Chapter 58

 

 

“I want to catch him and I want to wring his neck,” Amber said through gritted teeth.

Gracie was the first of her friends she’d been able to raise this morning. Once her two kids were off to school, Gracie suggested, they should meet for breakfast at their favorite place. It was the two of them now at Brennan’s where the eggs Benedict were heavenly.

Pen had said she could join them later. She was on an early call with her editor in New York. It was Mary’s turn to take the opening shift at the gym, and Sandy had management people in from her bank’s home office. They had all requested updates from Amber as soon as possible.

“But before I kill the slimy worm, I need to clear my name.”

“We need to figure out the best way to do that,” Gracie said, stabbing a fresh strawberry that had come with her meal. “And just to be clear, you don’t actually get to kill him.”

“I know. Dammit.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to. There’s always way more blood than you expect, and then there’s the life sentence in prison. If you thought embezzlement was serious …”

Amber actually chuckled, which drew a stare from a severe looking woman at the next table.

Gracie lowered her voice. “But secretly, I agree.”

Amber cut into her eggs and ate a generous forkful.

“So, how do you propose to clear your name?”

“I say we steal the money back. Remember how we did with Pen’s stolen necklace? Well, we just figure out how to gather up all the missing money.”

“And then what?”

“I’m not sure. Haven’t got that far with the plan yet.”

“You do remember what Pen and Sandy told us, that Cody redistributed the funds to a bunch of different accounts. It doesn’t sound like it’ll be easy.”

“Nothing worth doing ever is.”

“And we can’t forget, if we use Pen or Sandy in parts of the action, Cody most likely will recognize them. They’ll have to stay out of sight.”

“Right. We can figure out all that.”

Pen walked in just then, elegant as always in a lavender shell and slacks with a black blazer and pumps. She kissed Amber on the forehead and took the empty seat across from Gracie. “I understand you had a rough afternoon yesterday,” she said.

The server, seeing a newcomer, approached and offered coffee. “Just some tea, please,” Pen said.

Amber quickly filled her in with the basics of both the detective’s revelation about the fake text messages and the bombshell identity revelation that had come across her computer late in the night.

“Wow, I must say, it’s been eventful.”

“And now she’s ready for revenge.” Gracie glanced toward the neighboring table, but the eavesdropper had left and no one sat there now.

“I think we need to first steal the money back,” Amber said. “But we have to do it in a way that pinpoints Cody as the real crook.”

Pen nodded and accepted the small teapot their server brought over. “And how do you propose we do that?”

“Do you have a list of the banks where he transferred cash? I think you said a young banker told you something about that?”

“At the Bank of Scotland? Yes, I believe Sandy has that information. Earlier in the chase, in London and Paris, I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you say he withdrew cash from at least one of those?”

Pen nodded. “That’s right. He took out cash and then deposited cash in Scotland.”

“I wonder if it was all of it?”

Pen shook her head. “No idea. The young woman we spoke to was rather nervous, just sharing the bank names. She gave no details about the money amounts.”

Amber focused on her water glass for a minute. “Okay, at least that would be a start. I can try getting into the banking records.”

“What can the rest of us do?” Gracie asked.

“Sandy may be able to help with the banking aspects,” Pen suggested.

Amber shook her head. “Can’t risk her professional status. We need to move money around without Cody’s knowledge, and most likely those accounts are in his name.”

“Or the name of that company we discovered, Blandishment Inc.”

“Right. I’m thinking it’s legally iffy for us to do that.”

“You think?” Gracie’s mouth formed a wry grin.

“Yeah, well, it’s something we don’t want Sandy involved with. She could lose her whole career over it.”

“Whereas …”

“Whereas, I have nothing more to lose.” Amber said it nonchalantly, but the others knew she was deeply upset over the whole mess.

“All right. Moving the money will be a top priority,” Pen said. “And Amber, you will handle the details. Equally important, to my thinking, is that we need to find out where Cody actually is.”

Gracie brightened. “Exactly. Once everything is in place, if the police won’t chase him down, we will.”

“Mary will. She’s already promised to kick him into the next universe.” Amber filched a strawberry and gave an evil grin as she bit into it.