Stealing the Moon & Stars Read online

  Jordan handed him one of her business cards. Eddie designed and printed his cards, and they were pretty slick. He offered time and time again, but she refused to let him do her cards. Can’t let him do everything for me, can I? Her computer skills weren’t as keen as Eddie’s, to put it mildly, so she couldn’t make her own. What she did do was pretty much as lame as letting him do it for her. She ordered the dove gray, pewter-lettered cards from the O’Connell Paper Products main office in Illinois, the main source of her family’s fortune. Founded in the late 1800s as a paper mill, it had survived two massive fires, one recession, and deforesting. Transformed into an international distributor of paper products, it had made that side of Jordan’s family mega-rich—wealth that would be passed down through Mary to Jordan, Kate, and Alec.

  The good-looking young receptionist seemed to like them too. “Nice card.”

  “Thanks. Can you tell Karla Simpson that Jordan Welsh is here to see her, please?”

  Karla Simpson was the foundation’s comptroller and the logical place to begin.

  The clean-cut young man checked his log. “She’s expecting you, Miss Welsh.”

  He led Jordan to an open door, announced her and waited. When Karla Simpson looked up from her computer monitor, he walked away.

  Karla was an attractive black woman whose mahogany skin was wrinkle free and flawless. She could have been thirty or fifty, not that it mattered. She wore a silk red and blue paisley blouse. A navy blue blazer hung on a coatrack in the corner.

  Karla stood behind her desk and directed Jordan to a chair. “Have a seat, Miss Welsh.”

  “Thanks for seeing me.” Jordan sat and reached into her bag for her smartphone. A model or two before the latest upgrade, it was the original one Eddie bought her, the one she knew how to work—sort of. The box with the new one in it was still in her desk drawer. She opened a notepad application, ready to input any pertinent info.

  “Mr. Brenner said I should give you my full cooperation. I’m anxious to help any way I can.”

  “Good. That will make things more pleasant all the way around.” Jordan crossed her legs. “All right then, tell me. Were you the one who discovered the money was missing?”

  Karla nodded without breaking eye contact. “I was.”

  “When did you first notice it?”

  “A few days ago. We were consolidating, getting ready for the annual public audit. I couldn’t match a payment to Lenncore Systems to an invoice. There was a purchase order but no actual invoice. That single payment was for over forty thousand dollars. The more I dug into the matter, the more nervous I became. It was odd and confusing. There were other invoices paid without purchase orders. Purchase orders paid without matching invoices. The sum of funds we couldn’t account for began to pile up. Some of it goes back several months.”

  “Lenncore Systems? Tell me about them.”

  “I don’t know much, unfortunately. Evidently they are system and network specialists. We seemed to be having a lot of trouble with our network, multiple issues, even whole system crashes over and over, lost data. That struck me as odd. Our system is generally glitch-free. Supposedly these Lenncore people come in, you know, restore, repair, replace, et cetera, et cetera. High dollar nerds.”

  Jordan whistled. “Eight hundred thousand? Yeah, I guess you could say they’re high dollar. Why do you keep saying things like evidently and supposedly?”

  “The thing is, I can’t even be sure at this point they did any of the work we paid for. The only person who seems to remember them performing any actual service is Milo Wachowski, and he’s not really sure about it, either.” She seemed sincere in her concern. “I’m afraid I don’t have much for you to go on, which is mortifying, considering the huge sum of money that is gone. One thing might help you. Lenncore’s accounts payable were funded by direct deposit to Saguaro National Bank, a branch in Mesa.”

  Jordan made a note of the bank. It was the first potentially useful piece of information she had. “Why do you think this wasn’t caught earlier?”

  “The accounting software we have isn’t perfect. If the data processor makes even the tiniest typo, it could cause a mismatch. I’ve requested a trace from purchasing, Emmett Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan couldn’t come up with any answers either. He’s still looking into it. Also, if the system truly has been glitching—”

  “When did you go to Emmett Sullivan?”

  “A couple days ago.”

  “Two days ago Emmett Sullivan was asked about an eight hundred thousand dollar discrepancy and he’s still looking into it? I think a chat with Emmett Sullivan is next on my agenda.”

  “Excellent.” Karla reached for the phone. “I’ll ring him.”

  “If he has time today, I want to see him. If he doesn’t, he needs to make time.”

  Jordan waited while Karla called the purchasing department and explained things to Emmett. “He has a few minutes and said to come right over.”

  “Good choice. Please give me a call if you think of anything else. Anything at all.”

  “I will.”

  Jordan laid her card on the desk. “Does your employment contract with the foundation require strict confidentiality?”

  Karla picked up the card and nodded.

  “This matter is no different.”

  “I understand.” Karla flipped through her Rolodex and inserted the card.

  CHAPTER 4

  The lettering on the wall beside the open door read, Emmett D. Sullivan, Purchasing. For a moment Jordan stood just outside, watching Sullivan sort and stack color-coded files on the corner of his desk, reorganize his pencil cup, stapler and paperclip caddy. He frowned at each item while picking at his eyebrows then began shifting everything back to its original position.

  Detail oriented and meticulously organized, or completely obsessive compulsive?

  “Mr. Sullivan?” Jordan walked in without waiting for an invitation, her hand extended. “Jordan Welsh. You spoke to Karla Simpson about me?”

  Emmett gave her a feeble smile and reached out to shake her hand. His eyes flitted to the nearby bottle of hand sanitizer, but he gallantly resisted reaching for it. She could see he was dying to. “Yes. Uh, uh, right.” He spoke with a stammer. “She said to expect you, Miss Welsh. Yes.”

  Emmett lifted his hand toward a chair facing his desk.

  Jordan made herself comfortable. The office temperature was chilly, the way she liked it. While keeping the thermostat turned so low was neither green nor economical, it was very nice.

  “Jordan, please.” She smiled, hoping to put him at ease.

  “Right. Absolutely. You can call me Emmett, um, right.”

  He moved the folders a millimeter more, took a pen from the cup and began to click it, and click it and click it. He was looking beyond her at a spot on the wall, which gave her the chance to study him.

  Sullivan was pale and freckled, with the light red hair and unfortunate complexion the British referred to, with no small amount of contempt, as ginger. Soft curls lay against his forehead, his perspiring forehead.

  He was sweating profusely in a room no warmer than seventy. Glandular issue? Probably not.

  “Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I’m sure you’re very busy.”

  “Right. Well, yes. I don’t mind really. Not really. Karla, she seems to think this is pretty important. Karla. Yes. Right.” On second thought, it wasn’t quite a stammer, more like a nervous tick.

  He rearranged the stapler, paperclip caddy and notepad in yet another configuration and began to doodle on his desk blotter notepaper.

  It wasn’t meticulous attention to detail or great organization or even obsessive compulsion. A bad case of nerves, I’d say, or guilt, or both.

  “About the missing funds and the discrepancy between the Lenncore invoices and purchase orders … what have you found?”

  He gave into the siren call of the hand sanitizer. “I’m still working on that.”

  Jordan raised an eyebrow. “Really
? What’s the problem? Should just be a matter of looking it up. Am I wrong?”

  “Problem. What’s the problem? Right. Things are missing. Yes. Missing. Well, it’s possible these missing purchase orders were entered into the system, um, incorrectly. Maybe the invoices were, um, just misplaced, maybe. Probably. We, we could still come up with them. You know, later.” He paused and took a deep breath, presumably formulating his next filibuster. A drop of perspiration dripped from the end of his nose and splashed onto his desk blotter, smearing the ink. He gritted his teeth. “My guess? It was a bizarre series of, um, coincidental events coming together, you know, like a perfect storm, to add up to a humongous error. Humongous. Yes. A simple mistake can happen to anyone at any time. Anyone. Anytime.”

  “Once,” she punched the word. “It could happen to anyone once, maybe even twice and still be—what did you call it—oh, yeah, a simple mistake. But enough times to add up to eight hundred thousand dollars and it starts to look like maybe it wasn’t a mistake after all, like maybe it was intentional, like maybe it was a crime.”

  She handed Emmett her business card. “When you locate the information on Lenncore, give me a call and, speaking on behalf of Nick Brenner, Emmett—”

  “Yes?”

  “You need to get a move on.”

  “Of course. Absolutely. No problem. No problem at all. Yes.” He stood. Sweat trickled down his cheek. He swiped at it with his palm then reached for the hand sanitizer.

  Jordan left the office, grateful for the peace and quiet.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jordan hadn’t learned much. What should her next move be? She crossed the parking lot back to her car. Some idiot had parked so close she couldn’t even squeeze between the two vehicles, much less open the door wide enough to get in.

  Hateful thoughts ran through her mind. What the hell is wrong with people?

  She stood behind the offending vehicle for a minute, glaring at it, then finally marched around to the passenger’s side of her car. She opened the door, took a quick look around, hiked her skirt high on her thighs and clambered across the console to her seat.

  It was a damn good thing she pretty much gave up hose when she moved to Arizona.

  By the time she sat in the driver’s seat and had yanked her skirt back into place, her hair was sticking to her forehead. Sweat trickled down her cleavage. She took a moment to mop at it with a tissue and empathize with Emmett Sullivan then went back to glaring at the car beside hers.

  “Idiot jackass.”

  She put down the windows to evacuate the hot air and punched the air-conditioning all the way to the freeze-your-butt-off setting. The vents just blew warm air, irritating her even more. She shifted into reverse and began to back out of the parking space but jammed on the brakes when a pedestrian appeared behind her car.

  “What now?”

  An older guy leaned on a walker, grimacing with every step. He tried to hurry but struggled to just get past her car. He stopped at the offending car next to hers, fishing for his keys.

  She felt small and foolish for throwing a tantrum. Her frustration had less to do with the relatively minor inconvenience than it did with how little she’d accomplished at the foundation offices.

  Karla tried to be helpful, but when it came right down to it, she knew very little. And Emmett? That guy knew more than he told her, but the jury was still out on the Porky Pig routine. Did he always speak that way, or had she unnerved him with her cunning interrogation? Right, as if. Did it really matter? At the end of the day, the result was the same. She had made little headway into the investigation.

  Was it really so easy to siphon funds from such a big organization? Her gut insisted there was collusion going on. Connie and Nick Brenner might not want to believe the theft was perpetrated by one of their employees, but it was shaping up to be an inside job.

  If the case kept going like this, she’d better get a move on or she wouldn’t meet the deadline she’d made light of to Nick.

  She backed out of the parking space, making a concerted effort to smile and wave at the disabled man. He waved back, blissfully oblivious to the mean-spirited tirade launched against him only moments before.

  Need to watch yourself, woman. If you don’t quit practicing being a bitch, it won’t be long before you can go pro.

  Four-ish, and the sweltering heat settled over the valley like Grandma O’Connell’s heating pad. The old girl was in her mid-eighties and the heating pad was her constant companion, holding the arthritis at bay during the long Chicago winters. Jordan and the rest of the family tried time after time to persuade her maternal grandmother to relocate to Arizona. However, Nancy Kelly O’Connell refused to forsake her few surviving cotillion sisters turned legendary matriarchs or those favorite causes she fought for with what strength was left in her—not to mention Grandpa O’Connell’s grave, which she visited twice a week despite rain, sleet, snow, arthritic knees or an aching back.

  Too bad. A day like this would warm her old bones enough to make her dance an Irish jig.

  Miss you, Grandma. Katie and I sure could use you out here when Mom’s visiting. Nothing like a strong maternal presence to buffer another strong maternal presence.

  The general opinion was these near-record temps were the result of a stationary high front sitting over the state. The monsoon season had come and gone weeks ago; this year the media dubbed it the nonsoon. Another hot, dry day in the Valley of the Sun. Even the saguaro cacti gracing the slopes of the McDowell Mountains looked tired and thirsty. While October usually brought at least some rain, the weathermen weren’t optimistic.

  Like they know what they’re talking about anyway. We could have forty days and forty nights starting in half an hour.

  She glanced at the clear blue sky. Probably not. Even the fluffy morning clouds had dissipated. The weather dudes might have called it right for a change. All the same, it was Jordan’s conviction that meteorology was two percent science and ninety-eight percent dart throwing. At least it was a few degrees cooler in the foothills. Nice. Well, nicer.

  As she drove along the street lined with palo verde trees, the comfort of coming home filled her. She kept an eye out for Paul and Nicole, her neighbors’ kids, notorious throughout the neighborhood for darting into the street after their basketball. Today there were no kids or cars on the street. The block was still and serene under the lowering afternoon sun.

  As she pulled into the driveway, her phone sounded “Vader’s Theme” from Star Wars. The number on the console display confirmed—Mother. Sigh. Breathe in. Breathe out. Center yourself. “Hello, Mom.”

  “Hello, dear.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Just calling to let you know your father and I are flying in day-after-tomorrow. We have several properties lined up to look at for the new Scottsdale steakhouse.”

  Well, crap. “Great, Mom. How long are you staying?”

  “A while. Your father has lots to do to get our new place set up and running. He’s trying to replicate the Chicago Welsh’s Steak and Chophouse as closely as possible. Best beef suppliers, best seafood distributors. You know. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He has a reputation to live up to.”

  In the past, the fall and winter seasons occasionally brought Mary and Ben Welsh to Arizona. There it was again, that sinking feeling in Jordan’s stomach whenever Mary spoke of the new steakhouse planned for Scottsdale.

  A new business and her brother and his family relocating here to run it meant her parents’ future visits would be more and more frequent. Jordan and her sister, Kate, had already discussed the dismal forecast several times, even, heaven forbid, the possibility of her parents moving to their Troon house in North Scottsdale permanently.

  “Is Alec coming with you?”

  “Not this time. He’s in the middle of a big promotion at number one here in Chicago. It isn’t a good time for him to leave.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Are you still planning to help your sister at the fundra
iser on Saturday?” Mary asked.

  “I am.”

  “So glad to hear it, darling. Your sister does good work. She could use your help more often.”

  Jordan snapped her jaw shut and didn’t rise to the bait.

  “You know, if you quit your silly job, you could spend all your time on philanthropic work and hold up your end of the family tradition and all. This private eye nonsense may be exotic and glamorous, but it’s definitely unworthy of my daughter. A young woman with trust funds as generous as the ones your grandfathers have set up for you needn’t sort through other people’s dirty laundry for her livelihood.”

  The remark pierced her like barbed wire. She had to respond. “Seriously? That’s what you think I do? Dirty laundry?”

  “No? Let me guess. You chase desperados and banditos across the desert, six guns blazing.”

  “Cute, Mom. How did you know?”

  Her mother had no idea what Jordan’s work entailed, and if at all possible, Jordan intended to keep it that way. If Mary had even half a clue what she did or the situations she occasionally faced, it could get ugly. Once, when she was doing a simple background check on a hotel employee and asked about his work visa, the irate Brazilian shoved her off a second floor balcony. Jordan sprained just about everything. It could have been worse. Then there was the time she was shot at when she mistakenly stumbled into the middle of a drug transaction while trying to help Eddie do a security sweep. She hadn’t told her parents and wouldn’t. It was best they didn’t know all the aspects of her work. In reality, it wasn’t an innately dangerous job. Those incidents were a fluke, a phenomenon of vulnerability meeting exposure. She didn’t plan on letting those circumstances arise again. Since then, she’d been more careful. Besides, as Eddie would say, sometimes shit just happens.

  If Mary had even half a clue, she’d go nuclear. As it was, the job came up in every conversation, not because it was dangerous, because she thought it unworthy of her daughter.

  It had been a while since she’d seen her parents, and she loved them both. “Why don’t you and Dad come for dinner on Sunday?”