Staying On Top (Whitman University) (3 page)

It was more than twenty minutes before Miss Daisy Brown made an appearance in the foyer. Silk robes draped her soft, curvy figure from head to toe. She had her hair curled up in a style that made me feel as though I’d stepped through the door onto a 1950s film set, and the fact that she had on so many jewels I worried she’d fall down the stairs only added to the image.

“Maise, you can go now. I’ll be wanting more fresh cucumbers from the market.” Miss Daisy Brown dismissed her help before turning to me, the smile on her face as icy cold as the diamonds around her neck.

The tag on my sensible navy blue suit scratched at my neck and the backs of my knees. The smile on my face felt forced, but she couldn’t tell. I held out a hand when the old lady tottered over to me, her ankles wobbly in the three-inch heels that barely brought her even with my five-foot-eight. 

“Good morning, Miss Brown. I’m Special Agent Gillian Cooley, with the white-collar crime division at the FBI.” She peered at my badge when I held it out. The squint of her eyes told me she needed to be wearing glasses. They probably didn’t complement her fashion statement. “I’m here to discuss your recent fallout with accountant Neil Saunders.”

Miss Daisy Brown pursed her lips, which were too full, the skin around them too tight. She didn’t mind spending the money on fighting a losing battle against time, it seemed. “I don’t have anything to say about that.”

Great.

Step two—assess the mark’s intelligence and level of desperation.

“If you wouldn’t mind sitting down with me for just a few minutes, I’d like to ask you a few questions and let you know what our task force is doing to recover the funds lost by you and many others.”

Her ears perked up at the mention of others. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt to listen to what you’ve got to say. We can go into the dining room. Maise set out some lemonade.”

More like saliva juice. 

I followed her through a wide doorway into the ugliest dining room known to man. The walls were covered in black-and-white damask paper and dotted with giant wrought-iron sconces that looked as though they were meant for the outdoors. The table was mahogany and stretched from one end of the room to the other, even though I knew from my research that the woman had no family. She’d never married or had children; she had no one to spend her millions on—not that she’d earned a cent of them. Her grandfather had owned massive amounts of property in Texas that had been flowing with oil. His descendants still lived off the proceeds. 

The entire house smelled of kasha and mothballs, along with a potpourri of other scents I had no inclination to pin down. Trying not to breathe through my nose, I slid into an upholstered chair at the dining-room table and pulled a folder from my briefcase. It contained the details of what was stolen from her investment accounts and a forged report as to my father’s last-known whereabouts, as well as a nifty little card that claimed to give the FBI permission to include her in the list of victims and continue working on her case. In truth, it added my father as a signatory on her checking accounts and safety deposit box at the local bank. 

It was shocking how many financial institutions didn’t call to double-check things like signature cards, or even require customers to fill them out in person.

She sat down and stirred three packets of Splenda into a tall glass of yellow lemonade. “Maise is trying to kill me. Today it’s forgetting the sugar in the lemonade and not making it pink like I asked. Tomorrow it’ll be swapping arsenic for lemons.”

I kept my mouth shut about that, but made no move to grab the sweating glass in front of me. “Miss Brown, this will only take a few minutes. I’m here so we can verify the facts of your particular case. If you would like to be included in our investigation, I’ll just need a signature.”

She took the stapled pieces of paper containing her case specifics and glanced over them. The breath staling in my lungs released when her hawklike eyes slid over the words and numbers instead of studying them. There weren’t any mistakes—I knew the scam backward and forward—but I always worried there would be too much information there, or things the FBI wouldn’t know, but Neil Saunders, a.k.a. Neil Paddington, would.

She didn’t say anything about my having too much information, or start screaming her fool head off for the police. Miss Daisy Brown did pinch her bottom lip, watching me in silence while the rusty wheels turned in her batty old brain. 

“What are you gonna do to him? If you find him I mean, which is doubtful since the federal government spends more time with its head up its ass than finding criminals, even petty ones like Neil Saunders.”

The mini-tirade ended as quickly as it began, leaving me a little dazed but excited about the prospect of getting her on the topic of revenge and off the path of scrutinizing me. “We’re going to set up a sting with the information you and others authorize us to use, lure him out into the open, and arrest him. It’s not going to be easy to find him, but these people always make a mistake. And we’re there when they do.”

She snorted, then downed the rest of her lemonade and wiped her chin. “You’re not ever gonna get my ten million bucks back, but let me tell you something—there’s more where that came from, and more where that came from, too. The Texas Browns got so much money the likes of my crook accountant and Uncle Sam won’t never guess.”

Apparently not enough money to buy this broad some class. Or grammar lessons. Instead of engaging with her, I behaved like any good federal employee and ignored her idiotic commentary. It only made her keep blabbering in an attempt to get under my skin, but the tirade ended up in my favor, with signed authorizations for three different banks. 

I said my good-byes to Miss Daisy Brown, who waved me away like a gnat trying to kill itself in her lemonade. The little envelopes containing her signature cards, all addressed in my best imitation of her handwriting and bearing her return address, fell out of sight into a mailbox on campus. Dad would have access to three more of her accounts within the week. I wondered if he’d be interested in the likelihood that the woman had millions more buried in her backyard. Possibly in a creepy cat graveyard that may or may not contain the last few men who’d tried to woo her money away.

It seemed unlikely we would get it all, but that was okay. She had some to spare.

Dad had promised me ten million dollars for the last eleven years of free assistance on his cons—I’d been doing more legwork than he had ever since he’d decided living in the States proved too much of a risk. The thought of walking away had entered my mind, for sure, but somewhere along the way this had become what I did. I deserved the money in return for everything I’d surrendered, childhood included, and it was almost over.

Less than three years. Then I would be out of the game, and life could be whatever I wanted.

Chapter 3

Sam

We had not gotten in touch with my accountant, which boded poorly for his being able to help us recover my money, and the distraction had done nothing good for my game. I’d made it into the second week of the tournament in Switzerland by the skin of my teeth, helped along by an injury and a seriously uncharacteristic day of poor play by the top Spaniard. Tomas was a good friend of mine, which was one reason I knew to go after his hamstring.

Tennis was funny that way—practice and party with a guy one day, use every dirty trick in the book to kick his ass on the court the next. Every win meant more prize money, and since it appeared I was thirty million poorer, that had become more important than ever.

The season ended in less than a month—my plane would land in Paris in an hour, and after a week in one of my favorite European cities, all that remained was the Davis Cup and ATP finals. Leo wanted me to focus, to concentrate on the tennis and let him sort out my newfound financial woes. Easier said than done. Even spending the last couple of nights in Basel with Chloe hadn’t made me feel better, and that was a damn shame.

My hookups had waned over the past six months. I had spent about seven weeks dating an up-and-coming Aussie girl, and since she’d gotten tired of my “shallowness,” there had only been a smattering of one-night stands to take her place. My interest level had been too low to argue with her during the, in my opinion, overly dramatic breakup scene, but I wasn’t shallow. It had just been clear to me that the two of us weren’t made for any kind of long-term compatibility.

It had surprised me how much I’d like to find something less shallow. Just a little over a year ago I’d met Quinn’s girlfriend, Emilie, and I’d kind of thought he was crazy for sticking to one girl, no matter how totally hot.

The idea that I might want to change had started in St. Moritz, when I’d met their friend Blair. She’d made it clear she had no interest in sleeping with me, exclusively or not, but there had been something between us. A spark. I was sure she felt it, too, but I didn’t know her well enough to guess at her reasons for not wanting to act on it. Even though it hadn’t worked out, the experience had flipped some kind of switch in me. 

I’d spent my life embracing cynicism regarding long-term relationships. I thought that feelings couldn’t change, that there were families who wanted what was best for one another always, no matter what. It was what felt true to me. It was what I knew. 

For a girl like Blair, for a feeling like that . . . for a moment I thought about trying.

The wheels touched down in Paris, bouncing a little and forcing me to brace my hands on my armrests. I went through the motions in customs, which never got easier no matter how many stamps were in my passport. It would be impossible for me to answer a question about the last time I’d been in the States for anything other than business, but that didn’t stop customs officials giving me a hard time.

When the front desk clerk pulled me aside at the Parisian hotel’s elevator bank, I thought,
No way is this happening again
. Leo and the rest of my team had arrived earlier today and he’d texted to say everything was ready and waiting—including a suite with a massage table all set up. 

“
Perdon, Monsieur
Bradford
?”

“
Oui?”
I felt so tired. My six-week break couldn’t come soon enough. If we weren’t poised to win the David Cup, I’d be more than a little tempted to end my season after this tournament.

“I have a message for you.” He held out a piece of folded cardstock.

“
Merci,
” I replied, taking the piece of paper and heaving a quiet sigh of relief. No more embarrassing conversations about declined credit cards, at least.

I shoved the message in my back pocket, then shouldered my favorite racket bag when the doors dinged and slid open. Massage tables and sophisticated French girls with strong hands were the only things on my mind as the elevator climbed to the top floor, but apparently Leo had different ideas.

There was a table in my room, along with soothing music and some kind of floral scent hanging in the air, but instead of the pretty face I’d been hoping for, Leo’s overly tanned mug waited for me in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I dropped my bag and kicked off my freebie Nikes. “What’s up?”

“How was your flight, Sam? Mine was good, thank you for asking.”

“Cut the shit, Leo. What have you found out about Neil?”

“He’s a ghost. Left the States years ago and hasn’t been back, at least according to the passport issued under his name. It hasn’t been stamped for ten years, give or take, and that was in the Caymans. But he’s a kickass sailor. Owns at least three different boats. He could be anywhere.”

“How exactly did he slip through our background check, which I’m going to go ahead and assume we do before hiring people to handle millions of my dollars? Is it just me? Are there others? Is he under investigation, or . . . ?”

“Yes, we do background checks, but according to the FBI, who does have a pretty extensive file, this alias was new around the time we hired him. Their file is all unproven conjecture, which is how he’s still operating. I contacted Interpol, and same thing. His clients are all high profile, not the types to share who they’re working with financially, and also unlikely to report it when they’re been had. They both want a statement but I doubt they’ll have any more luck if you give them one.” He paused, taking a swig of something girly—maybe a mimosa. The thought of drinking sweet orange juice turned my stomach. “They suspect he has at least one accomplice, but they have no idea who or how they met, or her role in the scams.”

“You came in here and interrupted my massage to tell me we still don’t know shit?”

“Pretty much. And to raid your minibar because mine was empty.”

“Fantastic. Thanks for everything, Leo, as always.”

My phone rang, distracting me from wanting to strangle my manager. 

“Hello?” I glared at Leo as he rummaged through my minibar and disappeared through our connecting door with all of my vodka. 

“Sammy!”

“Quinn?”

“Do you let someone else call you Sammy now? Say it isn’t so!” His voice sounded far away and a little tinny.

I grunted. “Not likely. I believe I’ve made several attempts to get you to stop.”

“If you were better at poker this wouldn’t be an issue.”

“I’m not bad at poker when a guy who’s supposed to be mentoring me my first year on the tour isn’t dumping an entire bottle of whiskey down my throat.” The mere memory of that night made me gag. I hadn’t taken a single sip of whiskey since. “What’s up?”

“Do I need a reason to call my favorite baby pro?”

I rolled my eyes even though there was something different in his voice. It popped sweat out on my palms. “Usually.”

“There was a segment on some gossip show the other night that insinuated that you’re having some financial trouble. Just calling to check.”

I sank down on the edge of the bed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “What do you mean by ‘insinuated’?”

“By that I mean shaky cell phone video of you at the front desk while multiple credit cards get turned down.”