The Last Invitation (16)
“Gabby—”
“I also invested some of the money I got in the divorce, and I still get the quarterly payout from the business, which I trust you to run. All of that will keep me going until I can find a job. It’s been years, but I’d like to think . . . That’s not what you’re talking about.” She could tell by the way the tension pulled around his mouth. “Tell me.”
“There are some discrepancies in the business accounting.”
She recognized the empty words as having a big meaning. “Are you saying money is missing from the office accounts?”
Liam got off the stool and started pacing. After a few steps, he stopped and stared at her. “Did you know?”
“How would I know? I’m still not even sure what you’re saying.”
“Right.” Liam shook his head. “Of course . . . it’s just . . . I don’t understand what Baines was doing.”
Dizziness overtook her. She had to breathe in through her nose to keep from getting sick. “Back up. You’re saying Baines, my millionaire, account-for-every-penny ex, was taking money from the family business? As in stealing money?”
“I . . . maybe? I don’t know yet. I just hired an outside firm to perform an audit.” Liam’s shoulders fell as he let out a long breath. “Did he say anything to you about money being tight?”
He blamed her for everything, but he’d never mentioned this issue—though it wouldn’t reflect well on him, so he would have hidden it. “We hadn’t had a civil conversation since I left him.”
Liam started to talk then stopped.
Silence drummed through the room. She could hear it thumping in her head. “What?”
“It looks bad, Gab.”
That didn’t make sense. Baines had plenty of money. He and Liam had used the small inheritance left to them by their aunt to build a business where they bought and leased a network of warehouses up and down the East Coast. Big companies leased them. They had been growing, looking to expand deeper into transportation and distribution, when Baines died. Now all of that work would fall on Liam.
Baines bragged about having funding and access to money. They had trucks and contracts. Ongoing connections and significant money coming in. A “big deal” on the horizon. She knew some details about the company because she’d helped set up the business years ago and then insisted on seeing every document during the divorce despite Baines’s claims that she wasn’t entitled to look at or touch anything.
“How do you know Rob Greene?” Liam asked out of nowhere.
“What?” She blinked out of her mental wandering and saw Liam staring at the odd business card. “That guy? He was at the funeral, but about Baines and the—”
“Did he ask about Baines or the business?”
She didn’t know how to explain what they talked about. Coincidence, pattern—the words swirled in her mind, so she ignored the question. “How do you know who Rob Greene is?”
“His name is all over the news this morning. He was fired from the Washington Post yesterday, and the paper posted this big splashy statement about how Greene’s articles would all be investigated for accuracy.”
“The Post? His business card doesn’t mention the newspaper.”
Liam frowned. “I doubt it’s a different Rob Greene.”
The weird way her life bumped along recently, it was possible. “How did I miss what sounds like a major scandal?”
“You were out of town with Kennedy, and this sounded like a sudden thing. The downfall of an award-winning journalist.” Liam put his empty coffee cup in the trash under the sink.
The twisty answer about the reporter’s convoluted life should have made her write him off and move on, but the urgency in Greene’s voice that horrible day had tugged at her. He’d seemed so sure Baines’s death matched nameless others.
“The general sense was that he’s a big conspiracy guy and may have lost it.” Liam nodded at the card. “I’d throw that away and forget you ever met him.”
She handed the card to Liam, who ripped it up and stuffed it in his pocket. A second later, she wondered if she’d made a mistake.
Chapter Seventeen
Jessa
No one ignored a call from Loretta Swain. If they did, they only did it once. She was not the type to offer second chances. Jessa knew because the Honorable Loretta Swain, senior judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, happened to be her informal mentor.
They met back when she taught a seminar during Jessa’s third year of law school. Retta—the name Jessa was only recently given permission to call her—must have seen potential, because Jessa had been blessed with her wisdom, guidance, and no-nonsense opinions ever since.
Tonight, she’d been called to Retta’s house. Jessa wore that as a badge of honor. Not many people got invited into the private sanctuary Retta shared with her husband, Earl. Jessa usually met with Retta for a meal or coffee, or at the office. Jessa had only been in the Chevy Chase mansion one time before, and that was for a charity event. She couldn’t imagine living in a house with a ballroom on the second floor, but that was Retta’s life.
Jessa waited in the marble entryway as the person who opened the door—maybe a housekeeper—suggested. Fresh flowers in an intricate arrangement you might find at an expensive hotel sat in a vase that likely cost more than her car. She was about to touch the inlaid tiles on the entry table in front of her when a door to her left opened.