Armed With Steele (34 page)

Fingertips on my temples, I tried to rub the guilt from my mind. It wasn’t like I was avoiding her, or leaving her stranded. Hell, I was here trying to
save
her buttoosky. Regardless of what she’d said, this whole mess had been my fault from the beginning, and it would be me who’d make it right in the end.

I gathered up the printouts, and took them down to Michael for his review.

“Finished?”

I handed them over with a nod. “Only five or six, though. Sorry, I’m still getting the hang of this.”

“Only?” He looked over the top of his bifocals at me. “Jessica it usually takes my AAs a month to get up to this speed. Are you sure you aren’t skipping a few steps?”

My cheeks began to burn. “No, sir. I followed your directions and checked everything twice. But please, have a look and let me know when it’s okay to finalize and then file them.”

So while Michael spent the next half an hour double-checking my work, I was doing some double-checking of my own. On the rest of the payments processed by GBS.

Everything seemed to be fairly standard stuff. Small amounts here and there for supplies, print jobs, office furniture. But when it came to the Morrisson Group, their invoices had erratic amounts. The highest being from this last month.

After Michael approved my work, I finalized the transactions and headed down the hall. Was elated to find the storage room empty. I filed away my completed invoices in their corresponding vendor files, then hunted for one labeled
Morrisson Consulting Group
. It was tucked in the far back of the middle row of drawers. Rather than squat and stretch at an odd angle, I lifted the folder from its hanging dungeon and set it atop the extended filing drawer. No sooner had I opened the folder, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket.

It was Grace. Apparently she’d inherited her mother’s poor sense of timing.

“Hello?” I ducked down and kept my voice barely above a whisper.

“Hey Jess. Did I…catch you at a bad time?”

“No.” I cringed, knowing I couldn’t leave it at that. My roomie could talk for hours non-stop if I let her. “Well, I mean, sort of bad, yeah. Getting ready to meet with a client. Business has been booming lately. Lots of meetings, lots to do.”

“Oh, wow, that’s great, Jess!”

“So, how are you feeling today? Any better?”

“I guess so. This whole being weak stuff really stinks. Just sitting up wears me out.”

She kept talking, but I missed the rest. I’d shifted my attention to a set of approaching footsteps. I straightened up and looked down at the Morrisson folder, spread open before me.

“Jess?”

The footsteps drew closer. I flipped the folder shut, snatched it up, and tucked it under my arm. A woman I recognized from the lunchroom rounded the corner and gave me a cursory nod, then continued on her way. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sorry, you cut out on me for a moment. Bad reception. Can I give you a call back after my meetings?”

“A call back? Aren’t you going to come and visit? I hate it here. It’s so boring and lonely without you.”

Talk about a guilt trip—Grace had my bags packed and loaded in my car with that line. “Of course I will. Not sure what time it will be, you know how these things go. But I’ll be there.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“And you’ll stay as long as you can?”

“You bet.”

I cringed. Nate was expecting me after work. Then again, being with Grace would keep me safe from those seductive blue eyes of his. And surely he’d understand—this was Grace we were talking about.

* * * *

“What do you mean you’re on your way to Metzler? I thought we had plans?”

I squinted up at the stoplight and squirmed in my seat. “Well, Grace called. And she put me on this huge guilt trip. I mean, I haven’t been able to talk to the poor girl for more than a few hours this whole month. How could I tell her no?”

I heard Nate sigh. It wasn’t a happy sigh, more like a pretty pissed-off one. “So, what was the good news you were calling about?”

“I found some suspicious invoices in our financial system today.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Get this. The day of Grace’s accident? There’s a transaction listed with her credentials time stamped at 5:08.”

“5:08? But the accident—”

“Happened at 5:15. Suspicious, right?”

“Highly.”

“And the amount was only three dollars less than the cutoff for mandatory administrative approval.”

“Someone’s trying to sneak in just under the radar?”

“That’s my guess, too. But there’s more. When I pulled each invoice for this Morrisson Consulting Group from the past five months, Grace’s signature…varied.”

“You think someone’s been forging her name?”

“It sure looked that way to me. But I took the folder back to my office and scanned them all so you can be the judge of that.”

“Ah, but that would mean you’d actually have to see me again. You can’t hide from me forever, Jessica,” he said, his voice low, sexy.

My palms began to sweat. “Who’s hiding?”

He chuckled. “Have I ever told you what a terrible liar you are?”

“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle—”

“Hey, you got to sleep alone in your own bed on Saturday.”

“Only because crazy Katie sabotaged your plans.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The smirk in his voice came through loud and clear.

“Uh-huh. Who’s the liar now?”

“We’ll settle this later, face to face. You go do your thing with Grace, and call me before you head home. I’ll be waiting there for you.”

“But—”

Too late, he was gone. Damn pushy cop boyfriend of mine.

* * * *

I stayed with Grace until nine, when the nursing staff at Metzler kicked me out. They’d started enforcing their visiting hours, now that she was awake again. Which was fine—while I loved having my best friend back, I hated having to fudge about nearly everything that’d happened without her the past month. Heck, the past
day
. I headed home, exhausted, starved, and frustrated.

Nate was waiting for me as promised, his cruiser along the curb out front. He saw me coming and met me at the back door.

“Where’s your fancy ride?”

“Home. Captain wants more presence in the neighborhoods, asked us to drive our squad cars off duty and park ’em in plain sight.”

“Huh. Well you can leave your guns and cuffs in the car, thank you very much.”

“Darn,” he said, a twinkle in his eyes. “There goes that idea.”

I let us in the back door and tossed my purse down on a chair in the kitchen. “You hungry?”

“No, I ate hours ago.”

“Lucky. Grace wouldn’t let me out of her sight all evening. Couldn’t even use the bathroom without her freaking out. You’d think they were beating her or something.”

Nate’s eyebrow shot up.

“Which they aren’t. At least, I hope not.”

I turned my attention to the refrigerator and rummaged around for something to eat. A little white Chinese carryout box begged me to pick it up. I gladly complied.

“You got those scans of Grace’s signature handy?” Nate asked, taking a seat at the table.

“Yeah, hang on.” I spooned out my leftover shrimp lo mein into a bowl and tossed it in the microwave. Then I crossed the room and retrieved the papers I’d tucked into my purse.

“Okay, this,” I said, handing him the first page, “is Grace’s signature. I’ve seen her sign her name like that hundreds of times. There’re all sorts of receipts in her room with that exact signature on it.” I handed him a second page, which displayed her signature from September 10
^th
. “Now, take a look at this one. See how the S is more rigid? And the Ls aren’t quite right, either. But it’s the G that really gives it away. The person who wrote this left off that little tail.”

Nate studied the two pages side by side, then looked up at me with furrowed brows.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just that sometimes you amaze me.”

I removed my dinner from the microwave and grinned.

“So, you made it sound on the phone like there was more than one forged signature. Where’s the other?”

I set my dinner on the table and flipped through the rest of the papers until I came to a transaction from the end of July. “Here. Total fluke that I even caught this one, but the date caught my eye. Remember it like it was yesterday. Grace had an abscessed tooth. Poor thing came home from work one night with the worst toothache. Had to call in sick the next day, the twenty-third, so they could do an emergency root canal.”

Nate surveyed the sheet I’d handed him. “But…this transaction was done on the twenty-third.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t you think her boss would have noticed that?”

I pondered that thought as I chewed and swallowed my first bite of dinner. “I don’t know. Michael’s awfully busy. If he didn’t have to sign off on it until the following week, then I doubt he’d remember or even notice it.”

“But these other signatures are hers?”

“Yes.”

“So, does that really prove she wasn’t embezzling money?”

I scowled. “Someone forged her signature at least twice, Nate.”

“Sure, for actual invoices. You want to prove she didn’t steal that money? Find out what Morrisson Consulting Group actually does for Maxwell, and who stands to lose the most if that contract doesn’t get renewed.”

“You working tomorrow?” I asked, slurping a noodle into my mouth.

Nate shook his head.

“Okay, then how about you run along and do some research on Morrisson while I get caught up on my real job.”

Nate’s eyes narrowed. He rose from his chair and came to stand behind me, then leaned down so his mouth was level with my left ear. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to get rid of me.”

“Get rid of you? Who, me?”

He kissed my neck. Goosebumps sprung up all along my arms.

“Um, I’m eating here.”

He kissed my neck again. This time a little lower. “Oh? Well, don’t mind me.”

I set my fork down. Swallowed loudly. “It’s getting late.”

I felt his lips bend into a smile under my ear. “Then I should go so you can get a good night’s sleep. Because you’re gonna need it.” He stood. Swiped his keys off the table and headed for the back door. “You and me. Six o’clock. My place. Tomorrow.”

I retrieved my fork with a shaky hand. Knew damned well that he had more than dinner on the agenda for tomorrow. And had no idea how to worm my way out of it this time.

* * * *

I headed back into work the next morning with a chip on my shoulder. What I’d originally thought to be a major breakthrough in our investigation—the forged signatures—had actually led to more questions and zero answers. Come to think of it, that was the way this entire case had gone: zero steps forward, five steps back. I needed to find something to give me some thrust, get me over the newbie investigator hump.

But what?

So engrossed in my thoughts, a full five minutes passed before I noticed the innocuous white note beside my keyboard. I picked it up and opened it slowly. Inside, was a typed message:

Mind your own business, or you’ll end up like she did.

I swallowed hard. Knew exactly who
she
was, and how much I didn’t want that to happen. Whoever had stolen my notes had been back.

But how? And how had they known what I was doing?

I lowered the note and took a deep breath. At least they just called Grace
she
. Not
your best friend
. Not
your roommate
. Only
she
.