Veiled Threats (14 page)

W
EDNESDAY OF THAT WEEK WAS THE
F
OURTH OF
J
ULY
. I
N PAST
years I'd thrown parties, with beer and barbecue and front-row seats for the fireworks that went up from a barge moored out in Lake Union. This year I was in no mood to play hostess, but I was determined to take a day off. No paperwork today, and no pondering mysteries either. Maybe I'd bathe in sunscreen and spend all day on the deck with a novel. Or gorge myself on popcorn at the matinee of a scary movie. Or get out that Thai cookbook I'd been meaning to try, and make myself a fiery feast to eat while I watched the fireworks display. I thought of inviting Holt to share it, then banished the thought. Let him call me.

The phone rang.

“Ms. Kincaid?” An unfamiliar voice, crisp and confident. “This is John Hyerstay, Douglas Parry's special assistant. Could you meet with me downtown this morning?”

“Today? It's a holiday. Why do you need—”

“This is an urgent matter, Ms. Kincaid. Urgent, and private. I'm at our main office on Sixth Avenue.”

“Has something else happened?” I had visions of Gus in that muddy pool. Who was next?

He ignored the question. “Would ten o'clock be convenient?”

“All right. But—”

He hung up.

By nine forty-five I was in an elevator, rising to the thirtieth floor of a gray glass tower downtown. The Pike Place Market and Westlake Park had been festive with locals and tourists enjoying the sunshine, but farther south the financial district was almost deserted. A security guard had unlocked the lobby doors to let me into the building.

“Not many people working today,” he said with a sympathetic smile. “Sign in here, please.”

I'm not working, either
, I thought, as the elevator hissed open to the headquarters of Parry Enterprises.
I don't know what I'm doing.
The reception area was empty and silent, and my footsteps disappeared as I stepped from the zigzag parquet floor onto a vast pink-and-moss-green Oriental rug.

“Hello?” I ventured.

“Good morning.” John Hyerstay was about twenty-eight, and he looked like he'd been on top of the world for at least twenty-seven. He had curly brown hair and a trim mustache, and he wore a fashionably garish tie, Gauguin on a bad day. His left hand was dominated by a massive gold ring with two diamonds set off-center in a flat onyx field. He was not smiling. “In here, please. I'll be with you in a moment.”

“In here” was a walnut-paneled conference room with tall windows overlooking the city. Eight chairs in wine-colored leather surrounded an oak table, and surrounding them on the walls were recessed alcoves displaying Kwakiutl and Inuit artwork—red and black wooden masks, intricate baskets, a carved soapstone polar bear padding along an icy shore above its own soapstone reflection. Classy.

“Ms. Kincaid, this is Sally Kroger, from the Parry legal department. You know Mrs. Parry, of course.”

Of course. Grace took a chair, elegant in her gray slacks and a paler gray silk sweater. Sally Kroger was a hawk-nosed woman of fifty or so, with short unruly hair and dark, level brows. I sat down across from them, more and more confused. Legal department?

Sally Kroger opened a folder. She kept it tilted away from me, but I caught a glimpse of Made in Heaven letterhead.

“Mrs. Parry has asked me to handle this matter,” she began, in a low, husky voice. “We want to minimize any effect on Mr. Parry's health.”

“I'm afraid Mr. Hyerstay didn't explain the purpose of this meeting,” I said, mustering my most professional manner. “What matter are we talking about?”

She looked at me. What a poker player. “Surely you know, Ms. Kincaid. The matter of overcharging Mr. and Mrs. Parry approximately”—she glanced at the folder,— “twenty-three thousand dollars for goods and services related to their daughter's wedding.”

“What?!”
I was so stunned that when Grace spoke it was difficult to focus on her words.

“That's the total so far,” she said. “Who knows what other phony invoices she's got floating around.”

“Phony invoices?” I actually laughed. “Made in Heaven charges a fifteen-percent fee on everything we handle. That's stated in our contract and clearly itemized in our billing. I'm sure I can explain any misunderstanding.”

“There's no point taking that innocent tone,” said Grace.

“What tone? You show me one single invoice that isn't legitimate.”

Sally Kroger put two pieces of paper on the gleaming oak surface in front of me. One was a photocopied bill, marked “Paid,” for the French burgundies and Bordeaux served at
Nickie and Ray's engagement party at the Parry estate back in April. The other was a Made in Heaven invoice for the same wine, with our percentage added to the subtotal. But the subtotal, which should have matched the wine merchant's bill, was four thousand dollars too high.

After that came bills for tent and furniture rental, the florist's deposit, a couple of checks made out to cash for miscellaneous expenses. All of them altered in some way, to bring more money into my firm than we had paid out. My hands trembled as I paged through the evidence. This couldn't be happening, it wasn't possible, it was crazy.
Unless …

She put down the final sheet of paper. It was a photocopied news clipping, almost ten years old. A St. Louis paper. I saw the name Breen, Edward V. Breen, and the words “tax fraud” and “decertified” and “agreed to plead guilty.”

Unless Eddie had cooked the books. Eddie, who insisted I was undercharging the Parrys. Who had been so worried about my mother's mortgage, but was lately so optimistic. Who handled all our invoices. Eddie, who wrote the checks, or told me what checks to write, knowing there would be no questions asked. Who had lost his CPA license because he cheated on his taxes.

Eddie, who had shown up at the houseboat suspiciously late on the night of my date with Holt, with a flimsy story about leaving something behind in the office. Something incriminating, like a doctored invoice that I might notice in the morning before he got there to hide it?

“Well?” Sally Kroger took the papers from where I'd dropped them and gathered them into her file. “You mentioned an explanation?”

They looked at me, Grace triumphant, John Hyerstay suave, playing with his ring, Sally Kroger stern as a judge. I
stared at the soapstone polar bear over Grace's shoulder, and I thought about Eddie. I couldn't imagine him lying to me, but the proof was right there on the table, the unimaginable was there in black and white. It was a nightmare.

“I need some time,” I stammered. “I'll have to look into it, talk to my partner—”

“So you can confirm that your partner is responsible for this?” Kroger leaned forward, hungry for a culprit. “He seems to have had practice….”

“No! No, I just meant that I'll have to go over the paperwork with him, and—”

“And what?” said Grace. “Concoct more lies? You should both be arrested.”

“Ms. Kincaid,” said Hyerstay smoothly, “our primary concern here is to shield Mr. Parry from any more disturbance. We are prepared to settle this matter quietly, today.” Grace sniffed indignantly but let him continue. “We've prepared a document which terminates your contract, and which specifies that you will immediately surrender all paperwork and material relating to Niccola's wedding, as well as any undispersed funds.” He glanced at Sally Kroger. “At Miss Nickie Parry's insistence, and very much against our advice, you will not be required to repay the money already misappropriated.”

I didn't answer. I was concentrating, miserably, on trying not to cry. I took one long breath, and then another. “I need some time—”

“If you refuse,” Hyerstay said, his voice rising as he slid a single typed page across to me, “criminal charges will be filed against you and Mr. Edward Breen. And of course we would be obliged to warn your other clients of the, ah, situation. You can take your chances in court, or you can sign the agreement. Now.”

I pictured Fay Riddiford and Anita Reid being warned about embezzled funds. They wouldn't believe it, would they? Embezzled, what a bizarre word. I closed my eyes. I couldn't think, I had to talk to Eddie. But what could I say to him? Certainly I could say nothing
about
him, not to these cold-eyed people. They thought I was a thief, greedy enough to abuse Nickie's trust. Absurdly, I scanned my mental list of Things Still to Do for her wedding. Who would manage the rehearsal if I wasn't there? Who was going to revise the reception dinner menu to suit Ray's mother, and proofread the ring engraving, and order space heaters for the tents if the weather turned cold? Who had lists of last-minute violinists and a pocketful of straight pins and three handkerchiefs?

Sally Kroger offered me a pen. I could take it, and sign, or I could walk out of the room and into a new and ugly life as an accused criminal. My career as a wedding consultant would be over, my name would have a permanent addendum. I'd be Carnegie Kincaid—you know, the one who cheated Douglas Parry. And worse, far worse than that, would be the choice facing me: to plead guilty, or to condemn Eddie. I might, if I was lucky, be able to prove that he had deceived me as well as my clients. I might succeed in sending my father's friend, my own dear friend, to prison. If I was lucky.

I took the pen. Then I asked a question, sounding just as humiliated as I felt. “No publicity?”

“No,” said Grace with obvious contempt. “For my husband's sake, and for Nickie's, no publicity.”

I signed my name and walked out, my face hot and my lower lip trembling, the third-grader leaving the principal's office. Theo was there, leaning insolently against the reception desk. He stared at me, a pale smile on his pale face, as I
waited for the elevator. I was damned if I'd let him see me cry, and that determination carried me out of the building, back to the van, and eventually to Eddie's doorstep in Ballard.

I drove north out of downtown, along the lake and over the ship canal, then west on Market Street, past the old brick storefronts. I breathed hard and slow as I drove, trying to contain my shock and shame and anger. How could he do it, I kept repeating to myself. How could he, how could he.

I pulled up in front of the tidy brick house with its severely trimmed shrubbery. I had only been there once or twice before; Eddie liked his solitude. A pair of ship's running lights stood guard at the front steps, red to starboard, green to port, or was it the other way around?
I've lost my bearings
, I thought foolishly.
No compass anymore.
I stepped wearily up to the front door, which had an old ship's wheel bracketed to the wall above it. I knocked and waited, then knocked again.

“Carnegie!” Eddie appeared at the corner of the house, a plastic flowerpot in one hand and a trowel in the other. For once, his clothing wasn't immaculate. He wore dirt-smeared khakis and an old cotton undershirt with crescents of sweat under each arm. “Is something wrong? More invisible bogeymen?”

His humor put an angry edge on my words that I didn't intend. “For God's sake, Eddie, this is serious.”

“Well, go on inside,” he grumped. “It's not locked. I've got to turn the hose off back here.”

The door opened on a small square living room almost bare of furniture. Two chairs, a rag rug, a large television set. A brown glass ashtray on a metal stand. I sat on the scratchy plaid upholstery of a swaybacked recliner, and propped my
forehead in my palms. I could hear Eddie coming in through the back door and washing up at the kitchen sink. Then he stood in the doorway to the living room, folding back the sleeves of the flannel shirt he had just put on. Making himself decent for company. His hands were old and gnarled, seaman's hands like my father's.

“Now, what's so serious?”

“We've just been fired, Eddie. For faking our bills and cheating Douglas Parry.”

“That's nuts!” he sputtered.

“I just saw it, in black and white.” The chair, and the whole house, stank of cigars. I felt sick and disgusted, and I wished I hadn't come. What was the point?

“Wait a minute, what did you see?” Eddie demanded. He was standing over me, hands on his hips.

“Inflated invoices. Evidence of embezzlement.” He dropped into the only other chair, a monstrosity of avocado green vinyl. I told him about my trip downtown, the grim lawyer and the slick “special assistant,” and Grace Parry's sneer.

“So they won't sue, and they won't tell anyone. Not that our good reputation will help much if we don't have any weddings to do.”

“Never mind our reputation. How did this happen?”

I looked up at him. “That's what I came to ask you, Eddie.”

“Ask me? Why would you ask me? Carnegie, you're not making sense.” He was indignant, concerned, fatherly.

Don't pull that on me
, I thought.
You're not my father. My father wouldn't have cheated and then let me take the blame
. “I'm asking you because there's only two of us in the office. And I know
I
didn't fake any bills.”

Silence, for just a heartbeat, and then the storm broke.

“You're accusing me?
Me?
Christ almighty, I've been keeping you in business for your mother's sake—”