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Run For The Money
Stephanie Feagan
THEY HIRED HER TO WATCH THE MONEY — NOW SHE'S ACCUSED OF STEALING IT!It all started with Whitney "Pink" Pearl's bank statement. More than $200,000 mysteriously showed up in her account — along with a paper trail linking her to embezzling from the charity she'd been hired to safeguard! Even worse, Pink was caught at the scene of the crime where her sworn enemy was murdered — and now someone is gunning for her.With help from two sexy, marriage-minded men (help!) and one lovelorn mother (don't ask…) can Pink dodge the cops, turn the tables on the killers and clear her name before someone takes the money and runs?
Run for the Money
Stephanie Feagan
With much love and affection, this book is dedicated to
Aunt Glenda, who enthusiastically showed me the other
side of the world and shared her endless curiosity.
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks go to the following: Leslea, for not abandoning me to marry a Chinese man; Callie, for sharing her personal phobias of big fish and murky water; and Jo George, aka Mom, for taking me to China as your “paid companion.” To Mike, for your love and support and for understanding your wife’s wanderlust. Uncle Andy, for giving me a glimpse of what it’s like to work in China. As always, my agent, Karen Solem, who may well be the smartest woman on the planet, and Natashya Wilson, who’s definitely an editor prodigy. To the Wet Noodle Posse, may the publishing gods smile on each of you that you may sell bountiful books. And many thanks to my older brother, Dan George, who turned me on to great music at a very young age. Rock on, bro!
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Coming Next Month
Chapter 1
With the phone clutched in one hand and a mechanical pencil in the other, I stared at the sequence of numbers I’d just scribbled on an already crowded notepad. “This all looks to be in order, except for one thing. You say I have another checking account, at a bank in Kansas, with a balance of over two hundred thousand bucks.”
The nice lady at the mortgage company was getting less nice by the second. “It’s right here, on your report. Whitney Pearl, home address in Midland, Texas. You opened the account two weeks ago.”
“I’ve been in Washington, D.C., the past two weeks. How could I open an account in Kansas?” Why would I open an account in Kansas? I don’t even know anybody in Kansas.
“You can open an account on the Internet, or by mail.”
“There must be a mistake. They got the wrong social security number.”
“Could be, but I doubt it. I suggest you get this resolved. Anything not nailed down can be cause for the application to be rejected.”
Wondering why I’d been stupid enough to buy a house while I was on a consulting job over two thousand miles away from home, I told her I’d let her know, then hung up and dialed the Kansas bank. I got Shirley, in new accounts. Not sure, but based on the sound of her voice, I think Shirley started smoking at age twelve. I explained the situation, then listened while she pecked at the computer.
“Got it right here. Whitney Ann Pearl. Midland, Texas.” She asked for my social security number, verified it, then rattled off some other bona fides.
“How was the account opened?”
“Through the Internet.” She pecked some more. “Hang on and let me pull the signature card.”
I stared out my sixth-floor window of the Mills Building and watched the guards atop the White House, one block away. It had become a favorite pastime, ever since I started the engagement with CERF, the Chinese Earthquake Relief Fund. Thus far, I’d resisted buying a set of binoculars. Still, the tall one who worked the seven-to-three shift looked mighty fine, even from a block away.
“Here we are,” Shirley said. “Whitney A. Pearl.”
“And the balance is over two hundred thousand dollars?”
She pecked some more and I wondered what I was gonna have to do to get this straightened out.
“It’s $200,396.l4. There have been twelve deposits since opening, and four withdrawals.”
I’m a CPA. I know how these things work. Shirley was at a computer in a Kansas bank lobby, and there was no way she could give me any more information. “Thank you for your help,” I said as graciously as possible, in spite of being seriously annoyed. After all, it wasn’t Shirley’s fault. “I wonder if I could speak to someone in bookkeeping?”
“Hold, please.”
I watched the guards while listening to an elevator music version of Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” That was painful. Eventually, a woman named Courtney picked up. I asked for copies of the deposits, along with information about the withdrawals, and was pleasantly surprised when she said she’d fax me the information. Hmm. Maybe I really would open a bank account in Kansas. My bank in Midland would laugh me off the planet before they’d send me diddly squat.
Within thirty minutes, I had the copies.
And nearly had a heart attack.
Almost five hundred thousand dollars, and every single check came from CERF, the organization that had contracted me to act as accounting watchdog to ensure nobody stuck their fingers in the enormous amount of money the good people of the world donated to help the victims of the recent earthquake in China. I stared at the deposits in shock and total confusion. How had all that money ended up in a bank account with my name on it? Me, the CPA in charge of keeping an eye on the dough.
The checks were written to China Pearl, a Chinese company that manufactures generators and fuel pumps and other large equipment. I knew China Pearl was legitimate because I’d checked it out myself. Part of my job was to verify that invoices weren’t paid to phony companies.
The checks to China Pearl that were deposited into the Kansas bank account were endorsed “for deposit only” to the account number. China Pearl. Not so far from Whitney Pearl. My nickname is Pink and I occasionally get a check made out to Pink Pearl, which I deposit into my account named Whitney Pearl without any questions asked. Get that last name right and the tellers never blink.
I stared at those deposits and wanted to hurl. Somebody had opened an account in my name, then deposited the China Pearl checks into it.
Reaching for the withdrawal copies, I saw that all four of them were transfers into the account of Valikov Interiors. Bells started ringing and, honest to God, my skin crawled so bad it’s a wonder I didn’t become an instant skeleton. I grabbed the phone and called my mother’s cell, praying she was still in the airport, that she hadn’t boarded the plane yet. She had a one o’clock flight to Washington, on her way to accompany me to a birthday dinner for Steve Santorelli, a senator from California who’s a good friend of mine.
She answered on the fourth ring, breathless. “It doesn’t matter what else you forgot, Pink. I don’t have time to get it. They’re boarding the plane.”
“Just answer me a question. Yesterday, when you went over to my apartment to get my wool coat, remember the package you found on the doorstep that had an antique Chinese spider cage inside?”
“If you want me to go get it—”
“No. I just wondered if you remember where it came from.”
“I thought you decided it was a gift from Santorelli.”
“He told me this morning that it wasn’t, so I assumed it was just a mistake. Now I’m pretty sure it’s not a mistake. But I have to know who shipped it.”
Mom was quiet for a moment and I could hear the airport lady on the loudspeaker, calling the remaining passengers. “The company was in San Francisco, and the name was something Russian, like Vladivostok. ”
“Was it Valikov?”
“Yes, that’s it. What’s this about, Pink?”
Her Mom radar was kicking into gear, and I didn’t want to alarm her, so I said easily, “I was telling someone about it and they were curious who sells antique Chinese spider cages.”
“I’m about to miss the plane for this? Seriously?”
“Okay, so I have a reason. I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.”
“No way. I’ll call you from my layover in Dallas.”
She ended the call and I slowly replaced the receiver, my gaze frozen on those withdrawals. More than three hundred grand had been transferred out of an account with my name on it to the account of Valikov Interiors. And I’d received a package from Valikov.
I’m pretty much a linear thinker. Point A goes to Point B, to Point C, and so forth. Somebody set up an account in Kansas with my name and social security number. That person somehow got their hands on the China Pearl checks and deposited them into the Kansas account. They transferred money out of the Kansas account and into Valikov Interiors’ account. They sent a package to me from Valikov so it would appear I bought something from them. Whoever was behind it was very clever, except for one thing. Who the hell would believe I’d pay over three hundred Gs for a Chinese spider cage? Even an antique one.
To say I was pissed off would be like saying there’s a little bit of wheat in Kansas. I was so mad, my teeth hurt.
Gathering up the copies, I left my office and went down the hall toward the executive director’s. I rapped on his door frame to get his attention. He looked up from some papers on his desk and grinned at me, but as I walked in his office, his grin faded.
“Pink? What’s wrong?”
Parker Davis could easily be in the movies, he’s that good-looking. He’d always get the part of the backup guy for Gene Hackman, the faithful, handsome, blond, blue-eyed assistant who blindly trusts Hackman’s sneaky, evil character. Maybe I think so because Parker is married to a senator, and he’s totally devoted to her. Not that Madeline Davis is anything like a Gene Hackman character. But Parker’s unfailing support and willingness to take a backseat to his wife’s career always make me think of those trusting souls in political thrillers.
“I just found out that I’m an embezzler.” I tossed the papers onto his desk and briefly explained.
Looking like a diver whose equipment just failed, Parker leaned back in his chair and read through the papers. His face paled in spite of his golfer’s tan. While he fiddled with his watch, a nervous habit I’d seen a hundred times, he mumbled “Oh, my God” over and over.
“We have to get to the bottom of this, immediately,” I said. “Not only because CERF is getting ripped off, but because I don’t wanna spend my childbearing years locked up with hundreds of other ovaries for something I didn’t do.”
He picked up the phone and punched in three numbers. “Taylor, I need to see you, right away.”
Oh, man. Things were about to get infinitely more complicated. And aggravating.
Within a minute, Taylor Bunch sailed into Parker’s office on a wave of too-strong perfume and in a lime green suit. I noted that she’d put her pale blond hair up in a snazzy little twist. Maybe I would have liked her, if I hadn’t disliked her so much. I just don’t feel the love for people who are mean, nasty and sneaky. If they made a movie about Taylor, they’d make her a man and get Gene Hackman to play the part.
In my other life, which ended last summer, I was a senior manager at a Big Important worldwide CPA firm in Dallas. That career, and that life, were over after I blew the whistle on one of our largest clients. Turned out the partners at my firm were all in on the cover-up to hoodwink investors—and that was the end of Big Important.
Taylor Bunch was promoted to my job the day I got fired for blowing the whistle. Regrettably for Taylor, she only got to crow about it for a few short weeks. After that, she was beating the streets for a job, and just like me and all the other CPAs who’d been in management at Big Important, she couldn’t find anyone who trusted her enough to hire her. I ended up moving back to my hometown of Midland, Texas, and taking a mercy job as a forensic accountant at my mom’s CPA firm. I’d gotten my watchdog stint at CERF through a contract with Mom’s firm.
As for Taylor, she eventually found a job in the Texas state welfare system, churning out financial data for bureaucrats. That was how she met Parker Davis. He was the director of a children’s advocacy group and came to speak at one of those lunch things that no one would go to except for the free lunch and an extra hour off work. When Parker was tapped to head up the relief fund after the China earthquake, he called Taylor and asked her to step in as treasurer. Soon after, Parker hired me to keep an eye on things, unaware of the animosity between Taylor and me.
I can only describe the expression on Taylor’s semipretty face as joyful as she looked over the copies I’d brought to Parker. She couldn’t have seemed more happy if she’d won the lottery, had a proposal from Brad Pitt and earned the Nobel Prize, all in one day. Yeah, I hated her guts.
She looked at me and raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Why should we believe you didn’t do this?”
I ignored her and said to Parker, “I want your authorization to investigate and find out who’s behind this.”
Taylor stepped into my line of vision and said smugly, “Parker didn’t get where he’s at by being stupid. Why would he allow you to look into it when your name’s on the account?”
Looking genuinely confused and freaked out, twisting his watch round and round, Parker glanced from me to Taylor and back to me. “She’s got a point. I’m sure you’re not behind this, Pink, but whatever comes to light, it will look mighty weird if you’re the one who finds it.”
Still ignoring Taylor, I stepped away from her. “Maybe so, but if you put Taylor in charge of investigating, they’ll lock me up and throw away the key. She hates the ground I walk on.” It was the first time I’d openly acknowledged the bad blood between me and Taylor. If only I hadn’t squealed, she figured, she’d still be in a peachy position at Big Important. She never quite got that if I hadn’t blown the whistle, I wouldn’t have been fired, and she wouldn’t have had the position. All she could see was that she’d lost her job, and it was all my fault. Never mind that thousands of people lost their life savings and retirement funds. It was all about Taylor.
“Are you saying I’d fail in my responsibility, all because of some personal vendetta?” Taylor sounded righteously offended.
“Gimme a break.” I looked straight at her. “After I got promoted, you told everyone that you saw me going into the Crescent Hotel with the managing partner, effectively making my success a sexual exclamation point. You took pictures of me at Laura’s bachelorette party, while I was modeling lingerie and dancing with a male stripper, then made sure those pictures showed up at the office, where they were passed around to everyone, including the managing partner. And let’s not forget how the Bellington audit files disappeared from my office and turned up at the coffeehouse down the street. That made me look like a complete moron and could have gotten me fired, except that I happened to have gone to the emergency room that day because a friend was in a car wreck.”
I folded my arms across my chest and stared her down. I was on a roll. “You despise me, which isn’t my problem—unless you’re the only thing standing between me and prison.” Looking back at Parker, I said emphatically, “I am not going to prison.”
Clearly at a loss, he focused on Taylor. “If you dislike Pink so much, how can you look into this with any kind of objectivity?”
Taylor glared at me as she spoke. “Obviously, someone is stealing from this organization. My concern isn’t for Pink, but for all those unfortunate people in China who need this money to rebuild their lives. I can be objective because of them, because it’s important to stop whoever’s doing this.”
She said the magic words. Parker is one of those people whose goal in life is to save the world, to alleviate suffering, to make certain that truth and justice prevail. And he’s incapable of believing the worst in anybody. He practically beamed at Taylor. I knew I was toast.
“Pink,” he said patiently, “I believe Taylor is up to the task, and I’m certain she’ll leave no stone unturned to find out who’s behind this. In the meantime, let’s carry on as usual and keep this between the three of us. If the media get wind of this, CERF will be a distant memory. No one will send any more contributions, and even though we’ve got a lot to work with, we need a lot more.”
I didn’t have much of a choice but to accept his decision. The only alternative was to call the cops, and that was definitely not in my best interest.
With conflicting emotions that ranged from fear to fury, I made my way back to my office and did my best to concentrate on work. Thirty minutes later, Mom called from DFW airport and demanded to know what was going on. I told her.
And she wigged out. Mom is something of a pessimist, although she claims only to be a realist. She went off on me about prison, that Taylor would sell me down the river, that whoever was behind it had clearly set it up for me to be the scapegoat. “You have to look into this yourself, Pink. I’ll help.”
“It’s out of my hands, Mom.”
“That’s a load of BS. Somebody framed you. For all we know, it could be Taylor, and there’s no way we’re leaving this up to her. If Parker Davis wants to argue about it, we’ll sic Ed on him. And speaking of Ed, have you called him?”
“Ed can’t do anything, Mom. Why freak him out?”
