KILLIAN: A Mafia Romance (The Callahans Book 2) (65 page)

Jason

I stared at the picture on the internet, feeling slightly less self-conscious about it than when I first saw it. Justin, my younger brother, thought it was hilarious. He called me before I was even out of the shower this morning—which is saying a lot because before he became a father about a month ago, he likely would have just fallen into bed about the time I got up to start the day—crowing about the fact that he wasn’t the one getting himself into trouble this time. I was. He was laughing so hard, his warning to take care of it before Mom and Dad became aware of it was nearly lost.

I’d never been in this situation before.

Justin had. I couldn’t count on both hands the number of times I’ve had to bail Justin out of an awkward situation. The time with the stripper was the worst. I had to actually pay the girl off to get her to stop slipping things to reporters. When you come from a family whose name is on the deeds of almost all the buildings downtown, you have to be very careful about what you do and say in public. And in private sometimes, too.

This morning was my first rude awakening to that very clear fact.

I went to a local bar to interview a guy for one of the departments in my company, a role that needed to be filled quickly because a friend, someone I once trusted with my life, betrayed me and stole from the company. Therefore, I’m in the middle of a complete overhaul of almost my entire supervising staff. The interview went sour. But then I saw the girl I’ve been seeing and we had words because some guy kissed her right there at the bar. In front of everyone. The fact that it was on the cheek and he turned out to just be a friend was beside the point. I was jealous. And I don’t get jealous.

Anyway…one thing led to another and we ended up in the backseat of my car. Apparently, someone passing by recognized me and snapped a picture of the two of us. Then that person posted it on the internet—as if me with my girl was news. I mean,
Christ!
Anyone could see we were having a private moment. What kind of person intrudes on something like that? What ever happened to the days when you saw something like that and you laughed behind your hand, but you left the participants alone? Talk about lack of respect. I mean, I know we were in a public place, but does that really give someone the right to take our picture and…?

I guess it’s a little too late for recriminations. Now I needed to focus on how to get this off the internet and reduce the damage to not only my family name, but to my own reputation. I had clients who might be seeing this right now. Family-based businesses. This was not good.

It was dark. And the interior of my car is dark, too, so all you could really see were our faces and our hands. Her face was turned away from the camera. It was hard to get a real sense of what she looked like. But mine…I was looking up at her with this expression of pure ecstasy, which was exactly what I was feeling at the moment. She has this way of making me forget everything but what’s happening in the moment. No one else has ever been able to do that for me…and I’m digressing again.

It was obvious what we were doing despite the fact you couldn’t see much more than her sitting on my lap. And the comments under the photo were…let’s just say they wouldn’t win me any new contracts with the type of companies I preferred to work with.

I had to make it disappear. But first, I needed to warn the girl.

Joey Forman.

Joanne.

If she didn’t already know. The gossip in this place was like a fire raging through the mountains in a drought.

This was one of the dangers of dating me. I wish she didn’t have to learn it so soon after we began. I mean,
hell
, we’d only met Wednesday. This was Friday.

I had to admit, though, the idea of seeing her again had me smiling despite everything. I had every reason to be angry, annoyed, stressed, hurt, frustrated, and a million things that weren’t pleasant. But when I thought of Joanne, all I wanted to do was go find her and hide under the covers of my bed with her in my arms. She was beautiful and feisty and intelligent. She was everything I never thought I’d find in a girl. I knew almost nothing about her—except that I wanted to see her more than I wanted to deal with all of this bullshit.

I picked up the phone to call my assistant, Shelly. To tell her to have Joey sent upstairs from her cubicle in accounting.

That’s right. Joey works for me.

It’s complicated.

But just as I was about to push the right combination of numbers, Shelly stepped into the office.

“I was about to call you,” I said with a little smile, putting the phone down. “I need to—”

“We just got a call from downstairs,” she said, a sober expression on her face that she rarely ever wore. Shelly was a naturally reserved person, but a happily reserved person, if that makes any sense. I’ve known her for more than ten years, ever since I hired her as the first employee of my graphic design company.

I knew there was trouble when she looked like that.

“What’s the matter now?”

“The police just escorted Joey Forman from the property.”

I was out of my chair before the words had even finished coming out of her mouth.

Joey

My hands were shaking. I didn’t know what was going on. The uniformed cop took my arm and led me to the elevator, but he never said a word beyond asking me to go with him. Was I under arrest? If so, for what? Everyone was staring at me, whispering behind file folders and cubicle walls, pretending I couldn’t see what they were doing. Pretty soon they wouldn’t bother to even make the pretense of hiding it. There’d been plenty of gossip going around lately—thanks to the dismissal of the heads of several departments—but this would be the icing on the cake.

I could even guess what they were saying.
Perfect little Joey, finally got caught!

What I’d been caught at, I wasn’t quite sure. But I don’t think it mattered much to them.

We boarded the elevator, and the cop let go of me. I wrapped my arms over my chest and stared at the numbers above the doors, wondering whom I would call when they gave me my one phone call. Did they still do that? They must. But I had no way of knowing because I’d never been arrested before.

Rosie, I decided. My sister. She was something of a flighty kid, but she loved me. She’d get me out quickly. And her boyfriend, Jackson, was pre-law. Maybe it’d be good practice for him.

The doors opened, and the cop gestured for me to lead the way through the lobby. I was glad he was no longer pulling me along. At least the few people still lingering down here wouldn’t immediately know I was being arrested. Maybe they’d think it something else, something innocent.

And maybe my boobs would suddenly shrink and my legs would grow a few inches so that I’d look like the models I’d admired as a kid.

A patrol car was parked at the curb. I expected to be shoved into the backseat, but the cop politely held open the passenger side door. I slid inside, tucking my skirt around my thighs, and tried not to look scared to death, even though I was.

What would Jason think when he found out about this? That was really what scared me the most. The gossip I could deal with. The arrest…it was way out of my comfort zone, but I knew in my heart that I hadn’t done anything wrong. This would be resolved. But Jason? I wasn’t as confident that he would be as forgiving about this as I wanted him to be. I’ve worked for the company for a little more than a year, so I’ve known about him. I’ve heard the rumors and stories about his family. But I’ve only known him a few days. I didn’t know how he would respond to this. But I was afraid it wouldn’t go well. He had a reputation to maintain, after all. He wouldn’t want a girlfriend who’d been arrested.

Girlfriend.
I wasn’t even sure that was what I was to him. We’d shared a bed once. And the backseat of his car…I blushed even thinking about it. But was that enough to call myself his girlfriend? Or was I jumping too far ahead?

My thoughts were jumping all over the place. The cop got in the car, and we moved into traffic. I stared out the window, wondering what my parents would think when they found out. What would Rosie tell them? And my friends. Some of them would be supportive. Others would probably distance themselves. Who gets arrested? Not someone you wanted to be close to, someone you could trust and rely on to always be there for you. Would people think I was no longer reliable?

Just the thought made me sick to my stomach.

We pulled up to the police department sooner than I expected. A man in a suit was leaning against the wall just outside the front doors. He pushed away and came to the car, wrenching open my door as we came to a stop.

“Ms. Forman,” he said, reaching in with a big, beefy hand. “Thank you for coming down.”

I stood, smoothing my skirt as I did. “For coming down?”

“Yes. We’re hoping you’ll be able to clear up some information for us.”

And now I was confused. “I’m not under arrest?”

The man in the suit flashed an ugly glare at the uniform cop who just shrugged.

“I apologize, Ms. Forman,” the suit said, bowing his head like a gentleman from another generation. “I’m Detective Grant. We’re investigating some wrong doing at JB Graphics and were hoping you could help clarify a few things.”

Relief washed through me so quickly that I became a little unsteady on my feet. Detective Grant grabbed my arm to keep me from falling.

“I do apologize for the misunderstanding. Sometimes communication between my department and the patrol officers is a little muddled.”

“It’s fine. I’m just glad I don’t have to call a lawyer.”

He smiled. “Not unless you were somehow involved in this little embezzlement scheme.”

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t even know how to go about it even if I had access to the right things.”

He inclined his head slightly, then gestured for me to follow him inside. Moments later we were sitting in a small office with an old metal desk that was covered in so much paperwork, empty coffee cups, and discarded vending machine snack wrappers that I couldn’t imagine how he ever knew how to find anything. But he seemed to have a system. He picked up a file folder, leaned against the front of the desk, and handed it to me.

“These are financial records from the private bank account of a former employee of JB Graphics, a couple of billing statements, and some of those estimations I guess you and others in your department fill out each time the company takes on a new project?”

I flipped through the papers, recognizing the same bills and estimations Jason had shown me in his office a few days. And then the bank statement that showed several deposits from the company that fit the excess on the billing statements of two of the bills.

I wondered whom it belonged to. The name had been redacted.

“I’d like you to take a look and explain to me what all that stuff means.”

He smiled again, an almost charming smile that was also a little self-deprecating.

“Well, these estimates show how much the project should have cost, based on the price of materials, the billboards the material would be used for, labor, and all the other little things that go into these projects. And the bills are what the client was billed after the work was finished.”

“Is there always such a huge discrepancy between the two?”

“No. The final bill is almost always less than the higher estimate, but higher than the lower. That’s why we do three estimates, so that the client will be aware of the high end, but relieved when it comes in lower.”

The detective nodded. “That’s sound business practice.”

“These bills are off because someone charged for too many billboards and more supplies than they should have. It’s a simple mistake that should have been caught by the accounting department when the creative team sent their receipts down. Normally, in cases like this, the client would have asked for more billboards and that’s why there would be a discrepancy. But when that happens, the creative team normally sends an amended order to us so that we can adjust the estimate.”

“Did that happen in these cases?”

I looked at the bills again, noting the clients. “I don’t know. I’m not the only accounting assistant, but I don’t think so.”

“And the deposits marked on the bank statements?”

“Fit exactly the difference between the estimates and the bills. In fact”—I taped my fingers against one deposit—“this shows the difference is such that the bill should have been lower than the lowest estimate if it had been presented to the client properly. That’s probably because the billboard company we use often offers a discount for a certain number of billboards used in a single month.”

“You pass that savings on to the client?”

I nodded. “Mr. Brooks prefers to do things that way.”

Detective Grant nodded again. “Can I ask you to walk me through the entire process? How do the accountants arrive at the billing amount? Who oversees the process?”

“Of course.”

As I began walking him through what my department did every day, he took notes on a small pad of paper. I’d never had to explain my job to anyone before. It seemed so odd to hear it laid out like that, and it made me think of all the ways in which the process made it too easy for someone to take advantage of it. I could even see how this theft had taken place.

And I explained it to the detective.

“Each department head and creative team is given an expense account to pay for dinners with clients, travel expenses, and other job-related things. Each account has a set amount in it, deposited at the beginning of each quarter. Those accounts require for the employee to submit receipts. If they spend all the money in a said quarter, great, things come out even. If they have an excess, they are given a bonus in their final check for that quarter. If they go over, that much is taken from the following quarter’s allowance.”

“Okay,” the detective said, nodding slowly.

“The creative teams also get a bonus each quarter for the number of new clients they bring in, the number of projects they bring in under the lowest estimate, and a few other small things. This also includes the supervisor of the creative department—because that is the heart of the company.”

He nodded again. “Continue.”

“The team that often comes in over the estimates, however, does not get this bonus. In fact, the excess is sometimes taken from their account, depending on the reasons for the excess.”

I sat back a little, thinking about Jason. I wondered what he would think if he was sitting here, listening to me explain this to a stranger.

“The system we use is top of the line. But like any software, it has its vulnerabilities. One of those is the ability to confuse it when it comes to recognizing a deficit and an excess. If you submit a bill and a list of receipts at the same time that come to about the same amount, the software could place the balance of the impacted accounts on the wrong side.”

The detective shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m not following.”

I closed the file folder on my lap and leaned forward a little, looking the detective in the eye.

“Someone who is aware of this flaw could, for example, submit receipts for the creative team’s expenses along with the receipts for the project—and if they come to almost the same amount, it will cause an excess in one account and a deficit in another, so the software will want to make them either both excess or deficit. That’s when the accountant must pay attention and make the proper correction. But, in these cases, the accountant either wasn’t paying attention or missed it intentionally. So, the final bill was much larger than it should have been—excess—and the expense account was not reduced, but was increased by the amount of the receipts.”

“But I thought deposits into those accounts were only made at the beginning of the quarter.”

“They are. But the software would want to balance everything out. And the software doesn’t know it’s only supposed to make deposits at the beginning of the quarter. That’s where the accountant comes in. However, the person working these accounts clearly missed it.”

“But how did the money end up in the person’s account?”

“Each person attached to an expense account has a debit card connected to the account. It’s simple to make a payment to themselves from the account. Happens all the time. When someone accidentally uses the wrong card, or whatever, they’re allowed to pay themselves back. They just have to have a receipt for it. But, in this case, the money shouldn’t have been there in the first place, so if they removed it immediately, no one would ask questions until the end of the year when the statements for each account is reviewed. And, even then, it might not be noticed, especially if someone in accounting was in on it and missed the mistake in the first place.”

“So, you’re telling me that someone in the accounting department had to be in on this with the thief?”

I nodded. “Had to have been. This is a well-known flaw of the software. People in my department make jokes about it. All the accountants would have known to look out for it. I don’t see how they could have missed it.”

Detective Grant was about to say something, but his cell phone buzzed. He tugged it out of his pocket, apologizing as he stood and wandered near the door to answer it. I opened the file folder again, staring at the numbers on the bank statement. I found myself wondering if the head of the accounting department, Mr. Fredericks, could have had something to do with all of this. He was fired the day after the head of the creative department was fired. And the way the detective was talking, there had to be two people involved.

And a lot of money. If the third theft had been allowed to go through, the company would have been out nearly a hundred thousand dollars. That was a lot of money, five, six times what should have been available in the expense account given to the department heads and creative teams. Someone should have noticed such a large deposit into an expense account—even if they missed the system flaw. It should have been noticed. If not by the accountant working the receipts, then by the supervisor. It almost
had
to be the department head who was in on this because he was the only one who could have made the evidence disappear from the system and keep others from seeing what had happened. Not everyone in my department was corrupt. At least, I assumed not. And it would take more than one person to turn a blind eye if the evidence remained in the computer.