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I waited until he’d set it down before I spoke to Charmaine. “You wanted to see me?” It sounded so mundane for this whole cloak-and-dagger routine.
She nodded. “Yes. There are some things you need to know before you step foot in the Gold Moon offices. Joseph would have wanted me to tell you.” So here was another person purporting to tell me things my dad would want me to know.
For some reason, I had more instinctive faith in Charmaine than I did in Parker Montgomery, with his extra sheen of slime.
“And those things are?” I sipped my drink, relaxing into the feeling of the alcohol in my throat. When I needed to let go, I lived for the burn.
“Okay, well, there are a few things, but I’ll just give you a quick overview. Firstly, clients have been requesting larger shipments, and the revenues being claimed for our services are exceeding normal amounts for this time of year.” She squinted briefly. “For any time of year, actually. We’re bringing in more than ever before.”
“But isn’t that just normal business growth? The kind we usually encourage?” I swirled my drink around my glass as I looked around the bar. From what I could see, it had a lot of dark wood.
She shook her head. “Not growth like this. I mean, growth in a gradual curve, yes. That would be us doing things right and reaping the rewards. But this is growth in a spike with no certain cause.”
“Is there anything we can do to find out why?” I didn’t know how I wanted her to answer. I didn’t want to be responsible for a problem as soon as I walked into the office.
“We’ve already started investigations…Joseph and me, that is.” Her hands shook as she pressed them to the bar.
But that was nowhere near enough information. “What have you and my dad been doing?”
“Just basic things to start.” She ran her fingertips over the counter, swirling around the pattern in a knot in the wood. “Nothing actually dangerous. Joseph started by trying to verify contracts for actual shipments against our current client list, but there’s a lot of paperwork to go through still. He visited a warehouse not long ago, so he could see one of the shipments he had doubts about, but it was empty. The workers there said they didn’t know what he was talking about, and not enough time had elapsed for him to file a lost or stolen report.” She stopped talking and swallowed suddenly.
“Then what?” I prompted.
“Nothing.” Her voice was thicker now, like it was harder to force the words out. “The next day, Joseph didn’t come into work because he started feeling sick.”
That captured my full attention and I met her sorrowful gaze.
“Three days later, he died.”
I swallowed despite my sudden nausea.
No one had properly explained the timeline of events to me before. “So Dad went to visit a warehouse investigating missing shipments right before he…got sick?” I still couldn’t bring myself to saydied.
She nodded. “Yeah. He did.”
My mind whirled at her solemn tone. There was something beneath the way she spoke, something she wasn’t saying.
“Do…do you think the visit to the warehouse and his sickness might be connected?”
She didn’t say anything this time, but her eyes widened as she looked at me.
This conversation suddenly made no sense at all. I hadn’t even made this kind of link — that the non-dangerous investigations my father had started could well have killed him.
“Who does he think did it? Did he have a list?” I needed to have a list, a place to start.
Charmaine shook her head. “He was suspicious of everyone, Josephine.”
“Jo.” The correction was automatic; only Dad regularly called me Josephine, although Mom used it if I was in trouble. Dad had always said it sounded more powerful and dignified, and I think he secretly liked that I bore his name inside my own.
“Jo,” she repeated. “He suspected all of them, didn’t know who was guilty. It’s why he hasn’t promoted anyone recently. He wanted some fresh eyes on what we’d found, too, to confirm what he thought he was looking at.” She stopped. “And now that falls on your shoulders, and I’m so sorry.”
I nodded. It all sounded perfect. Gold Moon was in a shitload of trouble, and I had no idea where to start to root out the trouble-makers.
“There’s more.” Charmaine looked away, and I sighed softly.
There was always more. Wasn’t that the story of everyone’s life? Nothing was ever simple, and when things went wrong, they just about spontaneously combusted, leaving only ash and destruction in their wake.
I didn’t prompt her this time, but she spoke anyway, like she was glad to simply tell me the story.
