Chapter 3 - The Secretary Who Knew Too Much
"Give me the letter," Thomas said.
Penelope didn't move.
His hands were empty except for the paper.
No weapon.
No threat.
Yet his expression frightened her.
Not anger.
Fear.
"Why?"
"Because Richard never intended you to read it alone."
"You followed me."
"I protected you."
"Those aren't the same thing."
Thomas looked exhausted.
"Penelope, your mother didn't die because of a random accident."
The words struck harder than shouting would have.
Penelope's phone remained pressed to her ear.
Larkin had heard.
"What did you say?" he demanded through the speaker.
Thomas looked at the phone.
"Of course he's listening."
Penelope's throat tightened.
"What happened to my mother?"
"I don't know."
"You just said—"
"I know the accident wasn't random. I don't know who caused it."
Penelope stared at him.
Thomas held out the missing page.
"Read."
She took it.
Richard's letter continued.
Evelyn believed someone had been stealing from the company for more than a decade.
Not thousands.
Millions.
The money moved through legitimate subsidiaries in amounts too small for auditors to flag.
Only someone who saw every account could recognize the pattern.
Evelyn had recognized it.
Penelope felt sick.
Because she had recognized something too.
Small inconsistencies.
Invoices rounded upward.
Payments split across departments.
Accounts closed and reopened under similar names.
She'd assumed they were remnants of a badly designed system.
What if they weren't?
"What did my mother find?"
Thomas pointed toward the boxes.
"Somewhere in here."
Larkin arrived six minutes later.
He walked into the unit furious.
Thomas barely had time to turn before Larkin grabbed the front of his jacket.
"You knew."
"Enough."
"You knew her mother was in danger."
"I was twenty-one years old!"
Thomas shoved him away.
For the first time, Penelope saw something beneath Thomas's swagger.
Guilt.
"I was a kid," he said. "Richard told me Evelyn had discovered missing money. He told me to keep copies of her records somewhere nobody could find them."
"Why you?"
"Because whoever was doing it knew everyone else."
Larkin looked around.
"And you've kept this secret for eleven years?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Thomas laughed bitterly.
"Because your father died three weeks after giving me the key."
Silence.
Larkin's anger vanished.
"Three weeks?"
Thomas nodded.
"Then Evelyn died."
Penelope gripped the desk.
Her mother's accident had happened two months after Richard Steves's death.
The sequence suddenly looked very different.
Richard.
Then Evelyn.
Two people connected to the same financial records.
Both dead within weeks.
Penelope looked at the boxes.
"Where do we start?"
Thomas blinked.
"What?"
"If my mother found financial theft, there will be a pattern."
"Penelope—"
"I'm an accountant."
"You're emotionally involved."
"Which means I'm extremely motivated."
Larkin almost smiled.
Thomas did not.
They worked until sunrise.
Penelope removed her heels after twenty minutes and sat cross-legged on the floor in a four-thousand-dollar gown surrounded by dusty accounting records.
Larkin removed his jacket.
Thomas found coffee.
By four in the morning, the glamorous illusion of the gala had completely disappeared.
Penelope's hair had loosened.
Her makeup was smudged.
Larkin's sleeves were rolled to his elbows.
Thomas had stopped making jokes.
And the numbers were beginning to speak.
Penelope built a timeline.
Payments from seventeen companies.
Different names.
Different industries.
Identical patterns.
Every six months, a fraction of each subsidiary's revenue vanished.
The amounts were intentionally inconsistent.
$42,700.
$81,200.
$19,450.
Individually meaningless.
Collectively enormous.
Penelope calculated quickly.
"Thirty-one million."
Thomas stared.
"Over how long?"
"Fourteen years."
Larkin leaned closer.
"Where did it go?"
"That's the problem."
Every transaction eventually converged into an account labeled CEDAR HOLDINGS.
Thomas frowned.
"Never heard of it."
Larkin hadn't either.
Penelope searched older ledgers.
Then she found something.
The original authorization form.
Two signatures were required.
Richard Steves.
And—
Penelope stopped.
Thomas noticed.
"What?"
She slid the page across the desk.
The second signature belonged to Daniel Dixon.
Thomas's father.
Thomas stared at it.
"No."
Larkin said nothing.
Daniel Dixon had died six years earlier.
A respected executive.
Richard's oldest friend.
Thomas's father.
"No," Thomas repeated.
Penelope pointed at the ink.
"This doesn't prove he stole anything."
"It proves he authorized the account."
Thomas stood abruptly.
"My father would never—"
"Your father did plenty of things you didn't know about," Larkin said quietly.
Thomas turned.
"Careful."
"Like mine apparently did."
The cousins stared at each other.
Penelope stepped between them.
"We need facts."
Neither moved.
"Sit down."
To her astonishment, both obeyed.
Penelope continued searching.
At 6:12 a.m., she found another document.
A withdrawal.
Two million dollars.
Dated one day after Evelyn Woods's death.
Authorized by Cedar Holdings.
Recipient hidden.
But attached to the transaction was a handwritten note.
EW CLOSED.
Penelope couldn't breathe.
Larkin read it.
His face hardened.
Thomas looked ill.
Penelope folded the paper carefully.
She refused to cry.
Not yet.
"Who had access to Cedar Holdings?"
Thomas shook his head.
"Daniel. Richard. Maybe the finance director."
"Who?"
"Arthur Bell."
Penelope looked up.
Arthur Bell.
The company's current chairman.
The man who had personally approved Penelope's hiring three years earlier.
A cold sensation traveled down her spine.
"Arthur hired me."
Larkin turned.
"What?"
"Human Resources rejected my application initially."
She remembered it clearly.
Then she'd received an unexpected call.
Arthur Bell had reviewed her résumé personally.
He wanted to meet.
He'd asked strange questions during the interview.
Her mother's maiden name.
Where Penelope had grown up.
Whether she had siblings.
She'd assumed it was executive eccentricity.
Now—
"He knew exactly who I was."
Thomas whispered, "Oh God."
Penelope's phone vibrated.
A company security notification appeared.
ACCESS DETECTED: FLOOR 42.
It was seven in the morning.
The office shouldn't open for another hour.
Larkin took out his phone and checked the security system.
"Someone used an executive credential."
"Whose?"
His expression changed.
"Mine."
Penelope stood.
"My computer."
"What about it?"
"If someone knows we're investigating, that's where they'll go. I've been tracking irregular transactions for months."
Larkin stared at her.
"You've been tracking them?"
"I didn't know what they were."
They drove back immediately.
The elevator climbed.
The doors opened.
Penelope's desk had been destroyed.
Drawers emptied.
Computer gone.
Files scattered.
Larkin walked toward his office.
The glass door stood open.
Someone had painted a message across his desk in black ink.
STOP LOOKING.
Thomas swore.
Penelope stepped closer.
There was something beneath the message.
A photograph.
She picked it up.
It showed her entering the gala the previous evening.
Taken from inside the ballroom.
Someone who had been there was watching her.
On the back was a single handwritten sentence.
THE WRONG WOODS SURVIVED.
Larkin read it.
His face became dangerously still.
Then a sound came from the conference room.
A chair scraping.
Someone was inside.
Larkin reached for the handle.
The door opened before he touched it.
May you like
Arthur Bell stepped out.
And he was holding Penelope's missing computer.
