Page 77 of Justice Denied

“Speaking?”

“Ms. Stanhope, my name is Agent Leslie Updike with FinCEN. Are you familiar with our agency?”

Mae gripped the receiver tighter as her palms began to sweat. She tried to think why someone from the financial crimes agency would be calling her but decided it was probably related to the takeover bid. “Yes, of course. How can I help you, Agent Updike?” Good, her voice sounded steady and friendly.

“Would you be able to come to our office in Vienna for a chat?”

“What’s this about?” Mae wanted to come across as confused but her tone held a strident note.

“I’d rather not say on the phone. We’ll expect you in an hour. Here’s the address.” The agent rattled off the address, which Mae dutifully wrote down, then repeated out loud at the agent’s request.

“Oh, and Ms. Stanhope, please don’t mention this meeting to anyone.” The agent said goodbye before Mae could agree.

She replaced the receiver, then glanced at the computer clock. 12:40. Since Ryan took lunch at noon, she usually went at one, but today, he had been holed up in his office since returning from the board meeting. She composed an email saying she had an appointment, then left. Walking to her car, she tried in vain to stay calm, but the feeling of birds coming home to roost wouldn’t leave her. Her day of reckoning had arrived but at least she had a rather large bargaining chip to trade.

* * *

Seth munched on a chicken sandwich,wishing he were eating with Jetta and not alone in his car. After helping Emily into Jetta’s vehicle, he’d said goodbye and watched them drive away. Each time he parted from Jetta was hard, as he couldn’t help but think it might have been the last time he would be with her. He bowed his head, allowing a wordless prayer to flow from him to God, the only thing he could do in the circumstance. Respecting Jetta’s boundaries meant not pushing for his own agenda, which translated in waiting. His phone buzzed, drawing his attention outward.

“Hello?”

“Seth?” The female voice sounded slightly familiar to him, but he couldn’t immediately place it.

“Speaking.” He rewrapped the remainder of his sandwich, his appetite waning as it did whenever he pictured a future without Jetta.

“It’s Leslie Updike. I have an update on the case you asked about.”

“You do?”

“Mr. Warner sent over documents that showed someone at Topher Robotics had been stealing money for years—and it wasn’t Jay Ainsley.”

“Wait, he had documents?” Seth thought Warner had been upfront when he and Jetta had visited about what papers he had in his possession, but the man hadn’t mentioned additional documents beyond the invoices.

“Copies, not originals. But enough to show someone else was responsible for some of the embezzlement.”

Although reeling from this knowledge, Seth latched onto the modifier Leslie had used. “Some, but not all?”

“That’s correct. This person appears to have stolen roughly a quarter of a million dollars from the papers Mr. Warner sent.”

“Is this person still an employee at Topher Robotics?”

“That’s all I can give you at this time.” She sighed. “To be frank, I almost pushed this to the back burner, but my boss reminded me that Topher Robotics is in a fight to fend off a takeover bid from Maxwell Technology, so this became top priority.”

“Will you keep searching for what happened to the rest of the money? There’s still millions of dollars unaccounted for if this person only took $250,000.”

“This is the beginning of what will likely be a long process.”

“I appreciate the heads up.” He decided to share about the invoices. “Leslie, Mr. Warner did pass along invoices he thought might be dodgy for Jetta and I to investigate. We did and found almost all of them were legit except for one from SafeSense. The person I talked to claimed Topher Robotics brought the faulty invoices to their attention and that they’d fired the person responsible, a long-time employee named Dolores Green.”

“Mr. Warner’s email said something about that, but since we had clear evidence in what he did pass along, we haven’t investigated the invoices yet. Anything else you found out?”

“We went to see Ms. Green, and she vehemently denied altering any invoices, claimed her finances were an open book.”

“Dolores Green,” Leslie said. “I’ll put her on my list of people to talk to.”

Seth hesitated, his mind flashing back to the shots fired, his fear for Jetta and her unborn baby driving him to throw himself over her body as he brought them to the ground. He suppressed a shudder, then decided to tell Leslie. “We visited her, and someone took potshots at us as we left.”

“What?”

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