Chapter 7 - The Forged Check and the Pocket Watch
Silence descended on the restaurant, thick and heavy.
Monica, the woman who had spent a decade sleeping with my husband, the woman who had hugged me at holiday parties and told me how lucky I was, sank into one of the dining chairs and began to weep. She wasn't the mastermind. She was just another asset Frank had leveraged, and now, he was setting her up to take the fall for federal bank fraud.
"He played us all," Robert said, pacing near the bar. "If the police see Monica on those cameras depositing a check with your forged signature, Anne, they’ll think the two of you were in on it together to rob Daniel. Frank will walk away totally clean."
I stared at the pink bank receipt on the table. Frank was smart, but arrogance always breeds carelessness. He wanted to ruin me, but he also wanted to keep his stolen money secure.
"Where is the money going, Monica?" I asked, keeping my voice level. "If Camper Holdings is a shell company, the money doesn't just sit there. Frank is a control freak. He tracks every penny. Where does he keep his master records?"
Monica wiped her mascara-stained cheeks, looking up at me with genuine terror.
"He doesn't keep paper records at my house," she sniffled. "He said paper leaves a trail. But this morning, before he came here, he gave me something to hold. He said it was a family heirloom, and he wanted me to keep it safe during the divorce confrontation so you wouldn't try to steal it."
She reached into the deep pocket of her coat and pulled out a heavy, antique gold pocket watch.
I recognized it instantly. It had belonged to Frank's grandfather. It hadn't run in thirty years.
Monica handed it to me. I pressed the small release button on the top crown. The gold casing popped open.
Inside, the intricate clockwork gears had been entirely hollowed out. Nestled in the empty brass casing was a tiny, black micro-USB drive.
"Get the laptop," Daniel said immediately, snatching the drive from the watch.
Sarah pushed the computer toward him. Daniel plugged the USB into the side port. The screen flickered as a password prompt appeared.
"Try his anniversary date," Monica suggested quietly.
"Which one?" I asked dryly.
"Try my birthday," Daniel said. He typed it in. Incorrect.
"Try the date he bought the Florida condo," Robert suggested. Incorrect.
I looked at the vase of yellow tulips on the table. I thought about the man who had sat across from me for thirty-eight years. Frank didn't care about dates. He didn't care about people. He only cared about the narrative he controlled.
"Type in Responsible," I told Daniel. "Capital R. With a dollar sign at the end."
Daniel typed Responsible$.
The lock screen vanished, replaced by a sprawling directory of deeply nested financial folders.
We had found the motherlode.
There were spreadsheets detailing a decade of embezzled funds from his corporate logistics job, kickback receipts from shipping vendors, and the exact routing numbers for the offshore accounts in the Caymans. But more importantly, there was a folder titled Exit Strategy.
Sarah clicked it. Inside were PDF copies of two airline tickets booked for tomorrow morning.
But they weren't two tickets to Florida for Frank and Monica.
They were two tickets on separate airlines. One was a first-class ticket to Costa Rica under the name Frank Miller. The second was a coach ticket to Miami, Florida.
"He bought me a ticket to Miami," Monica whispered, staring at the screen. "He told me to go ahead and set up the condo, and he would follow next week after the divorce dust settled."
"He was never going to follow you, Monica," Robert said grimly. "Costa Rica doesn't have an extradition treaty for white-collar financial crimes. He was sending you to Florida to be arrested when the FBI tracked the forged bank deposit, while he disappeared with the millions he funneled offshore."
Before anyone could speak again, a thunderous crash shattered the front of the restaurant.
We all spun around.
May you like
The glass of the front door was completely spider-webbed. Standing on the sidewalk, holding a heavy iron tire-iron, was Frank. He had realized he left his master keys and his briefcase behind.
He swung the iron again, shattering the glass completely, and stepped through the frame into the dining room.
