Back at home, I took a quick shower and dressed in my red sequined gown. The dress fit me like a second skin and had a slit that ran up to the middle of my thigh. Sophisticated, sexy, seductive. The perfect dress for luring in a lecherous jerk like Nathan Jamison.
I pulled my hair up into a claw clip, allowing a tendril to escape on each side, framing my face. I loaded on the cosmetics, following it up with a musky jasmine body spray. I tucked the sequined clutch my mother had made for me under my arm and eyed myself in the mirror.
I might not be the type of voluptuous knockout that would stop traffic, but I could hold my own. And heck, it’s not like it took much to turn on a perpetually horny sex hound like Nathan Jamison. The guy had probably been born with a boner.
Yep, Nathan would be eating his heart out tonight.
I left my car in the parking garage at Alicia’s downtown loft, and the two of us walked the three blocks to the art gallery, our beautiful new clutches tucked under our arms. While I’d seen Alicia slip only her house key, a lipstick, and a pressed powder compact into her sequined clutch, mine was nearly bursting at the seams with my handcuffs and Glock packed inside.
The art showing had started at seven o’clock and it was now eight. The two of us would arrive fashionably late. Daniel planned to meet us at the gallery as soon as he wrapped things up at his office.
“I wonder if they’ll have the caramelized ostrich testicles again,” I said.
“God, I hope not.” Alicia shuddered. “That’s so disgusting.”
“You eat caviar and escargot and calamari,” I said. “Fish eggs and snails and squid are just as disgusting as ostrich parts.” I hadn’t actually tried the “ostrich oysters” last time. Though the caterer had assured me they were delicious, I had a hard time believing a testicle could be delectable. Still, it was fun to gross Alicia out. She tended to be a bit squeamish, and what were friends for if not to razz each other a little?
Three uniformed valets stood at a temporary podium that had been placed on the sidewalk in front of the art gallery. Men in tuxedos and women in cocktail dresses streamed in and out of the gallery’s front doors. As Alicia and I walked up, Nathan pulled up to the curb in his two-seater black Pontiac Solstice, the same car in which he’d first groped me all those years ago after buying me dinner at a fancy Italian place. He was more committed to his cars than to his women. Figured he’d be fashionably late, too.
Our gazes met through his windshield and he raised his fingers from the steering wheel in greeting. I tilted my head and offered what I hoped was a come-hither look. It was a bit hard to pull off when I’d really rather he go-thither.
Alicia and I entered the gallery, weaving through the tight crowd inside and greeting the others as we made a beeline for the bar. I ordered a merlot, while Alicia went for a cabernet. Having skipped dinner, both of us were starving, so we aimed for the hors d’oeuvres next.
While there were no big bird balls among the offerings today, there was a cheese ball and some type of spherical appetizer that appeared to contain mushrooms and spinach. I loaded up my plate, including triangular pieces of pita bread with hummus and a square of vegetable lasagna. I wasn’t sure whether I’d hit all the food groups, but the various shapes were well represented.
Six-foot partitions divided the gallery into roomlike spaces, each of which housed pieces by a particular artist. Alicia and I nibbled our food and sipped our wine as we meandered among the pieces on display.
The first section contained an eclectic mix of drawings, paintings, and sculptures. One painting depicted two cups of peach-colored ice cream situated side by side, each of the rounded scoops topped with a large red cherry. A charcoal drawing by the same artist featured two pointy pyramids, the stones at the very top of the pyramids colored darker than those that appeared below. A colorful fish sculpture was also on display. The pupils had been colored pink, and they bulged outward as if the fish suffered from a bad case of pop eye.
“Do you notice anything odd about these pieces?” I asked Alicia, keeping my voice low so that we wouldn’t be overheard.
“You mean the fact that they all look like breasts?”
So it wasn’t just me. “I think the artist has mommy issues.”
As if to prove our point, an older woman pushed past us, a heaping plate of food in her hands. “You must eat,” she said, forcing the plate into the hands of a balding, thirtyish man wearing a white dress shirt, a blue bow tie, and an angry blush. Glaring at her, he snatched a stuffed mushroom from the plate and shoved it into his mouth. As soon as the woman turned her back, he dropped the plate onto a nearby tray.
Alicia and I eased past him. “Love your work,” Alicia offered.
“Very original,” I added.
He smiled, his blush now one of humility rather than anger. “Thanks!”
The next section contained a series of nine separate paintings displayed in rows of three. Together, they depicted the face of a gray elephant.
The following section contained soft sculpture calico cats made from real calico fabric stuffed with cotton batting and sewn by hand. Each piece was marked with a place card giving the cat’s name. They all began with the letter C. Catrina. Corinne. Conner.
The artist, a long-haired Indian woman in a floor-length calico dress, wandered among her creations, speaking with the attendees about her techniques and vision.
“These are adorable,” I said to Alicia, discreetly checking a price tag on one of the smaller cats. Only sixty bucks. That was reasonable for an original piece of art.
I caught the artist’s eye and pointed to the cat. She walked over. “You’re interested in Calvin the Conniving Calico?”
“Yes. I’d like to add him to my art collection.” So far, the only art in my collection had been made by my young nieces and nephews, and consisted of wildly disproportionate drawings of family members and farm animals. Frankly, it was often difficult to distinguish between the two. What I’d once interpreted as a nanny goat turned out to be a portrait of Great-Aunt Ida. Given that both nanny goats and Aunt Ida have chin whiskers and lopsided udders, the confusion was understandable.
I set my plate and wine on a table while I dug through my clutch for the cash I’d stashed there. “Hold these,” I said to Alicia, pulling out my handcuffs and gun and handing them to her. Alicia didn’t bat an eye, but the artist’s face flashed in alarm. I held up a palm. “Don’t worry. I’m in law enforcement.”
I handed her three twenties and she handed Calvin over.
“I trust you’ll take good care of him?”
“Square meals every day.” Just like I fed my other cats, though their square meals ironically came out of a round can.
Alicia looked around, her expression miffed. “Still no sign of Daniel.” She checked her phone. “No text either.”
“He’s probably on his way.”
We enjoyed the exhibits for a few more minutes before spotting Daniel in the doorway. Alicia raised a hand to catch his attention. He lifted his chin in acknowledgment and steered through the crowd toward us.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “One of the partners is filing a high-dollar lawsuit tomorrow and he asked me to look over the petition.” He gave Alicia a kiss on the cheek, which seemed to soften her a bit.
We headed for the bar and another round of wine. After we received our drinks, I asked Daniel about the lawsuit. Most of the cases he dealt with sounded like pure drudgery—technical antitrust suits, breaches of contract, property disputes. Snooze! But good manners dictated that I feign an interest in his work. A few of the things I learned back at Miss Cecily’s Charm School had stuck with me.
“It’s a copyright infringement case involving software,” he said. “Our client is a local software company. They’re suing a former employee. He started a company with his brother and our client discovered they’ve been using some of the code he developed while he was still employed with them.”
Wait a minute. I felt my pulse quicken. Could it be?
“He started a company with his brother?” I asked. Daniel nodded.
“Any chance that company is called H2?”
“That’s the one,” Daniel said.
So the Hildebrands hadn’t initiated the communications with Gertz, Gertz, and Schwartz. Most likely, the phone call they’d made to the firm had been to return a call from one of the Gertz lawyers.
I explained about the SEC investigation I’d been helping with all week.
“Insider trading?” Daniel said. “Wow. These guys could be in some deep shit.”
I wasn’t sure their expensive slip-on loafers would hold up to the deep shit they could be in. Hell, they might need waders. If Hunter and Tanner Hildebrand had been aware of the potential copyright infringement claim prior to the conclusion of the audit, they had a legal duty to disclose that information to the auditors.
I needed proof the Hildebrands were aware of the claim before they signed the management representation letter in which they stated they were aware of no potential liabilities. Their cell phone bill would prove they’d placed a call to someone at the Gertz firm prior to the conclusion of the audit, but I needed something more concrete, something that would prove, without question, that they’d known of the infringement claim.
I explained my dilemma to Daniel. He was more than happy to help, especially once I warned him the bulk of the Hildebrand brothers’ funds had been squirreled away in a Swiss bank account, out of reach of both the IRS and his firm’s client. “They’ve got passport applications pending, too.”
He jumped on his phone, called the partner, and within seconds received a digital copy of a certified letter that had been sent to Tanner Hildebrand two weeks before the conclusion of the audit. The letter noted that Tanner had ignored numerous warnings from his former employer not to use the misappropriated code, ordered him to cease and desist from further use, and warned that a lawsuit would ensue if H2 sold any software that included the copyrighted code.
“Did your firm get the return receipt?”
Daniel nodded and touched his phone’s screen, bringing up an image of the green return receipt card. Sure enough, the card had been signed by Tanner three days after the letter was sent, ten days before the audit ended.
The documents spoke for themselves. Tweedledee and Tweedledotcom had withheld critical financial information from their auditors. There’d be no playing dumb this time. The management representation letter specifically addressed all claims and, knowing Nathan, he’d performed a thorough oral interview of the client as well.
Daniel forwarded the files to me. The lawsuit would be public information once it was filed tomorrow, and the proverbial poop would hit the fan.
Neener-neener.
Justice would be served. Looked like Tara Holloway might get some satisfaction after all.