Swindled (24 page)

Chapter 43

Two days later everyone was all gathered in the family room of the house to welcome home the new arrival. Vickie and Scott had had a baby girl with big red curls and huge blue eyes. They had named Mary after her maternal grandmother. The parents glowed with pride as everyone cooed over the beautiful baby.

Just as Vickie had managed to get the baby back to sleep, Karin showed up to the ‘welcome home party’ with a sheepish Joseph in her wake. Karin was grinning widely and had no qualms about dragging Beth’s once nemesis back into the foray.

“And so?” Vickie asked raising an eyebrow as everyone nagged at Joseph to tell them what had happened. Looking around the room at the eager and curious faces around him, Joseph caved.

“Anne had virtually lived for her work,” he explained with a shrug. “With all the partners pulling their weight, the business should have been taking off and the reliance on the money laundering would have fallen away. Anne couldn’t understand what was happening. They were winning new business but money just wasn’t staying in the accounts. And not just the money that was being moved in and out to legitimise it. All the money. What Anne didn’t realised initially was that as fast as the business was filling the accounts, Brian was emptying them. He would duplicate transactions that already existed with slight variations. To anyone who looked it would seem like the money was being legitimately used.”

“It was the same thing he did to us,” Beth agreed nodding her head and waiting for Joseph to continue. It was all starting to make more sense she thought.

“When Anne found out that Brian was responsible for taking funds from his own business, she just snapped. She decided it was up to her to fix things. That fateful evening, she went to Brian’s home to confront him. Somehow when they were talking, Anne decided that Brian wasn’t going to stop so she spiked his drink and stabbed him in the back while he was copping a feel,” Joseph leaned against the fireplace as he took them through the story.

“Do you really think that it was spur of the moment?” Scott asked sounding curious. It did seem a little too straightforward.

“I’m sketchy whether Anne had ever seriously tried to talk Brian around,” Joseph agreed nodding. ‘She says that’s what happened but I think it might be more likely that such an incredibly capable woman would have had it all planned. Why else bring the sedatives with her?” Joseph lifted a shoulder and let it drop again. “It just seems too coincidental that she planned the confrontation on the one night that Brian at his own home rather then out at his girlfriends. Taking both drinking glasses with her when she left is just icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned,” he admitted. “The only evidence she had left behind was Brian’s little black book which had been shoved into his mouth. Anne must have considered herself free and clear when she left.

What she couldn’t have known though was that her boss was home because he was cheating on his girlfriend. He was home that night but not alone,” the detective paused letting the significance of what he was saying seep in. The baby gave a little cooing noise drawing attention back to her but as she sighed herself back to sleep everyone turned with bated breath back to the tale at hand.

“Tina had been hiding in the closet. From what we can tell, Tina and Brian were having an affair for weeks and when Brian heard Anne calling him from the front hall, he panicked. He must have convinced Tina that it would be easier for him to get rid of Anne on his own. She was hidden from sight. If I were to speculate, I would say that Brian had probably wanted to keep Tina a secret knowing that Anne highly disapproved of her flighty and somewhat incompetent colleague. Brian had to know that Anne was the only reason the company was still afloat. Keeping Anne happy had to be his priority. Consequently when she came into the bedroom to find him, Brian had seemed completely alone. When she stabbed Brian in his bedroom, Tina had witnessed the whole thing.”

“So why didn’t she tell anyone?” Beth asked frustrated. If Tina had only told someone like the police Beth wouldn’t have had to deal with everything over the past week. All those questions, all that worry, all of that could have been avoided if Tina, normally big mouthed, had only just told someone what she had seen.

“Instead of telling the police, Tina decided to make a little money out of the situation and tried to blackmail Anne,” Joseph explained smiling in sympathy. He of everyone there knew how close they had come to dragging Beth into the middle of everything. “From what we can piece together, Anne arranged a rendezvous with the blackmailer in the office having agreed to pay and hid herself to catch Tina red-handed. At the time Anne wouldn’t have known who would have witnessed her attack. Still there must have been sufficient evidence in what the blackmailer had conveyed for Anne to take it seriously. When she saw who it was that was collecting the money, she had bludgeoned Tina over head with a paperweight while Tina had literally been counting the cash. Tina had not been smart enough to just take the money and run.” All of them looked faintly confused. How stupid could you be to count money at the scene of that crime Beth thought? Surely even Tina would have known better

“So why would Anne have hid our family papers in Brian’s room?” Beth asked dragging Joseph back to one of the things that had puzzled the twins from the start.

“She knew that the two of you were aware that money was missing from your company. You were bound to look in detail at your records to try and figure out what happened. Once you figured out Brian’s scam, it would only be a matter of time before someone thought to look at Brian’s business accounts. Anne was determined not to let that happen. She was going to make the business succeed come hell or high water. They had two big deals in the pipeline for the next week. She figured if she could delay the accounts getting into your hands, then they could pay the money back into your accounts sighting a clerical error. You wouldn’t then care how the money originally left your account and they could use future business to settle the rest of Brian’s business debt.”

Beth and Vickie had been right. The missing piece had been simple. The box of paperwork had been the key. Not because the sisters couldn’t find the paperwork but because Anne didn’t want them to find it. All she had wanted was to delay their discovery of the paperwork. Long enough to get funds back into their account and long enough for the sisters not to care that the money was gone because it was back again. If Anne had left it in her office where it was originally stored, the twins would never have found it and never would have linked everything together.

“So how did you figure out it was Anne?” Karin asked lounging back on the couch. “And how did you know that she would be at the house?” The others nodded in agreement.

David explained that Joseph had showed up at the back gate to the garden about five minutes after Beth told them she and Vickie were taking a break.

“We didn’t think it was Anne at the time,” Joseph admitted. “I was looking for Frank, one of the junior partners in Brian’s firm. He was the one who took the box of paperwork from the flat. We had been following him and one minute he was there and the next he was gone. His car had been parked in a side street near the house but when we couldn’t find him it felt to suspicious. He hadn’t left our sight all week and then gone.”

“We told Joe that Anne was in the house having tea with Beth and Vickie and that she was alone,” Scott said. “To be honest we weren’t worried at that point,” he looked over at David who nodded.

“Joe got the phone call while we were talking. His colleagues had found Frank unconscious in the trunk of his car suffering from a substantial head injury.” David continued giving Beth’s hand a squeeze. He had been worried, she thought. In that moment when that call came in, David had started to worry that something was going to happen to her. Beth felt warm inside. She squeezed David’s hand back and smiled into his eyes.

“We thought he had to be involved if not completely responsible for Brian’s death. Especially after you mentioned a man had put the box of paperwork under Brian’s bed,” Joseph said running a hand through his hair. They had been close to nabbing the right suspect but nearly not close enough. “It was just a matter of time for the three of us to put two and two together. The only time anyone had seen Frank outside of the office was when he was with Anne.”

“Of course,” Beth said sitting up straighter. “He was the one who drove Anne to the funeral. I remember thinking that he was happy to do anything Anne wanted.”

“Once we figured it out it was just a matter of getting into the house.” Scott said. “I just kept thinking there is a killer in there with my wife.” Scott looked haunted. Those brief seconds it took for them to run into the house must have felt like an eternity.

“They arrived just in time.” Joseph didn’t look greatly impressed “They weren’t going to wait for back-up. They just charged in there like enraged bulls.”

“I was first through the door.” David said ignoring the detective’s pointed comments. “I didn’t even think. There was Beth and this gun.” He paused and squeezed Beth’s hand more tightly. “I just reacted.” David had tackled Beth just as the gun went off. Scott following closely on his heals managed to position himself between his pregnant wife and Anne as Joseph grabbed her. It had been a scary moment.

Chapter 44

Digesting everything that had happened was exhausting. Beth just couldn’t get her head around it. She got up to fetch more tea for everyone needing a minute to herself. In the kitchen, staring out the window, Beth realise how close she had come to loosing her life. How close had she had come to loosing Vickie. How much she truly loved the men that had saved them.

*

David watched Beth head into the kitchen. He still felt a kick in the gut every time he thought about how close he had come to loosing her. If he had been a second slower, if they hadn’t figured out that Anne was the one. David stood up. He felt sick to his stomach even thinking about it. He didn’t want Beth to leave his sight.

His every instinct was to protect her and David didn’t know what to do about it. He loved her but he didn’t know if she felt the same about him. Was it too soon to ask? Too soon to push for some kind of commitment that would allow him to be a part of her life?

David walked into the kitchen and looked at Beth’s back. She was looking out the window lost in thought. He smiled. All he wanted was her and if he was right, she wanted him. Nothing else mattered.

*

Two arms came around her as she stood thinking in the kitchen. Beth leaned back letting the body behind her take some of her wait. She looked up at David. She had known it was him, known from the minute he walked into the kitchen that he was there.

“Thank you,” she said catching hold of one of David’s hands.

He pulled her more tightly against him “I told you I wasn’t letting you go. You can’t be trusted not to end up in some mess without me.”

“Me? What do you mean??” Beth asked teasingly as she turned in his arms. She reached up and stroked David’s face. She looked at the strong lines of his face, his dark hair and vivid blue eyes. He was everything she could have wished for in a man.

“Well the first time I set eyes on you, you were dripping naked in my bathroom,” David started with a smile.

“That wasn’t my fault.” Beth insisted in mock outrage. If anyone was listening this was probably better then a soap opera she thought smiling and hugging David to her.

“Then the next time I spoke to you, you had conferenced in your numerous friends. I seem to remember that conversation was all about why you didn’t kill your brother, why you threatened to kill him and how he would have deserved it because he was a … what was it? Oh yeah seedy,” David continued grinning at the woman in his arms.

“I was flustered.” Beth shrugged nonchalantly looking at her nails. “And he was seedy.”

“Then when I see you again, it’s at the funeral of the biggest swindler in the business. He, I might add, was lying dead in your living room. A living room filled with pretty much every thief and hoodwink around. And you with this lacy red and silk thing. I don’t think one of the men in that house had a coherent thought all day.”

“Stop,” Beth giggled trying to put her hand over David’s mouth. She loved the feel of him against her body. She let herself enjoy the rush it gave her to have him so close. She loved David.

“I didn’t know if I should run for cover, take you over my knee or move in!” he said looking disgruntled as he grinned down at her.

“So what have you decided to do?” Beth asked holding her breath.

“Oh move in definitely… haven’t you noticed?” he asked raising a surprised eyebrow at her.

“Well, yes I noticed that you hadn’t left. I thought that it might be because you were looking for your money,” Beth decided to be upfront. It was the one fear she had with David, the only one. Was David staying with her for her or for the money?

“What money?” David asked looking perplexed. He tried to get his scrambled thought back into a semblance of order to concentrate on what Beth was saying. With her so close he had a hard time.

“The money Brian owed you,” Beth explained breathlessly. She hadn’t wanted to think about it too much but she had been thinking about it since she had seen David’s name on that list of people swindled. It was the whole reason that she had seen David again. He had been looking for Brian because Brian had owed him money.

David knocked his forehead against hers. “Honey I have more money then I know what to do with. I stayed to keep an eye on you. And as for moving in… if there were any room in your closets I would have unpacked that suitcase half a day after I arrived.”

Beth took a deep breath and looked at David. She cupped his face.

“I love you,” she whispered to him. David pulled her tight against him and kissed her deeply.

When they finally pulled apart, he smiled and let his eyes rove around her face

“I feel like I’ve waited forever to hear you say that,” he said.

Beth laughed and shifted against him. He groaned and grabbing her hips.

“I loved you from the minute you plastered that naked body against me in the hotel bathroom. Spend the rest of your life with me,” he murmured unable to stop himself. He wanted to be with her. It was as simple as that.

“Yes.” Beth kissed him as he leaned closer. “I think it will take a lifetime to get my fill of you.”