Sin and the Millionaire (4 page)

Duncan set two plates on the island. “How much are we talking about?”

“Sixty thousand.”

He let out a low whistle as he slid one omelet onto Lizzy's plate, then another on his own.

She leaned forward and inhaled. The omelet was a little brown on the ends but it smelled divine. “Yeah, that's what I said. I had no choice,” she said, straightening. “I had to sell the chip wagon. But when I tried to do, I discovered I no longer owned it.” She'd been so in love, she'd ignored the signs, and when they came back to bite her in the ass, they'd taken a big ol' chunk. Or she hadn't been smart enough to see what had been happening in front of her eyes. “He'd used it for collateral.”

“He'd given your business to this loan shark?” After dishing up the bacon and toast, Duncan took a seat next to Lizzy.

“Yup.”

“So are you telling me you started stripping to pay off his debt?”

“I had no choice.”

“He forced you?”

His expression changed into something she'd never seen on him and it threw her for a few seconds. Thinking that she'd gotten it wrong, that he hadn't looked like he wanted to kill someone, she quickly put his mind to rest.

“It wasn't like that, exactly. Shortly after I found out about the chip wagon, he got arrested and left me holding the bag. This loan shark didn't care that I hadn't borrowed the money. He saw us as a couple and it was enough for him. I was getting ready to run when he made it very clear what he'd do to me if he caught me. Then he offered me a job in one of his
places
. I sucked it up and paid him off in a year and left. I had a friend in Reno and I decided life was better outside of Canada. Then I heard about Maggie and the rest, as they say, is history.” She cut into the cheese omelet and ate. “Hey, this is good. Want a job? I know this fantastic caterer,” she said, trying to use humor to shake off the unsettling unease of Duncan's reaction.

She'd have expected that from any decent guy who thought a woman had been forced into something not of her choosing, and Duncan was a decent guy. But it was like seeing the wolf inside your dog. Cool, but scary.

Duncan didn't blink, his face unreadable. “You seem so…blasé about it. He may not have physically forced you, but you were forced nonetheless.”

“I'm not blasé.” She set her fork down, needing him to understand. “But it's a part of my life. I can sulk over what happened and what I had to do to stay alive, or learn from it and move on.”

“And have you? Learned from it?”

“I take the
fool me once shame on me
approach to life. Kyle may be the one who tricked me but I'll never put myself in that situation again. I never mix business and pleasure. If I hadn't been dating Kyle, I'd have paid better attention to my bank account.”

“You
trusted
the wrong person.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” she said, wondering why he was the one getting upset.
She'd
messed up her life. And she'd also been the one to fix it. “I'm over what Kyle did. But I'm not going to forget it. Now can we change the subject? How about we get back to your wife?” Her murder and future implications of their lives should be their focus.

“Yeah… sure. I didn't offer you a drink. What can I get you?” Not waiting for her to answer he went to the fridge and opened it.

“I'm happy with water.” Duncan's abrupt change of subject threw her. Why did she suddenly feel clueless?

Chapter Four

Duncan retrieved two bottles of water from the fridge and told himself to get his act together. He was a smart man and he had a major portfolio to prove it. He could do this. He could make her see he wasn't this Kyle jerk.
I am smart
, he repeated to himself.

He set the waters on the island and grabbed a piece of bacon off the plate, taking a bite. “I like yours better.”

“That's because I bake it with maple syrup and you have a sweet tooth.” She too took some bacon.

He shook his head. “I don't eat candy.”

“What's that jar of caramels on your desk?”

“I keep that there for meetings. People are more at ease when you offer them something they've never had and those caramels are from a little shop in Paris,” he said with a smug grin.

“Yeah, I'm calling bull on that one. I've seen you scarf down three desserts. Honestly, I don't know how you manage to look so hot.” Picking up her empty plate, she took it to the sink, leaving him stunned at the table.

“I work out,” he said. “And thank you.”

She nodded. Had the crime scene outside the window caught her attention or had she realized she admitted too much? Did he dare hope? Then again, finding him attractive didn't mean she wanted a relationship.

“We should check a few more e-mails,” she said. “Maybe take a closer look at the ones at the time you caught her cheating.”

He picked up his own plate and brought it to the sink. “That's a good idea. Let's go then.”

She looked up at him, giving him an awkward smile.
Did
he dare hope?

Back in his office and thirty minutes later, they stared at the computer screen, having yet again found nothing.

“Something's not right. Wouldn't your wife have had a private account? She couldn't have been that self-centered.”

“She could have, but I think you're right. Her manager, her agent, they must have sent e-mails.”

“Could she have a separate one?”

“Damn, I forgot.” He punched in a new address, reversing Victoria's name from first to last, then he used the same password. “Bingo. When we were dating I kept getting her e-mail address wrong. In my companies we use last name first, to distinguish a business account from personal. Victoria had laughed, said her name was too famous to risk mucking up her account. I told her it wasn't wise to mix her personal e-mails with her public ones. For once in her life she listened to me.”

On the screen were messages from her manager, the subject headings lists of events she'd been scheduled to attend, and ones she'd never make it to. Scrolling down, he found ones from her evil lawyer, a few from her agent. And the list continued like that. Nothing personal popped up. They'd hit another dead end.

“Wait,” Lizzy said, taking over the laptop and clicking on the Deleted folder. It was empty. “Wow, I didn't think she'd be smart enough to delete incriminating evidence.”

“It was worth a shot.” Scratching his head, he looked at the empty Deleted folder. How could he have made millions on the Internet and still be dumb enough to forget the obvious? He clicked her Sent folder. Harris's name jumped out at him.

“Don't jump the gun,” Lizzy said, having seen what he saw. “Maybe he was telling her to back off.”

“You don't believe that.” He didn't. Was he wrong to think the worst of Harris? He opened one of the many e-mails. Nope.

“The scumbag.”

“Yeah.” Too blinded by rage, he looked away from the screen. A man he'd trusted had been fucking his wife.

“She doesn't sound happy with him. Looks like they broke it off a few weeks ago.”

He heard the sound of clicking keys as Lizzy brought up more e-mails. “Yup, none too happy. It appears he ended their affair. But look at this.”

He glanced down, at Lizzy pointing to the screen. “What?”

“See for yourself,” she said, turning the laptop in his direction. “She's threatening to expose him.”

“You think she was just talking going public with their affair? She'd have known I wouldn't be happy about it. Hell, I'd have fired his ass.” He
would
fire his ass.

“That's a motive for murder, don't you think?”

“Maybe. But he's made a lot of money working for me. I'm sure he could find another job. To kill her just to keep his secret is a little extreme.” He forced himself to scroll through the other messages. Their latest ones had a jilted lover tone, nothing to do with his business. Inwardly, he breathed a sigh of relief.

To think he'd been that stupid—twice—killed him. Screwing his wife was one thing, screwing his company another.

“Her last one was yesterday, just before the party. But there are no replies from him. She sent this to his company e-mail. Do you have access to his computer at work? Or is it password protected?”

“I have all the passwords. I know who logs in, when, and on which computer. If he assessed his work computer from home, I could find out. If someone else used his computer at the office, I can trace it.” His company, his rules. “I can access the server from anywhere. The only glitch is deleted e-mail. Those go into a security-protected online vault to prevent someone from leaking information. And I can only access those from the mainframe at work. Let's go,” he said. “We'll take my car.”

Her smile was so wide, it meant only one thing.

“Fine,” he said, as if relenting, “you can drive.”

Duncan wasn't particular about his any of his cars, except this one. This one was special. And if he needed anything to draw him out of the dark mood clearly waiting for him, it was this. Of course, in light of what she'd just confessed, if she ever found out he'd bought the car for her, she might not be so happy to drive it.

On the highway, with the late afternoon sun reflecting off her sunglasses, there was something extremely satisfying in watching Lizzy drive the white John Cooper Works Mini Roadster. She was like a kid with her favorite toy. She'd catered a car show he put on for the children's hospital and had gone on and on about the car. When he'd convinced the owner to lend it to her for a spin, she'd been the giddiest he'd ever seen her. He knew he had to buy one. That was six months ago, and he still hadn't had the nerve to tell her it was hers. He was such a chicken shit. But in hindsight, knowing what he knew, perhaps that was a good thing. For now.

The drive to his office ended too soon. Too soon for Lizzy because she loved driving the car, and too soon for him because he'd now have to face Harris's betrayal. Inside, the building was fairly quiet. His teams could choose to work on the weekends if they wanted a weekday off. Today they hadn't. As it was only one flight, they took the grand steel and glass spiral staircase to the second floor. He'd opted for a two story instead of a high-rise when he'd chosen his offices, wanting a more laid-back approach for the many creative people who worked for him. No one had walled offices except for his executives, and those were made of glass. But Duncan knew that sometimes solitude was needed to think, so if one chose, they could use the electric floor to ceiling curtain wall for privacy. As they stepped off the last step and onto the landing, Duncan keyed his code in the security pad and a sickly sweet voice said over the speakers, “Hello, and welcome to Zanadoo.”

“What the heck is that?” Lizzy asked.

“My staff's odd sense of humor.” Creative people needed to be creative.

“Oh, is that like the time they rigged a burp every time someone opened the front doors?”

“Yeah, that didn't last long.”

“They need to get out more.”

“I hire nerds, Lizzy. For them, this is getting out.” It was sad, but true.

His office was different from everyone else's in that his had a solid African ribbon mahogany judge's desk. It didn't hold true to the rest of the modern layout of the company spaces, but the warm wood tones had been so opposite to Victoria's tastes that he'd had to have it. The others were sleek and modern.

“Should we check Harris's office first? Maybe he was dumb enough not to delete the e-mails,” Lizzy asked, following him down a row of modular desks.

“Because there's no need to delete your lover's messages when her husband is totally clueless?” Enough time had passed that he no longer cared what Victoria had done and whom she'd done it with, but to learn of Harris's betrayal left him gutted. Duncan didn't have many close friends. He didn't belong in a high-society world. He simply used it like one would social media to promote his business and charities. Harris had been a few years in front of him in school. He, like Duncan, had been the kid everyone picked last. Outwardly, they may have transformed, but inwardly they understood each other. They'd become good friends. Or so he'd thought. The bastard.

“What are you going to do if we find something?” she said, rushing to keep up.

“If he's responsible for Victoria's death, I'll hand over everything we find to the police. If he was just screwing my wife? He'll be looking for a new job. Either way he's out of my life.”

“Are you jealous?”

“No.” And he wasn't. “But I won't be played—again.”

“Is that it? He made you look like a pansy?”

He stopped so abruptly that she ran into him. “Isn't that enough?” he said, regretting that he said it far more sharply than intended. “Sorry. None of this is your fault.” He wasn't going to take this out on her.

“You're mad. I get it.”

“I'm mad at myself,” he explained. “I thought they were loyal to me. To think they'd been running around behind my back… No one wants to be made the fool.”

She nodded. “Fair enough.”

“I can remote into Harris's computer. So we can do everything from mine.” They entered Duncan's office, where he took a seat at the desk while Lizzy looked over his shoulder. He'd had a meeting Thursday afternoon, so one of the curtain walls was still engaged. He turned the computer on, waited for it to boot up. Two profiles popped up, A and B.

“Why do you have two?”

“A,” he said, clicking on B, “is for my assistant, Beth.” He keyed in a password, then finding the remote icon, keyed in another password to access Harris's desktop. “I give her a new password every week, but there's nothing overly sensitive on that profile. Just documents she needs to type or send out and meetings she puts into my calendar.”

Victoria had been the one to ask him to hire Beth as favor. They were old high school friends. When he'd found her husband was out of work, Duncan hired him too. He'd been surprised to discover Beth had cut off all ties with his wife when she'd learned of the infidelity. Beth had wanted to show her loyalties were with him. Everyone in his company had proven loyal, to the point he considered them family. To think one of them hadn't been, especially Harris, was upsetting.

Looking at the man's desktop, anyone could see his skills lay in math. Meticulous to a fault, every deal had its own folder and old business was allocated to a separate folder. He could see the new one they were working on and couldn't help but wonder if Victoria had meant Harris was stealing. As a finance officer, he had the means.

Drawing a deep breath, he opened Harris's e-mail account. Sure enough, Victoria's last message was there, unopened. As he already knew what it said, he left it alone, going instead to the Sent folder. He didn't know what hurt more, seeing Harris's replies or his not deleting them because Mr. Clueless wouldn't bother looking? It was obvious from each response that his
friend
was growing more and more agitated with his wife. Clearly, she didn't want things to end. Clearly, Harris had had enough. But to kill her?

“He doesn't sound happy. And she's a persistent little adulteress, isn't she?”

“Yes, but why? She could have any man she wanted. There's no mention of love in their exchanges, no deep emotions other than when each got angry with the other. So end it and be done with it.”

“Maybe,” Lizzy said. “But if she had dirt on him? Could she have been looking for a piece of the pie? Read them again. Do they sound like a jilted lover? Or something else? We're assuming they're arguing about splitting up. Maybe we assume wrong. Look at this one.” She indicated an e-mail from six days ago.
This is a mistake. You need me. We need to talk.
He replies with
I'm fine on my own and I don't need you.
And this one from her:
You can't cut me out like this
. Out, not off. And they're super short, like they're trying to be careful, maybe.”

“You think Harris was doing more than screwing my wife and she was in on it. Then why rat him out?”

“I don't know,” Lizzy said, leaning her hip on the desk. “Maybe she didn't think that far ahead. She got angry and reacted. Or there's no proof of her involvement. These wouldn't stand up in a court of law. All they prove is they were sleeping together.”

“Hello and welcome to Zanadoo” startled them both.

Lizzy was the first to peek around the curtain wall. “Oh shit,” she mouthed. “It's Harris.”

Harris's office was directly in front of his own. He could choose to confront Harris about the affair here and now, but if he was the embezzler and most likely his wife's murderer, then he needed proof. He shut down his computer, bolted off the chair, and yanked Lizzy's arm, dragging her under his desk.

“Are you crazy?” she screeched in a whisper.

He snuggled close, putting an arm over her shoulder and a finger over his lips. Lizzy rolled her eyes, but stayed quiet.