Her Man Friday(78)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Leo inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly, but he never took his eyes from hers. Really, she was the one who owed the more important explanation here, not him. In spite of that, he supposed what she was asking wasn’t unreasonable. And he really did want to clear the air about himself. Why? He still wasn’t sure. But somehow, it seemed essential that there be no lies or misconceptions left between them.

"My full, real, name is Leonard Gustav Friday," he said.

"Gustav?" she echoed with the first genuine smile he’d seen from her all evening, obviously delighted by that scrap of knowledge. "Really?"

Leo wasn’t nearly as delighted by it as she was, but he replied levelly, "Really."

She smiled coyly. "What were your parents thinking?" Before he could answer that he had no idea, that he had often wondered about that himself, she hurried on, "And tell me, Mr. Friday, what is it you do for a living?"

He hesitated, then said evasively, "I’m self-employed."

"As?"

Another hesitation, then, "I guess you could say I’m a private investigator."

"Could I say that?" The revelation seemed to surprise her for a moment, but then she nodded, as if it all suddenly made sense.

"What I investigate, though, is mostly white-collar-type crime that’s financial in nature," he explained. "When businesses think money is disappearing too fast and too suspiciously, they call me in to find out where it’s going."

"And that was what happened here," she guessed. "Schuyler’s board of directors finally became suspicious?"

He nodded again. "You got a little too greedy this year, Miss Rigby. Fifty million bucks is kind of hard to hide."

"I don’t see why it would be," she said mildly. "They didn’t notice the sixty million the year before."

He gaped at her, his eyes widening. "Sixty?" he asked. "I only accounted for forty-two that year."

"Yes, and you only accounted for fifty from last year, didn’t you?" she asked. Then she smiled, a teasing little smile that made his heart both hum with delight, and crinkle with distress. Because as nice as that smile was, it didn’t quite reach her eyes, which remained cool and flat and angry. "Guess you’re not as good as you thought, are you, Mr. Friday?"

Leo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. "You mean there’s more than fifty million dollars missing?"

"There’s more than fifty million gone from the Kimball profits of last year, yes," she corrected him.

"What’s the difference?"

She shrugged, completely unconcerned about the fact that she was confessing to an enormous amount of illegal activity. "The difference is that when something is missing, no one knows where it is. When something is gone, that may not necessarily be the case."

"And of course, you know where all the money is," Leo said bitterly, "because you took it."

"Oh, yes," she assured him. "I know where every last penny went, and yes, I’m the one who … appropriated it. You didn’t quite find all my records, Mr. Freiber… Mr. Friday. Otherwise, this conversation wouldn’t be necessary."

He deflated some at her readiness to discuss the particulars of her theft. Somehow, he’d been holding on to a thread of hope that all of this would come to make sense. Clearly, she just wanted to taunt him with her success, with the fact that she had so thoroughly outsmarted him, with the overwhelming amount of cash she had been able to collect. "So you’re not denying any of it?" he asked halfheartedly.

"No. I’m not."

"You really did take the money."

"I really did funnel it off, yes."

"And what did you do with it?"

"Oh, I bought all kinds of things, Mr. Friday, you can’t possibly imagine." She waved a hand breezily through the air as she continued, "I bought clothes and cars, stocks and bonds, real estate and houses—"

Leo grew sick to his stomach hearing the particulars of her shopping list. "You can stop there, Miss Rigby, I get the idea."

But she obviously wasn’t quite finished yet. "I also bought some wonderful meals and entertainment. Oh, and athletic equipment, and college scholarships, and hospital equipment. In fact, I endowed an entire hospital wing one year. That was kind of fun."

Certain he was misunderstanding, Leo asked, "What?"

"And then there was the Best Chance School I started in West Philly. That’s one I’m rather proud of. A full ninety percent of the students have gone on to become college graduates. It’s really quite unprecedented."

A loud buzzing began humming at the back of Leo’s brain, gradually growing louder and louder, threatening to drown out his rationality. "I’m afraid I don’t understand, Miss Rigby… uh, Lily."

"No, I know you don’t, Mr. Friday. That’s why I’m trying to go slow. Now then. After the Best Chance School, there was the chair I endowed at Penn State for the School of Social Work. After that came the endowment for the International Educational Fund for the Children—or IEFC, as it’s more familiarly known—which has built schools in twenty-three countries so far."

"Lily?" Leo interrupted, trying really, really hard to stay on track, but not quite succeeding in that particular quest.

"Wait, I’m not finished yet," she interrupted him right back. "There have been the annual—and anonymous, of course—donations to things like Habitat for Humanity, Amnesty International, PET A, the United Way… oh, the usual… and also quite a bit given to fund awareness campaigns for a variety of social causes. All in all—"

"Lily?" Leo tried again.

"Really, Mr. Friday, if you keep interrupting me, we’ll be here all night. I have a full decade’s worth of charitable donations to account for, and it’s going to take some time."

"Charitable donations?" he repeated. "Are you trying to tell me that all that money you skimmed from the Kimball profits has gone for charitable donations?"

She nodded, smiling again, the gesture not quite so brittle as it had been before. "Yes, that’s right."

"You expect me to believe that you’ve appropriated, as you said, scores of millions of dollars from your employer, and it’s all been given to other people?"

"Well, only people who deserved it," she qualified.

He narrowed his eyes at her, hopelessly lost now. Thinking—praying—that Kimball might be able to shed some light on the situation, Leo turned to the billionaire, who stood beside Lily, sipping his martini without a care.