Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(27)

He didn’t look away as she approached. If anything, he met her gaze head-on, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Ballsy, she thought, for a guy most likely still wearing another woman’s perfume upon his skin.

And maybe, slightly flattering. Women like her didn’t garner a lot of glances across a crowded room. She had a tendency to hold herself too rigidly, always on guard against some unknown threat, but also walled off from polite chitchat. Then, after the events of two years ago… There were mornings she didn’t even recognize her face in the mirror. Her blue eyes were too flat. Her face too grim.

People moved away from her on crowded subways. She told herself it was good to be tough, but there were days she still found it depressing.

Her husband had been killed, and she lived now as an island. If not for Sophie’s unconditional love, she would exist in total isolation. It made her value her daughter more, while also worrying that having an eight-year-old as her main source of companionship was not healthy for either of them. Sophie’s job was to grow up and leave her.

And Tessa’s job was to let her.

She’d arrived at the table for two. She removed her long coat, too warm for a sun-baked coffee shop, and given she’d left her gun in her vehicle’s locked glove compartment, unnecessary. She draped her coat over the back of the chair, moving unhurriedly, then, at long last, took a seat.

Neither of them spoke, and now Chris Lopez’s smile grew.

“So,” Tessa said at last. “What was her name?”

His smile vanished. “What?”

“The woman. Last night. Or not the kind of thing where names are necessary?”

He scowled.

She held out her hand. “Tessa Leoni. I’m here in regards to the Denbe family.”

“You’re the former cop,” Lopez said, voice a tad sulky. He shook her hand but no longer appeared so amused. “The state trooper. You shot and killed your own husband.”

“Allegedly,” she corrected. The story of her life.

“What do you miss most? The uniform, the gun or the really uncool car?”

“The easy parking. Now, tell me what you do for Denbe Construction.”

They’d covered the basics by phone beforehand. Justin Denbe and his family were missing—Lopez had already been aware of the situation, no doubt called by either Denbe Construction or the Boston cops, probably both, during the initial search phase. Lopez reported last seeing Justin at a 3:00 P.M. meeting on Friday afternoon in the corporate office. Hadn’t spoken or met with him since. As for the family, the house, Lopez hadn’t seen them or visited Justin’s Boston town house in months. Too busy on a job down south.

Tessa wasn’t having this conversation because she thought Chris Lopez could lead her to the Denbe family. She was interviewing Chris Lopez as part of the next step of the missing persons’ process—developing a victimology report. Who was Justin Denbe? And who were the winners and the losers when a man like him vanished into thin air?

“You know construction?” Lopez asked her now.

She shook her head, taking out her phone and holding it up for inspection. When he grudgingly nodded permission, she tapped the recording app and set the phone on the table between them.

“Denbe Construction is a major player. We bid on projects that cost at least tens of millions and often hundreds of millions. Think prison construction, senior care facilities, military barracks, et cetera. Big money, significant timeline, make-it-or-break-it kind of risk.”

Tessa decided to start with the basics. She got out her notebook, turned it horizontally and presented it to Lopez. Here was a trick she’d never learned at the police academy, but had come up day one in corporate security school.

“Org chart,” she asked. “Major players.”

Lopez rolled his eyes but took the paper, her offered pen and drew the first box on the top of the page. Justin Denbe, CEO. Made sense to her. Beneath Denbe came three boxes. CFO Ruth Chan; COC Chris Lopez; and COO Anita Bennett. Tessa recognized Bennett’s name, as she’d been the one to contact Tessa’s boss bright and early this morning. Now, beneath the chief of operations’s name, Lopez drew two more, smaller boxes: MIS Tom Wilkins and Office Admin Letitia Lee.

“COC stands for chief of construction,” Lopez explained, tapping the box bearing his name. “Anita Bennett and I act almost as cochiefs of operations. She handles business affairs, while I manage the building gigs. So admin reports to her, while the tradesmen report to me.”

Lopez didn’t draw any more boxes. He pushed the org chart back and Tessa frowned.

“That’s a pretty small corporate structure for a hundred-million-dollar company,” she observed.

He shrugged. “First rule of construction: It’s all about the subs. Especially these major projects, no way you can provide all the boots on the ground, not to mention it’d be too expensive to maintain that kind of overhead in down cycles. We partner. Think of Denbe as being the head of a centipede. We develop the RFP—”

“RFP?”

“Request for proposal. How these big jobs start, especially if they’re government funded. The agency involved—”

“Agency involved?”

Lopez sighed. He leaned forward, placing his forearms on the tiny table while explaining: “Say we’re bidding on a hundred-million-dollar project to build new barracks for the navy. Obviously, that RFP is generated through military channels. Then there are hospitals, which can come through private or state channels. Or prisons, which might come through the Bureau of Prisons, depending on whether we’re talking a county, state or federal facility.”