Page 19 of Indecent Secrets

“Other than the whole company thing, did anyone dislike my uncle?” I asked, making myself sound a bit vulnerable. “I just can’t help but feel that a few people have a grudge going and they’re pushing it onto me now that he’s dead.” I gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Paranoid, I know.”

“Maybe, but it pays to be a little paranoid around here,” I was told. “I’ve found it helps.”

Well, hell. That wasn’t an ominous statement at all.

I went back to my office, pondering what I’d been told. Lawton wouldn’t be the first person to make promises that people then killed him over. I sat down at the desk and went into the computer to pull up the employee history of the company. If I could get a list of the secretaries who’d worked for Lawton, I could do research on my own time and see if any of them had access to his home—and if that access continued even after they were fired. Maybe this was a revenge killing, or the latest one thought he was still going to get something.

It was also time I looked into Weston and the others on the board. You didn’t kill over a corporate takeover, usually. But could there be an additional reason? Maybe one of them was in dire financial straits and needed a bigger paycheck from Lawton’s company to save them. Or there was a personal affront that just couldn’t stand.

I got the list and sent it to my work email, then deleted everything. I didn’t want to go on my personal laptop on the company’s Wi-Fi in case that would give a hacker an opportunity.

Like I’d been told, it often paid to be paranoid.

As I finished up, Leigh entered the office, waving at Rebecca before stepping inside and closing the door. Thank God this was one of the offices that actually had a proper wall facing the interior of the office space. Lawton must’ve put his foot down on that one, seeing as most of the other offices were pretty much all glass. It muffled sound but did nothing to hide visually whatever you were doing, whether that was falling asleep at your desk or making paper airplanes or arguing with your spouse on the phone.

“How was your day?” she asked, beaming at me with excitement. “Because mine was incredibly productive. You wouldn’t believe how many frustrated people Lawton left behind.”

“That is my uncle you’re talking about.”

Leigh rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, don’t give me that crap. You haven’t seen him since you were how old? You had no relationship with him. And you’re pragmatic enough to accept he had issues, anyway.”

I smirked at her. “You really are ruthless.”

“I’ve had to be. And you’ll have to be too, Jack Lawton, CEO. You’re not in philosophy class anymore where you can debate exactly what it means to have a bleeding heart and if rationalism is ever going to be anything more than a paper shield to try and cope with a reality people don’t want to accept.”

My eyebrows rose. “You know the school of rationalism.”

“I was forced to read Ayn Rand just like everyone else,” Leigh said breezily, sitting down across from me in one of the plush chairs meant for clients. I didn’t bother to hide my stare as she crossed those long legs of hers. “Rationalism is just a way to avoid personal responsibility. I can appreciate in Rand’s case why she retreated into that method of thinking—it was a trauma response. But rationalism is like nihilism, it’s an immature way of thinking. And I don’t mean that in the way people use immature as an insult. I mean that it’s a sign you’re choosing not to truly mature yourself. It’s thinking at a juvenile stage.”

“You would’ve been a delight to have in my classes,” I noted. “You know your work and you have a strong opinion. I’d like to set you on some students of mine.”

“Oh, give the students a break.” Leigh grinned. “I am older than they are by a good few years.”

“So you have the opinion that we have an obligation to help one another, and that by being in the world we are partly responsible for its failures.”

“Yes. ‘You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it’,” Leigh quoted. “From the Talmud.”

“Spoken like a true activist.”

Leigh shrugged, but I thought I saw a flicker of… something in her eyes. Was it fear?

“You never answered my question,” she said, shifting the topic. “How was your day?”

“Slow,” I said honestly. “And you never told me what you found out.”

“It seems that everyone has an idea that your uncle vetoed.” Leigh held out a notepad for me to take. “I wrote down the gist of a lot of them but I asked them to compile a proper proposal and email it to me so that I could go through it and eliminate the ones that we don’t want to do and prioritize the ones we do.”

I skimmed the list. “This is pretty exhaustive.”

“Like I said, everyone had an idea that your uncle vetoed. Many of them had multiple ideas. There was a culture of frustration here. He seemed to be of the opinion that if something had been working for the company all these years, it would always work for the company.”

“But with how things are advancing in technology and the social sphere…”

“Precisely,” she said with a succinct nod. “I think that things moved slowly enough that if it worked in 1910 it would work for you in 1960. But from 1980 to today? No way. Things have accelerated at an unprecedented speed.”

I scrutinized her face, but Leigh looked completely at ease and eager once again. There was no sign of whatever I’d seen in her eyes that one moment. Had there even been anything there? Or had I imagined it?

There was one surefire way I knew to get a woman off her guard and revealing the things she didn’t really want me to see. I stood up.

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