Chapter 29

He had managed to wipe the grin off his face by the time Jessica got to work, but Barbara gave him a Mona Lisa smile for his expression when he first walked in. Barbara was a classy lady and never would be as crass as Jessica, but she had her own little ways of letting him know what she was thinking. She did tell him she was glad to see him happy in that way. Then she winked. Rob was gobsmacked and she laughed at his face. He shook his head and toddled off to his office.

Jake came into his office at ten o'clock and asked for a conference. Rob told him to shut the door, then ushered him to the table. Jake spent the next half-hour outlining the final results of the investigation into the Zeller case.

Seven perpetrators had been identified as having profited from the scheme that was uncovered. Jake tried to apologize to Rob when he told him that he had made direct contact with Jeff, but Rob told him contacts of that nature were within the parameters of his job. The upshot of that contact was that Jeff discovered someone had jiggered the on-site accounting software that did the actual work of distributing the shares of the commissions. It had to have been done at the local level, and there were very few who knew how or had the access to affect the changes, and none of those were one of the seven. That meant there was at least one more person involved, but whoever it was, they didn't get their piece of the pie directly. Jeff offered the conjecture that the perpetrator got his share of the unearned incomes from the others involved.

Of the seven known to be involved, five had left the company around the time the investigation first got under way. The two remaining were a conundrum: they didn't appear to have profited from the transactions. There had been two others who had more or less disappeared at that time that weren't pointed out by the investigation. One of those was Sharon Davis. Since she didn't have access to the software, she was eliminated from consideration. The other had been talking about retirement, then suddenly vanished. That one did have access and was going to be considered a prime suspect by the police. Jeff had told Jake they had every intention of prosecuting.

Rob congratulated Jake for doing a fine job, and Jake tried to deny credit for the work, claiming it was Rob that had all the insights.

"Do you know," Rob asked, "That if he had wanted to, Bob could have claimed credit for nearly all of the work that I've done for the last five years?" Jake looked at Rob with shock on his face. "Every case I handled had his fingerprints on it. But do you know something else? He recognized then what I recognize now, that you were the one who sweated over the details, making sure every 'i' was dotted and 't' was crossed. My job is to support you, and the fact that you got your job done means I did mine. And that's the last time we will discuss who gets credit for what. We're a team here. Everybody did their part.

"Now, go get this assembled while I call the client with the good news," Rob continued briskly. "You may have told Jeff, but I have to make it official by notifying Mr. Harrison myself. I'll need that on my desk by two o'clock. Think you can handle it?"

"Yes, sir, I believe I can do that for you," Jake replied crisply.

"Good, get to it then. The sooner done, the sooner you can take on a milk-run and take a break. Be sure to release that intern, we need him for other things, you know." He ushered Jake to the door and shook his hand. "And Jake? Thank you. That was a job well done."

"Thank you, sir." Jake left the office with a spring in his step and a smile on his face. He hadn't gone ten feet when his coworkers were intercepting him with congratulations of their own.

"What's going on?" Bob asked curiously. "Did Jake have another breakthrough?"

"No, sir, he finished the case," Rob answered blithely. "He's just going in to tie a ribbon on it for me and turn it over." Bob stood there looking like a pole-axed steer.

"You can't be serious," he said incredulously. "I thought it would take weeks..."

"The actual problem wasn't in the books, it was in the accounting and distribution software," Rob replied. "That takes it out of our hands and places it in the hands of the white-collar criminal investigators. Someone diddled their software. We showed where it happened, now they get to prove how it happened. We can show them where the money went, so now they have to find out what happened after. We're done."

"Damn," Bob said, shaking his head with worry.

"What?" Rob asked. He'd thought Bob would be happy.

"I'm going to have to call Mr. Kerck," Bob said unhappily. "I really hoped it would be a while." He sighed. "Well, I better get to it." Then his face brightened. "But I'm not doing it alone. Come on, Rob. We've got a call to make."

The call was nowhere near as brutal as Bob had convinced himself it would be. He suspected Rob was a mitigating factor, but there was no way to tell.

Basically, they told Mr. Kerck the case was done and was being remanded to the client. He asked for, and got, a précis of the case, then asked that they email him when the case was filed so he could review it. The only other thing he said was "Good job," then he hung up.

Rob shrugged at Bob's relieved expression. Bob grumped at him and told him to go find something to do and shooed him out of his office. Rob looked around the floor, wondering what kind of mischief he could get up to and noticed a glass with ice in it on the desk behind Jessica. As he tried to affect a wandering attitude, he also noticed she was wearing a loose-collared blouse...

Bob looked out of his office to see what all the noise was and goggled at Jessica doing a salsa dance as she flapped the back of her blouse. He saw Rob dodge into his office before Jessica settled down. She looked suspiciously about the room, but no one in sight was close enough to have done the deed. She growled dire imprecations against whoever had done it if she ever found out. Some wag asked if she was going to take him to the park and hand him her ass again.

"That's it, Rob," she called out stridently. "Game on!"

Bob shook his head and returned to his seat, closing the door behind him. He didn't see Jessica smiling, because if he did, he might have been concerned.

The Mustang was waiting for him at the curb when he came down for his lunch break, but the engine was off. He looked in the front seats but no one was there. A quick check of the back seat revealed no one there either. Shrugging, he got in, but the key wasn't in the ignition. Suddenly, a hand came over the console dangling the key. The hand was encased in a thick leather glove, so there was only one person it could be.

"Elaina, sweeting," he asked with his heart in his throat, "What's wrong?"

"I know my armor is good," she replied hollowly, the mask distorting her voice, "But it's been a while since I've been out alone when the sun is high. I ... panicked while I was waiting for you. I tried to hide under the back seat." She snorted. "We're going to have to get that fixed. I think I broke something back here."

Rob had noticed during the morning that the sun was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds. He hadn't thought of how this would affect her. She had been so strong, he'd forgotten that in the face of the sun, she was weak.

"How are you now?" he asked carefully. It had been some time since he'd had to face the predator. Elaina in a panic was going to be pure predator. She would regret it when night fell, but she could well kill him without thinking.

"I'll be fine, now that you're here," she answered softly. "But I think I'll stay in the back for now, okay?"

"That's fine, sweeting," he said. "You're going to have to direct me, though. I don't know where we're going."

"Just go straight until you hit Twelfth Avenue, then turn left," she told him. "It'll be two blocks down on the right. You can't miss it, it's the only pink building on the block."

"Oh, that's just fucking great!" Rob groused, keeping an eye on her in the mirror. "I'm gonna be seen walking into a pink stylist's boutique. That's just gonna do wonders for my street cred." He knew everything was going to be okay when she chuckled at his complaint, but she wasn't there yet: she hadn't called him out for being a baby.

Just as Dawn had said, despite lunch hour traffic, they were there in less than ten minutes. Unaccountably, there were several parking spots open in front of the building. Rob figured it was because no self-respecting car would be caught dead in front of it. The Mustang bucked once when he turned off the ignition, as if it wasn't happy to be there either.

The sun had gone behind a solid bank of clouds and didn't look to be putting in an appearance any time soon. All the same, he was not happy when Elaina decided it was safe to come out without the mask on. He saw she had her enormous satchel/purse with her which meant she was keeping her armor close, but he still wasn't happy. He held his tongue, recognizing it as her way of getting back on the horse: if she started fearing the sun, she would never go out during the day. He just hoped she didn't go too far and forget to respect the danger. Well, he thought, she has managed seven hundred years...

The salon was nothing like he expected. It was just like a barber shop, except everything was brighter and shinier and there were women instead of men behind the chairs, and it all smelled nicer somehow. Dawn was there waiting for them when they came in. She ran over squealing just a little and crushed his lips to hers.

"I was beginning to think you couldn't make it," she sighed.