"He's right, you know," Lily said, lifting her own drink for Leo's inspection. "Help yourself, and we'll see you shortly."
And without awaiting a reply, she spun on her heel and strode confidently out of the dining room without a backward glance.
* * *
Chapter Twenty
This was too weird.
As Leo watched Lily trace the steps of her employer in exactly the same manner in which the billionaire had strode out of the room himself, a wave of déjà vu washed over him. Man, it was as if one of them was a shadow of the other, something that frankly gave him the creeps. And because of that, he had no qualms about following their instructions regarding a drink. So when he approached the library a few minutes later, he was armed to the teeth with a Scotch and water, and he wasn't afraid to use it.
There. That oughta hold 'em off.
Kimball's library was, like the rest of the house, a study in conspicuous consumption. The fifteen-foot ceiling was a gridwork of elaborate, stylish molding, and the shelves were crammed with books, many of them leather bound. The furnishings were likewise overwhelmingly leather, and the mingling aromas of old books, and tanned hide, and mellow Scotch made Leo feel just so damned grateful to be alive.
As he stood in the doorway looking in from the hall, he saw Lily and Kimball on the far side of the room, framed by the massive Palladian window behind them and, beyond it, the illuminated landscaping outside. Their heads were bent in quiet conversation, and they seemed to be both troubled and resigned about whatever they were discussing. Neither had noted Leo's arrival, so he took a minute to study them in private.
Even if they weren't lovers anymore, there was an intimacy between them with which Leo wasn't sure he would ever be completely comfortable. Then he realized that in acknowledging such a feeling, he was allowing himself to think that he and Lily had a future together, and that simply wasn't the case at all. Whatever she had to tell him tonight, even if whatever that was excused or explained what she had been doing with Kimball's company over the years—and that was a pretty major if—he wasn't sure it would be enough to repair the damage that had been done to their newly generated feelings of trust and affection and fidelity for each other.
The damage had occurred in the roots of their relationship, and had cut deeply into those roots before their affection—okay, their love, he admitted grudgingly—for each other had had a chance to fully blossom. And that kind of wound almost never healed completely. The flower of their affections would have to be awfully sturdy to sustain such a blow.
And when the hell he had decided to become such a friggin' poet, Leo would never know. In addition to everything else Lily had done to him—made him fall in love with her, crawled into the center of his heart and rearranged all the furniture there, tied him up in knots—she'd made him whimsical. Dammit. He was never going to be the same.
He couldn't get over the change in her this evening. He just wished he could identify how, exactly, she had changed. There was an air of command about her that hadn't been there before, an unmistakable confidence in who and what she was. But precisely who and what she was still remained a mystery. As did so much else.
"So?" he said as he ambled into the room, feigning a casualness he didn't feel. "You have my undivided attention. Convince me not to take what I've found to the board of directors of Kimball Technologies, Inc. Tell your boss why you've been stealing money from him for years, and see what he has to say about it."
To Leo's surprise, Kimball didn't bat an eye at the allegation. Instead, he smiled as if Leo had just reminded him of an old joke he had enjoyed years ago.
"Yes, Lily, darling," he said, turning his attention to his secretary. "Do tell me. I'd love to hear all about it."
"That's funny," she replied, smiling in much the same way Kimball was. "You never wanted to hear about it before. You always told me, 'Lily. Darling. I don't want to know. Just do what you have to do.' "
"Yes, well, there was a reason for that, wasn't there?"
"Not a very good one."
"Lily. Darling. You—"
"Would somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?" Leo interrupted. He was getting tired of the by-play between employer and employee.
But instead of offering the explanation Leo had demanded, Lily turned to look at him full on and made a request—or was it a command?—of her own. "Before I spill my guts to Mr. Not-Freiberger, I'd like to know more about him," she said. "So, please tell us all about yourself, sir."
Leo inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly, but he never took his eyes from hers. Really, she was the one who owed the more important explanation here, not him. In spite of that, he supposed what she was asking wasn't unreasonable. And he really did want to clear the air about himself. Why? He still wasn't sure. But somehow, it seemed essential that there be no lies or misconceptions left between them.
"My full, real, name is Leonard Gustav Friday," he said.
"Gustav?" she echoed with the first genuine smile he'd seen from her all evening, obviously delighted by that scrap of knowledge. "Really?"
Leo wasn't nearly as delighted by it as she was, but he replied levelly, "Really."
She smiled coyly. "What were your parents thinking?" Before he could answer that he had no idea, that he had often wondered about that himself, she hurried on, "And tell me, Mr. Friday, what is it you do for a living?"
He hesitated, then said evasively, "I'm self-employed."
"As?"
Another hesitation, then, "I guess you could say I'm a private investigator."
"Could I say that?" The revelation seemed to surprise her for a moment, but then she nodded, as if it all suddenly made sense.
"What I investigate, though, is mostly white-collar-type crime that's financial in nature," he explained. "When businesses think money is disappearing too fast and too suspiciously, they call me in to find out where it's going."
"And that was what happened here," she guessed. "Schuyler's board of directors finally became suspicious?"
He nodded again. "You got a little too greedy this year, Miss Rigby. Fifty million bucks is kind of hard to hide."
"I don't see why it would be," she said mildly. "They didn't notice the sixty million the year before."
He gaped at her, his eyes widening. "Sixty?" he asked. "I only accounted for forty-two that year."
"Yes, and you only accounted for fifty from last year, didn't you?" she asked. Then she smiled, a teasing little smile that made his heart both hum with delight, and crinkle with distress. Because as nice as that smile was, it didn't quite reach her eyes, which remained cool and flat and angry. "Guess you're not as good as you thought, are you, Mr. Friday?"
Leo couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You mean there's more than fifty million dollars missing?"
"There's more than fifty million gone from the Kimball profits of last year, yes," she corrected him.
"What's the difference?"
She shrugged, completely unconcerned about the fact that she was confessing to an enormous amount of illegal activity. "The difference is that when something is missing, no one knows where it is. When something is gone, that may not necessarily be the case."
"And of course, you know where all the money is," Leo said bitterly, "because you took it."
"Oh, yes," she assured him. "I know where every last penny went, and yes, I'm the one who … appropriated it. You didn't quite find all my records, Mr. Freiber… Mr. Friday. Otherwise, this conversation wouldn't be necessary."
He deflated some at her readiness to discuss the particulars of her theft. Somehow, he'd been holding on to a thread of hope that all of this would come to make sense. Clearly, she just wanted to taunt him with her success, with the fact that she had so thoroughly outsmarted him, with the overwhelming amount of cash she had been able to collect. "So you're not denying any of it?" he asked halfheartedly.
"No. I'm not."
"You really did take the money."
"I rea
lly did funnel it off, yes."
"And what did you do with it?"
"Oh, I bought all kinds of things, Mr. Friday, you can't possibly imagine." She waved a hand breezily through the air as she continued, "I bought clothes and cars, stocks and bonds, real estate and houses—"
Leo grew sick to his stomach hearing the particulars of her shopping list. "You can stop there, Miss Rigby, I get the idea."
But she obviously wasn't quite finished yet. "I also bought some wonderful meals and entertainment. Oh, and athletic equipment, and college scholarships, and hospital equipment. In fact, I endowed an entire hospital wing one year. That was kind of fun."
Certain he was misunderstanding, Leo asked, "What?"
"And then there was the Best Chance School I started in West Philly. That's one I'm rather proud of. A full ninety percent of the students have gone on to become college graduates. It's really quite unprecedented."
A loud buzzing began humming at the back of Leo's brain, gradually growing louder and louder, threatening to drown out his rationality. "I'm afraid I don't understand, Miss Rigby… uh, Lily."
"No, I know you don't, Mr. Friday. That's why I'm trying to go slow. Now then. After the Best Chance School, there was the chair I endowed at Penn State for the School of Social Work. After that came the endowment for the International Educational Fund for the Children—or IEFC, as it's more familiarly known—which has built schools in twenty-three countries so far."
"Lily?" Leo interrupted, trying really, really hard to stay on track, but not quite succeeding in that particular quest.
"Wait, I'm not finished yet," she interrupted him right back. "There have been the annual—and anonymous, of course—donations to things like Habitat for Humanity, Amnesty International, PET A, the United Way… oh, the usual… and also quite a bit given to fund awareness campaigns for a variety of social causes. All in all—"
"Lily?" Leo tried again.
"Really, Mr. Friday, if you keep interrupting me, we'll be here all night. I have a full decade's worth of charitable donations to account for, and it's going to take some time."
"Charitable donations?" he repeated. "Are you trying to tell me that all that money you skimmed from the Kimball profits has gone for charitable donations?"
She nodded, smiling again, the gesture not quite so brittle as it had been before. "Yes, that's right."
"You expect me to believe that you've appropriated, as you said, scores of millions of dollars from your employer, and it's all been given to other people?"
"Well, only people who deserved it," she qualified.
He narrowed his eyes at her, hopelessly lost now. Thinking—praying—that Kimball might be able to shed some light on the situation, Leo turned to the billionaire, who stood beside Lily, sipping his martini without a care.
"Kimball?" he said in an effort to claim the man's attention.
"Yes, Friday?"
"Would you, uh, care to help me out here? I seem to be kind of—"
"Befuddled?" the billionaire supplied helpfully.
"Uh, yeah. That'd be a good word for it."
Kimball sighed dramatically. "It's actually quite simple, Friday, if you think about it."
"Is it?"
The other man nodded, then took a few steps forward, pausing beside one of the leather-bound sofas to strike a nonchalant pose. And then, very clearly, very matter-of-factly, he said, "Leo. Darling. Lily runs the company. She always has."
Leo opened his mouth to reply, but absolutely nothing emerged. He could only stare in silence at Schuyler Kimball, feeling certain that he must have misunderstood.
Seeming to take pity on his inability to speak, the billionaire flicked a piece of lint from his lapel and continued with a careless explanation. "She's been the one in charge of Kimball Technologies from the start. We just never exactly got around to telling anyone about it, that's all."
If Leo had thought he was confused before, he had been mistaken. Because with this newfound knowledge, he was suddenly, completely, utterly… well, still befuddled. "I'm afraid I'm not following you."
Kimball sighed again, even more dramatically. "I was afraid of that," he muttered. He glanced down at his watch. "Damn. Dinner will be served in fifteen minutes. Let's see if we can make this quick, shall we?"
"Oh, that would be fine with me," Leo assured the other man. "Let's just make it understandable, too, okay?"
Kimball took another step forward, rounding the sofa that was situated perpendicular to the fireplace and facing an identical one on the other side of a wide coffee table. "Have a seat, Leo," he said, following his own advice. "No sense standing on formality."
Leo obeyed the billionaire's instructions, not because of any feeling of obligation or courtesy, but because the command was the first statement that had made sense all night. Lily, too, crossed to the sofas, but instead of aligning herself with Kimball on his, she sat at the opposite end of the one Leo occupied. Somehow, that went a long way toward making him feel as if maybe they would recover from all this.
Depending on just what the hell all this was. Unfortunately, the answer to that was looking murkier all the time.
"Schuyler's intention to create Kimball Technologies started in an apartment we were sharing at the time," Lily said. "All the creative power, all the design work, even the labor, he performed himself. I kept track of the paperwork and records for him, more as a favor to him than anything else." She offered the billionaire a brief smile, then turned back to Leo. "Schuyler, for all his brilliance, can't even balance a checkbook, let alone keep track of a business. Even a small one. So the responsibilities for that fell to me. Because he was my friend, and because I was well suited for running a business, I was happy to take them on."
Leo shook his head slowly, unable to believe he was hearing what he was hearing. "Are you trying to tell me that, all these years, it's been you, not Kimball, who's been running Kimball Technologies? That you're the man in charge?"
Lily nodded, but smiled sadly at his wording. "I'm afraid so."
Finally, Kimball jumped in. "She's been the CEO of Kimball Technologies in everything but title," he said without a trace of resentment. "When I decided to go into business for myself, Lily was, quite simply, the best man for the job. She still is." He threw her a look of weary resignation. "I don't know what I'll do without her. I don't know what the company will do without her. Lily, darling, I wish you'd reconsider."
She shook her head and smiled with something Leo could only liken to melancholy. "Schuyler, you know what's going to happen when word of this gets out. If you keep me in charge, the stock will plummet, the board of directors will be outraged… It's better I quit now, before things go sour. You'll find someone to take my place. Someone with a Y chromosome to make it all more palatable to everyone."
Leo gazed at both of them in silence for a moment, completely at a loss for something to say. Finally, he managed to get out, "You, uh, you'll excuse me if I have just a little bit of trouble believing all this. Not that you couldn't run the business," he hastened to add when he saw her expression change to one of prim offense, "but because keeping something like this a secret all these years would be next to impossible."
"Not really," she said, her pique evaporating, once she understood his objection. "What would probably have been impossible, at least where the American business and financial communities are concerned, would have been launching Kimball Technologies with a woman in charge. A girl, really, was what they would have considered me," she amended. "Because I was only twenty-one at the time."
"I'm sorry, but I'm still not following you," Leo said.
She exhaled a quick breath. "No one would have taken us seriously, had mine been the face they saw as the one in charge when we approached businesses for investment. A young woman, they would have all assumed, would never be able to cut it, wouldn't have the sense or the wherewithal to build a business from the ground up. A young man, however," she added, dipping her head toward Schuyler, "well�
� that was perfect. A young hotshot mechanical designer with a brilliant mind, fresh out of college? Schuyler was all the rage.
"We used the prejudices of the business community to our advantage," she said. "The reason it was so easy to keep secret the fact that I was running things was because no one ever bothered to question Schuyler's position. We said he was the CEO, and he was, in fact, the CEO—on paper. Then we let them assume whatever they wanted after that. We let them assume he would be the one in charge, the one with the final say, when in fact, I was the one making all the decisions and keeping the business running. And, naturally, everyone did indeed make that assumption. It was a very effective smoke screen."
"But—"
"No, no buts," she interrupted him. "The hard fact of business is that women simply are not given the same treatment or recognition that men are. And I wanted Kimball Technologies to be a rousing success. Maybe even more than Schuyler did. In order to accomplish that, I needed to be the one who was in charge, but we needed for other people to think that Schuyler was. Otherwise, it never would have worked."
"But why would you be content to stay behind the scenes that way?" Leo asked. "Why would you let Kimball take credit for your hard work?"
"Well, for one thing, Schuyler was working every bit as hard as I was. He was just doing it in a different area. And for another thing, I got something out of the arrangement that was far more important to me than recognition for my contribution."
"What's that?"
"Money," she said succinctly. "And lots of it."
Leo's gut twisted again when he heard her say it flat out that way. So she really was driven by greed. She really had been motivated by personal gain.
"It's not what you think," she said calmly, clearly having read his nausea on his face. "The money I wanted—and received—from the arrangement was never meant to make my life better. Well, not in the way you're interpreting it. All of that money, Leo, every last nickel, went to worthy causes. And in seeing it distributed that way, I did, in fact, receive quite a lot of personal gratification."
Her Man Friday Page 29