japanese maple trees littered the grey stone walkway and fell into the low dark green hedge that lined the square entry to the building. I had seen this courtyard through all the seasons—summer, fall, winter, spring—then summer again. During the year leading up to my trial, I trudged in nearly every day to work in the conference room and study the documents the government had seized from Patterson Tinker.

  When the FBI raided the office the previous spring and arrested me, my boss, Tim Norquist, and his boss, Ralph Tinker, Aunt Marie insisted that I retain the best criminal defense attorney in the city. But that guy was too expensive, and Ralph hired him right away. So I drained all my accounts, sold my car, gave up my expensive condo, and moved into the apartment over Aunt Marie's garage. And was still short of funds to retain a lawyer.

  Fortunately, Rob was a long-time friend of Aunt Marie's, and he practiced criminal defense. He hadn't done a white-collar criminal case before, though. His career had been built on defending bank robbers, drug traffickers, and gunrunners. He knew how to try a case in federal court. And I knew my way around the investment firm's files, so I could help him understand the voluminous records the government had seized. Even with my promise to act as my own paralegal, I still had to borrow money from Aunt Marie to pay Rob. He had expenses—rent, insurance, and payroll for his small staff—Sarah Girard, his paralegal; Theresa McFarren, his secretary; and Burton Worthington, the investigator.

  I'd just been fired and was under indictment in a federal fraud case. Employers weren't beating my door down to offer me jobs. So I had time on my hands.

  I let myself into the office and found it unnaturally quiet. Theresa's desk was empty and tidy, which was a good sign that she was gone for the day.

  "Miranda? That you? I'm in the back."

  Rob was working in the large conference room, an open book on his lap and his boots propped up on the long table. He gave me a friendly wave and motioned for me to join him. As I walked in, I heard the soft thumping of a dog's tail from under the table. I reached down to pet Basil, Rob's oversized Golden Retriever. He raised his head and gave my hand a sloppy wet greeting, sighed and returned to his nap.

  The office was quiet and Rob was alone. His staff kept their own hours, though, so Sarah and Burton could have been out in the field or working at home.

  "Have a seat," Rob said, waving me toward a seat at the conference table. "How have you been?"

  I sat and shrugged. "I've been fine."

  He put his feet on the ground and the book on the table. "Is that true? Your aunt says you're still looking for work."

  His kind eyes were studying me intently, and I squirmed. Before I hired him as my lawyer, I'd seen him around the bakery for years and knew he and Aunt Marie were friends. Rob was a tall, rangy man. He looked like he'd spent his youth on a ranch, which was the case. Before he went to law school, he'd been a farrier and a roper on the rodeo circuit. He looked a little ill at ease in a suit, but he knew how to do his job. He waited patiently for me to answer his question, and I knew he'd wait forever, and that I'd eventually give in.

  With a sigh, I nodded. "Yeah, I'm having some problems getting back into the workforce. I've sent in dozens of resumes and can't even get a call back from most of them."

  Rob's face softened. "It's going to be hard to brush off the scandal for a while. Have you considered doing something else, besides finance?"

  I frowned. My education didn't make me qualified to do much other than work in investment banking.

  "I hadn't really thought about it. What would I do?"

  "You were a damn good paralegal," Rob said. "Have you considered going to law school? Becoming a lawyer?"

  I tilted my head. "I don't know if I'm cut out for that, Rob. I mean, maybe it's because it's still so soon after my experience with the justice system, but I think it would be too stressful."

  He nodded and looked thoughtful. "I may be getting a new fraud case soon. If you're interested, I could use your help sorting through the discovery and making sense of it. If you think you'd want to do that."

  The thought of burying myself in paperwork in Rob's small conference room, dubbed the "War Room," and looking for ways to fight against the federal government's narrative made me want to throw myself out the window. It wouldn't do any good, though. Rob's office was on the ground floor. Plus, I really needed the money.

  "I guess I could do that," I said.

  Rob threw back his head and laughed. "Don't get too excited. It won't be as hard as working on your own case—you can keep your distance. It's not going to be your own life on the line. Plus, since you figured out all the fancy new software, you can take the laptop and work from home if you'd like."

  That fancy new software had been bought and paid for by my retainer. The FBI had seized a huge trove of paper and electronic records from Patterson Tinker in its raid, and all of that was made available to Rob and his staff for preparing my defense. Because the federal agents weren't sure how deep or wide the fraud scheme was, they grabbed everything they could, sweeping in vast quantities of client information, banking records, co
mputer hard drives, email servers, phone logs, you name it. A portion of the information—about 110,000 pages worth—was culled out by the government, scanned, and provided to Rob as evidence related to the charges against me. The rest was in a warehouse, where we could go review it. Or rather, where Rob, Sarah, and Burton could review it. I wasn't allowed. I guess they were afraid that I might eat something vital.

  I was afraid that there was something in there that I needed to prove my innocence, so I sold the last asset I had—a mountain cabin with a sliver of a view of Lake Tahoe. It had been in my dad's family for sixty years and was the only thing I'd ever gotten from anyone with the last name of Vaughn. If any of the Vaughns could have been bothered to write a will, I wouldn't have inherited it. But thanks to their laziness and the laws of intestate succession, I became the owner of the rustic one-bedroom cabin with single-pane windows, leaky pipes, a roof made of papier-mâché, and a charm that bears found irresistible.

  But I wasn't going to enjoy the cabin while spending a decade in federal prison, so it went on the market, and I used the proceeds to pay for a service to come in and scan the rest of the documents in the warehouse and convert them to electronic versions that we could search, and the software to manage that much electronic data. It wasn't cheap. But it was worth it. I learned more about Patterson Tinker than I had ever thought possible.

  "Think about it, anyway," Rob said. "I can't use that high-tech software for my usual clientele. It would be good to put it to use, and if this new client decides to retain me, I'll probably need it."

  "What about Sarah? She knows how to use it."

  He waved a hand. "She's already busy with the usual research and writing. It would be easier to have one person devoted to this job."

  "I'll think about it," I said, though I wondered if he was just taking pity on me.

  He must have heard his former clients complain a thousand times that they couldn't find work, but most of his clients were busted for drugs or bank robbery or identity theft. That narrowed one's employment options. I'd been cleared of the charges—at least in court.

  "So you're here to pack up the War Room today?" Rob asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table.

  "Yeah, Theresa said you're going to need to prepare for another trial soon. I know I should have come by sooner, but I guess I was putting it off."

  He smiled and patted my hand. "No problem. I could have done it myself, but I thought you'd probably be better at keeping it organized. Not that I'll need to return to it, since we don't have an appeal to worry about. But the state bar says I have to keep all my records for five years. Or is it seven years? Anyway, I put a stack of boxes in there, but just give a holler if you need more."

  I left him in the large conference room with Basil and went down the hall to the windowless room with the "authorized personnel only" sign on the door. The tiny room was lit with fluorescent lights and lined with banker boxes, labeled with tags that read "United States v. Vaughn." I'd spent about nine months in this room, sorting through the boxes and staring at the laptop screen until my eyes were dry. Just being back here made my heart beat faster and my stomach fill with dread—a Pavlovian response.

  Rob had thrown a couple of empty boxes on top of the table dominating the middle of the room and had scribbled out the old labels with a black felt-tip pen. They lay haphazardly on stacks of papers and folders that would need to be organized before they went to storage. I started at the far end of the table and worked my way to the open door.

  I had nearly cleared the table when Rob and Basil appeared in the doorway.

  "I'm heading out for the night. You're welcome to stay as late as you want, or you can come back on Monday—your choice." He leaned on the doorframe and rested his hand on Basil's head, stroking the dog's ears.

  "I'm close to finishing. If you don't mind, I'd like to get it all done tonight," I said.

  "No problem. You still have a key?"

  I wondered how many criminal defense attorneys gave their clients keys to the office.

  "Of course. The alarm code still the same?"

  "It is," he said and started to turn away. "Oh, and I almost forgot. Can you check the laptop for any electronic files? I know the external hard drives have all the discovery on them, but we had pulled copies to the laptop for trial. I want to make sure our only electronic copies are on the external drives in storage so we're not violating the protective order."

  "Sure, I can do that," I said. "But how would that be violating the protective order?"

  "We're not supposed to copy the files except as needed for the case, and now that we're done with your case, I don't want any extra copies floating around. I want to be sure that all of the evidence in your case is in these boxes or on those external drives. Any extra copies of documents put in the shredder."

  "Got it," I said, wiping my hands on my jeans and standing up. "Thanks for giving me some extra time to get this cleaned up."

  He gave me a wink, and I could see the young charming cowboy in his eyes. "Don't stay too late. It's Friday night. Go have some fun."

  He locked the office door behind him as he left, and I returned to my task. Before long, my stomach was protesting the lack of dinner. The boxes were labeled. I entered each container's label and content into a chart for Theresa, in case she ever needed to order something from storage. All that was left was the laptop.

  As I waited for the computer to turn on, the cell phone in my pocket buzzed. It was such a rare occasion anymore, the sound startled me. The caller's number was blocked, and I expected a telemarketer when I answered.

  "Miranda? It's me, Dylan."

  The sound of his voice over the phone made my heart skip. That, too, was only a memory, though. I had missed him for a long time, and then I had hated him. But now, I needed him. Which made me hate him a little more.

  "Hi, Dylan."

  "How are you?"

  Annoyed with having to make small talk with you.

  "I'm fine, thank you. What's going on?"

  He cleared his throat, and my heart sank. It was a nervous tic of his—a way of avoiding giving bad news. When he dumped me, he sounded like he was in the later stages of tuberculosis.

  "I, uh, made some calls, like I said I would. You know, about any job openings."

  He really didn't even need to continue. I knew what was coming.

  "Here's the thing. The industry, you know, it's still rebounding from the recession."

  Bullshit. Corporate profits for banks were as obscenely huge as they'd been at the height of the market. Did he think I didn't still read the Wall Street Journal?

  "So, there's that. Plus, you know, you've been out of the game for a year."

  You're so full of shit. I was falsely accused of a crime. Set up by someone at Patterson Tinker to take the fall.

  "And the thing is, well, you're sort of radioactive right now. Given some time, that will probably change. But right now? Well, it's going to be a tough sell to get you in the door."

  My face flushed. Radioactive? That's not what I expected to hear. I mean, I knew it was going to be tough, but I figured there was a chance. I wasn't going in without credentials or experience. I graduated near the top of my class. I did excellent work, knew what I was doing. Sure, my best references were en route to federal prison, but I had been cleared of all charges.

  I tried to talk, but my throat was closed up like a fist.

  "Listen, Miranda, if I hear of anything, I'll let you know." He cleared his throat again in the uncomfortable silence that followed.

  "Thanks, Dylan."

  I didn't know what else to say. I wanted to rage, wanted to scream at him. But it wasn't his fault and I couldn't burn that bridge. As much as I hated to admit it, Dylan was the only person in the banking industry who would return my calls.

  He said a hasty goodbye and hung up, and I sat in the small airless conference room, surrounded by the proof that I hadn't done what they said I did. That I wasn't a swindler, a c
on artist, a fraudster.

  Or was it proof? I remembered one of the jurors quoted in the local newspaper after the acquittal had said that she wasn't convinced that I didn't know what Ralph and Tim were doing, but the government hadn't proved it beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury had deliberated for four days, and the testimony of the victims who lost their life savings had almost swayed them. Almost, but not quite. At the time I read it, I didn't care about that nuance because I was so happy to not be going to prison. Now I understood that the gulf between being cleared and being found not guilty was going to haunt me. Maybe forever.

  I leaned forward and put my forehead on the smooth wood surface of the table, trying to quiet the roaring in my head. All my years of working crappy waitressing jobs to put myself through college, all my hard work at Patterson Tinker, everything that Aunt Marie had sacrificed for me—it was all swirling down the drain. I'd be stuck making apple turnovers at the Sugar Plum Bakery and dodging my former colleagues until everyone forgot that I was the woman who was arrested on fraud charges. Which was approximately never.

  The laptop sitting next to my head beeped, and I sat up and reluctantly opened the electronic discovery software. It looked like I had no choice. I'd be working for Rob, reliving my past in his new white-collar criminal cases. I was going to get reacquainted with the computer I'd spent so much time with. I navigated to the folders that contained my case, and my finger hovered over the delete command.

  I paused for a moment, my earlier discussion with Dylan echoing in my head.

  I had been set up. I had known it as soon as I saw the evidence against me. Someone knew that I was in charge of transferring client funds and had set up an account in my name and used it to siphon off investments. I knew I hadn't done it. But it was someone with access to my computer, my information, my passwords. Ralph and Tim would have known enough to do it, and Rob had been successful in convincing the jury that they certainly had motive to set up an underling and lie on the stand about it.