Page 86 of Partner Pursuit
“I didn’t have to make a call,” Mrs. Rothman said. “I just wanted to talk to you in private. Genevieve agreed with me. It was a bit of a covert operation. Sometimes you have to work around men’s egos.” The three women smiled at each other.This is the feeling of camaraderie that I want with Colette.
“Okay, then you don’t mind if I make the callhere?”
“I’d be delighted.”
Audrey called her Hen contact and asked her for the records related to March twelve years ago and todouble-checkthat all the records had been provided. It turned out that some paper records were in offsite storage and had never been scanned. Audrey asked for them all to be sent toher.
“Can you let Genevieve know what you find?” Mrs. Rothman asked.
“Yes, I’ll call Genevieve as soon as I review the documents.”
“And thank you for the society articles,” Mrs. Rothman said. “Something is up. Laila accompanies Pierre everywhere, and she loves those events.”
Chapter Forty-Two
The boxes full of paper documents arrived at 5 p.m. in Audrey’s office. She had chills as she opened the first box. An earlier phone trade could be a huge break for the case. Audrey called Jake and told him she wouldn’t be home. He was working late too, busy coordinating a marketing campaign for this album. They agreed to meet for a quick dinner around 9 p.m. near Audrey’s office.
She finished an initial review of the contents of the boxes late that evening and arrived at the restaurant first, a small Italian place in the neighborhood that was nearly empty at 9 p.m. The waiter greeted her by name—she’d been coming there for seven years now—and led her to one of the best corner tables.
“Just one, right?”he asked.
“No.” Audrey smiled. “I’m meetingsomeone.”
“Ah, Winnie comingtoo?”
“No, my boyfriend,” she said, the claim still feeling awkward on her tongue. And it didn’t seem to adequately describe Jake’s role inherlife.
“Boyfriend!” the waiter said. “That’s marvelous! We’ll dim the lights some more.” He lit the candle on the table with aflourish.
She laughed and looked up to see Jake arriving, pulling his hat off his wavy brown hair. Their glances met across the room, and Audrey felt as if he had physically caressed her. The waiter turned to see who had entered the restaurant.
“Yes, I see he is here,” hesaid.
And then Jake was hugging her and giving her a hard kiss on the lips. She leaned into him, breathing in the comforting smell of him, and looked into his blue eyes. He smoothed back her hair, and she kissedhim.
“It’s good, then.” Jake looked at her as he took his seat. “I can see you’re bouncing to tell me something.”
“Better than good. I found that trade, and even better,” she whispered, “I found the written authorization allowing discretionary trading.” Just saying it out loud gave her chills again.
“You’ve got it.”
“I do,” she said. “Finally, a big break in this nightmare of a case. But now how do I tellthem?”
“Tellwhom?”
“Well, first, I have to tell Genevieve. I promised I’d tell her if I found anything, and she’ll let Mrs. Rothman know. But this will make Colette look terrible—because she should’ve seen this gap in the records and followed up.”
“She should’ve. That’s not your problem. She certainly hasn’t had any problem pointing out yourmistakes.”
“But my mistakes were not this big. This could’ve made us lose the case. I don’t want to be responsible for her not makingpartner.”
“She’s the one who made the mistake. It’s her responsibility,” Jake said. “Don’t you dare feel that it’s yours.”
“I don’t. I’m pretty upset that this wasn’t found earlier.” She shook her head. “But I still don’t want to throw her underthebus.”
“And I respect you for that,” he said. “But you may also want to be prepared for her trying to pin it onyou.”
“What?”
