Echoes of Titanic (53 page)

Overcome with a wave a dizziness, she reached out and placed a hand
on the wall to steady herself. She reread the document two more times, just to be sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. The forms were identical—same date, same executive summary, same exact info—except for those two amounts, which had been altered.

It was clear as day. They had each been working from different figures.

One of them had been given fabricated data.

She pulled out her phone and dialed Cole's number, praying he would take her call. He answered on the fifth ring, his voice flat and distant.

“Yes?”

“I'm sending you an email right now. Can you take a look while we're on the line?”

“I guess. Hold on.”

Dashing over to her desk, with trembling hands she sent off her version of the form she held in her hand, the one she had scanned earlier. “There,” she said softly. “It should show up any second.”

She held her breath as she waited. Finally, she heard him gasp.

“Do you see what I see?” she whispered.

“Kelsey, where did you get this?”

“I did the same thing you did. I looked up the old numbers.
My
old numbers. I wasn't going to send them to you. I just needed to reassure myself that I was right. But then I got your version, and I realized—”

“We were set up. We were working from different figures.”

They were both silent for a long moment.

“Do you understand what this means?” he said. “For one thing, it means Lou was lying.”

“Or Gloria. She's the one who gave me this information.”

“It means you made an investment based on vastly inflated numbers,” Cole said.

“It means you may be right about Lou's pyramid business structure,” Kelsey replied.

“It means…” His voice trailed off.

“It means you and I were both right, because we didn't have the same information. I would never have made such a high offer based on your figures.”

“I would never have made such a low offer based on yours.”

After a beat, he ended with the obvious. “It means our breakup was predicated on someone else's lie.”

Kelsey closed her eyes. “Oh, Cole,” she whispered. “If only we could turn back the clock…”

“I know, but don't say that, Kels. There's nothing we can do about it now. And we both had a lot of growing up to do. I truly think God used that time apart to make us stronger, to lead us to new places, new challenges.”

“Judging by today's fight, I don't know that we got all that far.”

He groaned. “Look, I overreacted and I'm sorry. I didn't realize how much of that stuff I was still holding on to until it came up this afternoon. Obviously, forgiving you all those years ago wasn't enough. I needed to release it completely and let it go. I thought I had, but…Well, let's just say I should never have let you walk out of here earlier like that, much less sent you such a cutting email once you were gone.”

“At least you followed that up with another, kinder version.”

“Yeah, also intended to cut, just couched in a little more civility.”

She couldn't help but laugh. “What a mess we are. Will we ever get this right?”

“At the moment, Kels, I think our relationship is not our most urgent problem. It's almost four o'clock. What are you going to do?”

She hesitated, relishing the way he'd referred to their “relationship.” Did that mean they still
had
a relationship, one that might possibly be saved after all?

Your will, Lord, not ours
.

Trying to focus, she looked at the clock. It was three fifty-two.

“First things first,” she said. “Can you hold on a sec?”

“Of course.”

Setting her cell on the desk, Kelsey reached for her office phone and called down to security. When Ephraim answered, she asked if Walter had come in yet.

“I haven't seen him, but he usually goes up the back stairs anyway, so that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Want me to check the security code log-in?”

“Um…no. I'm sure he's here by now. How about Lou Strahan? Has he come in yet?”

“I haven't seen him either. Is he supposed to?”

“Yeah. Walter and I have a meeting with him.”

“Okay. Well, he hasn't shown up so far.”

She exhaled with relief. “Good. When he does, could you detain him for
a few minutes? Walter and I need to speak privately first, and we don't want to be interrupted.”

“Sure. Just call back when you're ready for him. What time is he supposed to come?”

“Any minute now. Our meeting's at four.”

“Okay. You got it, Kelsey.”

She hung up and returned to her call with Cole. “All right, at least I've headed Lou off at the pass. What's my next move, other than alerting Walter to all of this?”

“I was just trying to figure that out. Do you think I should come over there? I could gather more information for you. There's a chance Lou is innocent in this, you know. Maybe it was all Gloria's doing.”

“Maybe.”

“Then again, maybe they did it together. There's a chance something was going on between the two of them we didn't know about.”

“You mean like they were in cahoots?”

Cole cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, or maybe they were even in a, uh, relationship.”

A relationship? Lou and Gloria? With a start, Kelsey remembered her conversation with Yanni at the funeral home, about her and Vern's affair. “
Gloria knew
,” Yanni had said. “
She knew and she didn't even care.
”

Was it possible the reason Gloria didn't care was because she was involved in an affair of her own?

Her mind racing, Kelsey thought back to the time when Lou worked at B & T. He and Gloria had been close friends and colleagues, but to her recollection there had never been even a hint of impropriety between them. Gloria was an attractive woman, but she was older than Lou by a good ten years—and in many ways she acted even older than that. If anything, her demeanor toward him back then had been that of elder stateswoman, so to speak, the same as she'd been with almost everyone in the company—superiors, peers, and underlings alike.

“This may be tacky, but I think I need to call Vern,” Kelsey said to Cole. “He'd tell me the truth.”

“If he knew about it.”

“Who else could we ask?”

They both thought for a moment.

“Didn't you say your EA keeps an ear to the ground?” Cole asked.

“Yeah, but if Sharon knew Gloria was having an affair, she would have told me already. Besides, she's only been working here for two years, so if it's something from before, back when Lou was still on staff, she wouldn't have any reason to know about it.”

“True…wait. Remember Brooke, who used to work in human resources?” Cole asked.

“You mean ‘Babbling Brooke'? The office gossip?”

“That's the one. She might know something. Back when I was at B & T, she knew everything about everyone.”

“Maybe, but do you have some way to reach her?”

“As long as she hasn't changed her number since she retired. How about this, you call Vern and I'll try Brooke. Between the two of us, we might find some answers.”

Kelsey glanced at the clock. Three fifty-four.

“Okay. Let's text each other when we're done, and then we can talk.”

“Sounds good.”

Once they had disconnected their call, Kelsey pressed the speed dial marked
Gloria
—
Home
. With a surge of sadness, she realized she'd have to change that now, removing it from speed dial and changing the listing to read
Vern Poole
instead.

Fortunately, Vern answered her call right away. She felt terrible having to ask such a question the very day of his late wife's funeral, but in light of all Gloria had done lately, she really had no choice in the matter.

“Vern, it's Kelsey. I am so sorry to bother you, especially today, but I need to ask you an important question—and it's really urgent. Are you where you can speak privately?”

“I can be. Hold on a sec.”

Listening, she could hear the murmur of voices in the background and then the sound of a closing door.

“Sorry about that,” he said, coming back on the line. “I have family staying here, and we were just going through some old photos.”

“No,
I'm
sorry. This shouldn't take long.”

She looked at the clock. Three fifty-six. Time to head upstairs to talk to Walter. She could finish her call on the way.

“I don't know how to say this other than to just come out with it. Vern, do you know if Gloria was involved with Lou Strahan?”

“Involved?”

“Were…were they having an affair? Either recently or at some point in the past?”

Vern was silent for a long moment. “Funny you should ask that. I was wondering that very thing myself, a few weeks ago.”

Kelsey's eyes widened. “You were?”

“Yeah. It's a long story.”

“I'm listening,” she told him as she gathered up her papers, turned off the lights, and headed down the hall.

“Well, it started one night when we were getting ready to go to the ballet. She was in the shower and I was in the bedroom, getting dressed. I accidentally dropped a cuff link into one of her open drawers. While I was digging around in there trying to find it, I ran across an envelope hidden under some clothes. It was one of those brightly printed folder envelopes, the kind you get when you buy tickets to a show. Anyway, I was nosy enough to take a peek. Like I expected, there were tickets inside, real expensive ones, for VIP seats to a big Broadway musical. I thought they were for the two of us and she was going to surprise me with them.”

“Let me guess,” Kelsey replied, remembering her conversation with Detective Hargrove about Rupert and Rhonda and how they had spent their first evening in town. “Were the tickets for a Monday night show? This past Monday night?”

“Yes, actually. How did you know that? There aren't that many Broadway shows that even run on Monday nights.”

“Just a guess. Keep going.” Kelsey reached the elevator and pressed the “up” button.

“Well, like I said, I thought she was going to surprise me with them, but as it got closer and closer to the date, she never said anything at all. To make matters worse, she'd been acting pretty strange for the past month, kind of secretive and evasive. Finally, on Sunday night, I asked her about the tickets. She got real weird and flustered, and she said they weren't for us at all but instead a professional gift for a colleague. I took her at her word. What other choice did I have?”

Kelsey didn't reply. She just thought how much better Vern and Gloria's relationship could have been if only they had
talked
to each other more. Then again, who was she to judge? Her and Cole's original breakup could have been avoided entirely if only one of them had thought to bring up the exact figures of the deal involved.

“Anyway,” Vern continued, “that next afternoon was the day she came home from the office a little earlier than usual. Around six o'clock I was in the kitchen, cooking supper. I thought she was in the living room, just resting her eyes for a bit, when I heard the front door open and close. Curious, I went to the door myself and looked out in the hallway—and that's when I saw her getting on the elevator, tickets in hand.”

Kelsey thought about that as her own elevator arrived and she stepped on board and pressed the button for the fifth floor. Monday afternoon was when Gloria had fought with Walter and gone home soon after.

“I'm not ashamed to say I followed her down. By the time I got off the elevator, she was out in front of the building, handing off the envelope to somebody in a taxi. I tried to get a better look through the front window and realized it was Lou Strahan, of all people.”

Kelsey closed her eyes, swallowing hard. Lou and Gloria. Together.

“I wanted to bust out the front door and punch him in the face,” Vern said, “but standing there at the window, watching them, I realized they really were acting like colleagues, not lovers. When Gloria came back inside, I confronted her, and she just said that she and Lou had been working on some big business deal recently and that's all it was. I believed her, Kelsey. I can't explain it—and goodness knows I had no room to judge—but I really think their relationship was platonic.”

The elevator came to a stop at the fifth floor and opened up. Kelsey stepped off but hovered there for a moment, wanting to finish her call before she continued on to Walter's office. “Lou hasn't worked at B & T for five years. Why would he and Gloria have been involved in a business deal together?”