Chapter Five --

 

“I’m not worried,” he replied, opening the fire door at the back of the building for me and ushering me through. We walked down the corridor and stopped at the third door on the left. “You haven’t seen the place in a while, have you?”

“No,” I agreed. I remembered that night I knocked to deliver the divorce papers.

“Come on in.” He unlocked the door and opened it, revealing a large living room with a dining area. I looked around, noticing the new paint on the walls. It was brilliant white. He still had his brown leather recliner, but now he also had a beige recliner sofa upholstered in microfiber. He was using a small chest as an end table. A glass-topped contemporary coffee table sat in the middle of the room. There was a large flat screen TV mounted on the wall. I saw the small dinette set we used when we were first married sitting under a contemporary glass chandelier. “The kitchen is this way.”

He led me into the tiny galley kitchen next to the front hall closet. With room enough for a small sink, a dishwasher, narrow range, and apartment-sized refrigerator, it was perfect for a person who didn’t cook much.

“Your bathroom is down the hall.” He led me to a small room with a single pedestal sink, toilet, and claustrophobic shower stall. “As you can see, no one actually expected anyone to use this on a regular basis.”

“It will be fine,” I replied, all too aware of the fact that I was one step away from homelessness and bankruptcy.

“Your bedroom. madam,” he announced, opening the flat slab door to a room barely big for the twin bed in there. It looked like something you’d find in the dorm room of an accounting student, except for the light blue comforter with cartoon characters emblazoned all over it.

“Kevin’s,” I sobbed, feeling the cotton between my fingers. “I can’t believe you have it. I thought it was up in the attic.”

“Sorry.” He looked sheepish, standing in the light of the hallway, still holding my blue overnight case.

“Don’t be sorry. If you hadn’t taken it, it would have been gone forever.”

“Well, in that case, you’ll probably be happy to see the closet.” Bosco set the case down on the bed. “I’ll leave you to it. There’s an alarm clock in the top drawer of the dresser. There are sheets in the second drawer down. Towels are in the linen closet. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks.” I smiled at my ex-husband. “Good night.”

“Sweet dreams,” he told me. “Don’t be afraid to wake me.”

I pulled the comforter back and got to work making the bed. Not surprisingly, the sheets matched. I thought about the day Kevin and I picked them out at Target. He was so excited to have a “big boy” bed. A small, hard knot formed halfway between my heart and my throat and settled there. I remembered what Bosco said, and with hesitation, I approached the closet. With a slow twist of the door knob, I opened a memorial to Kevin. Bosco had added shelves, to hold all of Kevin’s trophies and treasures. There was the junior championship cup from the year before he died, as well as his first baseball trophy from his t ball league. I saw the dinosaur project Kevin made with Bosco in second grade, as well as the wooden race car my son carved with his Cub Scout pack. Hanging in the corner was the Packers jacket Bosco bought him for Christmas when he was ten. I examined every item, grateful that I didn’t know Bosco had taken these things. I would have been angry. I would have raged at his need to take away pieces of Kevin. And I would not have been standing here, with the last remnants of Kevin’s life.

“Are you okay?” I heard my ex-husband speak from the doorway. I didn’t trust myself to reply, but I nodded. “Are you mad?”

A small, tear-choked chuckle escaped from my lips as I fought to keep my composure. I shook my head in response. I was holding Kevin’s favorite race car in my hands, remembering his face when he opened the birthday package. “No.”

“Good,” was all Bosco said before he disappeared into his bedroom.

I didn’t think I would be able to sleep, but I got dressed in my pajamas and settled into the twin bed, feeling small, but safe. I left the light on, pulling the comforter up to my chin, glad that the air conditioner was on. I was reluctant to give up my covers.

I slept surprisingly well, all things considered. I woke up to the sound of Bosco puttering around the kitchen. I hadn’t bothered to set the alarm clock, expecting him to be true to his usual early bird self. He didn’t let me down. I took a quick shower, towel-drying my short curls, before slipping into my clothes for work. That’s when I realized my car was still in the garage of the house that blew up. Or rather, what was left of my car was in what was left of my garage.

“Damn!” I cursed aloud as I came out of the bathroom.

“What’s the matter, sunshine?”

“I have no car. How am I going to get to work?”

“I’ll drop you off,” Bosco offered. “And I’ll pick you up.”

“Lord, where’s the silver lining in all this?” I sighed, accepting the mug of coffee Bosco offered me. A slight smile crossed his face.

“At least you don’t have to worry about explaining why you’re living at my place. Shall we have our coffee on the terrace?”

We took our cups out to the tiny square of cement that overlooked a babbling trickle of water in a rock bed. There was a tall sugar maple, offering shade from the morning sun. Bosco had a couple of chairs and a small glass-topped table in one corner, and a small grill in another. I took a seat as Bosco set down his mug and went back into the condo. A moment later, he was back with bagels and cream cheese, the newspaper tucked under his arm. We ate in companionable silence, flipping through the pages.

“This place reminds me of our first apartment,” I told him. I saw the corners of his mouth turn up briefly, but he kept his eyes on the sports section.

“Me, too,” he agreed. “That was a good place.”

“It was.” We were newly married, almost penniless, and content to be together. Things were good then. As I gazed around, I realized it was no accident Bosco chose this unit. I started to comment, but I stopped myself. Maybe it was enough to know that Bosco needed to feel connected to those years.

At quarter after eight, we headed out. Bosco dropped me off at Dynamic Productions, with the promise to return at five. He was going into the office to start the investigation into George’s con, to coordinate with the insurance investigation, and to have a lawyer handle the second mortgage fraud with the online lender. There was no house to rent, so there was no point in finding any tenants.

I stepped into the foyer of our production house, only to be greeted by a crowd of five. Ralph was right there, with flowers, surrounded by Dom, Tony, Kendall, and Gloria.

“Dori, we heard. We’re so sorry,” he said kindly. “You must be devastated.”

‘Yes,” I nodded, tears welling up in my eyes and spilling over the rims, only to trickle down my cheeks. I hadn’t cried this much since Kevin’s death. Even when George left, I didn’t have this many tears in me.

“Are you sure you’re up to working today?” Gloria wanted to know. She gave me a gentle hug. She was our all-around go-to girl, a woman of nearly fifty with a big heart, a penchant for adopting stray animals, and a knack for soothing ruffled client feathers. “Let me get you a cup of coffee. Unger Ink called, by the way, to ask how long it will be before their commercial is ready. Should I tell them we need a few more days?”

Even as she spoke, Gloria was walking me to my desk, flower bouquet in hand. She had the Unger Ink file ready, the tape cued up on my monitor, and the storyboard sitting on my desk. Dom’s notes on the shots we finished and those we needed to do were in my file box attached to the wall. I took a deep breath, seeing my familiar desk waiting for me, and turned to Gloria.

“I would love a cup of coffee,” I smiled through my tears. “And can you ask Kendall to step in? I need to ask her about Unger.”

“Sure, doll. Let me put these flowers in a vase. I’ll be right back,” she promised. I watched her swish out of my office in her vibrantly-colored broomstick skirt, and ruffled black blouse. Her auburn hair was piled on top of her head, with curls casually cascading down as they escaped from the scrunchie that barely held them in place. Gloria looked like a modern-day revamped earth mother from the sixties. She wore chic gold jewelry and had a penchant for designer clothing, but her style was what Bosco had called “eclectic barefoot”. I often suspected that Ralph was enamored of her, especially when I caught sight of his longing gazes. The long-married Ralph had a wife with a sour disposition, three daughters, and a slew of grandchildren. Ever since he had hired her five years ago, Ralph had a spring in his step. He always seemed to relish coming to work, and I thought I knew the reason.

For her part, Gloria seemed oblivious to his attention. She was too busy with her new baby granddaughter, her Pilates classes, and her love of her four rescued cats to notice him. She had been single for the better part of twenty years, no longer actively looking for Mr. Right. Instead, she threw herself into caring for the people around her. I suddenly appreciated how much I counted on Gloria’s goodness, especially today. I knew she would handle the delicate situations with tact because she cared about people, and I needed to believe that there were still good people on this planet.

“You wanted to see me?” The long, leggy Kendall popped her head into my office doorway.

“Yes,” I looked up. “How close are we to being ready to give Unger a showing?”

“Well, we still have the final three close-ups to do. I suppose we could get those done today. Dom can handle that. And we have to do the voice-overs, but we have to tweak the script to match the timing. With a final edit session tomorrow, we could probably do it by Thursday.”

“Could you get the ball rolling on all that and give Paul Unger a call by five, just to give him a heads-up?”

“Sure, Dori. Listen, I don’t know if this is a good time to ask,” Kendall began, “but is there any chance we can hold off on the Renschler project until next week?”

“Is there a problem?” I looked up at her earnest face, framed by the boyish haircut. Kendal was an accomplished camera woman, more comfortable behind the lens than in front of it, even though she had been a teenage model. For all the years she walked the local catwalk, wearing designer clothes across the runway for local retailers, she loved the money and hated the work. Once she had paid for her college education and saved enough for her first place, she quit modeling and rebelled, heading to film school. Kendall never wore any makeup and the only pieces of jewelry she sported were plain gold ball earrings and a simple gold chain around her neck. It was as if all the years of artifice had taken their toll on her soul, and Kendall’s choice was to abandon them in favor of a more natural life. It gave her camera work an edginess that didn’t work for every client, so Ralph and I often tangled over her work, especially with the more commercial applications. Give Kendall a non-profit spot to film and she was in heaven. Give her a commercial for a bank, and she was looking for an “Occupy Wall Street” opportunity to find a way to throw in a subtle little dig at corporate greed, usually as a visual joke in the background of the commercial. One of our clients spotted it in his commercial and was less than thrilled. We almost lost the account because Kendall refused to remove it, until she realized we meant business.

“We picked up the House of Hope spot for their fundraiser in September, and they want to start the campaign as soon as possible. I have some ideas about the storyboard, so I was thinking maybe you would let me take the lead on this and punch it out.”

“That depends,” I replied, keeping my gaze steady as I watched her. I knew she really wanted to work on the House of Hope public service announcement. “If I say yes, I want you to put as much attention to the Renschler project as you do to the PSA. I don’t want our paying client to get less than what our non-paying client gets.”

“Sure, boss. You have my word on it.” Kendall gave me a big smile. “Thanks. I’ll tell Bing that it’s a go.”

Lanny Bingler was Kendall’s boyfriend and she often used him to help her film the PSA shots she made in our off-hours. We gave her the chance to use our equipment, but we benefitted from the experience she gained behind the camera and in the editing room. She developed a reputation among non-profit organizations for her quality work, and the local broadcasting stations were more than happy to give her prime time slots because her public service announcements were attractive and clever. I just wished sometimes she would put as much effort into the work she did for our paying clientele.

I took a break at eleven, walking down to the Caulkins Corner CVS to pick up a few things. All morning long, I had thrown myself into my work, blocking out the horror of the day before and the loss of my home. Now, as I headed down the sidewalk in the late morning sunshine, I was struck by the magnitude of it all. It was more than just the house. Why would someone deliberately tamper with the gas line? I thought about the neighbors who could have been killed. Why was George so determined to ruin me? Was it really only because of Bosco’s work on the Feed the World fraud? Was it only because he followed the money trail? I thought about George as a man and a lover. Looking back, without the glow of hormones and happiness, I could see the chinks in the knight’s shining suit of armor. What did it take for a man to manipulate a woman like me to that extent? How big a role did Tati play in my seduction?

When Bosco identified the Feed the World embezzlers, who received kickbacks from the local administrators, there was still almost $1.8 million dollars missing from the $5 million dollar fund. Where was that money? Someone had taken it, and taken it successfully. The vice president of food distribution got caught with $600,000 in his bank account. The chief financial officer of the non-profit agency had funneled $2.2 million dollars into a small start-up company that made meals-ready-to-eat for civilians, as part of an effort to provide non-perishable foods for famine relief, which he then recommended Feed the World purchase for its food distribution program. In exchange for his financial support, he received stock options that were worth about a million dollars before the U.S. Attorney in Pennsylvania indicted him. That still left some other money out there, unaccounted for, and Bosco’s colleagues were in the process of tracking that down in the States. His work was done in Somalia, and he had moved on to a couple of other financial frauds, including a bank in Portland, Maine that was robbed by a gang in Eastern Europe that hacked its way into ATMs.

I understood why Bosco believed he was the real target of all this dreadful destruction. It all made perfect sense from the viewpoint of an experienced forensic accountant, used to financial fraud. But what if he was wrong? What if George had nothing to do with anyone at Feed the World?