No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (5 page)

I didn’t think I would be
able to sleep, but I got dressed in my pajamas and settled into the
twin bed, feeling small, but safe. I left the light on, pulling the
comforter up to my chin, glad that the air conditioner was on. I
was reluctant to give up my covers.

I slept surprisingly well,
all things considered. I woke up to the sound of Bosco puttering
around the kitchen. I hadn’t bothered to set the alarm clock,
expecting him to be true to his usual early bird self. He didn’t
let me down. I took a quick shower, towel-drying my short curls,
before slipping into my clothes for work. That’s when I realized my
car was still in the garage of the house that blew up. Or rather,
what was left of my car was in what was left of my
garage.

“Damn!” I cursed aloud as I
came out of the bathroom.

“What’s the matter,
sunshine?”

“I have no car. How am I
going to get to work?”

“I’ll drop you off,” Bosco
offered. “And I’ll pick you up.”

“Lord, where’s the silver
lining in all this?” I sighed, accepting the mug of coffee Bosco
offered me. A slight smile crossed his face.

“At least you don’t have to
worry about explaining why you’re living at my place. Shall we have
our coffee on the terrace?”

We took our cups out to the
tiny square of cement that overlooked a babbling trickle of water
in a rock bed. There was a tall sugar maple, offering shade from
the morning sun. Bosco had a couple of chairs and a small
glass-topped table in one corner, and a small grill in another. I
took a seat as Bosco set down his mug and went back into the condo.
A moment later, he was back with bagels and cream cheese, the
newspaper tucked under his arm. We ate in companionable silence,
flipping through the pages.

“This place reminds me of
our first apartment,” I told him. I saw the corners of his mouth
turn up briefly, but he kept his eyes on the sports
section.

“Me, too,” he agreed. “That
was a good place.”

“It was.” We were newly
married, almost penniless, and content to be together. Things were
good then. As I gazed around, I realized it was no accident Bosco
chose this unit. I started to comment, but I stopped myself. Maybe
it was enough to know that Bosco needed to feel connected to those
years.

At quarter after eight, we
headed out. Bosco dropped me off at Dynamic Productions, with the
promise to return at five. He was going into the office to start
the investigation into George’s con, to coordinate with the
insurance investigation, and to have a lawyer handle the second
mortgage fraud with the online lender. There was no house to rent,
so there was no point in finding any tenants.

I stepped into the foyer of
our production house, only to be greeted by a crowd of five. Ralph
was right there, with flowers, surrounded by Dom, Tony, Kendall,
and Gloria.

“Dori, we heard. We’re so
sorry,” he said kindly. “You must be devastated.”

‘Yes,” I nodded, tears
welling up in my eyes and spilling over the rims, only to trickle
down my cheeks. I hadn’t cried this much since Kevin’s death. Even
when George left, I didn’t have this many tears in me.

“Are you sure you’re up to
working today?” Gloria wanted to know. She gave me a gentle hug.
She was our all-around go-to girl, a woman of nearly fifty with a
big heart, a penchant for adopting stray animals, and a knack for
soothing ruffled client feathers. “Let me get you a cup of coffee.
Unger Ink called, by the way, to ask how long it will be before
their commercial is ready. Should I tell them we need a few more
days?”

Even as she spoke, Gloria
was walking me to my desk, flower bouquet in hand. She had the
Unger Ink file ready, the tape cued up on my monitor, and the
storyboard sitting on my desk. Dom’s notes on the shots we finished
and those we needed to do were in my file box attached to the wall.
I took a deep breath, seeing my familiar desk waiting for me, and
turned to Gloria.

“I would love a cup of
coffee,” I smiled through my tears. “And can you ask Kendall to
step in? I need to ask her about Unger.”

“Sure, doll. Let me put
these flowers in a vase. I’ll be right back,” she promised. I
watched her swish out of my office in her vibrantly-colored
broomstick skirt, and ruffled black blouse. Her auburn hair was
piled on top of her head, with curls casually cascading down as
they escaped from the scrunchie that barely held them in place.
Gloria looked like a modern-day revamped earth mother from the
sixties. She wore chic gold jewelry and had a penchant for designer
clothing, but her style was what Bosco had called “eclectic
barefoot”. I often suspected that Ralph was enamored of her,
especially when I caught sight of his longing gazes. The
long-married Ralph had a wife with a sour disposition, three
daughters, and a slew of grandchildren. Ever since he had hired her
five years ago, Ralph had a spring in his step. He always seemed to
relish coming to work, and I thought I knew the reason.

For her part, Gloria seemed
oblivious to his attention. She was too busy with her new baby
granddaughter, her Pilates classes, and her love of her four
rescued cats to notice him. She had been single for the better part
of twenty years, no longer actively looking for Mr. Right. Instead,
she threw herself into caring for the people around her. I suddenly
appreciated how much I counted on Gloria’s goodness, especially
today. I knew she would handle the delicate situations with tact
because she cared about people, and I needed to believe that there
were still good people on this planet.

“You wanted to see me?” The
long, leggy Kendall popped her head into my office
doorway.

“Yes,” I looked up. “How
close are we to being ready to give Unger a showing?”

“Well, we still have the
final three close-ups to do. I suppose we could get those done
today. Dom can handle that. And we have to do the voice-overs, but
we have to tweak the script to match the timing. With a final edit
session tomorrow, we could probably do it by Thursday.”

“Could you get the ball
rolling on all that and give Paul Unger a call by five, just to
give him a heads-up?”

“Sure, Dori. Listen, I don’t
know if this is a good time to ask,” Kendall began, “but is there
any chance we can hold off on the Renschler project until next
week?”

“Is there a problem?” I
looked up at her earnest face, framed by the boyish haircut. Kendal
was an accomplished camera woman, more comfortable behind the lens
than in front of it, even though she had been a teenage model. For
all the years she walked the local catwalk, wearing designer
clothes across the runway for local retailers, she loved the money
and hated the work. Once she had paid for her college education and
saved enough for her first place, she quit modeling and rebelled,
heading to film school. Kendall never wore any makeup and the only
pieces of jewelry she sported were plain gold ball earrings and a
simple gold chain around her neck. It was as if all the years of
artifice had taken their toll on her soul, and Kendall’s choice was
to abandon them in favor of a more natural life. It gave her camera
work an edginess that didn’t work for every client, so Ralph and I
often tangled over her work, especially with the more commercial
applications. Give Kendall a non-profit spot to film and she was in
heaven. Give her a commercial for a bank, and she was looking for
an “Occupy Wall Street” opportunity to find a way to throw in a
subtle little dig at corporate greed, usually as a visual joke in
the background of the commercial. One of our clients spotted it in
his commercial and was less than thrilled. We almost lost the
account because Kendall refused to remove it, until she realized we
meant business.

“We picked up the House of
Hope spot for their fundraiser in September, and they want to start
the campaign as soon as possible. I have some ideas about the
storyboard, so I was thinking maybe you would let me take the lead
on this and punch it out.”

“That depends,” I replied,
keeping my gaze steady as I watched her. I knew she really wanted
to work on the House of Hope public service announcement. “If I say
yes, I want you to put as much attention to the Renschler project
as you do to the PSA. I don’t want our paying client to get less
than what our non-paying client gets.”

“Sure, boss. You have my
word on it.” Kendall gave me a big smile. “Thanks. I’ll tell Bing
that it’s a go.”

Lanny Bingler was Kendall’s
boyfriend and she often used him to help her film the PSA shots she
made in our off-hours. We gave her the chance to use our equipment,
but we benefitted from the experience she gained behind the camera
and in the editing room. She developed a reputation among
non-profit organizations for her quality work, and the local
broadcasting stations were more than happy to give her prime time
slots because her public service announcements were attractive and
clever. I just wished sometimes she would put as much effort into
the work she did for our paying clientele.

I took a break at eleven,
walking down to the Caulkins Corner CVS to pick up a few things.
All morning long, I had thrown myself into my work, blocking out
the horror of the day before and the loss of my home. Now, as I
headed down the sidewalk in the late morning sunshine, I was struck
by the magnitude of it all. It was more than just the house. Why
would someone deliberately tamper with the gas line? I thought
about the neighbors who could have been killed. Why was George so
determined to ruin me? Was it really only because of Bosco’s work
on the Feed the World fraud? Was it only because he followed the
money trail? I thought about George as a man and a lover. Looking
back, without the glow of hormones and happiness, I could see the
chinks in the knight’s shining suit of armor. What did it take for
a man to manipulate a woman like me to that extent? How big a role
did Tati play in my seduction?

When Bosco identified the
Feed the World embezzlers, who received kickbacks from the local
administrators, there was still almost $1.8 million dollars missing
from the $5 million dollar fund. Where was that money? Someone had
taken it, and taken it successfully. The vice president of food
distribution got caught with $600,000 in his bank account. The
chief financial officer of the non-profit agency had funneled $2.2
million dollars into a small start-up company that made
meals-ready-to-eat for civilians, as part of an effort to provide
non-perishable foods for famine relief, which he then recommended
Feed the World purchase for its food distribution program. In
exchange for his financial support, he received stock options that
were worth about a million dollars before the U.S. Attorney in
Pennsylvania indicted him. That still left some other money out
there, unaccounted for, and Bosco’s colleagues were in the process
of tracking that down in the States. His work was done in Somalia,
and he had moved on to a couple of other financial frauds,
including a bank in Portland, Maine that was robbed by a gang in
Eastern Europe that hacked its way into ATMs.

I understood why Bosco
believed he was the real target of all this dreadful destruction.
It all made perfect sense from the viewpoint of an experienced
forensic accountant, used to financial fraud. But what if he was
wrong? What if George had nothing to do with anyone at Feed the
World?

Chapter Six --

As long as Bosco thought he
was responsible for my financial downfall, he would pursue it
relentlessly. But what if the real culprit had a different motive
and target? What if someone was out to get me?

Why didn’t George steal from
Bosco, if the idea was to punish him for his work unraveling the
embezzlement? After all, I was divorced now, living a life separate
from Bosco. Why come after me?

This nagged at me as the day
wore on. Maybe it was the reality that I was now completely
dependent on my ex-husband, save for the money I had trickling in
from Dynamic Productions. George had stolen the bulk of my money,
along with the money from the second mortgage, obtained by fraud.
It was my house that blew up. It was my life that imploded. Did
that mean someone wanted me dead? Did someone hate me that
much?

In my mind, I went over the
early days of knowing George. What had happened after that trip to
the Pleasant Bay resort? I had returned home to find several emails
from him. He was back in New York, media marketing specialist for
Farley Hinson Day, the advertising agency. We began calling each
other to talk for hours, in between messages and emails. Four
months later, he had quit his job and moved into my house, starting
his own business as a media marketing expert in Caulkins Corner.
Once embedded in my house, he wanted his first clients to be
Dynamic Productions, but I refused to mix romance with business.
Despite his best efforts to charm me, I had simply told him that
wouldn’t work. You can’t be married to a guy like Bosco for two
decades without learning a thing or two about business. But how did
George get into my house? Why did he get there?

I went back to the day
George asked me to move to New York, to be with him. We had been
meeting for three months at the half-way point between New York
City and Caulkins Corner. He would take the train to New Haven
every Friday and I would drive down to pick him up. We would go off
for the weekend, finding little inns here and there. Sometimes we’d
head for the mountains and spend the hours hiking. Sometimes we’d
head for the ocean and walk on the beach, even in the chill of
spring, or explore the tourist attractions and shops. At first, we
would get separate rooms, but after the first month, George said it
was a waste of money, because he was ready to commit to me. On the
weekend he announced I should consider living with him, he wanted
me to visit his apartment in Manhattan. I told him I was never a
city girl. I had lived in Philadelphia while I was a student at
Pantheon College. Even though I had enjoyed my school days, I
wasn’t a fan of the hustle and bustle of high rises and cramped
buildings, crowded subway trains, or constant street traffic. I had
no intention of giving up my job at Dynamic Productions. What I
hadn’t told George was that I had invested a lot of my time and
money in the company over the years, and I wanted to be around to
see it pay off for me. It had been my lifeline after Kevin died,
and it looked like it would be again after the divorce.