My Missing Puzzle Piece (Creekside Falls #1) (15 page)

Elle got home after running her errands later that night and was exhausted even though it was only 7:30. She put on her pajamas; who cared if it was early she was tired. She made herself a salad for dinner and poured a glass of wine. She sat in front of the TV to watch a re-run of
Hawaii Five-O,
when her cell phone rang. She looked down and saw it was Taylor.

“Hello.”

“Hi! How was the date?”

“Great,
really
great actually.” Elle said smiling as she thought about it again.

“I’m so glad to hear that! Now give me details, I can hear you smiling through the phone.”

“I don’t even know where to start. But I guess I’ll start with Trevor staying over last night!” Elle said enthusiastically.

“That much huh? Wait he what?!” Taylor paused a minute, “Ohmygawd, why didn’t you say that instead of hello when you answered.” Sounding so excited for her friend.

Elle laughed and said, “I don’t know. And no we didn’t have sex, to answer your next question but I have no doubts he’d be good at it.”

“Holy crap girl. I want to know every detail.”

“Okay not every detail but mostly everyone.” Taylor added after a brief pause.

Elle talked to Taylor for over an hour while she ate her dinner and drank her wine. When she hung up she
felt even better about the situation with her and Trevor but Taylor didn’t give a definitive answer when she asked her about Jake. However, things with Jake must have been going pretty well or at least they were talking because Taylor seemed in higher spirits than she had been in a long time.

Trevor finally finished his homework and looked up to see it was almost midnight. He didn’t realize it was so late; he hadn’t even looked at the clock when he made a sandwich for dinner. He let Bruiser out one more time then headed up to bed. He grabbed his phone and texted Elle, “Goodnight, talk to you tomorrow,” and smiled like a little kid at Christmas when she texted him back a minute later saying, “Goodnight. Sweet dreams ☺”

Sunday Elle went to dinner at her parents’ house. She had just gotten home and was making sure she had all of her notes together and the week’s schedule nailed down when her phone rang; it was Trevor.

“Hey you, how are you?”

“Hey, I’m good. I was just calling to check up on my favorite girl. What did you do today?”

“I just got back from dinner at my parents. I haven’t seen my family for a while, so it was good to catch up. How was yours?”

“It was good; I hung out with my brothers and watched the Phillies/Mariners and Red Sox/Yankees games.”

They made small talk a few more minutes before Elle asked the question that had been bugging her all day, “How are we going to handle this thing with us at work, with your employees?”

There was a minute of silence before Trevor answered, “I don’t think we need to “handle it” or hide it if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t see why it matters.”

“I don’t think we need to hide and I don’t want to but it matters because you hired me to help you fix what’s going on at your company and it might seem unprofessional if we come out with whatever it is we’re doing now.”

“Well, I think we’re dating, so let’s set that record straight. Second, I get what you’re saying but I still don’t want to hide it.” Trevor said a bit defensively.

“Dating? Okay, I like the sound of that.” Elle smiled to herself at the thought. “I don’t want to hide either. What if we just say nothing, we won’t be hiding it but we don’t have to announce it until after we at least know who is sabotaging you?”

“I guess….I still don’t like it, but if that’s what you want fine. By the way, Elle, I was wondering if you wanted to come over for dinner on Tuesday?”

“Sure, I would love to!”

“Okay. Do you like chicken parm?”

“Of course.”

“Good, I was hoping you’d say that because apart from grilled cheese and omelets, chicken parm is the only thing I know how to make that is any good.” Trevor admitted sheepishly.

Elle laughed a hearty laugh and said, “Don’t worry about it; and just so you know I like grilled cheese too.”

Trevor smiled and said, “Noted…does 7:30 work for you?”

“Perfect, I’ll bring wine and dessert.”

“It’s a date. I’ll let you get back to your stuff and I’ll see you tomorrow morning at my office. Goodnight sweet dreams.”

“See you tomorrow. Night.”

onday morning Elle was backed up big time. She had a client call her all in a tizzy at 7 a.m. so she had a conference call with the client and Taylor, who took over the situation with the client, and at the office until Elle was finished at Trevor’s. “I can tell this is going to be a long day already,” she thought aloud as she grabbed her stuff and locked her front door.

Trevor got into work a little early on Monday to make sure he would have time to help Elle if she needed it but also to spend some time with her.

Jake was standing in the doorway to his office thinking about an incident that occurred on a job he was working the other day with Rob and both of their teams.

He looked up and saw Trevor come in and head to his own office; Jake was debating whether he should mention the incident from last week. Their teams had been scheduled to work together on this big job and
Rob’s team was there on time but he wasn’t. He showed up almost two hours later and said he’d overslept but one of Rob’s guys, Sean, told Jake he was probably at the casino, and said he’d been spending a lot of his time there recently, on and off the clock.

Later the same day, Jake was standing a few yards away from Rob and heard him on the phone placing bets on a horse. Jake saw Rob checking his phone later, probably checking to see who won and heard him mumble, “Shit…another $5,000, now I’m in the hole for thirty-five G’s.” Rob turned and saw Jake standing there with his arms crossed so he asked, “Did you hear my phone call?” Jake answered honestly, “Yeah, I did. What’s the deal?”

“It’s nothing, just a favor for a friend…I owe him some money, it’s no big deal but can we keep this between us? I don’t anyone getting the wrong idea.”

“Everything good?” Jake asked warily while trying to rub some of the tension from his neck.

“It will be,” was all Rob said in response.

Trevor was doing some paperwork at his desk when he felt a presence in his doorway, he looked up and Jake was standing there. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other before rocking back on his heels.

“Hey what’s up?” Trevor asked.

“Hey dude, not too much what about you?” Jake said as he walked into Trevor’s office and sat down on one the empty chairs across from his desk.

“Nothing waiting for my meeting with Elle.” Trevor said.

“Speaking of Elle how is that going? I’m guessing pretty good since when I stopped by your place the other morning you weren’t there and Bruiser obviously hadn’t been out for a long while, judging by how desperate he was to pee.” Jake smirked.

“Yeah…it’s going good.”

“I need to talk to you about something real quick,” Jake said, he had this look of uncertainty in his eyes.

“Sure, what’s going on?” Trevor asked.

“I feel weird telling you this but I thought you should know. I saw Becky doing something with the schedules yesterday and it’s not the first time.”

Trevor rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, “You did? How many times have you seen her with them?”

“I’ve only seen her with them twice, the first was the day you mentioned the scheduling situation at the bar and then yesterday. The first time I figured she was just checking them for a client because she was on the phone, but it did look like she was changing and moving things around, I couldn’t be sure from where I was standing. But when I saw her on the scheduling module again yesterday, I thought I’d better mention it. You’re probably pissed I didn’t say anything before but I kept telling myself she could have a good reason to look at them.”

“Knowing probably would have helped but I’m not pissed. She does have a reason to look at them but we don’t know if it’s her or not. Let me know if you see anything else.”

“Well actually…”

“Seriously? That was quick!” Trevor said mockingly.

“The other day at the Benson job when my team was working with Rob’s, he was late and a few of his guys mentioned that it had happened before, frequently actually. They think he’s been going to the casino during work hours. Not mentioning Becky and the schedules is one thing; Rob gambling when he’s supposed to be at work is completely different.”

Jake felt guilty that he wasn’t telling Trevor everything he knew about Rob’s situation but he didn’t know how serious it was and he didn’t want to be a snitch on the guy, up until lately he’d been a very good team leader. He kept the stuff he knew about Rob owing money and placing bets on horse races to himself. That information didn’t necessarily mean he was messing with the work schedules, in fact Jake had a hard time seeing how they could be linked.

“Thanks. I’ll let Elle know all this. That could be helpful.” Trevor was worried that it could be Becky but he was also strangely worried it could be Rob, he didn’t know what Elle’s reaction would be if she found out it was Rob. It occurred to him that she could take Rob’s side against him, just for old times’ sake and, even though he knew that was silly, he couldn’t help but get a little knot in his gut.

He changed the subject so he could think about something else. “So what’s this about you and Taylor? How’s that going?” Trevor said then inwardly groaned because Elle mentioned that to him in confidence, but hell this was his best friend.

Jake laughed at his obvious breach of the girls’ confidence. “Man, women talk a lot, huh?”

“But hey, I’m happy for you man, it’s about damn time.” Trevor asked him how things were between him and Taylor.

“It’s going fine,” is all Jake said as he looked at his watch and said, “Look at the time, I better go. Catch you later,” and strode right out of the office.

Trevor wasn’t sure what the hell had just happened but knew it must have something to do with Taylor. Jake never acted sketchy like that about women, Taylor seemed like she’d be good for him, so why did he jump ship when Trevor asked about her?

Elle walked into Trevor’s office about five minutes before she was supposed to. He knew most of his guys were out on jobs and Becky wasn’t in yet so he walked to his office door, grabbed her laptop case off her shoulder, shut the door, pulled her in close and kissed her.

Elle was caught off guard by the kiss but it felt amazing to be in his arms and kissing him again. She knew they shouldn’t be doing this here but she wasn’t about to back away. She just leaned into it and kept it going.

Trevor finally backed away a fraction of an inch and said, “Sorry I know we weren’t going to do that at work but when I saw you I couldn’t help it.” He picked up her laptop bag and backed away so she could come in and set everything up and he could open his door. Elle sat down and quickly got to work.

“I noticed something when I was going through the email accounts.” Elle said suddenly serious.

“What did you see?”

“Your old partner Max, is his email
[email protected]?”

“Yeah, why?” Trevor asked curiously.

“Well I noticed he’s been emailing both Becky and Rob on their work accounts and it looks like
he
initiated the contact with
them
.”

Trevor stared at her quietly a minute than said, “Well I know Max stopped by a couple times and saw Becky. He wanted to take her out and I’m pretty sure she turned him down, but maybe she changed her mind. I have no clue why he’d be talking to Rob. I didn’t even know they knew each other.”

“I guess that might explain why he contacted Becky but he’s not just emailing Becky or Rob about personal stuff or the general, “how are you?” He’s asking about your business and the jobs you’re working on. Does he have a reason to ask that?”

“He is? No he has no reason at all, he and I barely talk about business but if he really wanted to know he could just ask me. This makes no sense.” He paused running a hand over his chin and added, “Could the three of them be doing this together? But why?”

Elle put her hand on Trevor’s, “I don’t know but we’ll find out.”