Authors: Nina Howard
Mercedes picked up one of the ‘small’ accounts. The balance was $467,968. Nice small account if you can get it. With a cursory glance across the paperwork, she did a quick calculation. The Vernons were worth at least $18 million, and that wasn’t counting real estate. What the hell was this guy embezzling for?
“I didn’t realize we were in such financial straits,” Victoria said. “Trip must have panicked. He was just trying to make ends meet.”
Mercedes looked over her glasses at her client and didn’t say a word. Victoria could feel she was being judged, but didn’t care.
She was probably the first client Mercedes had who had a bank statement.
She was sure most of her clients only went into a bank to rob it.
“Okay, then. As you know, the government has frozen all your assets pending an investigation into the alleged activities of your husband. It’s typical in a case of this sort, although to be honest, I don’t have a ton of experience with this sort of thing.”
“Neither do I,” Victoria fumed.
“Hopefully we can get some of your assets freed up - thank you for the statements. I’m going to try first with the children’s accounts.” She took a look at the statement for Parker. There was over half a million in that account alone. “This is a little complicated. You’ve going to have to give me some time to get this sorted out.”
Like I have much choice, Victoria thought. “Absolutely. Whatever you need.”
“I see you’re still traveling with your friend there.”
“Lucky me,” Victoria said.
“It could be --” Victoria could tell she was about to say ‘worse‘ then stopped herself. “It could be some time until I can get back to you. Where’s the best place to contact you?”
“Here, let me give you a number,” she wrote it out on a piece of notepaper she found buried on Mercedes’ piled-high desk.
“Is this your cell?”
“No, my mother’s house,” Victoria said standing up. No Mercedes, it couldn’t be much worse.
CHAPTER 15
As she cut the crust off of Posey’s cream cheese and jelly sandwich, Victoria realized that this was about as far as her culinary skills took her. Until now, she never really had a need to try. When she was out of school she and Andrea ate out every night, either on the wine company’s dime, or by hitting every happy hour buffet. She found living on buffalo wings and cold quesadillas wasn’t a problem as long as it was chased down with a cold beer or icy Cosmo.
When she and Trip were first married, she couldn’t wait to pull out the stunning Cartier china and Waterford crystal they had gotten for wedding presents - all from Trip’s side of the family. The few members of the Patterson family that Barbara insisted be invited to the wedding gave them cash, slipped to Trip while going through the receiving line. Anything that was beautiful or sentimental came from the Vernon side of the family.
The first time she attempted to cook at home she insisted on having a dinner party for some of Trip’s classmates from Williams. They had inherited Trip’s grandmother’s mahogany dining room table that easily seated 12, and she was determined to fill it. The day of the dinner, Trip was surprised to see Victoria cool and collected. The table was gorgeous. She had spent three hours working on the floral arrangement alone. Set with the family sterling, beeswax candles in the candelabra, thick linen napkins folded just so, the table was magazine-ready. She agonized over the place cards, striving to achieve the perfect conversational seating arrangement.
People arrived, and cocktails were served. Trip was the perfect host and bartender. Rarely a glass went empty. Victoria slipped into the kitchen to get dinner prepared, happily listening to the sounds of clinking glasses and laughter spilling from the next room.
She opened the oven to find that the $200 tenderloin she had meticulously marinated and tied was red and raw. The oven was stone cold, and nothing she could do to get it, or the burners to light. A lesser woman would have panicked, but Victoria quickly checked her watch, and got to work. She took eight Stouffer’s dinners out of the freezer and systematically cooked them all in the microwave while she tossed the salad and sliced the cold bread. She divided the eight dinners between the twelve plates, and served them without a word to Trip or any of the guests. If anyone noticed that their table mates were eating Fettucini Alfredo while they were dining on Chicken A la King, nobody said a word. Victoria never broke a sweat, but after that dinner she had every other meal cooked by someone else.
She shook off the memory, and put Posey’s sandwich in a brown paper bag with an apple and a bag of goldfish. If someone had told her six months ago she’d enjoy making a brown bag lunch for her children, she’d laugh all the way to the bar at the Four Seasons. Today, as she put Posey’s name on the bag, she added a heart and ‘mom’. It felt good in a foreign way. She handed the lunches to the kids, kissed them on the forehead and sent them out the door. This housewife thing was starting to appeal to her.
She grabbed the dog and sat on the sofa. Without thinking, she picked up the remote and flipped through the channels. There was an “America’s Next Top Model” marathon that couldn’t really hold her interest. Most likely because she had seen most of the episodes. She went to the refrigerator, and stood in front of it for a good ten minutes, not hungry. After pacing the little house, she decided to go up to the library to use the internet. Since Barbara and Bud had yet to join the 21st Century - they still had phones on cords and a television that sat on the floor - she was reduced to using the computers at the public library. All those people browsing on their laptops in Starbucks used to look like idle idiots, but what she wouldn’t give for a wireless laptop now. Or a latte.
Before she left, she put together an outfit consisting of a few of her New York pieces anchored by her new thrift store basics. It wasn’t ideal, but it was working. If she had learned anything growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, it was to make do. But at least now ‘making do’ included a $1,500 cashmere cardigan. She was pleased with what she saw in the mirror. While she wasn’t even getting close to her New York Skinny body, the extra pounds were going grudgingly, thanks to her bicycle rides and nightly walks. The skirt was perfect and she wrapped the too-large blouse around her and anchored it with one of her mother’s large brooches from the 60’s. She added a strand of beads that the FBI didn’t feel were worth taking, and put on the pair of Ferragamo flats that were her first find at the thrift store. Not bad for someone living off of everyone else’s castoffs.
She went to the garage and walked the bike out to the alley. She tried to raise her leg to get it over the bike, but the skirt was both too tight and too long to allow her that much of a range of motion. She tried to hike her skirt up to give her legs more freedom, but by the time she had raised it high enough, it was almost at crotch-level. Frustrated, she threw the bike down and stamped her foot. She’d walk.
“I didn’t think you were one to give up that easily,” Mike said as he appeared from nowhere in the middle of the alley. How did he do that? Something he learned in FBI school? Whatever it was, it was really beginning to unnerve Victoria.
“Stupid bike,” she said, throwing a scowl back toward the offending piece of metal.
“Come on, let me give you a ride,” Mike offered.
“I may be down, but I’m not desperate.” She kept walking.
“Oh, it’s not that bad.”
“You drive a truck with a giant bug plastered on either side,” she pointed out.
“Some chicks dig that,” he smiled.
“I bet.” It became apparent that he was not going to go back to his truck, but was going to follow her like a stray puppy, and she was kind of glad he did. She wondered what he did when he wasn’t following her around. “Don’t you get bored?”
“Bored?”
“Sitting around all day, waiting for something to happen.” She said it matter-of-factly, but it stung just the same. “When walking uptown with me is the high point of your day, that’s a sad state of affairs.”
“I wouldn’t say walking around town with you is rough duty,” he answered.
“No, really. Wouldn’t you rather be
doing
something? Making something. Making a difference. No kid wants to grow up to be a guy who sits in a truck.”
“I knew a few stoners in high school who would have thought it was the best job in the world,” he deflected the question.
“Can’t you be serious? I really want to know.”
Mike thought about the question. Of course he got bored. Bored silly. Even when he was on a stakeout in his beloved Organized Crime Unit, tailing some of the baddest of the bad guys out there, it got boring. “It’s part of the job. The payoff is worth it in the end.”
Neither of them wanted to talk about what that payoff was. They both knew Trip was out there somewhere. “Did you ever want to be anything else?” she asked.
“What, you’re my career counselor now? I like my job, thank you very much.”
“I don’t know, you seem like a smart guy. You could probably do anything. Why this?”
“I wanted a job where I got to meet beautiful women,” he said, raising his eyebrows in an exaggerated leer. “Seriously? What else would you have me do? Become an investment banker?”
Frustrated that she wasn’t getting anywhere, Victoria changed the subject, but only slightly. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“What’s with the in-depth interview today? What did I want to be when I grew up? Sisters or brothers? You starting a file on me?” he teased.
“It’s not really fair, is it? You seem to know everything about me, and I don’t know anything about you. So far all I’ve got is that you’re probably not married and you went to high school with pot smokers.”
“Okay, okay. I’m game. Ask anything you want. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“First of all, where are you from?”
“I told you. Pennsylvania.”
“It’s a big state. Narrow it down.”
“Philadelphia,” he said.
“Proper?”
“Boy, you are a nosy one. No, not proper. But close enough. Are we done?”
“Where did you go to school?” she asked. He was a puzzle to her, and she felt compelled to crack it.