by Karis Walsh
“It’s my work,” Merissa said. “My personal drawings and plans. No one has any right to take them from me.”
“Who was going to try?”
“Karen said the lawyers were going to confiscate all our files. They’d go through them and give us back anything that didn’t belong to the firm.” Merissa examined her hand without meeting Billie’s eyes. “I was trying to be helpful and save them the trouble of sifting through all the paperwork.”
“Very kind of you,” Billie said. She didn’t need years of police experience to tell her Merissa was holding something back. She leaned forward and poked through the contents of the box, as wary as if there might be a ticking bomb inside. “I understand why you might want to clear out some things from your office, especially if the office will be closed for the time being and if the lawyers might not be sure what items are yours and what rightfully belong to the firm. But…” She drew the word out for several moments. “If there’s anything illegally obtained, whether you took it by accident or not, we need to return it right away. And I’m just adding the by accident phrase to protect you when you’re inevitably sued for stealing documents from the company.”
Merissa gave a derisive snort. “Stealing documents. Really. Pfft. ” She made a beseeching gesture with her hands. “Although, I might have—by accident—gotten some of Dennis’s files mixed in with mine when I passed through his office to exit out the window.”
Billie covered her face with her hands while she tried to come up with some way to get Merissa out of this mess. Nothing came to mind. Hargrove was going to have her drawn and quartered for letting Merissa do this while she was supposed to be on guard duty.
She dropped her hands and sat straight again. “Be sure to use that wide-eyed innocent expression when you attempt to explain this to the jury. Even so, though, they might ask if the route through his office window was your usual one.”
“It’s a shortcut to the coffee shop,” Merissa said, batting her eyelashes.
Billie fought for a moment, and then gave in to her laughter. “Okay, tell me the truth. Why did you steal his files?”
“I thought they might have some clue in them. Some way to tell if Dennis was in trouble, or why anyone would want to hurt him.”
Billie’s heart wrenched when she saw the dejected expression on Merissa’s face. The eyelash batting had been an obvious joke, and just as clearly she was now being honest. She had lost someone very close to her and wanted to understand why. Billie could relate to the need for answers more than Merissa knew.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said after giving the problem some thought. She wanted to extricate Merissa from the trouble she’d be in while at the same time help her find some closure. What harm would it do to look at papers Dennis had in his office? “You’re going to call Karen and tell her you went through some files you had at your house and you found some that belonged to Dennis. Maybe you had them here to review and forgot about them until now. And then you will return all of them.”
Merissa opened her mouth, likely to protest, and Billie held up a hand to stop her. “Before you give them back, though, I think it would be wise to go over them quickly. To make sure none of your own papers are mixed in.”
“I think that’s a brilliant idea,” Merissa said with a happier smile than Billie had seen yet. “Will you go through them with me? I might miss something a cop would notice.”
“Yeah, you’ve seen where I live,” Billie said with an answering grin. “I’m clearly an expert when it comes to urban renewal.”
“You’ve got the before part down cold,” Merissa said, fishing through the box and dumping a pile of folders on the table in front of Billie. “These sketches will show you the afters.”
While Billie opened the first file, Merissa sorted the rest of the box’s contents. Two manila folders, lots of files, and some scrap papers. Merissa pulled out a date book and set the box on the floor beside her. Apparently the rest was hers.
Dennis had been fairly organized, and Billie quickly figured out the files. He had sketches and preliminary plans, a list of notes from staff meetings, and the final plans and a contract from the builder, all carefully kept in order. Some projects never got out of the development phase, and others were in progress. A handwritten memo in black ink on the outside of each folder gave the dates for each meeting and draft deadline. She had a mishmash of dates in front of her. Some of the files Merissa had pulled during her foray into the world of crime were from three or more years ago, and others were more recent.
“I don’t know for sure what I’m seeing here,” Billie said. She handed Merissa one of the older files. “Walk me through this.”
“I had just started at the firm when Dennis was negotiating this project,” Merissa said, looking at the sketches and not the date. She set two drawings side by side. “This is what he proposed for the site, and this is what he drew up after getting input from the contractor and investors. You can see some of the design elements are the same, but the floor plan was changed to make larger office suites.”
“Is this common?”
“Compromise?” Merissa asked. Billie nodded. “Yes. It’s part of the process. Not my favorite part, but a necessary one if we want to get the financial backing we need.”
“Okay, then look at this folder from two months ago. Here are some sketches from your meetings.”
“Oh,” Merissa said with a soft exhale. She picked up the piece of paper and ran her fingers softly over the lines of the drawing. “He put most of my ideas in here. The way the bungalows are grouped around a central courtyard and you can access any of them by these paths here and here. This site is near the hospital, and we wanted to create a complex for medical offices.”
“It’s beautiful,” Billie said. “Very open and inviting.”
“I guess I wanted to make it pretty and comforting,” Merissa said, putting the paper aside. “I imagined nervous people going there, maybe getting bad news or going through scary tests. I wanted the setting to help them through the process, make them feel just a little calmer and more hopeful.”
Billie was quiet, watching Merissa talk. She was passionate about her work and had the people who would be using the small parts of the world she created in the front of her mind. She just didn’t always think about the people who were being ousted to make way for her visions.
“Do you know who used to live on this property before it was flattened?”
Merissa rubbed her hand over her face. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Your best friend and the hundred homeless cats she rescued?”
Billie laughed. “No. Actually this one was a vacant lot. But you should know what you’re destroying every time you create something new.”
Merissa rolled her eyes at the mini-lecture. “Did you have a point to showing me this project?”
“Yes,” Billie said as she pulled another sketch out of the file and unfolded it. “This is what Dennis actually proposed at his meeting with this Edwin Lemaine guy.”
Merissa took the paper from Billie. “He’s the contractor Dennis uses most often, but he…Wait, this sketch is from a project he did several years ago, for some business offices. The scale of the rooms is changed a little, but it’s basically the same plan. It must have been put in the wrong folder.”
“Look at the date.”
Merissa frowned and started pulling files from Billie’s stack. “These are the same, as well. Everything from the past six months or so is just a recycled version of other projects. Our recommendations and ideas are in his original drawings, but only a few little elements are added to the final ones. I can see some of my touch in these”—Merissa put three sketches on the table and pointed to cornices and windows—“but otherwise, they’re nothing like the vision we had as a group.”
“Is that normal? Wouldn’t you have noticed this before?”
“Dennis did all negotiations on his own. This current project was the first time he was going to let me take pa
rt. I knew when he signed contracts, but I never saw these final plans. I just assumed he’d gone with the proposal we’d come up with, except for the minor compromises he had to make.”
“Wouldn’t you notice when the buildings started going up?”
“Of course, but the lag time between concept and actual building is huge, so none of these have even broken ground yet.”
Merissa silently shuffled through the sketches. Billie opened the manila folders to give Merissa time to process what she was seeing. She pulled out several blank legal forms and a few handwritten notes.
“He was slipping,” Merissa said, barely loud enough to be heard. “For at least a year, maybe more. I can’t tell without seeing more files, though. His designs are poor, and there are mistakes a contractor would need to fix. He’s just copying old plans with minor changes for size and to add some of my ideas, but even those are just tacked on and not in a practical or visually effective way. It’s like watching someone’s mind go…”
Billie put her hand on Merissa’s shoulder, hearing the anguish in her voice. “Had you noticed anything different in person? Did he seem more confused or tired lately?”
“No. Well, he took a few personal days scattered over the past few months. Nothing unusual for your average person, but before that I’d never seen him take a sick day. He claimed he was spending more time with Karen because they were working on their marriage, but maybe something else was going on.”
Billie put the forms she had found on the table, covering the sketches. “He was planning to sell the firm, Merissa. He’s got the paperwork here, but nothing is filled in.”
“So we have no idea who was going to buy it?” Merissa picked up one of the documents with a shaking hand.
“No, but he has a list of clauses he wanted to add, and he uses she and her in them. If he was starting to involve you in the business more, he might have been preparing to hand over the company to you.”
“Karen said it was what he wanted,” Merissa murmured. “What were the clauses?”
Billie squinted at the paper in her hand. “I can’t decipher his writing well, but something about monthly financial audits by an independent party and a requirement to use a minimum of three contractors every year. Do they sound like normal expectations?”
“I don’t recall the firm ever having an audit. We had an accountant who would come during tax time and twice a month for payroll, but nothing more elaborate. And he usually used Lemaine, except for our current project.”
“What was different about this one?”
“He said Jeff Kensington might be more suitable for my style of planning. And something about it being time to try someone new.”
Billie looked through the pages again, trying to make sense of what they’d discovered. Was Dennis’s decision to change contractors due to his decision to sell, or were all his choices related to the decline Merissa was noticing now, as she looked through his drawings?
“Was any of this worth killing for?” Merissa asked, saying aloud what Billie was wondering in her own mind.
“I don’t know,” she said. And until she knew for sure, she couldn’t guarantee Merissa’s safety. If someone would kill Dennis because of the changes he was going through, what would they do when they learned Merissa had seen the files? She put everything back in order and stacked the folders in a neat pile. “We need to get these back to Karen. The information in here isn’t a secret since the contracts are signed and the plans are already on file with the city.”
She took the forms and handwritten list of clauses out of Merissa’s hand and shoved them back into the manila folders. The information on them, scant as it was, might be dangerous to Merissa because she had likely been part of Dennis’s plan for the firm. But was he trying to protect her, somehow, with these clauses, or trying to protect a secret of his own? “These are blank forms and a few scrawled notes. Nothing to do with the business. For the time being, let’s consider them missing.”
She tucked the folders under the sofa’s cushion. She wouldn’t hide them forever, just long enough to figure out what exactly had been going on with the Morgan Group, and how it affected Merissa. She was taking yet one more step away from her old life by hiding this information. How far would Merissa lead her? How far was she willing to go?
Chapter Thirteen
Merissa walked into the barn the next morning wearing a blazer and gray slacks, with her portfolio tucked under one arm. Billie was in the central aisle, grooming Legs after their trail ride, and Jean-Yves was next to her putting a saddle on Juniper. Billie took one look at her in her business attire and gave a long-suffering, eye-rolling sigh.
Merissa held up one hand. “Spare me the dramatics,” she said, hiding a grin at Billie’s exaggerated annoyance. Well, maybe it wasn’t exaggerated, but it was still amusing. “I was going to sneak out while you were riding, but I didn’t this time.”
She had considered doing just that, and until this morning she hadn’t been sure whether she would tell Billie she was leaving or run off like she’d done the day before. Last night, after they’d gone through Dennis’s files, she’d spent hours lying on her quilted bedspread and staring at the ceiling while she thought about Dennis, their past, and her uncertain future. She wasn’t sure what to do with the information she’d gotten yesterday, but she needed to know more before she could make a decision. When she’d called Karen about the missing files, she’d asked a few vague questions about Dennis and the company, but Karen hadn’t given her any more information. She’d sounded unfazed about the files, and asked Merissa to drop them at the front desk of the office whenever she was in Tacoma.
Merissa had immediately called both Kensington and Lemaine and told them she was thinking of buying the business. She asked for meetings this morning and both eagerly accepted, despite the short notice. Of course they would. The amount of money they’d make from an alliance with the Morgan Group, whether she or Dennis was leading it, was worth an impromptu meeting or two.
Since she’d already gotten Billie involved in the file theft, something Billie clearly wasn’t happy about, she had originally planned to leave her behind again. But the guilt of dragging Billie along with another scheme was outweighed by the betrayed expression she’d likely see on Billie’s face when she finally came home. She’d be up-front about her meetings, and Billie could decide whether to come with her or to stay behind. Either way, Merissa was going.
“I have appointments with Kensington and Lemaine today,” she said, trying to look anywhere but at the pulsing beat near Billie’s jawbone. She must be grinding her teeth with frustration. “Both are in public places, and I’m just getting a feel of what our relationship will be if I buy the firm. This is a completely reasonable and expected course of action given the amount of money I’ll be expected to pay for Dennis’s company. It would almost look more suspicious if I didn’t meet with them.”
Her logic had sounded infallible last night, when she was alone, but Billie didn’t look swayed by it. “What’s your end goal here, Merissa? Are you going to accuse them of killing Dennis and hope they confess?”
“No.” Merissa was telling the truth. She didn’t have any sort of plan, just a desire to get a feel for the two men in person and to learn more about what had been going on in Dennis’s life. If she happened to stumble across a clue or two, all the better. “I’m going to show them my sketch for the new project and get their input. And then I’ll come right back out to the car where you’ll be crouching in the backseat.”
Billie tossed her brush into the wooden tack trunk and unsnapped the crossties from Legs’s halter. “I’ll sit in plain sight in the front seat. And I’m only going along with this for two reasons. One, I believe you when you say you’ll go even if I try to stop you, and two, you’re right that this would be a reasonable step for anyone about to buy a business.”
“How much did it pain you to say I’m right?” Merissa asked with a laugh as Billie led Legs into her stall. She felt a sa
gging sense of relief that Billie would be going with her. She hadn’t realized how tense she was about the meetings until just now. She’d met Edwin in passing, when he’d come to the firm’s offices, but she only knew Jeff by hearsay. Maybe she’d be more confident now if she’d been involved with Dennis’s negotiations from the beginning, but she had a feeling Dennis hadn’t wanted her or anyone else to see him losing his edge. She had thought he was finally letting her be more involved because he was willing to give up a little control to her, but now she wondered if his condition—whatever it was—was getting worse and he felt he had to move some responsibility to her shoulders.
“Do you mind taking Juniper on a short trail ride, Jean-Yves?” Billie asked.
“Not at all,” he answered. He was already swapping Billie’s saddle for his own. The mare danced as he buckled her girth loosely. “I’ll let her have a short gallop along the track first, to work off some of this energy.”
“Good idea. Remember she’s still a little nervous walking through water. If you go on the trail that crosses the stream, be sure to—”
Merissa grabbed Billie’s arm and pulled her down the aisle. “Have a good ride, Jean-Yves,” she called.
“But—”
“We’re going to be late if we don’t hurry. Besides, he has more horse knowledge than the two of us put together. He’ll probably have Juniper happily doing laps in the pool by the time we get back.”
“Fine,” Billie said, allowing Merissa to pull her along toward the car. “Where are these meetings of yours?”
“Kensington’s office is in Gig Harbor,” Merissa said, starting the car and heading out. “Lemaine is in Tacoma, just on the other side of the bridge.”
“Okay. Let’s go over exactly what you’re going to say.”
Merissa gave the speech she’d spent most of last night preparing. “I’m interested in taking over the firm, but I don’t have Dennis’s experience with the business end of submitting proposals and working with investors to solidify plans. Would you please take me through the process and give me some input on these sketches?”