Armed With Steele (39 page)

I was one hundred percent positive I wanted nothing to do with anything involving Milo Finnegan and legs being helped up. I also knew if I was going to escape this elevator ride unscathed I had to do something and do it quick. He was taller than I and looked to be in decent physical shape. Fighting back would get me nowhere. So I hit him from a different angle. “Why, Mr. Finnegan, I’m flattered you feel that way. I would love to…a-a-a—” I faked a sneeze, right in his too-close face. “
Choo
!”

It worked like a charm. Milo recoiled as if he’d been stung by a bee. His hand flew to the interior pocket of his suit coat in search of a handkerchief to wipe away my imaginary nasal fluids.

I reached out, wearing a look of mock mortification. “Oh! Oh, Mr. Finnegan. I’m…I’m so sorry. It’s just that…a-a-a—”

This time he took two steps back. And quickly hit the stop button a second time. The elevator resumed its smooth descent to the first floor.

“
Choo
! My hayfever has just been so
terrible
the past few days.”

Milo dabbed incessantly at his face and took another step back. “That’s…quite alright, Miss Hartley. Why don’t you, uh, swing by my office another time. Perhaps
after
allergy season.”

The elevator doors opened, and Milo shot out like a stone from a catapult.

It felt good to have the upper hand for once. Now if only I could find a way to do that with whoever was leaving me all those threatening notes after hours.

After hours? An idea popped into my head. I hurried out the front door, past the ice queen and her frosty sneer—seriously, what was with that woman?—and dove headlong into Nate’s car.

* * * *

“Turn into that parking lot up ahead, will you?” I said, pulling a t-shirt out of my bag.

“I thought we were going to see Grace? And wait, what are you
doing
?”

I pulled the shirt over my head, worked a little Copperfield-like magic, and slipped the blouse I’d worn to work out from under it. I began to inch my skirt down toward the floor and felt the car lurch right. “Eyes on the road, Officer Steele. Haven’t you ever had a woman change her clothes in your car before?”

“Not without my help.” His gaze traveled down to my bare thighs. “Are you sure you don’t need—”

I smacked his reaching hand. “You’re gonna get us into an accident.”

“No,
you’re
the one that’s going to get us into an accident.” He turned his head forward once more and half-glared, half-pouted at the road ahead. “So, are you going to tell me why I’m turning or not?”

I put a foot into each leg of the jeans I’d packed, and lifted my butt off the seat. “Yes. I need to show you something.”

Nate turned his head back to me so fast he nearly wrecked the car.

“Not here!” I yelled, grabbing the steering wheel. “Back at work!”

Nate brushed my hands away. “Damn it, Jessica, why the hell didn’t you tell me that before we got all the way over here?”

“Because we needed to give them time to arrive.” I buttoned my jeans and settled back down into my seat.

“Them…who?”

“You still got Marcus Phillippe’s license plate number?”

“Yeah,” he said, turning the cruiser back toward Maxwell. “Why?”

“You’ll see.”

Nate glowered at the road while I pulled on a clean pair of socks. The soft cotton felt incredible after another day in those blasted high heels. Grace could
have
her dumb job back—I’d take sneakers over heels any day.

I finished lacing up my shoes just as we were coming up on Maxwell’s entrance. “Okay, now don’t turn in here. Go over to that little side road—where we went on our first stakeout.”

A wolfish grin appeared on Nate’s face. “You regret not making out with me that day, don’t you?” He made a little fist pump and whispered, “I
knew
it!” Then he cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, I’ll give you a second chance.”

Men.

“While that is very thoughtful of you, it’s going to have to wait. This is another stakeout session, dear, not a make-out one.”

“Fine,” he grumbled. Half a second passed before he turned his head back toward me, the frown traded for a look of optimism. “Then could we make out?”

“How about we focus on this for now, and I’ll make it up to you later.”

“You’re no fun.”

I turned away. “Yeah, I’ve been told that before.” By a certain ex-boyfriend of mine. A boyfriend on the verge of proposing. All I had to do was agree to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. Move to Nebraska. Make a fresh start. Only to me, that didn’t sound like fun. More like Hell on Earth.

No Grace. No friends. No family. Only the man I loved.

Or so I thought. Thank God I’d come to my senses.

Nate threw his cruiser into park and sighed. “Well, chief, what’s the plan?”

“You got those binoculars handy?”

“Wouldn’t leave home without ’em.” He reached into his center console and pulled out his private, collapsible pair.

“Pervert.”

He threw me a look of mock innocence. “What?”

I shook my head as I took them from him, then scanned the lot. “Come on…where are you?”

And then I saw it—a blur of maroon, just like I’d expected.

“There.” I lowered the binoculars and handed them to Nate. “Take a look in the lot over by the side door.”

“A maroon van.”

“Can you read the plate?”

“I think so.” He squinted, straining to read it. “411S… Sonofabitch.” He dropped the binoculars. “This was what you couldn’t remember last night?”

“Yep.” I pulled a stack of copies and notes I’d been compiling from my bag. “I was trying to get some information out of Michael about our vendors today—”

“To get him to spill about Morrisson?”

“Exactly. And I’ll come back to that.”

Nate’s right eyebrow rose.

“So I’m listing off harmless ones. Our paper supplier, safety products vendor…then I come to our cleaning company. Steuben Environmental.”

“Steuben…
county
?”

“Yep. Hit me as soon as Michael said they were our
after hours
cleaning company. Then I looked a little closer at the invoice. Darn thing had
Attention: M. Phillippe
printed right at the top.”

Nate shook his head. “I’ll be damned. Now we know who’s been sneaking around your office, leaving those notes.”

“And sabotaging my printer. Which makes absolutely no sense. Why would our cleaning guy be worried about what files I’ve been printing?”

Nate stowed his binoculars away. “Because he’s also somehow involved with Morrisson Consulting. He has to be. He’s collecting their mail, for Christ’s sake.”

“Oh! Speaking of Morrisson…after the shock wore off about Steuben Environmental, I asked Michael about Morrisson. At first he didn’t recognize it. Then he goes, ‘Oh, you mean MCG?’ I swear this company has an acronym for everything. The copiers. The reports. Probably has one for the darned brand of toilet pap—”

“Acronym junkies. I get it, Jess.”

“Right. Anyway, according to Michael, MCG does market analysis work for Maxwell. Um…” I paused, checked my notes. “Something about doing comparisons between us and our competitors. Surveys. Things like that. Sounds fairly legitimate.”

Nate’s brow furrowed. “Hmm, have you actually seen any of their work?”

“No.” I shrugged. “But I’m an AA, Nate. What would I be doing with a technical document like that?”

“If they even exist.”

My jaw dropped open. “You think it’s a fluke? But…we’re paying them big money for their services.”

And then the light bulb went on.

“Wait.” I flipped through the stack of papers until I came to my spreadsheet. Thank goodness I’d taken a risk that afternoon and reprinted the last page—the one listing all the invoices for this year. One, two, three, four… “Huh, that’s odd. Michael said they only use Morrisson two or three times a year. But I’ve got nine invoices from them for this year alone.” I looked up and met Nate’s gaze.

“Sounds like you might have found where Michael’s money’s been going. Do you know how much is missing?”

“No, I don’t remember Vanessa ever giving me the actual amount.” I snatched up my cell phone and plugged invoice amounts into the calculator function. “Wow.”

“That much?”

“In nine months, we’ve paid them $46,992.”

Nate let out a long, slow whistle. “Probably a little more than your boss thinks he spent. But wouldn’t he have noticed the increase in invoices? I’m sure he’s the one who has to sign off on them each month.”

“Yeah, he would. But if they forged Grace’s signature…”

“What’s to say they didn’t forge his, too?”

I looked up from my phone. “Exactly.”

“You need to get back into that stack of invoices tomorrow, Jess. Make copies of them all, not just the ones Grace processed, so we can compare Michael’s signatures on each.”

I didn’t relish hauling more folders back and forth from the storage closet. But with Vanessa in her current snit, it might be easier to sneak around. “Okay.”

“Also, see if you can get your hands on any of these market analysis reports from MCG. Find out if they’ve given Maxwell anything more than lip service.”

Where the hell was I going to find something like that? I tried to think of a good place to look. Ran a hand through my hair. Got my fingers stuck again.

When was I going to learn?

“But who’s doing all of this? I mean, they’re signing in as Grace on the computer, signing her name on the print outs, signing Michael’s as well...”

Nate shrugged. “Maybe it’s a copy.”

“Huh?”

“You know, of his signatures. You can’t be the only one with access to a scanner. And it wouldn’t take much to scan the invoice, copy and paste his scanned signatures, and then reprint the whole thing. Hell, they could have done it ages ago. Who’s going to question something with Michael Frankston’s signature on it?”

“True. But it can’t be our cleaning guy—he wouldn’t have access to the computers.”

“Maybe, maybe not. It’s not like no one’s ever hacked into a system before.”

I considered that. Shook my head. “Hacking is one thing. But knowing their way around the financial system, and shuffling invoices through the paper trail at all the right times? No, no way it’s him.”

“Okay, so maybe Mr. Phillippe is just one piece of the puzzle. Maybe he has a partner on the inside, one who’s familiar with the system. Maybe they’re splitting the money.”

I looked out the windshield toward Maxwell. “But how do we find them?”

“You got an employee listing in that pile of notes?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Let me have it. While you’re visiting with Grace, I’ll see if I can’t find a connection between Marcus and your coworkers.”

I fished the list out of my folder and handed it to him. He jotted down a few notes, and I got distracted by the way the tendons in his lean forearms moved with each stroke of his pen. The temperature in the car seemed to rise.

“Hey, Nate?”

He looked up, pen still on paper, and met my gaze. “Yeah?”

I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted, and felt zero guilt in my decision. But we had a pit stop to make along the way. A promise was a promise.

I leaned over so that my mouth was beside his ear. Ran my tongue along his lobe, then whispered, “Drive.”

Chapter 30

I peeked into Grace’s room a short time later and spied her staring out the windows. She looked…down. I hoisted my bag full of goodies higher onto my shoulder and rapped on the doorframe. “Anyone home?”

“Just us invalids.”

“Everything okay?” I asked as I crossed the room to give her a hug.

Her shoulders slumped ever so slightly. “Yeah. Just…frustrated.”