Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“The vacant offices?” Ally asked.
“What?” I asked back.
“I did some preliminary checks. On that floor where you were, there were four office suites. Three taken. One by an accounting firm. One a data processing organization. The last, an architect. The only other suite of offices, the one around the corner from where you two were lurking, was vacant.”
Again, Toni and I exchanged a glance before I went back to Ally. “That should be an engineering firm.”
“Well, it isn’t. I went in. There’s nothing there. Not even a desk. But there is a listing for it on a commercial rental site, and it’s been vacant for twelve months.”
“Whoa,” Toni whispered.
My skin started feeling funny.
“That’s it, child?” Shirleen spoke for the first time, watching me carefully. “An empty folder?”
I shook my head at her. “No. I didn’t know what was up, so I typed the number on the tab into our system, thinking maybe the paperwork had been misplaced. It’s the case file number. And it came up locked. The message said I had to ask the network engineer for access. I’ve never run into that before. We have three named partners, four senior partners, six junior partners, and four associates. I do work for all of them. I have all access to everything because I need it.”
“Okay, we’re getting fishier,” Ally said. “What else?”
“I asked the network administrator for access,” I told her. “And he was acting all kinds of shifty and said that only Jeffrey, one of the named partners, has access to that file.”
“And let me guess, you got curious, and it didn’t stop there,” Ally deduced.
I nodded. “Especially since it was a named partner. They don’t do any of the grunt work. They pass it off to the paralegal pool. Or an associate. So I looked up Remostros Engineering. And it exists, and I’m no forensics accountant, but from what I can tell, it’s a shell company.”
“Well, damn,” Daisy whispered.
“And that’s owned by what appears to be another shell company, that’s owned by another one, that’s owned by yet another, and that last one is owned by a tiny LLC with only one director,” I went on.
“This Jeffrey,” Ally concluded.
I nodded again.
She turned to Daisy. “Extortion?”
Daisy shrugged. “Maybe.” She gave her attention to me. “This Jeffrey married?”
Oh my God.
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
“Office gossip has him banging one of the junior partners,” I shared.
“Yup,” Daisy stated. “Hiding assets. He’s gonna scrape off the wife for the side piece.”
He totally was.
“After I talked with our network administrator, Jeffrey called me into his office,” I told them. “He asked me to bring the file, the one with nothing in it. He’s usually very professional. Friendly, but a be-a-good-team though work-is-work, get-the-job-done type of guy. Except, when I brought the file, he was being super outgoing in an oily way that felt dirty, telling me the Remostros deal was highly confidential, they were important clients, would mean a ton of billable hours, and the firm had promised them his individual attention.”
“And you didn’t buy it,” Ally said.
“That was when I started digging deeper. But my bad feeling was helped when he ordered me in no uncertain terms not to speak to anybody about it. Not anybody. Not even the other partners.”
“Well, stop digging,” Ally ordered. “I’ll get Brody on it so we can make sure this isn’t extortion, and your firm isn’t going to be vulnerable to whatever he’s doing. But if he’s preparing to fuck over his wife, you got a decision to make. That being, does she somehow learn, anonymously, he’s screwing around on her at the same time setting her up just to screw her?”
“That would be my vote,” Ava said.
“Me too,” Sadie put in.
“Totes,” Roxie added.
“Malia, you do any of that research on a work computer?” Shirleen asked me.
More shaking of my head. “No. I did it at home.”
She nodded once. “Smart girl.”
I smiled at her.
“I think we all know everyone’s vote, but it’s gotta come from you,” Ally said to me. “If it’s him ramping up to fuck over his wife, do you want her to know?”
I thought about Jeffrey.
I didn’t really know him. The underlings didn’t pal around with the partners, but he was even more removed.
Though I did know he was in his early fifties, he and his wife had three kids, all of them in college. They’d been married since college themselves. The junior partner he was possibly sleeping with was in her mid-thirties, smart, gorgeous and a shark. And Jeffrey’s wife planned all of our office parties.
She was the perfect attorney’s wife. She didn’t work, except the onerous jobs of making his life and family run smoothly so he could make his mark, and she bent over backward to make him look good to colleagues, staff and clients.
I didn’t really know her either.