Harbour Falls (A Harbour Falls Mystery #1)(60)

Once I’d organized the photos back into a pile, I spun around once, twice. Dizzy, I tried to imagine what it must be like to be Adam Ward. Being that rich and powerful tended to make people do exactly what you wanted. Even I hadn’t been immune to Adam’s charisma. It had to be intoxicating to be him. Hell, I felt it just by being in his presence.

I swiveled the chair left and right, and took a moment to inventory the study. Packed bookcases lined the room, an eclectic mix of literature and technical manuals. A few museum-worthy oil paintings graced a couple of the walls, and on a credenza under the window, there were framed photos of Adam’s parents as well as his sister.

There was a work area on the opposite side of the room, and by the looks of it, it was a tech-lover’s dream. Elaborately set up computers and peripherals, routers, and other hardware that held little interest for me. So I directed my gaze to the large window on the far wall, the one with the view of the ocean through the trees.

Night had fallen, but the blinds remained open. It was a little unnerving to think that someone—like Max—could have been out there watching us. Even though it was unlikely, and I was being a little paranoid, I still wanted them closed. But as I rose from Adam’s chair to do just that, something on the floor by the desk drew my attention. One of the photos had apparently fallen to the floor.



I reached down to pick it up, and that was when I noticed the bottom drawer—the one Adam had pulled the photos from—stood ajar, the tiny key resting innocuously in the keyhole, the digital keypad dark and disengaged. Adam had forgotten to lock it back up, probably since we’d been otherwise engaged.

At that moment I had a choice to make. I could just ignore the unlocked drawer, or I could open it and see what other things Adam was keeping in there—the only drawer with a lock on it. God, would he be pissed if he knew I was even contemplating going through his private things.



I held my breath and listened. Everything was quiet, Adam apparently still busy with Max. Only a few moments had passed, so I knew I probably had a good ten minutes more to snoop. I breathed out and sat back down in the chair, tapping the edge of the photo on the desk. What to do, what to do. Oh hell, the temptation was just too much. Tossing the picture aside, I wrenched the bottom drawer open and peered in.

Stacks of thick file folders and large A4 envelopes were piled high. With my hand shaking, I reached down tentatively and flipped the top folder open. It contained what appeared to be some sort of a business contract. Nothing too interesting, just boring legalize.

In fact, as I made my way through the pile, it seemed several of the folders and envelopes contained the same things: contracts, lots of contracts, and reams of transcribed notes from business meetings. There was one folder labeled Hensley Files, but I paged past it. I assumed it detailed the stuff Adam had already told me about Ami, plus I didn’t really have time to peruse everything. All of this stuff was obviously private papers. But nothing seemed damning, until I reached the very bottom of the pile. There, three things caught my eye.

One was a file folder stamped “confidential.”

The second was a large, ivory-colored A4 envelope with the name “Trina” scrawled on the front in Adam’s neat script.



And the third was a gun—a .38 revolver. Loaded, based on the weight in my hands as I picked it up and turned it over and over.

OK, so Adam owned a gun. It didn’t seem unreasonable for a man of his professional stature to possess a weapon for home defense. I tried not to over-think the firearm as I carefully placed it back in the bottom of the drawer. With the gun safely secured, I focused instead on the first item of interest: the file folder marked “confidential.”

It contained pages and pages detailing a stock trade Adam had made during the winter months, almost seven years earlier. I nearly dropped the entire contents when I saw the amount of profit he’d made on that single transaction on a stock he’d held for less than two months. Wow!



Attached to one of the earnings summaries was a worn, yellowing page from a newspaper I’d never heard of—The News Record of Cambridge. Skimming through the articles from six years earlier, it appeared to be some sort of tiny publication, maybe just for the students of MIT. Why had Adam kept something so insignificant under lock and key? When I reached the bottom left-hand corner of the newspaper page, I had my answer.





SEC Investigation Comes to an End for Promising MIT Student





Due to a lack of evidence, current undergrad Adam Ward has been cleared of any wrongdoing in a fortuitous stock transaction that netted the young MIT computer whiz 18.7 million dollars.

Following an intense two-month investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, it was determined that the young Mr. Ward’s incredible windfall had more to do with diligent research, and possibly a bit of beginner’s luck, than with trading on an illegal insider stock tip, as was originally suspected.



The SEC became suspicious after Mr. Ward withdrew a significant chunk of his trust fund monies to purchase an exorbitant number of troubled TechnoDyne Inc. shares only six weeks before the small, New York-based software development company was purchased by an industry leader, thus sending the stock price soaring.

When Mr. Ward unloaded all of his holdings and collected his tidy profit, the SEC swooped in and opened a case to investigate the transaction.